Skyscape Read online

  She had anticipated his eyes, his searching, ironic glance. But she had not realized that she would find him immediately likable. True, he was impressive, accepting a coffee, making amiable chat about taxi cabs and traffic, but he looked so at ease with himself that Margaret found herself wanting to tell him everything.

  Bruno Kraft held the cup and saucer in one hand, gracefully. “Andy Warhol said that Curtis was the best thing since the invention of the tape recorder. He said Curtis could fill up empty space better than Capote could fill up paper.”

  “I hate the portrait Warhol did,” said Margaret.

  “Curtis in Black Leather. It’s really quite lovely.”

  “It makes Curtis look so angry.”

  “You mean Curtis isn’t angry anymore? Tsk Tsk.” He said this tisk tisk, archly, pretending, it seemed, to be someone in a comic strip.

  “When we were married I knew we might appear to be an unusual couple to some people. A person with a quiet career married to—to him.” Margaret reminded herself that Curtis was upstairs, listening.

  “He’s not here, is he?” said Bruno.

  He was letting her lie. She could read his eyes. She shook her head, not allowing herself to speak.

  He seemed to enjoy this. “Curtis used to vanish for months at a time,” said Bruno. “Go underground. Actually, he was just hiding here. Or, rarely, up by the Eel river, fishing and drinking beer.”

  Margaret decided to be just a little bold. “Actually, I thought I wouldn’t like you.”

  Bruno, head tilted back, eyes slitted in an exaggerated study, affecting surprise, but Margaret sensed real surprise, and some amusement. “Good Lord—an honest woman.”

  “I wish you could stay here in San Francisco. Curtis and I could use an ally.”

  He thought this over, and let her see him enjoying what she had said. “Strange that you say ‘ally,’ not friend.”

  She felt a flash of embarrassment. I am chattering, she told herself. “Both.”

  “Some people simply can’t understand what makes so many American women so odd. They are odd, you know. Most American women speak in these brittle voices. Imitation male voices, compensating for the deficiencies of nature. But you, my dear, are a perfect example of American womanly charm. If we had world enough and time we would be fast friends. Or, I almost said, fat friends, in reference to my being out of training recently. You, on the other hand, must never eat.”

  “I love desserts,” she said. “I have a wonderful recipe for bourbon truffles.” She told herself that she sounded stupid.

  “Then you have a fortunate metabolism. I admire that. I think that human beings blessed with one sort of talent, also have others. The talented so often are at least fairly good-looking.”

  “I’m better at more than losing weight.” God—I have never sounded more like a complete ninny.

  “I have one of your books,” he said. “Starr of the Yard. I gave Starr of the Yard in Paris to children of good friends. When you can convince Curtis to come to Italy again you must sign my copy for me. Curtis didn’t like Italy much, you know. He tried to be polite about it.”

  Starr of the Yard had various adventures, and worked with Scotland Yard in solving crimes. The crimes were mild, missing cows and stolen wheelbarrows, and, in the adventure taking place in Paris, a stolen tray of croissants. Starr’s intelligent expression now adorned coffee mugs and T-shirts. He had the white splash of a star on his forehead, and an alertly cheerful frown a little like the look Bruno gave her now.

  Bruno stirred his coffee, and then got up to step through the dining room to admire the view. “I like the fact that Curtis is still living in a high-security penthouse. An artist has to take care of himself.”

  “Why was the painting there, in Bedford Square,” she said, “and not in the museum?”

  “It was being restored.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “You remember sometime ago a Basque terrorist, I believe it was, attacked it with what used to be called an ice pick.”

  She remembered well.

  “There was a lab that was expert at sealing holes. Like a human celebrity, it paid a visit, was repaired. And was lost.”

  It was hard to ask. “It is actually destroyed, then?”

  “Completely.”

  “Without knowing it,” she said, her voice breaking, “I held out some hope.”

  “That’s understandable. I’m so sorry.”

