by Tara Conklin
With the feel of the show still inside her, a phantom reverberation, Lina nodded yes.
THE BAR WAS INDEED GRUNGY. Low lights, a pool table, some pinball machines, a thick-fingered blond woman behind the bar who laughed once to reveal a mouthful of silver and black. Jasper and his bandmates Callum and Mike settled at a table, and Lina played hand after hand of gin rummy with them. At first, Lina won—as a preteen, she had played with Oscar nightly, betting chocolate chips and pieces of gum—but first Mike and then Jasper beat her again and again, and she insisted they keep going. They were drinking gin, in honor of the game, and the liquor warmed her at first, then dulled her, made her sloppy.
They left latish, Lina wasn’t sure what time. She stumbled on the curb and leaned against Jasper, who took her elbow and steered her along the sidewalk, helping her up a flight of stairs, into a crowded apartment where everyone seemed to be talking and laughing, someone playing guitar and a woman with outsize earrings and red lips singing the most beautiful song.
“This is our place,” Jasper said. “Me and Mike. We always come here after the shows.”
Lina left Jasper and wandered into the mix. Candles burned on low tables, a person-sized lava lamp glowed in a corner, and talking wove through the room, up and down, highs and lows, a cacophony but one with some sort of rhythm. She talked to a personal assistant for a semifamous actor, a waitress/dancer, a waiter/actor, a publishing intern, another dancer, an actor, a musician, another musician, a student of philosophy, a student of art history, and in these discussions—random, odd topics, everyone happy and drunk or stoned, expertly holding all personal sorrow at bay—Lina remembered herself as a child standing in footed pajamas at the top of the stairs, listening to Oscar’s parties below. Sometimes she would steal down and mingle among the crowd for a spell, before Oscar caught her and carried her giggling back up to bed. Those nights felt like this now: a creative energy, a limitless enthusiasm, a faith that talent and will and work would ultimately prevail, and a fatalistic wryness about the whole spectacle too—of course we are all creative and interesting, of course everyone will know our names, but tomorrow and the next day and the next we must go to our low-paying jobs where we sit on stools or take orders for food or clean up messes that no one else wants to clean; at least tonight we can say we are artists.
Very late, after Lina switched to drinking water, after she helped the singing woman find a lost earring, she happened upon Jasper in a hallway. He was alone, smoking a cigarette, and it felt suddenly to Lina (Was it the gin? The thrill of new people?) as though they were lifelong friends, separated by some tragic mishap, and here they were, at last, united again. Lina grinned at him.
“So do you want to see the Bell picture?” Jasper asked, crushing out his cigarette in an ashtray he held in his hand.
“Yes. I’d love to see it.”
“I have one. The other two are at my mom’s in Poughkeepsie. Come on.”
Lina followed him down a short dark hallway, pressing against bodies as she went, excusing herself and sidestepping to avoid collisions and spills, and into a small room. Jasper closed the door behind them and the noise from the party immediately became muffled and accented with the thumping bass line of an unrecognizable song.
The bedroom was small, so narrow that Lina could have touched both walls with her arms outstretched, and neatly organized. A tall many-drawered chest stood beside a twin bed pushed against the far wall, a guitar case leaned upright in a corner. A reading lamp by the bed lit the room, harshly illuminating a narrow cone of space but leaving the rest in shadow. On the walls hung several shelves, an unframed poster of Miles Davis, and one framed picture. Gingerly, Jasper removed it from the wall and handed it to Lina.
Lina sat on the bed and put the picture under the light, angling away the glare. It was a charcoal drawing of an African American man, young, probably about the same age as Jasper. He stood in a field, sloping hills behind him, his hands at his sides, not working at that moment but alert, his body ready for motion. He looked directly at the viewer as though the two shared a secret. There was an intimacy in his gaze and in the way he stood, an ease and self-possession, the way you would stand before a lover. It was not a large drawing, and not particularly detailed, the fields barely suggested, the sky unfinished, but still it was something.
Lina exhaled. “Josephine Bell made this picture.”
Jasper sat beside her on the bed. “How can you be sure?”
“I don’t know. But it feels the same, it looks the same. Wait—do you mind if I take it out of the frame?”
“Sure. But be careful.”
