Quiver (17 page)

“Where’s Edward?” I ask.

“He is sliding.” She points up. Henry and I crane our necks towards the ceiling and see a criss-cross network of Plexiglas slides in the middle of the building. There’s an entrance to a slide on each floor, and the tubes corkscrew down to the ground floor. We see bodies jetting through the transparent slides, people spat out, a little dizzy, at the bottom.

“It is an exhibition, see?” Maria hands us a leaflet that explains the piece,
Test Site,
by Carsten Höller. It says sliding is supposed to inflict “voluptuous panic on an otherwise lucid mind.”

“Is Edward reviewing this or something?” I ask.

“No,” Maria laughs, “I do not think so. He wants just to slide. Ah, there, he is at the bottom now!” She points again.

Edward picks himself up from the end of one of the Plexiglas chutes.

“That’s good fun, yeah?” says Edward, putting his arm around Maria’s waist. “Hello, hello,” he says and shakes our hands. “Nice to see you again. So, are any of you going to give it a go?”

“With these shoes, I do not think so,” says Maria, pointing to her heeled Mary Janes. “But I am glad you had fun.”

“I might give it a go,” says Henry.

“You boys,” Maria laughs. “Let us see the exhibit first. Here, already we have the tickets.” She hands us one each.

“Thanks, but you didn’t have to get them,” I say.

“It was really no trouble,” says Edward. “Shows are free for members, so that covers us, and I always get comp tickets. I’m happy to see them go to use.”

“Shall we go?” Maria links her arm with mine, and the men pair up ahead of us.

The Louise Bourgeois exhibit is not very crowded. I hear Edward and Henry art-speaking ahead of us: “Her work really didn’t get sufficient critical attention until later in her career, and it’s hard to say which movement can really claim her”; “Really, I think she resisted categorization, both organically and intentionally...”

Maria is silent. She reads the pamphlet about the retrospective and breaks away to look at the works. I’m floating around the gallery, trying to focus on the paintings, but I’ve got one ear open to eavesdrop on Henry and Edward, and one eye on Maria. I feel outside of their little group. It’s probably something I’ve constructed in my head, but still I worry I’m being purposefully excluded.

I’ve been standing in front of the same painting for five minutes: it’s a long, rectangular piece, the canvas coated with a dark grey wash, a tall, blocky skyscraper in the background and a woman’s naked body from the waist down, legs splayed, in the foreground. I’ve managed to register the title, one of the
Femme Maison
series, but the rest of the blurb is lost on me. What would I say about this piece if Edward asked me? Maria and Henry would have brilliant commentaries, and I would probably stutter or relate it back to some outdated, boring inkblot theory I learned about in third-year undergrad.

I see Edward and Henry move into the next room. Maria hovers near the doorway. She’s studying a caged sculpture.

“Like it?” I ask. I scan the curatorial statement: it’s a scale marble sculpture of the artist’s childhood home, enclosed in a cage, meant to symbolize the trauma of her childhood.

“
Like
is perhaps not the right word,” she says. “Very skilled—the detail, the house, amazing. Simple, yet so precise.” She still doesn’t look at me; her eyes fix firmly on the piece. She starts to walk around it; I follow. She makes a full circle and seems ready to move on to the next room. I try to get her attention again.

“Do you think Henry and Edward are having a good time?” I whisper. Through the archway, I see that they are already halfway down the next gallery.

“Hmm?” She looks at me, seemingly startled from a reverie.

“Henry and Edward?”

“What about them? Look, already, they are there. Probably they are talking shop, as you say.”

They are engrossed in an animated conversation, presumably about the sculptures in front of them. Edward gestures, Henry nods; then they reverse the actions.

Maria puts her hand on the small of my back, leans towards my ear. “Dani, they are fine. They are in their element. Do not worry.”

“I’m not worrying, I just want to be sure that everyone is having a good time.”

“But are you? You are distracted. Here.” I follow her to a line of totem-like sculptures displayed in the next room. “Just be still. Just look. Experience this. You do not have to think, just feel what you feel.”

She says this in the kind of tone we are supposed to use for patients who get stuck on the literal details of questionnaires. Except, in contrast to my fake-calm voice, hers sounds sincere. Like she cares, like she knows for certain that she’s leading me towards some new and special place.