  He had an accent that was hard to place, American with the precise t’s of a British news reader, an accent she took to be a pan-Atlantic, international brand of English. When she had dried her tears, she agreed with him that the Marin headlands he could see across the Golden Gate were beautiful. The tide was going, the black-blue water muscling outward.

  He had asked the question, and Margaret was not answering him.

  He asked it again. “What has he been painting,” but this time he did not inflect the words as a question. The words were nearly a subject heading. “Because I know you’ve been able to help him paint,” he continued. “I believe that.”

  He turned to look at her. “You broke a thousand hearts when you married Curtis. Ten thousand women and roughly triple the number of men actually contemplated suicide.”

  “You don’t have to be kind to me,” she said.

  “We adore you, Margaret.”

  “He’s not here,” she said. “Honestly.”

  “Of course not. He’s out in the woods, somewhere, I imagine up in Muir Woods. Or in Guerneville, canoeing. Fishing. That’s what he’s doing, I just know it.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “He’s up there stream fishing with a Mepps double-zero. He orders them by the dozen—he keeps losing them on the rocks.”

  Bruno chuckled.

  “He isn’t here,” she said. “He’s not hiding from you.”

  “He’s hiding, Margaret, but I believe you, for the moment.”

  She was impressed by this, as though belief were a style of thought one could adopt or not, as one chose. “He’s up at the Yuba River,” said Margaret. “He needed to get away after—”

  “After the news,” said Bruno. He was silent for a moment. “I was stunned. I still am. It’s an outrage. They’ve ruled out terrorism, by the way. That entire part of Bloomsbury is gradually being renovated. It seems a welder’s torch set off a minor blaze. They thought the fire was out, but that night it returned to life.”

  His voice was sorrowful. “The art world has gone insane. Every Curtis Newns in existence has exploded in value. The trouble is that this was his only true masterpiece, the only work that the world simply had to possess. Of course, he may never paint another quite like it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. Perhaps he expected her to respond. But she was suddenly filled with hope, so full of feeling that she could not speak.

  He continued, “That’s really why I’m here, as perhaps you know.” He turned to look at her. “We need him to try, Margaret.”

  She said, softly, “Curtis may surprise you.”

  Bruno dabbed at his graying mustache with the napkin and gave her a steady look. “I want to see what he’s been doing.”

  “There’s nothing really.” She had a feeling that surprised her: she did not want Bruno to see the drawings, the images of her body.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Bruno no longer looked avuncular and amusing. His eyes were glittering.

  She said, in a way that had to sound teasing, “I don’t think you’d really be interested.” She wanted to protect herself and Curtis, their life together.

  “The talent flowers again,” said Bruno, with a slightly threatening air behind his gentleness. “We knew you could do it.”

  9

  They paused just outside the studio.

  There was always a feeling of trespass about entering the studio, especially when Curtis was not there.

  Mr. Beakman, the starling, jounced from food dish to perch to leather toy in his cage. He made a watery cackle, and then
offered a strange, faraway sounding murmur, a noise that hinted at motion and power. Distant traffic, thought Margaret. He’s imitating traffic, or perhaps the rumble of a jet. She had known this before, but it stopped her thoughts: animals are alive to the world.

  Through the window there was an expanse of water, cliffs, green hills, a view that gave Margaret the feeling of being at the end of something. It was the end of a continent, of course, but also the end of what it was possible for humans to accomplish. To the east, the view seemed to tell her, lies all that people can do. To the west is everything else, the ocean, the wind.

  “The work is over here,” she said. She knew how to control herself, make her voice steady. She wasn’t a weak person.

  But Bruno was quiet in a way that told her how unkind he could be, a large cat of a man.

  “His studios were always so spacious,” said Bruno. “He was afraid of chaos, among other things. He was always neat.” Bruno was one of those people who seemed to live everywhere, and who get tired only when faced with the ordinary. His one admission of age was the fact that he put on a pair of half-lens reading glasses.