Lina turned the frame over. A dozen or so small rusty nails held a cardboard backing in place, and she eased the nails out of the wood, each releasing with a creak and shower of fine red dust. Beneath the backing was page after page of old, yellowed newspaper, the type irregular and old-fashioned, the paper nearly disintegrating in Lina’s hands. Finally Lina reached the painting itself, and, yes, as she had suspected, written in a neat, careful script, the same handwriting she had seen on the pages at the Bell Center, was a name: Louis.
They sat together on the bed, Lina and Jasper, and looked at the faint but unmistakable letters.
“This is what Josephine Bell did with all her portraits,” Lina said. “She wrote the name of the sitter on the back. According to Porter, this is one of the things they’ll use to prove Josephine was the artist. Handwriting. And maybe some fingerprints, if they’re still detectable.”
Jasper took the picture carefully between flattened palms and turned it face up. “Louis,” he said.
“You should take this to an authentication expert. Once the authorship question has been put to rest—I mean, once Josephine is fully recognized as the artist of the Bell works—if you are a descendant of Josephine Bell, you could have a legal claim to all of them, I think.” Lina was talking quickly, her thoughts moving from one idea to the next, and she stood up to pace the small room. “And I know you’re not interested in cashing in, but think about it—right now virtually all the art is owned by the Stanmore family. It doesn’t seem right that they should be controlling Josephine’s work. I think the Stanmores are more interested in protecting their investment in the Lu Anne Bell enterprise than they are in figuring out the truth.”
Lina stopped pacing and stood before him. “Porter thinks you’re lying, you know. About any connection to Josephine Bell.” She watched him carefully.
“And what do you think?” he asked levelly, meeting her gaze.
“I don’t think you’re lying. I think there are so many uncertainties.” She resumed her pacing. “Did Josephine make the picture? How did your dad get it? Can we actually prove that you’re related to Josephine?”
“Are you always like this? I mean, so determined?” Jasper asked with a teasing smile.
Lina cocked her head, taking the question seriously. “It’s my lawyer mode. Sometimes, with my dad for example, I’m not determined at all.” Those moments in the kitchen with Oscar and Natalie returned: Should she have pushed him? Should she have demanded that he tell her the truth?
Jasper’s eyes went then to his bedside table, and Lina’s gaze followed his, to a photograph, this one in a simple metal frame propped upright. Lina bent to examine it: a color snapshot of a middle-aged man caught pre-laugh, that moment just before the lips curl and part, when the smile is held only by the eyes. The man was handsome; he looked like Jasper, the same tawny eyes, dark hair, full lips.
“Is this your father?” Lina asked. She did not pick up the photo; she did not want to overstep.
“Yes. That’s him. This was his fiftieth birthday party. My mom surprised him.” Jasper’s voice was even but soft, hard to hear, and Lina leaned toward him to catch the words.
“Come on,” Jasper said, louder now, standing from the bed. “Ready for some more gin rummy?”
He opened the door of the bedroom, and Lina was sorry for the intrusion of noise and smoky air.
“Okay,” she said. “One more game.”
FRIDAY
A door slammed somewhere perilously close to Lina’s head and her eyes flew open. She lay on the floor, on her left side, and her hip ached, her head ached. Her gaze dimly registered a thin blue rug and, among its wrinkles, discarded tops of beer bottles, a crushed cigarette, a few strands of dark hair. She sat up. Beside her, the two of them sandwiched between a battered couch and a coffee table laden with empty bottles and full ashtrays, was Jasper. Both of them wore their clothes from the night before. Jasper was asleep, silent, his face serene.
Lina stood, careful not to disturb him, and wandered to find the bathroom. It was a small apartment, but the number of sleeping bodies seemed sufficient to populate a small village. Draped over chairs, lying in corners, underneath the kitchen table, in jeans and jackets and shoes. The apartment smelled of stale beer, cigarettes, sweat, and the lingering sweetness of marijuana. Outside a garbage truck clanged, a horn beeped. Lina rubbed her head. She wondered what time it was. If she had enough money for a cab. Where was her BlackBerry?
“Lina?” She heard Jasper softly calling her name.
“I’m here.” Lina turned a corner and walked right into him, her nose colliding with his chest, their hands touching, and she laughed. “Careful!”
