The Wrong Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Ralph Lauren instead of Ram Dass?”

  “Exactly,” said Scott, laughing. “And they always paid well for the work, and nobody needed much to live on anyway—enough for a pair of tickets to see a Dylan concert or maybe a down payment on a VW bus.”

  “I get it. Enough to keep you in designer tie dye, but no one saved for a rainy day,” said Tim.

  “Rainy day? It’s one thing to have no health insurance when you’re twenty-five and going to live forever, but now…Have you ever had to pay for a root canal? Holy shit, man.”

  Tim looked at Scott’s expensive boots and the cashmere v-neck he so casually wore under the apron as work clothes. He thought, but didn’t say aloud, that Glen and Blake had cultivated a talented bunch of artists and had instilled within them exquisite taste.

  “And I laughed at my dad when he suggested dental school,” said Scott.

  After Tim had said hello to Annie and tidied himself up from his brush with the planter, he left Scott with her for their color consultation. “Color consultation”? Tim wondered if that might be a C & L euphemism for a different kind of consultation altogether. Annie was a beautiful girl, all dark hair and pale skin, violet eyes, Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. Her gorgeous eyes though, when she answered the door, were red-rimmed. Was there someone at last shedding a tear for old Rick? As he walked down the path, he paused again at the planter and bent over, trying to hear what Scott was saying. He thought it was something about someone not being able to hurt her anymore. Had Rick been her lover and now was Scott moving in? For the “color consultation”?

  He could hear Glen LaSalle announcing at one of the orientations for new artists: “We at Campbell and LaSalle do not have affairs, dalliances, quickies, or nooners, as they might be called elsewhere. We at Campbell and LaSalle have ‘color consultations.’”

  Tim was trying to decide whether or not to head over to Rick’s cabin and see if he could find Jane or help her find whatever it was she was looking for. Knowing Jane, he was sure she didn’t know what it would be until she saw it. That quality often made her a good scout at a rummage sale—not too set in her ways, not too dead-on to the lady head vases or the souvenir bottle openers to the exclusion of everything else that was interesting. No, Janie saw all the good stuff, but unfortunately she had only one set of eyes and one pair of hands. She couldn’t scoop up the first editions and the collectible LPs in one room and still be the first one to the Pyrex or the button box in the room around the corner. In fact, she could get so caught up in looking over everything that she sometimes didn’t make it out of the one room she started in.

  Bruce Oh had told Jane that it was her persistent looking, her openness to what there was to see that would make her a good investigator. Yes, Oh was right about that. And it made her a good picker for Tim, but he had to train her to know when to stop looking, too. He had to be able to rouse her from that trance she got into when she started going through a box of photos, a tray of old mismatched silverware. What was she always looking for? Tim wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure what any of them were always looking for, except now. He was looking for Claire Oh.

  Feeling more than a little silly, he walked off the path and searched behind bushes, around the rear of some of the cabins and studios. His eyes kept sweeping the property the way he wanted to teach Jane to sweep a sales room. In fact, he had used the old game show, Supermarket Sweep, as an example of how she was to train herself. They used to watch it when they both faked being sick on the same day in elementary school. Jane, an independent fourth grader, would be left home alone with a can of chicken noodle soup and an opener and instructions to call the EZ Way Inn if she felt any worse.

  Tim would be tucked into his bed with a quilt and a tray with tea and toast. He’d have to beg his overzealous mother to go watch her soap operas in the living room because he wanted to call Janie’s house and see if she had the same flu bug. As planned out the night before, Jane would be cozied under a blanket in her father’s recliner watching television. Tim would call, and Janie would do the play by play.

  “Oh my god, she’s taking all the cereal boxes into her cart; is she nuts?” Jane would say. “Go for the hams, go for the meat counter, you idiot,” she’d scream into the phone.

  “You know what she’ll say, don’t you? But my kids love that kind and it always seems expensive and I just thought if I got enough…,” Tim would respond, disgusted. “What’s she wearing? What’s her hair like?”