I try it. By the fourth room, I even stop looking at the pamphlet to see if my reaction to the spider-nest-vortex sculpture matches what’s been written by the curator. I feel a relaxation, a freedom from judgment. I walk into the sixth room, lost in my thoughts. I’m drawn to one of the sculptures; it’s called
Avenza Revisited.
The name means nothing to me, and for the first time I don’t worry that it doesn’t. Instead, I focus on the piece: a blobby plaster creature, with egg-sac type bubbles on the top. Languid streams of plaster extend from the bottom and settle into fleshy ribbons on the floor. Entrails, a sliced abdomen, guts spilled. Like Báthory’s diaries.

The next room contains installations staged within cages. I lose Maria in a series of larger pieces, miniature rooms, boudoirs filled with sculptures of limbs, red stuffed animals, pillows on beds. Cages containing textiles, old clothes, a white woollen peacoat with
the cold of anxiety is very real
painted on the back in red letters.

I step into the last room. Small sculptures, arranged on shelves behind glass, line two walls. I wander down one strip until I come to another
Femme Maison
piece. A Barbie doll encased in a brick of clay. Her face is embedded in the grey mass; only her blonde hair, her arms and her long legs stream free. A few cracks run up the side of the clay, like the doll tried to struggle against this smothering.

“I think Báthory, she would wish she had thought of that.” Maria is to my left. I’m not sure how long she’s been there.

I don’t respond at first. Then I say, “But there would be no blood.”

“True. But I think that was rather secondary. Something she could take. She craved it, wore it. It became hers.”

“And how would she make something like this hers?”

For a moment she stands very close. I feel the hairs on my arm tingle, my skin aware of her proximity. I wait for her touch.

She walks out of the room.

I push open the doors and walk into the foyer and gift shop area. Maria and Edward are standing near the shop entrance, chatting over a stack of souvenir cards.

“There you are!” says Maria.

“You enjoyed the retrospective, then,” says Edward.

“Yes,” I say. “Very engaging.” Suddenly I start to worry again about saying something clever about the art. Maybe
engaging
was too vapid. “And you?” I manage to ask back.

“Yes, yes, brilliant. The Tate does manage some wonderful shows, even though it is somewhat like a supermarket for art.”

“Oh, do not be such a snob,” says Maria.

Edward laughs, puts his arm around her shoulders and kisses her hair. “You are right, my darling. You always lighten me up.”

I feel like he’d rather I weren’t there. “Where’s Henry?” I ask.

“Oh, he’s having a go on the slide,” he says. “Shall we meet him down there?”

“Sure,” I say, and we all start walking towards the stairs.

“I will meet you there in a moment,” says Maria, “I must stop at the loo. Go on, I will be a moment only.”

Edward stares after her for a couple of seconds as she walks away, and almost runs me into the stair railing. “Oh, terribly sorry, Dani.”

“No worries. Can’t take your eyes off her?” I joke.

He stammers a bit. “I...I guess not.” He’s suddenly flushed. “I admit, I’m quite smitten. Besotted, really.”

“That’s sweet. So things are going well between you.”

“They seem to be. I mean—they are, yes. Yes. It’s only been a short while, but I hope things continue, become serious, do you know what I mean?”

The last phrase comes out all strung together, that unconscious
dya-nowot-I-mean
that punctuates some English teenagers’ sentences. It’s surprising to hear it from a suddenly stammering Edward. He must really be in love. I feel bad for him; Maria may care for Edward, but I’m not convinced she’s serious about him.

“In any case,” he says, clearing his throat, “how’s work going? There’s a lot of guys from the newsroom sniffing around for Stowmoor stories, about that terrible man.”

“Yes. It’s a sensational case. Sells papers, I guess. Maria told me there were lots of stories and rumours going around.” I don’t want to say too much. But I’m curious whether he knows about any new theories the reporters are putting together.

“Oh, definitely. Rumours. They’re scrambling after any source they can get, anyone who has even a scrap of a comment.”

“What are they looking for?”

“Last I heard, someone at the
Telegraph
had some sort of tip that Foster didn’t act alone, that he has the support of an obsessive group behind him. But it’s mostly hearsay. The more reputable papers wouldn’t run a story like that, just based on anonymous tips, you know?”

