The Gallery (4 page)

The foyer of Old Main was barn-like. Ceilings high overhead were plastered in ornate designs favored at the turn of the century. LaDonna thudded up the first flight of steep stairs. The wooden floor and now wooden steps to the second floor creaked and groaned. Maybe she should have just gone home. Johnny wasn't going to like being interrupted.

By the time she reached the twisting stairs to the third floor, she had a lonely feeling of being the only one alive on the campus. It seemed strange, unnatural, not to have run into even one student.

Half running, she searched the brass numbers overhead until she located 339, Johnny's usual room. Grasping the knob and turning, she tumbled in as soon as the door opened.

A look of astonishment flitted across Johnny's face as his hands froze in midair over ivory keys. Bass notes trembled long after being struck. LaDonna bent across the curve of the baby grand and gasped, sucking in the musty air of the closet-like room.

“LaDonna? What's wrong? Are you all right?” Johnny came to life, stood, stepped around the piano and put his hand on her shoulder.

“I'm fine, Johnny, fine. I—I—just—lost it out there, spooked myself good. Why isn't there anyone on campus? Where is everyone tonight?”

“I'm right here.” He grinned. “Who else were you looking for?” Johnny stepped back and studied her.

“You aren't mad, are you? I'm sorry to interrupt your practice. I needed—I needed—”

“Me? I'd like that.” His blue eyes sparkled. Long, slim fingers rested on the shiny black wood. LaDonna averted her eyes to his hands, not able to keep looking into his eyes.

“Well, if it won't make you conceited, I guess so. I needed someone, and you were the closest one I knew of.”

“Now you're trying to wiggle out of wanting to see
me
, not just anyone, but old Johnny Blair, counselor to artists, especially those of the female gender, smelling of oil paint.”

In an uncharacteristic move, she reached up to him, hugged him tight. He hugged back, his flesh warm and comforting.

“Can you stop early, Johnny? I'll even buy pizza.”

“You
are
desperate.”

“Don't expect me to be this generous all the time.” She turned, taking a deep breath, collecting her composure. “This is an occasion.”

“I'll stop. I'll stop. Or I'll come back later. I never could resist a damsel in distress.”

“Okay, create a melodrama if you must, JB. Let's go. All of a sudden, I'm starving.”

“When did you last eat?”

“I don't remember. It didn't seem important.”

“That's your problem. Your blood sugar has dropped so low, you're hallucinating.”

Johnny laughed, followed her out the door, locked it behind them. A tall, model-slim girl greeted them—him. “Hi, Johnny. Quitting early?”

“Pizza break. I shall return.”

They both laughed as the girl stopped at a practice room two doors down. La Donna found she wasn't breathing. For some reason she pictured the girl's long slim fingers on Johnny's arm. Johnny's hand smoothing down her wild, dark-red hair.

“
Now
I see another human being.” La Donna needed to comment on the girl's appearance. “Good friend?”

“You care?”

“Of course not. I—” LaDonna stammered, felt her face heat up, her cheeks redden.

Johnny laughed. “It's all right to be jealous. I don't mind. I guess I see almost as much of Katherine as I do you. She's just another musical genius.”

Outside the building, people swarmed as if a class had just been dismissed. Couples, hand in hand, strolled towards the darkened pond. A cluster of students argued over some point as if continuing a class discussion. LaDonna looked around, thinking she had crossed from the art building in some kind of time warp. This scene was normal.

Teresa's had a twenty minute wait, making LaDonna even more hungry. Spicy tomato and pepperoni smells floated out to them while they sat on a bench in front of the restaurant.

“Want to talk or wait till you've eaten?”

“There's someone in the art building basement with me, Johnny.” LaDonna blurted out her suspicion.

“Someone? Who?”

“I don't know. I haven't seen him. But I feel his presence. And tonight he'd left me a painting to look at.”

“What kind of painting? Whose? Was it pornographic?”

“Of course not, Johnny. Don't tease me. I'm serious. I assume it was his painting. Why would he show me work from another artist?”

“Let me run this by again. Some guy is pestering you at work, and tonight he asked you to look at one of his paintings?”