“Good morning,” Jasper said, and stepped back, rubbed his face. “That was a good party for a weekday.”
“Oh my God.” Lina looked at her watch: 8:45. “I have got to get to work. Hey, can I borrow your jacket?” She was eyeing his tuxedo jacket, hanging over the back of a chair.
Jasper smiled. “Sure,” he said.
She picked it up, sniffed a lapel, and slid her arms through the sleeves. “Not too bad,” she said, rolling up the cuffs.
Just then Jasper bent down and kissed her. Without thinking, she leaned into the tall length of him and returned his kiss, testing the pressure of someone new, his taste and warmth. And then as abruptly as the kiss began, it ended, both of them stepping back.
Jasper said, “Well,” and rubbed a flat palm across his head. As his arm raised, Lina saw the flash of his tattoo. A strip of taut skin appeared above his waistband as his T-shirt rode up. Curry and beer smells permeated the kitchen, a digital clock on the table blinked a red 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, waiting to be reset, and with a crippling rush Lina felt awkward and out of place, nervous and shy. “I … I … really can’t be doing this,” she stammered, regretting her words even as she said them. “I could get into trouble. At work. I mean, our connection is professional.”
“You know, nothing happened last night.” Jasper’s hand came down, his voice was quick and guarded.
“I know,” Lina said. “I know it didn’t.”
“I didn’t realize that … last night, it was all business. I don’t want to get you into trouble. With work, I mean.”
“Don’t worry about it. Really, it’s my fault. I’m sorry,” she said. These last twenty-four hours had happened to her with a spinning suddenness, and this was the only way she could think of to slow the pace, calm her heartbeat, regain control. “I’ll call you later, Jasper. About the case.”
“About the case. Okay.” He nodded stiffly and unlocked his front door.
With a small apologetic wave, Lina descended the empty echoing stairwell, down four narrow flights, the walls tagged in black and red spray paint, the floors painted a dingy blue. She emerged onto a sunny street, the corner of Essex and Rivington, spicy smells of Mexican food from a tortilla place on the corner, the beeping of a truck as it reversed down a narrow alley, and stopped. She turned and looked at Jasper’s building, and almost headed back inside. Why couldn’t she do this, kiss someone new, be late for work? Somehow everything from this morning and the night before seemed parts of a whole, Jasper’s show and the confrontation with her father, her decision to move out, the kiss, this buzzing of her senses and the faint musky smell of Jasper on the jacket she wore, all of it strange and exhilarating.
Just then Lina felt her BlackBerry vibrate in her back pocket, and she pulled it out. Meeting with Dan—9:00 A.M., popped onto the screen. Already it was 9:01 and she saw Dan checking his watch, rolling his eyes at Garrison as they waited for Lina to arrive. And with this image, she seized up. She turned away from Jasper’s building, thinking already of an excuse for her lateness—subway trouble? Lina raised her arm for a cab.
AT 9:18 A.M. LINA SLIPPED into Dan’s office and hovered for a moment by the door to survey the scene, gauge the mood. Today she was meeting with Dan, Garrison, and Dresser to discuss the reparations case and, more specifically, developments in her search for Josephine Bell’s descendant.
The mood, Lina quickly ascertained, was not good. Dan sat behind his desk, looking annoyed. Garrison perched in his chair, looking annoyed. Dresser’s voice boomed from the speaker phone, definitely annoyed. “Let’s get this show on the road, people. There’s a critical mass behind this case now. I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve spoken to recently, they’re all behind us. We’ve got a movement here. And we need to move.”
“We hear you, Ron,” Dan said. “We’re very close to finalizing the brief for your review. Very close.”
“We better be. I’ve been talking to Dave”—Lina knew that there was only one Dave at Clifton & Harp, Dave Whitehead, the firm’s managing partner, head of all thirty-seven worldwide offices and more than two thousand lawyers, known to the associates as El Gran Jefe—“and he’s right behind me on this. I told him I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I’m still waiting on you, Dan. And today you’re telling me I’ve got to wait some more? I want this to be the last call we have, Dan, the last call where I hear the word wait.”
