Scarlet Night (2 page)

Her rationalizations were numerous, of course. She had expected to meet, and God knows she had met, a lot of troubled people about whom she hoped to write someday. Of all the things she wanted to do, writing was foremost. But she lived in the shadow of a master whose work she had reverenced from the time he’d lectured on campus when she was in college, and the more he encouraged her, the less capable she felt. No, she decided, Forty-fourth Street had meant more to her than mere spite of Doctor Callahan: she had attempted to create an environment for herself among people who would not intimidate her intellectually. She had subsequently learned that the simplest people were by no means simple. And she had learned about herself that she functioned well in emergencies, even while pumping adrenalin. She had taken all her notes to Paris with her and Jeff had said he did not know an investigative reporter who could have done better at collecting material.

She went back to Jeff in the living room and told him what Donleavy had said about Rita Morgan, that she was probably incompetent to stand trial. “It’s a sort of ending, isn’t it?” she said.

“Or a beginning,” Jeff said, looking at her over his reading glasses.

“Yeah.”

Jeff took off his glasses and put them in his pocket. “Julie, keep the place on Forty-fourth Street for a while. I don’t know how much I’ll be at home, but you ought to have a place of your own to work in.”

Julie’s spirits took an upward leap. She said, “You’re great, Jeff, absolutely great.”

“Well, it’s time there was a Geoffrey the Great,” he said in mock seriousness. “There’s been a Geoffrey the Handsome, a Geoffrey the Bastard—Archbishop of York, by the way—and a Geoffrey the Cat that I know about, but to my knowledge, I am the first Geoffrey the Great.”

Julie’s impulse was to throw herself into his lap, something she knew pleased him very much, but that was part of the “little girl” pattern, and the time had come to break it. She went around the back of his chair and hugged him. Straightening up, she faced the empty wall over the mantel. “Before anything, I’d like to find a picture,” she said. “I’d like this room to be right, somehow. It’s like starting a sentence and never finishing it.”

“Then look. Go out and look at pictures. There must be a hundred gallery owners in New York waiting for you.”

T
HE GALLERY DOOR STOOD
open and a young man with a broom noticed Julie at about the same time she noticed him. “Come in if you want to.”

Julie walked into the Maude Sloan Gallery. She had already seen too many paintings for one day, but the poster out front announcing the opening that afternoon described Ralph Abel’s first American show as “Parisian fantasies.” It wasn’t so bad, only fourteen paintings when she got to counting them, with a lot of wall space and light around them. She strolled from one canvas to the next, not greatly impressed. They all had names, but so far as she could see, there was not much relationship between the name and the picture. Julie the art critic, she mocked herself. Except that once she had studied art…but then, what had she not studied at one time or other?

She had the feeling that the young man was painfully aware of her. He took plastic glasses from a box and lined them up alongside a punch bowl. Was he the artist? She felt that he was, although his attitude was uncharacteristic of any artist she knew. He put the box away and went back to work with the broom.

“Hey!” Julie came up to a splash of city colors—or so she saw them, a lot of red, blue, purple, and black. Nonobjective. But she could sense the presence of the lurking whores. She swung around to where the young man had stopped in his tracks to stare at her. The color leaped to his face. “Are you Mr. Abel?”

“Yes, I am.” But he fled with the broom to the closet at the back.

Julie read the legend beneath the frame:
SCARLET NIGHT
.

“I’m going to have to close up for an hour, ma’am.” He really could not bear to be in the room alone with someone looking at his paintings, not today anyway.

Ma’am, Julie thought, and wondered if there was a Paris, Nebraska, or Iowa or Illinois. “I’ll go peaceably. No problem.”

“I didn’t mean to be impolite,” he said, still blushing to the roots of his corn-colored hair. It made his eyes seem very blue. “It’s nerves, that’s all.”

“I kind of like that,” Julie said, indicating
Scarlet Night.

His smile was beatific. “I’m sorry the wine hasn’t come yet.” He made a helpless gesture toward the empty bowl.

“Is everything here Paris? I’ve just got back from there.”

“No kidding? I’ll tell you the truth, I painted most of them in Naples. I couldn’t get with Paris until I got away from there. I guess that doesn’t make much sense…”

“You bet it does. I’d never make it in Paris alone.”