“You make it sound so ordinary, Johnny. It's not. I haven't seen this person. I think it's a man. I feel that he's there with me. He's been there from the very beginning. And when I came in this afternoon, a very different painting hung on the wall where I've been hanging those I've unpacked.”

Johnny cleared his throat and frowned. One hand played with the braid on La Donna's shoulder. LaDonna wished he'd stop. She didn't want to be distracted, but since he was probably unaware of what he was doing, she didn't speak.

“What kind of painting?” he asked again.

LaDonna pictured the scene in her mind again, thought about how to describe it. “Disturbing. Fairly dark colors. Monks or people in robes lining a street, as if—as if they were waiting for someone. Troubled sky. The center of the painting is lonely.”

“The sky is troubled. The center is lonely. Sure this is a painting you're describing, LaDonna? You've been alone too much. You probably came and got me just in time.”

“Yes, and I should have known you'd laugh at me.” She breathed deeply, wishing she could just laugh about all of this.

“Hey, I'm not laughing. Look at my face. Is this laughter you see?” Johnny framed his face with both hands and widened his eyes. He needed a haircut badly. She thought of the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
, his straw hair sticking up all whichaways.

She laughed, relaxing. “I guess I do sound nutty, but who left a painting, a good painting, hanging down there for me to see?”

“A struggling artist who'd do anything to get attention?”

“My attention? What could I do for him?”

“Who else's attention would he get if you're the only one working down there?”

“And I am.”

“Let's go back to this feeling you've come up with.” Johnny made a steeple with both hands, pressing his fingers together as if stretching them. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

LaDonna sat quietly herself for a few seconds. “I never have before now. Do ghosts paint?”

“Is the person who left the painting the same one who's—who's been haunting you?”

“Yes.” She didn't even hesitate before she answered that question. She knew
he
'd hung the painting on the wall.

“Obviously this ghost paints then. Tell Walker your story.” Johnny glanced at the door of the restaurant to see if anyone was looking for them to tell them a table was free. LaDonna felt he was more interested in eating than hearing her crazy story.

“I—I don't want to. He might make me stop working there.”

“You want to stop?”

“No, I can't.”

“You can't? You mean you need the money.”

That wasn't what LaDonna meant at all. She lied. “Yes, paint is so expensive. I can't keep asking my dad for so much.”

“Are you scared down there?”

“No, not really. I got a bit spooked tonight for some reason. Suddenly, the whole idea just seemed so strange.”

“Yes, I'll agree with that. But
you
are strange, LaDonna Martindale.” Johnny returned to his teasing. He squeezed La Donna's shoulder.

“Someone followed me across the campus.” She didn't mean to say that. The idea blurted out.

“This ghost followed you. I thought ghosts were supposed to stay in one place. One house per ghost. No moving around. Something happened in the art building to make him unhappy, so he's supposed to hang around there until he resolves it. Those are the ghost rules.”

“How do you know so much about ghost behavior?”

“I see movies. Watch TV. Read. I'm fairly normal despite my obsession with my piano. You really think he followed you?”

“No. But someone did.” Somehow she was sure of that.

“Blair.” An outside speaker announced that their table was ready. Both of them stood slowly and moved towards the door.

“Let's eat. I'll walk you home. Will that make you feel better?” Johnny took her arm and steered her into a booth.

“Much better. Tomorrow I'll be back to normal, I promise, JB.” She felt better being with Johnny. She hoped tomorrow the world would return to normal.

“No more ‘Twilight Zone'?” Johnny hummed the music to the old TV show.

She smiled and shook her head, slid into a booth, and concentrated on the menu.

“Share your booth and I'll treat,” said a voice behind LaDonna. She didn't have to turn around to know the speaker was Eric Hunter. And too much lilac perfume probably meant—LaDonna turned around to be sure—Merilee Morris. She was right. Wasn't this against some kind of unwritten rule? No teachers dating students. Hunter was a student teacher, but he was probably supposed to behave like faculty at Bellponte High while he was there.

Johnny looked at LaDonna as if to say, do we have to? But he moved over to let Eric slide in beside him. Instead Eric Hunter slid in beside LaDonna, close, too close. And Merilee sat beside Johnny and grasped his arm. She giggled and whispered in his ear. LaDonna hardly ever saw Johnny blush, but his face got pink and his lips formed a sheepish grin.