  Then Tim would make up a story about her and her unhappy life with her husband. “They have great kids, though,” Tim would say. “They are her pride and joy.”

  Yes, Tim would remind Jane about Supermarket Sweep, and that would help her use her keen rummage-sale eye to great advantage.

  Just when Tim thought he was completely over his hangover, he hallucinated. He saw a rope ladder fall down out of a tree four feet in front of him. Shaking his head and squinting and beginning to feel vaguely like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk, he looked up.

  No hallucination, not even one of Tim’s, ever swore like the man descending the rope.

  Mickey, dressed in sweatpants and a kind of loose-fitting kimono, was letting fly with a string of expletives when he saw a startled Tim standing directly in front of him.

  “What do you know about this?” Mickey demanded, holding out a chunk of gold set with what appeared to Tim to be a real ruby.

  Tim shook his head, looking up to see if Mickey had indeed come down from a beanstalk after raiding the nest of a golden-Cartier-earring-laying hen.

  “I built this tree house. I take care of it, and it is my sanctuary. Do you hear that? Blake and Glen have both okayed it. They know I need a place to meditate, and now I find this. There’re food scraps up there, too, which, if you didn’t know, I’ll be happy to tell you, will bring every critter in the world into my house—my house,” Mickey said, still holding out the earring.

  Tim thought to himself that it didn’t look like it belonged to any of the women in residence here, but he decided anything he said right now to the enraged Mickey might be held against him. Was this the same stoned-looking, laid-back painter who had casually dropped food all over Jane last night?

  Mickey began breathing deeply—in, out. Tim could count one on the inhale, two on the exhale. Mickey was clearly trying to calm himself. He seemed to be succeeding. His face lost some of its redness; he unclenched his fists.

  “I’m sorry, pal. I was out of control there for a minute,” Mickey said, his voice soft and measured.

  “No problem,” said Tim. “If I may ask, uh, what’s up? I mean up there?”

  “I built it as a getaway,” Mickey said. “Yeah, I know, I know, Campbell and LaSalle is a getaway, but I just need a little more, you know. I’m tenser than the average bear, and I like to have a place where no one can find me. Hardly anybody even knows about this place, but…” Mickey let his voice trail off, then shrugged. “I brought Martine and Silver out here last night, and we got pretty loaded. When we left, I must have left the ladder down. So someone was up there, and it just bugs me, you know.”

  Yeah, Tim did know. It would be like someone finding your secret clubhouse.

  “Anything missing?” Tim asked.

  “Like my dope?” asked Mickey with a laugh. “Nah. Looks like someone just wanted a place to crash.” Mickey opened his hand and looked at the earring. “With his lady, I guess.”

  “That lets me out,” said Tim with a smile. He took off his sunglasses, a dark and mirrored pair that had protected his bleary bloodshot eyes from the early morning light.

  “No interest in stargazing?” asked Mickey.

  “No lady,” said Tim.

  “Well, turn around while I hide the ladder so I won’t put you on my list of suspects if it happens again.”

  Obediently Tim turned around. Holding his sunglasses just so in front of him, he watched in the reflection as Mickey pulled a rope hidden on the other side of the tree that hoisted the ladder high up into th
e leaves. Mickey then wound the pulley rope around a hidden branch and poof, no more beanstalk.

  It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that system, thought Tim, looking around at several vantage points from which they could be seen. They were in plain sight of the deck of the art gallery and the rear of two of the cabins. There were two telescopes that Tim knew about—one on the deck of the lodge and one in the gallery library of the barn. Mickey’s little secret was probably known by every resident and guest of Campbell and LaSalle, even the ones he hadn’t brought up for a little taste of stoned stargazing.

  Tim left Mickey mumbling to himself and shuffling off toward his own cabin. Scott had mentioned last night that Mickey was angling to become Blake’s right-hand man now that Rick was gone, but Tim didn’t think he had a shot at it if Blake knew he was a doper. And Mickey didn’t look like he was trying to keep that fact a secret.

