Mansions Of The Dead (26 page)

He opened the front door and stepped aside to let her in.

They were standing in a cavernous room, with a stainless steel circular stairway at one side climbing up past the second and third floors to a giant skylight. She stood underneath it and looked up at the night.

The walls of the studio were painted bloodred and there were a few huge canvases, white fields scrawled with lines of dark red paint. One whole side of the studio was taken up with huge pieces of machinery, circular saws and other tools that she didn’t know the names of.

But all around the rest of the studio, as though it were a park full of moving, walking people, were his strange wood and metal figures, their limbs at so many different angles that they really did seem to be moving. Though they were made of many kinds of wood and held together with varied mechanisms—bolts, screws, pieces of strings—the pieces all looked vaguely related. It was clear they were made by the same artist. But they represented many different emotions. A running figure, his long, Giacometti-like legs caught in mid-stride, his arms pumping at his side, was pure joy. Another man stood tall and upright, his arms gesturing as though he were giving a speech.

“What was this?” she asked, pointing to a pile of heaped debris. She could spot a limb here or there, the edges of the cut wood raw and splintery.

“Oh . . . that was a . . . a mistake.” He led her over to a tall figure, obviously feminine, that stood shyly, her limbs in an attitude of demure flirtation.

“I’ve started doing women,” he said. “When my last girlfriend was breaking up with me, she threw in my face the fact that I’ve never done women. She said it was because I had a total lack of understanding of them. What do you think of this one?”

Sweeney studied it for a few moments. “It’s pretty, but . . . I don’t know.”

“It’s limited?”

She looked up at him in surprise. It had been exactly what she was thinking.

“Not in a bad way. In kind of an innocent way actually. Kind of . . . I don’t know . . . boyish.”

“Great.” He put a playful arm around her shoulders and she felt competing urges to lean into him and to stiffen against his arm. “Want a drink? I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

She hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

“You don’t have to look so afraid. I’m not going to bite you.” He laughed.

Sweeney tried to laugh too. “I’m not afraid. It’s just . . . ”

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s have that drink.”

They climbed the circular staircase and were suddenly in an open-plan living space, with a brand-new restaurant-quality kitchen separated from a large living room and dining room by a maple and marble island.

Jack went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of scotch. He handed one to Sweeney and pointed to the couch in the living room. It was old, with art deco wooden detailing, and upholstered in pale blue silk, but somehow it fit perfectly in the otherwise modern room. Sweeney walked around looking at a series of canvases featuring blue fields of various shades and sizes. On one wall, he had hung a long black bully whip. The dark leather made a snaking shadow on the pale wall.

“I like your house,” Sweeney said, sipping the scotch and then setting it down on a coaster that appeared to be a butterfly caught in epoxy. “But what about that?” She pointed to the whip. “Isn’t it a little kinky for home decor.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Kinky can be good.” He winked at her and sat down next to her on the couch, kicking off his shoes and turning to face her.

“How are your parents doing?” Sweeney asked, flushing from his comment.

“All right. Getting through the memorial service was important,” he said. “I think that doing it on their own is hard, though. I even wondered if . . . Anyway, I think they’re getting through it.”

“How old were you when they split up?” She knew the answer, but she wanted to see how he’d describe it.

“Oh. It was just a few years ago. After Petey died. It happens, you know. When a child dies. To almost everybody. I was seeing a head-shrinker around that time and he told me the statistics. They’re pretty staggering. The strange thing to me was that Petey’s death was the thing that finally did it. They’d almost broken up so many times before. You heard the stories. Our house was . . . I mean, you can imagine. He was not the nice guy he is now.” He paused. “What about you? Are your parents still together?”

Sweeney took a deep breath. “My father committed suicide when I was thirteen and my mother is something of a drunk herself. I don’t even talk to her anymore. They never got married, but they lived together until I was five. Then my mother caught him screwing around and he moved out. She was an actress and we moved around, all over the place, but when things were really bad, she’d send me back to Boston to live with him.”