“Funny. I thought at first you were a critic.”

“No way. I don’t even know why I like things.”

“Do you think any of the critics will come? Do you live in New York?”

“All my life—except for a month in Paris.”

He was on a single track. “And you go to a lot of openings. Right?”

“Not a lot.”

“But you look like you do,” he persisted. “The way you dress, you know—a certain style, good material. My father was a tailor.”

Julie was beginning to feel the whole scene wasn’t happening—not in SoHo, New York. “I usually wear sneakers and a raincoat.”

“That wouldn’t matter. I’d say the same thing. Even the bones in your face.”

Julie turned her wide gray eyes upon him. “Look, I’m curious. This is your first exhibit, right?”

He nodded.

“What’s the price on
Scarlet Night?”

“I’m not allowed to talk prices. That’s Mrs. Sloan’s department.”

“I didn’t say I was buying. I’m just curious. I suppose it’s rude of me, but I’m a very direct person.” With some people; she had overstated the characteristic.

“It’s not that, but Maude’s been good to me. She said she’d give me a show after seeing a couple of transparencies and stuck to it when I got here with the rest, which I’m pretty sure she didn’t like much.”

“Oh, man. You need a larger dose of self-confidence than that. Don’t
you
think they’re good?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think they’re beautiful.”

“Then they are. Don’t sell them short, for heaven’s sake.” Julie made a move toward the door.

“Don’t go…I mean please stay for the opening.”

“I’ll come back at five and join the crowd.”

“What if nobody comes?” There was such a sweet, sad look about him.
Ah, Wilderness!
Julie thought, having played in it in college. Or
Our Town.
They ought to be sitting on two stools at a make-believe soda fountain.

“Don’t you have any family?”

“Not real close. I have a cousin who bought out my father’s shop from me when my father died. But he thinks I’m crazy.”

“There are worse things—I mean than having a cousin think that. I have cousins with whom I pretend I’m crazy so they’ll leave me alone. Not that I have to pretend all that hard. Where’s the tailor shop?”

“Keokuk, Iowa.”

“I like that.”

“What’s your name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Julie Hayes.”

“You’re married, aren’t you?” He pointed to her ring.

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet your husband is a professor. I’ll bet he teaches electronic engineering or computer programming.”

“You’re way off. Jeff’s a newspaperman.”

“That’s great. And you?”

“Well, let’s say I’m a proletarian poet.”

“I lived with the proletariat in Italy,” he said, serious to the core. “I did a lot of life sketches, if you’d like to see them sometime.”

“I would. I really would.”

Julie had been edging toward the door. She came suddenly face to face with a sleek-looking woman on the far side of forty. She took one look at Julie and then ignored her. “Give me a hand with the wine, Ralphie. Why in the name of God didn’t you turn on the air conditioning?”

Julie slipped out and away. She walked down Greene Street, wanting to urge everyone to come to Ralph Abel’s opening. The street was a crazy mix of factories, businesses, and art galleries. There were remnant shops and garment shops, a thread mill, makers of brass fittings. The cobbled, potholed street supported tons of trash and pale-faced youngsters sorted through it for the stuff of their make-believe. New locks shone on rusty doors, and there were flowering plants and laundry hanging in the windows of the upper lofts. Among the ravaged storefronts, every third or so had entered on a new life, and the posters out front advertising the galleries deep inside were gay as poppy fields, noisy hawkers of tomorrow’s Oldenburgs and Riverses.

At a quarter past five, having had an Italian ice on Wooster Street, Julie returned to the Maude Sloan Gallery. Wherever the people had come from, the place was jammed. Julie edged her way through to have another look at
Scarlet Night.
Nobody was talking to or about Ralph Abel. They were all talking about themselves. And the uptown galleries. And money. But Abel, his face flushed and streaming with honest sweat, didn’t seem to notice that part. He wriggled around groups that ignored him until he reached Julie, smiling as though his face would burst.

“See,” Julie said, “somebody came.”

“How about that? I’d like you to meet Mrs. Sloan—if you still want to, that is.”

“All right.” Not that she had ever wanted to, but she allowed the tall, loose-jointed Abel to haul her to the desk. He had to lean over Mrs. Sloan to make himself heard.