  Tim decided to go back to the lodge and meet with Jane. It would be time for lunch soon. They hadn’t made a plan on where to rendezvous, but Tim had never known Jane to miss a meal. He could ask her how she was doing on her research assignment, and they could wander out to the porch rockers. She could tell him all about what she had found in Rick Moore’s cabin, and he could tell her all about not finding Claire Oh.

  He wasn’t returning from his search entirely empty-handed though.

  He knew that Scott and Annie were special friends and that Annie had been crying. He knew that Scott needed a root canal. He knew that mellow Mickey had quite a temper when he thought his space was being violated. And he knew about a charming little hideaway that someone who didn’t want to be seen on the grounds could use without being seen herself. He was also sure that when he and Jane did find Claire Oh, she would be wearing only one ruby earring.

  13

  When I carried out to the alley my first box of throwaways, I was shocked at how quickly people gathered to pick through my rubbish. I had a vision of all of us, picking through rubbish every time we enter a shopping mall. After all, isn’t it all eventually refuse washed up on the shore of our wants and needs? The coast of our base desires?

  —BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed

  Jane made a quick stop at her cabin. If Claire Oh needed a place to hide out during the day, wouldn’t she feel safest in Jane’s place? And even if she hadn’t wanted to stay in such an obvious location, she might have left a note, perhaps something a little less cryptic than the lipstick on the mirror.

  But Claire Oh wasn’t hiding under the bed or in the closet or behind the shower curtain. Jane lightened the load in her big leather bag by taking out the Westman book. She could go over what she had learned from that source later. The rest of the papers she had picked up at Rick’s she kept with her. After tucking his Birkenstock sandals out of sight in her closet, she left for the lodge. It was almost lunchtime, and she was sure that Tim, over his hangover by now, would not want to miss a meal.

  Approaching the front porch, she saw a new visitor talking to Roxanne. She could only see him from the back, but he looked familiar. A tall, slender man, he carried himself almost regally. He had a small duffel in his left hand and was gesturing with his right. If one looked quickly, it might appear that he was patting Roxanne’s shoulder in a kind of “there, there” gesture, calming her; but looking more closely, Jane could see that he was patting the air. It had the effect of a “there, there” or a “don’t worry about a thing” but it was more respectful, less familiar or patronizing. The man didn’t know her so would not presume to touch her. Even that gesture seemed familiar to Jane.

  She was only a few feet behind him when she heard his voice.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself. I’m only sorry Mr. Moore didn’t give you my message. I can see how it must be an inconvenience, me showing up like this.”

  “The room in the lodge is quite nice, it’s just that it’s smaller than the guest cabins. We can have it ready after lunch, and I’ll make sure you can meet with Mr. Campbell after tea this afternoon. We keep a silence after lunch you see…”

  Again, the man patted the air. “Please, you are being so kind, and I am the intruder. I will leave my bag in the car,” he said.

  “No, no. I’ll put it in my office, and it will be in your room after lunch,” Roxanne said, taking the bag. “Jane, come and meet Mr….”

  “Oh,” said Jane, as the man turned to her with a small smile and extended his hand.

  “Mr. Kuruma. And you are?”

  “Jane Wheel,” she whispered.

  He was wearing tan dress pants and an unstructured silk-and-linen sport coat in a rich brown with a thin windowpane of robin’s egg blue running through it. Against his pale blue shirt hung an incredible tie. On a tan background, shiny blue-and-green cicadas were scattered, so colorful and vividly detailed that the design seemed three-dimensional.

  “Are you a restoration artist, Mrs. Wheel?” he asked.

  “No, a…student,” she answered, trying desperately to remember how to speak a few more words in English.

  “Call yourself an apprentice, Janie,” said Tim, walking up behind them. “It’s more in keeping with the spirit of Campbell and LaSalle. Right, Roxanne?”

  She nodded and began to introduce Tim to the newcomer.

  “Tim Lowry, meet Mr. Kuruma.” Jane said the name at the same time as its owner, who thrust out his hand toward Tim.

  “Oh,” said Tim. “Hello.”

