Daughter of Regals (39 page)

“If you take me with
you,” I responded, “you won’t have to call me.”

This time, I didn’t need
help to reach her. I just needed to go on smiling.

But what I was doing
made sweat run down my spine. I didn’t want to see her hurt any more. And there
was nothing I could do to protect her.

The walk to the place where she and her
brother lived seemed long and cruel in the heat. There were fewer cars and
crowds around us now—most of the city’s people had reached their destinations
for the day—and thick, hot light glared at us from long aisles Of pale concrete
At the same time, the buildings impacted on either side Of us grew older,
shabbier, became the homes Of ordinary men and women rather than Of money. Children
played in the street. shrieking and running as if their souls were on fire.
Derelicts shambled here and there, not so much lost to grace as inured by
alcohol and ruin, benumbed by their own particular innocence. Several of the
structures we passed had had their eyes blown out.

Then we arrived in front
of a high, flat edifice indistinguishable from its surroundings except by the
fact that most of its windows were intact. Kristen grimaced at it
apologetically. “Actually,” she said, “we could live better than this. But we
save as much money as we can for Reese’s work.” She seemed to have forgotten
that I looked worse than her apartment building did. Almost defiantly, she
added, “Now we’ll be able to do better.”

That depended on what
she called
better
. I was sure Mortice Root had no end of money. But I
didn’t say so.

However, she was still
worried about how Reese would react to us. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
she asked. “He isn’t going to be on his good behavior.”

I nodded and smiled; I
didn’t want her to see how scared and angry I was. “Don’t worry about me. If he’s
rude. I can always offer him some constructive criticism.”

“Oh, terrific,” she
responded, at once sarcastic and relieved, sourly amused. “He just loves
constructive criticism.”

She was hardly aware of
her own bravery as she led me into the building.

The hall with the mail
slots and the manager’s apartment was dimly lit by one naked bulb; it should
have felt cooler. But the heat inside was fierce. The stain up to the fourth
floor felt like a climb in a steambath. Maybe it was a blessing after all that
I didn’t have a shirt on under my coat. I was sweating so hard that my shoes
felt slick and unreliable against my soles, as if every step I took were
somehow untrustworthy.

When Kristen stopped at
the door of her apartment, she needed both hands to fumble in her purse for the
key. With her face uncovered, I saw that her nosebleed was getting worse.

Despite the way her
hands shook, she got the door open. After finding a clean handkerchief, she
ushered me inside, calling as she did so, “Reese! I’m homer’

The first room—it would’ve
been the living room in anybody else’s apartment—was larger than I’d expected,
and it implied other rooms I couldn’t see—bedrooms, a kitchen, a studio. The
look of dinginess and unlove was part of the ancient wallpaper and warped
baseboards, the sagging ceiling, not the result of carelessness; the place was
scrupulously kempt. And the entire space was organized to display Reese’s
sculptures.

Set on packing crates and
end tables, stacks of bricks makeshift pedestals, old steamer trunks, they
nearly filled the room. A fair number of them were east; but most were clay,
some fired, some not. And without exception they looked starkly out of place in
that room. They were everything the apartment wasn’t—finely done, idealistic,
painless. It was as if Reese bad left all his failure and bitterness and
capacity for rage in the walls, sloughing it away from his work so that his art
was kind and clean.

And static. It would
have looked inert if he’d had less talent. Busts and madonnas stared with eyes
that held neither fear nor hope. Children that never laughed cried were hugged
in the arms of blind women. A horse in one corner should have been prancing,
but it was simply frozen. His bitterness he took out on his sister. His
failures reduced him to begging. But his sculptures held no emotion at all.

They gave me an
unexpected lift of hope. Not because they were static, but because he was
capable of so much restraint. If reason was the circumference of energy, then
he was already halfway to being a great artist. He had reason down pat.

Which was all the more
surprising because be was obviously not a reasonable man. He came bristling
into the room in answer to Kristen’s call, and he’d already started to shout at
her before he saw I was there.