His eyes were wide. “Was your father Paul St. George? I didn’t put it together before.”

“Yeah. That was him.” She looked away from his intense gaze.

“He was another one of my heroes. Seriously. I love his work. I always said that I’d buy one if it came on the market. Wow. I can’t believe you’re . . . Wow!”

She focused on a metal and leather mask that was hanging on the opposite wall.

“How do you think it’s affected you? Growing up like that?”

“I don’t know,” Sweeney said. “I suppose a shrink would say that I have a hard time trusting, all that. I don’t put a lot of stock in shrinks. What about you?” She put on a German accent. “How has your childhood affected the vay
you
deal with things?”

He laughed. “Well, I told you about my relationship history.” He
grimaced. “No, no. I’ve dated some really great woman. I guess that ultimately I just wasn’t ready to take it to the next level or whatever. I think in some ways seeing Drew and Melissa’s marriage was what did it for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I think they actually really love each other. But it hasn’t been easy. They were always kind of volatile, even before they got married. Breaking up and getting back together. And then they’ve been trying to get pregnant for years. Melissa keeps having miscarriages. There was even one baby that made it to six months and then she lost it. It was awful. They buried it and everything. We all went to the service.” Sweeney thought of the little marble angel she’d seen at Mount Auburn. “Anyway, I guess I shouldn’t judge, but it always seemed like life would be a lot easier if they hadn’t gotten married.”

“It’s a platitude, but I think the thing about being married, or loving someone or whatever, is that it isn’t easy.”

“Yeah, and lately I’ve been feeling like I understand that. I can see having kids someday, more so than I ever could before. Maybe it’s turning thirty.” He grinned. “Who knows?”

He was getting drunk. Sweeney could see the signs, his bright eyes, the deliberately unslurred speech. It struck her that he must have had a couple of drinks before he came to the gallery. But he was someone who knew how to drink. She watched him carefully modulate his words, determined to appear alert and together.

“Do you think you were helped by seeing a shrink?” she asked him.

“Do I think I was helped? I think I came to know myself better. But whether I have the wherewithal to do anything about it is another question.”

She gulped her scotch and realized that just to keep up with him, she was drinking faster than she usually did. It was like that thing she’d heard about where people who were effective conversationalists learned to match their tone of voice and way of speaking to the person they were talking to. It made them feel good and it made them feel like you were like them.

Uncomfortable under his gaze, she looked around the room. “So how long has this building been in your family?”

“I think my great-great-great-grandfather bought up the land in the 1850s, before the Back Bay existed at all. They put up a bunch of buildings and we’ve held on to them. Now Drew has some scheme to turn them into luxury apartments or something.”

He leaned toward her and dropped his arm along the back of the sofa. “I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward,” he said. “But I just have this kind of feeling about you. I want you to be in my life.”

Sweeney looked away. She felt somehow pleased, but she wasn’t sure what to do.

“I’m sorry. It’s kind of crazy.”

“Do you think it has to do with Brad’s death?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’ll stop making you uncomfortable.”

He drained his scotch and got up to pour himself another one.

“It’s different than it was with Petey, you know. There’s a sense that we haven’t put him to rest yet, that there’s all this unfinished business, if you know what I mean. I think that we’re so used to death just being the end of something and this feels open, raw. And all the media interest and everything just keeps on reopening the wound. Somehow I feel ill-prepared to deal with it, if you know what I mean. My last girlfriend was Jewish and when her father died I remember sitting shivah with the family and thinking that it made sense. There was something they were
supposed
to be doing. It was all scripted for them and it was kind of a relief.”

“I know what you mean,” Sweeney said. “I think that by giving up some of the ritual surrounding death, we’ve given up some of the most important effects of that ritual. That’s what ritual does—it kind of puts an end to suffering. It allows you to go on.”