“Right. That’s quite a story.”

“I’ll say. Probably all rubbish, but imagine if it were true? Come on,” he laughs, “what’s your professional opinion?”

“Serious stuff, if it’s true. If these other people exist, they’d probably be very dangerous.” I’m careful to speak in the hypothetical, and I know Edward is just joking, but now I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.

“So,” I say as we reach the ground floor, “do you think we can spot Henry coming down one of these tubes?” We glance at the bodies sailing through the Plexiglas chutes. Then I see a flash of Henry’s khaki jacket and dark blond hair whiz out of the longest slide. He stands up and I wave at him. He gives me the biggest smile I’ve seen from him in weeks.

On the walk back to the tube station, Henry says, “I’m glad we did that. You know, met up with them. They’re both great. He’s really nice, and Maria, I mean...there’s no one like her.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“What, what’s the problem?”

“No, no,” I smile and try to sound lighthearted. “It was great. I just meant I didn’t have as much fun as you did, on the slide and everything.”

“Oh.” he gave me a quick shoulder squeeze. “You could have slid down, too, kitten.”

“Maybe next time.”

He walked through the Heathrow arrivals door, pulling his black wheelie suitcase with one hand, holding his briefcase and a large boutique bag in the other. The crowd waiting to meet travellers was sparse today, and he picked her out immediately, even though they had never met in person. Tall, with long, dark hair and olive skin. She was focused on her phone.

He parked his suitcase in front of her. “I believe you’re my ride?”

She looked up. He surveyed her brown, almost black, eyes, fuchsia-slicked lips. Her long legs, white and silver python-skin boots. She lived up to his expectation that she would be uncommonly pretty.

“Yes,” she said. “Lovely to meet you, finally.” They leaned towards each other and kissed cheeks. She smelled like sandalwood and honey, and ran her hand down his shoulder and upper arm.

He followed her to the car.

“I’m to take you straight to the meeting,” she said as she merged onto the motorway.

“So, no nap to get over my jet lag?”

“I’m afraid not. My instructions were explicit.”

“Well, if those are the instructions. Of course.”

“The thing is, it’s all moving along fairly quickly.” She saw him stifle a yawn. “Well see about getting you a coffee.”

“Great. So things are on schedule?”

“More or less. Almost everyone is here. The painting arrived a little while ago.”

“Really? I’ve never seen it, you know, in person.” He’d been involved in the cause for over a year, but had been outposted for most of that time.

“It’s spectacular. It’s stored it in my flat at the moment.”

“Could I sneak a look?”

She shifted gears and accelerated the Audi past two cars, then veered into the left lane. “Do you have everything ready?”

He unzipped a compartment in his wallet and took out an SD camera card. “Right here.”

He’d spent months abroad to get these photos. The town was small enough that people often left their car doors unlocked, made small talk in coffee shops about the weather, but still big enough for him to blend in. He’d researched three possibilities. There was a series of photos of a girl in an ice rink, fair hair peeking from her hockey helmet. Off-ice, lugging her equipment bag across the parking lot. Another girl, at the public library. He’d worn a ball cap and read a novel while he shot her, his small camera hidden under a few blank pages of loose-leaf. And what he thought was his best work: a half-dozen photos of the girl who bused dishes at a diner. The way her thin arms trembled under the weight of the dishes made her seem waif-like. Barely strong enough not to break under a fully loaded tray.

He felt an anxious flutter as he displayed the card in his palm. They’d all agreed the next project needed to be away from CCTV cameras, so he’d been sent to scout girls someplace more remote. But would they be able to get everything in place? “It seems so...”

“Impossible?”

“Complicated. But yes, maybe impossible.” He slipped the card back into his wallet.

“We’ve made progress on that front. Very good progress.” She turned off the motorway and started threading the car through narrow city streets. “You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

“There’s a solid plan, then?”

“I meant, we’re almost here.” She stopped the car in front of a tall building. Through the entranceway’s glass doors he could see a white couch and high-backed chairs in the lobby. “But we’re close on the plan, too. We have a new lawyer. They’ll tell you. Ninth floor.”