  “I’ll leave you all for a few minutes, if that’s all right. I want to make sure that Mr. Kuruma’s room gets made up. See you at lunch.

  “Can you please tell me about these studios?” asked Mr. Kuruma, so much better known to them as Bruce Oh, escorting the two of them off the porch. As he pointed and gestured, looking out at the grounds, he quickly and quietly told them that Claire was still missing.

  “When she didn’t come home, I looked over a few things in her office. She has a phone record printed out every month from her business phone, her cellular, and I saw that she had called Campbell and LaSalle the night of the antique show, at seven-eighteen P.M. Which would be right after Horace Cutler had come to her booth and made such a scene. In her calendar notebook, she had written down that she had called C & L and explained the problem to Rick. I decided to show up here and say that my secretary had called to say to expect me this day, this time, and that she had left the message with a Rick Moore. Sadly, I knew they wouldn’t be able to check with him to see if I had called for a meeting and tour of Campbell and LaSalle.”

  “So Rick Moore knew that the Westman chest had been exposed as a fake,” said Jane.

  “Yes.” Oh nodded. “And over there?” he asked loudly, pointing to the art gallery and studio behind the lodge.

  “Did Claire say how specific Horace was when he yelled at her about selling him a fake? Did he mention that it was a Westman chest?” Jane asked.

  “Claire told me that it was lucky he was so mad. He just sounded like a sputtering old man. No specifics. She was relieved. Just talking about a Westman chest would have called so much attention to the controversy.”

  “So as far as we know, only Claire, Horace, and Rick Moore knew about the Westman chest,” said Jane. “No one here has mentioned it.”

  “Which doesn’t make sense at all. They all peer over each other’s shoulders here, dickering over which brush to use, whether or not they should make a hand-hammered hinge to match, or go off and scout one. They’re all in each other’s pockets,” said Tim, then he remembered his news. “By the way, was Claire wearing chunky gold earrings last night, big ruby in the center?”

  “She owns such a pair,” said Oh, evenly. “I don’t know if she was wearing them when she left.”

  Jane didn’t know whether to be impressed with Oh’s composure or shocked at his coolness. “Why, Tim?” she asked.

  “I didn’t find her, but I know where she slept last night. And that she ate well. She apparently left crumbs and an earring in Mickey’s tree house. He was furious, but he has n
o idea that we have a stowaway,” said Tim.

  Oh nodded. Was he smiling? Jane wished she knew what the microscopic changes in the rise and fall of the corners of Oh’s mouth really meant? Did he have a facial tic, or did he have feelings?

  “Mickey has a tree house?” she asked, turning her attention to what Tim had discovered.

  “Very possessive about it, too. He thinks someone spirited one of the gals up there for a liaison last night.”

  “Why last night? How does he know…?”

  “Because he was up there with Silver and Martine getting high after the memorial service. And when he went back this morning for his salute to the sun, or whatever the hell he does up there, he found the earring and dinner remains.”

  Oh cleared his throat and went into Mr. Kuruma mode. Martine was descending on them like a funnel cloud.

  “You cannot monopolize our new guest, my dears,” she said, brushing off Jane and Tim like gnats. “I am riveted by Asian culture and sensibility, and I insist you allow me to absorb some of your”—Martine gazed upward and around, looking for that pseudospiritual teleprompter that she seemed to call upon at will—“innate knowledge.”

  Jane watched Martine sweep Oh away from them.

  “Close your mouth, Jane,” Tim said. “It’s a catch-and-release program with her. She’ll throw him back when she finds out he has no money, no publishing connections, and no desire to take her to bed.”

  “Publishing connections?” asked Jane.

  “That’s why she latched on to Silver. She thought he knew people in the book biz. She told me she was shocked to find out Silver didn’t have an agent. Some life coach guru type stayed here, and she and Martine talked a lot of bullshit; and then the ‘protégé,’ as Martine referred to her, went off and wrote a bunch of self-help books and made a fortune. Martine wants a piece of that pie. She said she was terribly disappointed that Silver didn’t seem to understand anything about publishing. So she’s given him the gate.”