“You are Mr. Somers?”
“Patrick ‘Pat’ Isaac M. J. Somers, Jr.” I said, trying to keep up with the d’Oplinter Cruzes.
“Will you sit, please? I can’t see, but I prefer to be seen straight on, not in profile.”
I pulled up a chair and sat and winked broadly at her. Then I slowly drew my upper lip up to reveal my top teeth, à la Bogie. I decided to think of the woman with half a telephone book for a last name as Franny and undressed her with my eyes. I’d never had any problem with that stunt before, but it was more enjoyable when the woman could see me do it.
“I’ve been blind for four years, Mr. Somers.”
“I can beat that,” I said. “I haven’t been able to see or smell a thing in five years.”
“The agency told me you were amusing.” She forced a tight little laugh. “But let’s get down to business. Jaak Froger is my second husband. He’s an artist and spends most of his time in his studio in the back of the house. I need someone to keep me company during the day.”
She coughed away a catch in her voice. I raised my eyebrows.
She seemed to feel a change in my attitude.
“I hope I haven’t offended you,” she said.
“You’ve seen right through me. In my business, I have busy periods and slow spells. Right now, things are slow as molasses.”
“I might as well be dead for all the attention I get when my husband’s busy with his stinking plaster.”
She seemed a pleasant woman, well into her middle age, who didn’t mind looking the other way when it came to questions of etiquette.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not very good company. I’m really more of a loner.”
“That doesn’t matter. I just want someone in the house for a few hours a day. Perhaps you can read to me a bit.”
I got to my feet and crossed to the baby grand on the far side of the room. I hadn’t played in a long time, but I ran my fingers across the keys and brought Erroll Gamer back to life for a few moments — a zombifled version of him, maybe, but still. A copy of Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise lay on top of the instrument. Yeah, Franny seemed to be the sort of dame who belonged back in the Roaring Twenties. I carried the book back to the chair and sat, flipped it open, and cleared my throat, but before I could get out a syllable, she stood up and groped her way to the window, almost knocking over a vase as she went.
“Mr. Somers, I told you that my husband no longer pays me any attention. Why don’t you go have a look at what he does pay attention to these days?”
She leaned forward, her forehead touching the window. Her pale calves were well worth looking at.
I nodded as I realized what she really was hiring me to do.
As I stood in the dark atelier trying to brush the plaster out of my hair, I thought back to the phone call that had set this whole chain of events in motion. Four days earlier, before the cops, before the model, before the lady of the house, I’d been hired by an insurance company. It seemed that a certain Francine Marie-Christine d’Oplinter Cruz had suffered from poor vision her entire life, but the company wanted to find out if the lady had truly been stricken blind four years earlier.
“We suspect,” my caller had told me, “that her claim is fraudulent.”
“Tell me about it,” I’d said.
“The woman receives a hefty payment every month because of her ‘blindness,’ and we think she’s concluded that we must be blind ourselves. You’ll be taking a position as a household servant, but in fact you’ll be working for us.”
“I don’t do windows,” I’d said — but I’d taken the job.
And now, four days later, I located the flashlight on the work table by the atelier’s window. I flicked it on and followed its beam of light like a bloodhound on a scent.
Something glittered behind one of the plaster grotesques. I headed that way and stumbled over a work in progress, which shattered like a china plate in a Greek restaurant. My attacker whirled towards me, but I swung my right arm in a wide arc and felt my elbow connect with its target.
In the flashlight’s beam, I saw a pair of black sunglasses lying amongst the plaster shards that littered the floor. I picked them up and set them on the bridge of a statue’s nose. Then I told Franny the game was up, and she crawled out from behind the gargoyle where she’d fallen. Even with one eye swollen shut and ass over teakettle, she held herself with perfect dignity.
“Enough already,” I said.
“This time I really couldn’t see where I was going.”
I forced a tight little laugh.
“I can see where you’re going,” I told her, “and you’re not gonna like it there.”
“How long have you known?”
“I suspected it when you almost knocked over that vase the other day. A blind woman would know exactly where every object in her house was located.”
I put out a hand and helped her to her feet. She leaned against a giant plaster sculpture. It seemed to be the only finished piece in the studio. Froger had apparently found his inspiration after all, although it really didn’t do much for me.
“I know it’s none of my business,” I said, “but there are easier ways to make a living.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she responded coldly. “I’ve never worked a day in my life.” “You’ve been busy,” I said, “filing your nails.”
“You have no idea what it’s like living with an egomaniac like Jaak.”
“I can imagine there were times when you couldn’t stand the sight of him, but there are limits.”
“I’m not a maid, Mr. Somers. You don’t think I’d spend my life cooking and cleaning for him?”
“No, not that, but you’d help him get away with a murder. Or did Helga realize you were faking, so you did what you had to do to protect your secret?”
She lowered her hand from her eye. It was already turning purple, but oddly enough, on her the color looked good. I wondered why a woman would hide herself away like this. She lived in another age, with other values and other norms. She called it elegance, but to me it read like pure indolence. After four years of putting on an act, she’d become literally blind to the world outside her home.
I shuffled my feet, wiping plaster from the soles of my Pumas.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“You’re not the only one who’s suddenly seen the light, darlin’.”
“Jaak and I went through hard times, Mr. Somers. My ‘blindness’ was the only way we could think of to generate an income — and it was barely enough to keep us going. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve never known a woman who’d go out and get a job while her husband stayed home and stared at other women’s nakedness. I believed in Jaak’s talent, but I wasn’t that blind.”
“But Helga didn’t want Jaak staring at her — so Jaak lost control of that file he was holding?”
“Jaak’s not just an artist. He’s like some kind of omnipotent god. If he can’t have what he wants, then no one can have it.”
“These bastards who think their ‘art’ entitles them to gallop off in any direction their dicks are pointing make me sick.”
Her head swiveled to gaze at the giant grotesque figure against which she was leaning. I shoved her into it, and they both fell to the ground with a crash. The statue cracked open like Humpty Dumpty.