LaDonna suddenly lost her appetite. She scooted closer to the wall and studied her menu again. This was going to make the weird state of mind she'd gotten into this evening vanish.

five

J
OHNNY
B
LAIR WAS
often brutally honest. “I didn't think teachers were supposed to date students, Hunter.”

“This is not a date, Blair. Don't panic. I ran into Merilee on the campus and found she hadn't eaten dinner. So why should two lonely people eat alone?”

Merilee giggled. “Yeah, why?” She blinked blue eyes at Johnny.

In her lap, LaDonna felt both hands tighten into fists. She took them out and flattened them on the table cloth.

“The hands of an artist,” Eric Hunter commented, running one finger from the tip of LaDonna's middle finger to her wrist. She took her hands back and hid them in her lap again. She had stubby fingers, permanently paint stained unless she scrubbed with turpentine. But she'd never cared how her hands looked before.

She stared at her watch. “Oh, my gosh, Johnny. I completely forgot I told my dad I'd go to the basketball game with him tonight. We were supposed to pick up something to eat on the way. He's going to kill me.” LaDonna jumped halfway to her feet and would have slid past Eric Hunter if he hadn't gotten the idea that she wanted him to move.

“I'll go with you,” Johnny pushed Merilee until she almost slid off the orange plastic bench. “Your dad won't care. I'll practice double tomorrow.”

Outside Theresa's Johnny started laughing and shaking his head. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

LaDonna burst into laughter. “You noticed.”

“How many basketball games have you ever attended with your dad, LaDonna? Huh? How many, huh?”

“Let's see.” LaDonna pretended to count on her fingers. She laughed again. “I had to do something. I'd lost my appetite.”

“There's always a hot dog at Mustard's Last Stand. I'm not going to let you get out of buying. It's not often you volunteer.”

“That sounds like a perfectly healthy dinner, JB. Let's take them over into Central Park. We can look at the train and pretend we're going to Paris.”

“Paris by train. Gotcha.” Johnny grabbed her hand and they jogged together out to Broadway. Then they settled into a leisurely walk, neither saying anything until they reached the tiny diner at the bottom of the hill.

By the time they'd eaten and Johnny walked her home, her dad had gone someplace. LaDonna stared at the phone on the wall in the kitchen. Why not? She dug into her pocket for the phone number that Mrs. Coombs had written for her, smoothed the paper, dialed.

“Hello?” The voice was tentative, as if this girl was afraid to answer the phone.

“Minette Waterson?”

“Yes?”

“You don't know me. My name is LaDonna Martindale. I took the job at the art building that you tried to do. I—I just wondered why it was you quit so soon.”

“Why do you want to know?” The girl's voice was somewhat defiant.

“Curiosity I guess. It doesn't matter if you'd rather not say.” Now it did matter. LaDonna hoped Minette would keep talking.

“I—that basement is creepy. I felt scared down there alone. That's all. I didn't need the money
that
bad.”

Silence. What Minette said gave La Donna no further information.

“Don't tell me you like working there.”

“It's okay.” LaDonna laughed. “But that basement room is pretty scary.”

“It's a creepy place and I never want to go down there again. Good luck.”

“Thanks. Thanks for sharing your experience.” LaDonna hung up and stared at the phone, not at all satisfied with the conversation.

“I guess, thanks,” she said to the kitchen cabinets. She wanted to know why Minette felt scared, what she felt. She wished she had found the girl and talked to her in person. She opened the door to the refrigerator, stared inside at the cold white walls, the empty space. Her mind drifted. What was she doing? She wasn't hungry. But she grabbed a Coke.

The lid on the drink popped with a hiss. LaDonna walked slowly to her room and pulled out a sketch pad. From memory, she was able to reproduce, in an amateurish way, the painting he'd put on her wall. She studied it, tried to decide what it meant. Did it matter? She was successful in tapping into the emotional quality of the composition. Despite the overwhelming somber tones, there was an element of hope in the yellow light. She decided the robed figures were waiting for something or someone. Maybe that someone was coming from the storm, out of the storm, or despite the threatening fury of the sky.