Maude Sloan reached up and brushed a tassel of golden hair from his forehead. Her fingers were still moist from his sweat when she offered them to Julie. “Isn’t it a marvelous show?”

“Great,” Julie said.

Mrs. Sloan plucked a mimeographed sheet from a stack on the desk, a price list. “Perhaps you’d like one of these?”

“Thanks.” Julie tried to think of something to say. It didn’t matter.

Mrs. Sloan gave her a get-lost look and turned to her protégé. “You’ve got to mingle, Ralphie. It’s important for you.”

He looked out over the crowd, dubious.

Julie found a spot where she could look at the price list.
Scarlet Night
was down at five hundred dollars. Which could be a lot or a little. She went back and tried to see the canvas through Jeff’s eyes. That didn’t work very well. She thought she knew why she liked it, but she wasn’t sure why Jeff wouldn’t like it. Only fairly sure that he wouldn’t. But suppose he said, “All right, Julie. If you like it, I’m quite willing to make the compromise…” If Jeff said that, she knew as she stood before
Scarlet Night,
she would not want to buy it. Which probably had more to do with the psyche than with art. The picture was in a heavy but plain gilt frame that wouldn’t quarrel with the Victorian setting. Nor would the painting quarrel…much. In any case, she was not going to buy a painting until Jeff saw it. Besides, it wouldn’t cover the white spot, unless she hung it on its side.

Again she caught Ralph Abel watching her. He came over, bringing her a glass of punch.

“I can’t afford to buy a painting, Mr. Abel. Besides, I’ve promised my husband…” Well, Julie thought, it’s true.

“I understand. You both have to live with it.”

“And each other.”

“That price list isn’t the last word,” Abel said. “Maude would kill me for saying it, but I know. She says so herself.”

“Look. I’ll try and get Jeff to come down with me tomorrow and see it. Okay?”

“The next day. We’re closed tomorrow. Mrs. Hayes, I don’t want you to buy it for my sake. I want you to buy it for you. Are you feeling sorry for me?”

“If I buy it, it will be for me. It has meaning for me, but whether it will also please my husband, I can’t say. That’s something we’ll have to find out.”

“But you do like it?” he persisted.

“Yes! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” A nice, forthright lie.

“Please don’t be mad. I was thinking: couldn’t we put half a star on it? It wouldn’t commit you to buy it, you know. But nobody else could buy it until you had a chance to think about it—and talk it over with your husband.”

It was going to be a lot easier to put the star on than to take it off, she felt. But there was something in it for Ralph Abel too. To be sure, it was early, but nobody was running around looking for stars or even half stars. As a theatrical agent used to say to Julie when she was trying to make it as an actress, all you got to do is get that first olive out of the jar.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Julie said.

Maude Sloan was busy running the punch bowl, but Julie was sure the woman saw Ralph take the tiny star from a box and cut it in half. In fact she stretched her neck to see where Julie was. Julie avoided her eyes. It didn’t help. She felt even more committed.

Abel returned and licked the half star, but before he got it on the title card, a hand caught his.

“Hold on, young fellow.” With an air of boredom, the plump man held onto Abel’s arm but spoke to Julie. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, miss, but I’ve made arrangements with Mrs. Sloan to buy this canvas.” He let his eyes shift languidly toward Maude. With a message, Julie felt. Okay. Fine.

“Who are you?” Abel demanded, which was no way to speak to a customer.

“I doubt you would know if I told you.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I just promised this lady…”

Julie tugged on his arm. “It’s all right.” It was more than all right. “Hey, congratulations!”

It didn’t work.

“It’s not all right,” the painter said, “I want you to have it.”

“But I’m not even decided and this gentleman
is.”

The gentleman, who Julie didn’t feel sure was one, put his hand on Abel’s shoulder, which was at about his eye level. “Let’s have Mrs. Sloan settle it,” he said, as though it was all too ridiculous.

Maude was waiting for them, smiling hard. It made all the wrinkles in her face get together. “What’s the matter, Rubin?”

“Tell this young genius of yours that we just closed the deal on
Scarlet Night.”

“Aren’t you proud, Ralphie?” She didn’t even bother with the intermediate step. “Mr. Rubinoff buys with excellent taste.”