He was staring at her and his hand had crept from the back of the couch to her shoulder, where it was playing with her hair. She was tempted to lean back so his hand was on her neck. Instead she sat up. “I should get home, I guess.”

“Yeah. I bet you have to be up early and all that. But you haven’t
seen my roof deck. You have to see the roof deck! Come on!” He jumped up and pulled her up too, then ran up the circular staircase. Sweeney laughed, though she was still uncomfortable, and followed him. The stairs led past a hallway with four doors leading off and up to a little landing with a storage area and wide French doors. Jack opened them and they stepped out onto a large wooden deck surrounded by a low railing. There were five chaise longues and a bunch of chairs around the deck and, over in one corner, a hot tub. Sweeney stood against the railing and looked up into the night. A few billowy clouds floated by and from somewhere off in the distance she heard music—Miles Davis, she thought. Before she could be sure, he was standing directly behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and he turned her around to face him.

Their faces were very close and at the same moment, they leaned in, knocking noses, then finding each other’s lips. There wasn’t anything tentative about the kiss. Jack kissed her hungrily, his hand at the back of her head, pressing her into him and she could taste the alcohol on his breath, smell the tobacco, feel his unshaven face pricking her cheek.

She was breathing hard and he smiled at her before he leaned in, pressing her hard into the railing, his knee between her legs, his lips all over her neck, biting her, not quite hard enough to hurt. She was turned on and she pushed back, arching her neck to give him access to her throat. He bit and licked her skin and she felt his hot breath against her skin.

“Jack,” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. He kept biting her skin and Sweeney felt little pinpricks of sensation, not quite pain, but something like it. His breath in her ear was harsh and ragged.

She turned quickly out of his grasp so that they had switched positions and he was pressed against the railing. He smiled again, then roughly caught her hands behind her back and held them there. His grasp almost hurt, but she let him kiss her again, her body useless against his strength.

Breathless, she stepped back and looked at him. He was grinning
and he was about to reach for her again when she wrenched her hands away, moved out of his grasp, and sat down on one of the patio chairs.

“What’s wrong?” He was breathing hard.

“Nothing. I just . . . things are moving a little fast.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to.”

“I . . . I do.I just, let’s sit down and talk.”

“Okay. That’s fine. Let’s talk.” He sat down across from her and grinned, then reached forward to touch her knee. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Let’s talk about Brad.”

“What about Brad?”

“Who do you think killed Brad?” It was cruel, but she wanted to say the one thing that would slow down whatever was happening between them. She watched his face crumple with anger, then recompose itself.

“How should I know? I’m not a detective.”

“But you were there. You must have some idea about it. You saw the room.”

“Yeah, but it just looked . . . I don’t know. It just looked the way it always did. There wasn’t anything strange about it at all.” Not looking at her, he ran a hand through his hair nervously. She could still hear Miles Davis, climbing in the air, bouncing off buildings, and sailing off toward the water.

“What about when you left the apartment? How did he look when you left him?”

“He was on the bed, passed out, with the ropes around his hands or whatever and he . . . ”

She interrupted him, staring. “But it wasn’t ropes, he was tied up with neckties. The police . . . ” The realization hit her as she watched his face. “It wasn’t you, was it? It wasn’t you who tied him up that night.” She stood up, her heart beating, her eyes searching for the stairs.

“Sweeney . . . ”

“Why did you lie about it?” She was whispering and when he stood up, his hands out, reaching for her hands, she turned away from him
and started down the stairs. She was afraid now and she heard him behind her.

“Sweeney, wait . . . ”

She didn’t say anything as she ran down the two flights of stairs, grabbed her coat from the banister, and kept going out the door.

“Jesus Christ! Hang on.” She heard him calling again, but she pushed the door closed and ran across the street to the Comm. Ave. mall.

The mall was almost empty and she stood for a moment, confused and dizzy. It was late. What if she couldn’t get a cab? But when she reached Newbury Street, she saw one heading toward her. She put a hand up and miraculously it stopped for her.