“I hear you, Ron. Loud and clear.” Dan raised his gaze from the phone and his eyes fell on Lina. He waved her over with a tired flap of his hand. Pouches of purplish skin hung beneath his eyes, saggy as used-up tea bags. Lina approached the desk and settled into her usual chair, the too-low backrest familiar, comfortable (almost) if she stayed perfectly upright, if she did not attempt any type of relaxation.
“Here’s Lina,” Dan said. “She’s just back from her trip to Richmond. She’s ready to update us on her findings. Lina?” And he pushed the phone in her direction.
Lina shifted, unbuttoned the tuxedo jacket, which she realized now smelled distinctly of smoke, and wished with a passion rarely attributed to beverages that she had stopped for coffee.
“It was a very useful trip,” she began, feeling her hangover recede as she spoke. “I found some extremely helpful documents at the Bell Center archives. These documents appear to establish that Josephine Bell had a child in 1848, and that child was sold to a Mr. Caleb Harper.”
“Cut to the chase, Lina,” Dresser barked from the speaker phone. “Do we have a plaintiff? Do we have any names?” Lina felt Dan’s unblinking gaze heavy on her, and she met his stare head-on. She was aware of Garrison in the chair beside her, watching.
“Well, yes,” Lina said. “I do have a name. Battle. Jasper Battle. He’s a musician. He’s in New York.”
Dan’s mouth fell open, his eyebrows shot up. “Fantastic!”
“Excellent work,” Dresser said, his voice fainter now, as if he had stepped away from the phone. There was the rustle of other people entering the room, soft footsteps on thick carpet. “Lina, what do you think of his backstory? Is he verifiable as a Bell descendant?”
“Yes, I think so. There’s still some work to be done in that regard.” Her voice wavered and she cleared her throat. “But on the face of it he seems … legitimate.” Lina felt heat in her cheeks and wondered with a rising panic how she would prove that Jasper was Josephine’s descendant. Would he ever talk to her again? Why had she not taken hold of his face, why had she left his apartment?
“Well, I look forward to meeting him,” Dresser said.
Dan thrust his head toward the phone and said, with a conviction bordering on maniacal: “Ron, you have my word—give us a few more days. My word, we will have this b
rief for you by Tuesday. At the latest.”
Garrison tapped Lina’s arm and she turned toward him. Tuesday? he silently mouthed with great exaggeration and implied outrage. Today was Friday. Tuesday was soon. Four days for them, Garrison and Lina, to draft and edit the brief on a legally complex, highly contentious, potentially historic claim that other (presumably) talented lawyers had previously argued and, in all instances, lost.
“Great, I look forward to reading it,” Dresser said. “I’ve got to run now, people. Dan, thanks for the call.”
The line switched to a painfully loud dial tone, all three of them jolting in their chairs with the sudden awful noise. Dan groped for the off button, the phone went dead, and for a moment it seemed they might all have suffered some irreversible damage to the ear or head. Lina felt the cruel return of her hangover.
“Well, I’m happy to hear the trip paid off, Lina,” Dan said and scratched his scalp vigorously, red curls thrown into frenzied motion. “Let’s get this Battle person in here asap. Tuesday, team. You heard me. You’re working through the weekend, obviously. We’ve got four more days.”
BACK AT HER DESK, HER office door closed, the enormity of Lina’s lie fell upon her with a sudden suffocating weight. She could not yet prove that Jasper was descended from Josephine Bell and, perhaps even more important, he had made clear his complete disinterest in becoming involved in the lawsuit. What had happened that morning—her hasty departure, the collapsed look on Jasper’s face—did not bear contemplating. Not now. She had to focus or this case would fall apart. Without a lead plaintiff, there would be no reparations lawsuit.
Lina picked up the phone and dialed Jasper’s number.
AFTER SOME AWKWARD PLEASANTRIES AND a beseeching “please” from Lina, Jasper had agreed to meet her at NYU’s main library, a tall tower of red stone known for its soaring open-air atrium and the highly literate and pornographic graffiti found in the third-floor bathrooms. Lina almost didn’t recognize him as he walked toward her across the wide marble-floored expanse. Gone was his musician’s swagger and all-black ensemble. Now he wore khakis, a white button-down shirt, the cuffs nearly covering his tattoos; he carried a canvas briefcase. Lina waited by the circulation desk as his steps echoed against the stone.