  Against a far wall were canvases Curtis had bought long before she had known him, framed, stretched empty canvases, as big in size and promise as his now lost masterpiece but untouched by a brush.

  Bruno’s eyes told her that he recognized this assembly of blank canvas. “All that empty canvas,” he said. “It makes a room look endless.”

  She slid open a drawer, and withdrew a small kid-leather portfolio. She unzipped it, and withdrew a tidy pile of drawing paper.

  Bruno held forth his hand. She let him take the drawings and step away, into the afternoon light.

  What Bruno said was law. If he said the drawings were Newns at his best, then Curtis was reborn, his career alive once more.

  The studio was chilly. Curtis liked it that way, and said that he worked well when he was a little cold and a little hungry. The paper made a dry, brittle whisper as Bruno looked though the small collection. Bruno paused, held one up for a moment, and then let the drawing slip back.

  Bruno was in no hurry.

  They were pencil on white paper, not the explosive canvases of the past. She loved Curtis for his courage, and when Curtis knew big work was beyond him, he took up the simple, the new. For an instant she could not suppress a sensation of pride. Me. He was drawing me.

  She clasped her hands. As a girl she had bitten her nails, and her mother had painted them with a solution that tasted of soap to rid her of the habit. Why was Bruno taking so long? If they were good, and if they weren’t—surely it didn’t have to take all this time. But she had always been impatient. She had always wanted more out of life than most people. She made herself be still.

  Bruno had large hands, the hands of someone who worked at something that took care, a violin maker. His nails were carefully and almost certainly professionally done.

  She had a glimpse over her shoulder. A breast, a pubic triangle, an arm stretching out until the fingers became the space into which they extended.

  She felt cold. He held up the drawings, turning each one aside to let the afternoon light play upon it. Margaret looked away. It was another sketch of her in the nude, sitting with her hands folded, looking out from the surface of paper with what you would have to call an expression of concern, the way she so often looked at Curtis.

  Bruno thought that Margaret Darcy Newns was a perfect little woman, delightful, and he wished that she would go away for just a moment and leave him alone. It wasn’t too much to ask, after all, but he didn’t want to be discourteous. The poor child had been through so much.

  Bruno did not want to show her what he was thinking. He thought: don’t let her see how excited you are.

  He gazed at her. “This can’t be all,” he said.

  Don’t say anything rash, Margaret cautioned herself. Help Curtis. He needs you. And his career needs you. “I think they’re remarkable, don’t you?”

  “Curtis doesn’t like them,” said Bruno, sifting through them once again, and then tenderly putting them back into a neat pile. “He wouldn’t keep them like this, in secret, if he was proud of them.”

  But she could tell. There was that trace of excitement in the famous critic’s voice. She said, “He’s not ashamed of them.”

  “Don’t be afraid of me, Margaret.”

  “I know you like them.”

  “I like roasted garlic. I like Frascati, for that matter. I don’t use like for something as important as art.”

  She was waiting.

  “They aren’t bad,” he said, the the tone of someone being very kind, someone saying see how nice I’m being?

  “But not what you hoped for.”

  “Not what I expected,” he said, putting emphasis on the last word. “You know that what people want from Curtis are paintings. They want color, scope. They want him to be the Curtis Newns of years ago. Some people will say that unless he produces another giant oil he’s finished, a spent force.”

  Maybe he really did feel they were inferior, she thought. “You knew he was having problems.”

  “Definitely.” He reflected and then chuckled. “He’s always had problems.”

  “He’s changed,” she said. “He goes out more now.”

  “I hear he’s the same as ever.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “And he’s become even more of a recluse,” said Bruno, “or perhaps you would have me believe that two years of married bliss has him seeking his own, private paradise. He’s hiding.”

  He certainly knew Curtis, thought Margaret.