At once, he stopped; he
stared at me. “Who the hell is
this?”
he rasped without looking at
Kristen. I could feel the force of his intensity from where I stood. His face
was as acute as a hawk’s, whetted by the hunger and energy of a predator. But
the dark stains of weariness and strain under his eyes made him look more
feverish than fierce. NI of a sudden I thought, Only two weeks to get a show
ready. An entire show’s worth of new pieces in only two weeks. Because of
course he wasn’t going to display any of the work I could see here. He was only
going to show what he’d made out of the new, black clay Mortice Root had given
him. And he’d worn himself ragged. In a sense, his intensity wasn’t directed at
me personally; it was just a fact of his personality. He did everything
extremely. In his own way, he was as desperate as his sister. Maybe I should
have felt sorry for him.

But he didn’t give me
much chance. Before I could say anything, he wheeled on Kristen. “It isn’t bad
enough you have to keep interrupting me,” he snarled. “You have to bring trash
in here, too. Where did you find him—the Salvation Army? Haven’t you figured
out yet that I’m
busy?”

I wanted to intervene;
but she didn’t need that kind of protection. Over her handkerchief, her eyes
echoed a hint of her brother’s fire. He took his bitterness out on her because
she allowed him to, not because she was defenseless. Her voce held a bite of
anger as she said, “He offered to help me.”

If I hadn’t been there,
he might have listened to her; but his fever made him rash. “Help
you
?”
he snapped. “This bum?” He looked at me again. “He couldn’t help himself to
another drink. And what do you need help—?”

“Reese.” This time, she
got his attention. “I went to the doctor this morning.”

“What?” For an instant,
he blinked at her as if he couldn’t understand. “The doctor?” The idea that
something was wrong with her hit him hard. I could see his knees trying to
fold under him. “You aren’t sick. What do you need a doctor for?”

Deliberately, she
lowered her hand, exposing the red sheen darkening to crust on her upper lip’
the blood swelling in her nostrils. He gaped as if the sight nauseated him.
Then he shook his head in denial. Abruptly, he sagged to the edge of a trunk
that held two of his sculptures. “Damn it to hell,” he breathed weakly. “Don’t
scare me like that. It’s just a nosebleed. You’ve had it for weeks.”

Kristen gave me a look
of vindication; she seemed to think Reese had just showed how much he cared
about her. But I wasn’t so sure. I could think of plenty of selfish reasons for
his reaction.

Either way, it was my
turn to say something. I could have used some inspiration right then—just a
little grace to help me find my way. My emotions were tangled up with Kristen;
my attitude toward Reese was all wrong. I didn’t know how to reach him. But no
inspiration was provided.

Swallowing bile, I made
an effort to sound confident. “Actually,” I said, “I can be more help than you
realize. That’s the one advantage life has over art. There’s more to it than
meets the eye.”

I was on the wrong track
already; a halfwit could have done better. Reese raised his head to look at me,
and the outrage in his eyes was as plain as a chisel. “That’s wonderful,” he
said straight at me. “A bum and a critic.”

Kristen’s face was tight
with dismay. She knew exactly what would happen if I kept going.

So did I. I wasn’t
stupid. But I was already sure I didn’t really want to help Reese. I wanted
somebody a little more worthy.

Anyway, I couldn’t stop.
His eyes were absolutely daring me to go on.

“Root’s right,” I said.
Now I didn’t have any trouble sounding as calm ass saint. “You know that. What
you’ve been doing”—I gestured around the room—”is too controlled. Impersonal.
You’ve got all the skill in the world, but you haven’t put your heart into it.

“But I don’t think he’s
been giving you very good advice. He’s got you going to the opposite extreme.
That’s just another dead end. You need a balance. Control and passion. Control
alone has been destroying you. Passion alone—”

Right there, I almost
said it: passion alone will destroy your sister. That’s the kind of bargain you’re
making. All it costs you is your soul.

But I didn’t get the
chance. Reese slapped his hand down on the trunk with a sound like a shot. One
of his pieces tilted; it would have fallen if Kristen hadn’t caught it. But he
didn’t see that. He jerked to his feet. Over his shoulder, he said to her, “You’ve
been talking to this tramp about me.” The words came out like lead.

