"I don't even know the man."
"No malice, no libel."
"I know, I know," McClintock said. "But what about for dead people?"
His editor considered. Facts bored him, yes, but occasionally they pretzeled up into paradoxes he found amusing. "The only other criterion is demonstrable economic damage to someone's reputation…. But if someone's dead, how can you damage his reputation just by claiming he's alive?"
Arty Magnus was a savvy fellow, but he didn't understand the market for fine art.
17
"Sonofabitch," said Kip Cunningham. "Sonofabitch. That bastard is going to spoil everything."
He wriggled in the stately leather chair in the locker room of the University Club, then adjusted the thick towel that had gotten tangled between his thighs as he twisted. Not far away, his squash racquet lay on top of a pile of dirty sweaty clothes that a flunky would pick up, launder, and neatly fold. He sipped his club soda and lime and cradled the phone against an ear that was still damp from the shower.
"It's only a rumor, darling," said his wife. She'd taken to calling him darling again, and Cunningham was too oblivious to notice that she called him that the way some people call a Lhasa apso Killer or a knocked-out fighter Champ.
"Rumor? You just said it was in the paper."
"Not a real paper," she said. "Only the Sentinel. And the Sentinel always gets things wrong."
Cunningham sipped his soda and looked for the comfort in this. A couple of club colleagues strolled by, splotched with sweat and red as beef, and the bankrupt tried to look like he was doing business, real business, rather than helplessly hoping his wife would finesse him out of hock. Importantly, with great acumen, he moved the phone to his other ear.
"What if it isn't wrong?" he said at last.
Claire Steiger looked out her office window onto 57th Street. It was just after six. People were darting home from work, out for drinks, to early movies, to the park for a stroll. She tried to remember, and vaguely could, the romance, the dim still perfection of warm late-May dusks in Manhattan. Going to the theater while at the western verge of 45th Street the sky was red above the river. The cafe off Madison where darkness would slip in soft as Margaux while her handsome husband told laconic but exciting tales of business and she tried to think past his immaculate shirts to his skin. Was that this same city in this same season?
"Awkward," she said. "It would be very awkward."
"Muck up the auction," said Kip Cunningham. It wasn't a question, wasn't a statement, just a mumble. Absently he glanced toward his dressing cubicle where a white-haired black man was stooping slowly to gather his dirty clothes. "Maybe people won't find out," he added. The sneak's last hope.
"Kip, don't be an ass. True, not true, anybody who might conceivably be interested is going to hear about this by tomorrow."
There was a silence. The squash player looked across the locker room at a calendar near the pro shop window. It was a pin-up calendar of sorts, but instead of women as the objects of desire, each month had a different yacht. May had an elegant Concordia with tanbark sails, but Kip Cunningham wasn't looking at the boat. He was counting days until the Solstice Show, gauging how much time it would take for things to fall apart. "So how'll it play?"
His wife had turned her back on the window, on its mocking promise. "Depends," she said. "Best-case scenario, the rumor is false. Nothing has really changed, and this buzz about the artist's return just adds interest."
Oddly, disconnectedly, Kip Cunningham began to chuckle.
Claire Steiger could find nothing remotely humorous in what she'd said, and she imagined her husband must be party to some clownishness in the locker room. "Kip, if you can't even pay attention to what I say-"
"Oh," he interrupted, "I'm paying very close attention. You just said you hope that Augie Silver's dead."
The artist's dealer underwent a hellish moment of knowing she'd been caught, a moment as unsettling and humiliating as being discovered naked in a dream. She squirmed in her chair as though dodging thrown rocks, scrambled in her mind for some avenue of excuse, some route of escape. "I didn't say anything about Augie Silver," she protested, and her voice was thin and shrill. "I was only talking about the situation."
Kip Cunningham had not won much lately, not in business, not in squash, not in his marriage. He savored the event, let it fill his senses like wine, and when he answered, it was in the sweetly condescending tone of the victor. "But, my dear," he said, "Augie Silver is the situation."
The next day was a Tuesday, and just after ten o'clock in the morning Reuben the Cuban climbed the three porch steps of the widow Silver's house. The key he'd been given many months before was in his hand, but even though he knew that Mrs. Silver would not be home, would be working at her gallery, he knocked. It was the proper thing to do, not only for a housekeeper but for anyone approaching another's place. He knocked, he waited, and was just moving the key toward the lock when the door swung open.
Nina Silver stood before him, and even though she was smiling, Reuben was concerned that she was ill or freighted with that sadness that weighed people down like the muck around the mangroves, that made it so hard for them to move that they stayed in their houses, then in their rooms, and finally in their beds. With his eyes, he asked if she was all right.
By way of answer she grabbed him by his slender wrist and coaxed him across the threshold into the living room. "Reuben," she said, "something wonderful has happened. Mr. Silver has come back."
He looked at her, then past her shoulder at the blues and greens, the curves and edges of her husband's paintings. She did not seem crazy, but Reuben was afraid for her. Hadn't he served at the dead painter's memorial? Hadn't he heard the bald man with the deep voice give the eulogy?
"Come," the former widow said, and again she took his wrist. "I'll show you."
Reuben's feet did not want to move, it was as if they'd been replaced by wooden skids that scraped hotly across the floor. He dreaded the moment when he would stand in the bedroom doorway and see nothing, and would know that he had lost a second friend, not to the ocean this time but to that other bottomless sea called madness. He struggled for the courage not to close his eyes.
He let himself be dragged down the hallway, and when he saw Augie Silver propped on pillows, his white beard billowing forth like foam, he did the pure and necessary thing. He fell to his knees with his chest across the returned man's bed and wept against the back of his bony hand. His tears left dark streaks on the sun-scorched skin that was white-coated with a powdery dryness. The parrot looked on and did a slow dance on its perch.
"I pray for you," Reuben said through his weeping. "I don't like to pray, I don't believe, but I pray for you, then I feel like I believe enough to feel bad I don't believe, so I shouldn't pray. But I pray for you, Meester Silber. I do."
Augie put his hand on the young man's dark hair. "You're a pal, Reuben. You're really a pal."
He received the words like an anointment and answered with a knightly modesty. "Yes," he said. "A pal for you. And for Meesus Silber too. A pal." He stood up, wiped his eyes.
"The Cubans saved my life, you know."
"Yes?" said Reuben. There was confusion in his heart. The Cubans were his people, and if they were kind to Mister Silver he was proud. But the Cubans were also the ones who called him maricon and made him feel cast out, who scoffed and threatened and mimicked his walk. Why was he outside the circle of their kindness?
"I'll tell you about it sometime," Augie said, and then Nina caught Reuben's eye and gestured him out of the convalescent's room.
They went to the kitchen. Morning light was pouring in through the French doors at the back of the house. Hibiscus flowers were stretching fully open, their pistils brassy with pollen and thrust forth like silent trumpets. The dark leaves of the oleanders looked almost blue.