  “You are loyal to him, Margaret, and that’s sweet, but you can’t think that marriage can turn Curtis Newns into someone boring and reliable. Has he attempted suicide again? Or has he attempted to kill anyone else lately?”

  Maybe the big critic was jealous. “I’ve been good for him. I help him.” She found herself close to tears, feeling love for Curtis, and seeing how little she had been able to do for him.

  “I don’t like being too frank. It leads to a lack of manners. But I think he can and will do much better than this.”

  In his mind was the single, flashing thought: you can sell every single one of these drawings tomorrow. They weren’t Skyscape, but they were brilliant.

  She said, as though she read his thoughts, “They aren’t for sale.”

  His eyes narrowed. He made himself smile. “They would help prove to everyone that Curtis is still recovering.”

  It was even colder here now, she found herself thinking.

  Bruno added, “They prove how much he loves you. But, aside from that, they have charm. Or because of it. They are the work of a man in love.”

  Inwardly, Bruno could hardly keep himself from shivering with pleasure—sheer, white-light happiness. He had to spar a little, toy a bit with this lovely girl, but the fact was that he could not leave the room without these drawings. It would be madness to leave them here. The problem was that he liked this young woman.

  He had not expected to, really. She reminded him of a ballerina, someone small and strong at once, one of those people who seem all grace and compliance but who endure. If Bruno had been interested in women, this was the sort of person who might have captured him. As it was, he wanted to return to Andy as soon as possible.

  If he waited, held off, banked his enthusiasm just a little, maybe Curtis would paint another big canvas. He had to. He had to paint something big. On the other hand, if he couldn’t, perhaps these would do.

  If he showed his enthusiasm, this girl would want big money and a splash in the media. New Newns Nudes. What woman wouldn’t want her cute little behind in all the papers, sketched by the famous man?

  We don’t want to encourage Curtis in this vein, however exciting it might be, thought Bruno. We want him to get back to the large canvas, the giant view of the truth which Curtis had long ago mastered.

  Still, it hurt him to see the drawings go back into the pretty kidski
n portfolio. What a final sound a zipper made when it was closing up after a splendid offering.

  “They aren’t for sale,” she said, and she sounded like a woman who would not enjoy further argument.

  When they were in the living room again Bruno called Yellow Cab.

  “I really believe that you’ve helped him,” he said, and he took her hand.

  It was easy to say because it was the truth: “I love him.”

  “Those drawings show real promise. But don’t worry—they will be our little secret,” he said. “By refusing to see me he’s making himself all the more attractive. He knows me.”

  “He’ll be so disappointed.”

  “I have business in New York that it would be absolutely criminal to neglect. Besides, do you think I should see him as he is now? Don’t you think I should wait for him to get stronger before we talk?”

  She began to speak, and he smiled and shook his head against her protest.

  “Does he hurt you?” he asked.

  She said that, of course, he had never hurt her.

  “He always hurts women,” said Bruno, knotting the sash of a handsome camel-hair overcoat. He said, with what sounded like sincerity, “It used to make me sick.”

  “He’s never done anything like that to me.”

  “We all live a kind of fiction, don’t we?”

  The coat was something out of the Via Condotti, manly and well-cut. She wanted to be distracted by such details, the cloth of his tie, the soft-leather black shoes, how they made almost no sound across the hardwood floor.

  Bruno took a stance at the foot of the stairs and called upward, “Goodbye, Curtis.”

  At the door, he said, “If I thought he would never paint again.…” But he did not complete the thought, looking, for an instant, sad.

  He gave her a smile, thoughtful, measuring, and kissed her politely. “But why a goat, if I may ask?” he said.

  “People ask, from time to time.”

  “Because it was a brilliant choice,” he said.

  “Starr just happens to be a brilliant goat.”

  “You don’t know why, do you? One day it seemed that a detective goat was a good idea. Because it’s a secret,” he said. “Something even the artist doesn’t understand.”