She didn’t answer. There
was no defense against his accusation. To catch the sculpture, she’d had to use
both hands, and her touch left a red smudge on the clay.

But he didn’t seem to
expect an answer. He was facing me with fever bright in his eyes. In the same
heavy tone, he said, “It’s your fault, isn’t it. She wouldn’t do that to
me—tell a total stranger what a failure I’ve been—if you hadn’t pried it out of
her.

“Well, let me tell
you
something. Root owns a gallery. He has
power.”
He spat the word as
if he loathed it. “I have to listen to him. From you I don’t have to take this
kind of manure.”

Which was true, of
course. I was a fool, as well as being useless. In simple chagrin I tried to
stop or at least deflect what was coming.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ve
got no business trying to tell you what to do. But I can still help you. Just
listen to me. I—”

“No,” he retorted. “You
listen. I’ve spent ten years of my life feeling the way you look. Now I’ve got
a chance to do better. You don’t know anything I could possibly want to hear. I’ve
been
there.”

Still without looking at
his sister, he said, “Kristen, tell him to leave.”

She didn’t have any
choice. I’d botched everything past the point where there was anything she
could do to save it. Reese would just rage at her if she refused—and what would
that accomplish? I watched all the anger and hope drain out of her, and I
wanted to fight back; but I didn’t have any choice, either. She said in a
beaten voice, “I think you’d better leave now,” and I had to leave. I was no
use to anybody without permission; I could not stay when she told me to go.

I didn’t have the heart
to squeeze in a last appeal on my way out. I didn’t have any more hope than she
did.  I studied her face as I moved to the door, not because I thought she
might change her mind, but because I wanted to memorize her, so that if she
went on down this road and was lost in the end there would beat least one man
left who remembered. But she didn’t meet my eyes. And when I stepped out of the
apartment, Reese slammed the door behind me so hard the floor shook.

The force of his
rejection almost made me fall to my knees.

In spite of that, I didn’t give up. I didn’t
know where I was or how I got here; I was lucky to know why I was here at all.
And I would never remember. Where I was before I was here was as blank as a
wall across the past. When the river took me someplace else, I wasn’t going to
be able to give Kristen Dona the bare courtesy of remembering her.

That was a blessing, of a
sort. But it was also the reason I didn’t give up. Since I didn’t have any past
or future, the present was my only chance.

When I was sure the
world wasn’t going to melt around me and change into something else, I went
down the stairs, walked out into the pressure of the sun, and tried to think of
some other way to fight for Kristen’s life and Reese’s soul.

After all, I had no
right to give up hope on Reese. He’d been a failure for ten years. And I’d seen
the way the people of this city looked at me. Even the derelicts had contempt
in their eyes, including me in the way they despised themselves. I ought to be
able to understand what humiliation could do to someone who tried harder than
he knew how and still failed.

But I couldn’t think of
any way to fight it. Not without permission. Without permission, I couldn’t
even tell him his sister was in mortal danger.

The sun stayed nearly
hidden behind its haze of humidity and dirt, but its brutality was increasing.
Noon wasn’t far away; the walk here had used up the middle of the morning.
Heatwaves shimmered off the pavement.

An abandoned car with no
wheels leaned against the curb like a cripple. Somebody had gone down the
street and knocked over all the trashcans, scattering garbage like wasted
lives. Somewhere there had to be something I could do to redeem myself. But
when I prayed for help, I didn’t get it.

After a while, I found
myself staring as if I were about to go blind at a street sign at the corner of
the block. A long time seemed to pass before I registered that the sign said, “21st
St.”

Kristen had said that
Root’s gallery, The Root Cellar, was “over on 49th.”

I didn’t know the city;
but I could at least count. I went around the block and located 20th. Then I
changed directions and started working my way up through the numbers.

It was a long hike. I
passed through sections that were worse than where Kristen and Reese lived and
ones that were better. I had a small scare when the numbers were interrupted,
but after several blocks they took up where they’d left off. The sun kept
leaning on me, trying to grind me into the pavement, and the air made my chest
hurt.