"Just what, darling?"
"I don't know. It seems so soon." Even as Nina was saying the words, she knew they were beside the point. Twenty years from now it would still seem soon.
"Nina, listen, I understand that everything feels very new right now, very raw. But this show will be a celebration-the kind of big overview that Augie would have wanted."
"I don't think Augie wanted that," said Nina, and a flash of suspicion again arced through her brain. Living artists had a lot to say about when, where, and how they were shown; dead artists were not consulted. Someone had to step in and tell the world what the painter would have wanted. That someone was usually a dealer, and mysteriously, what the painter would have wanted fit in very neatly with a marketing plan. "Claire," the widow said, "I don't think I like this."
The proprietor of the Ars Longa Gallery looked out her office window at the springtime bustle of 57th Street, the veering taxis and recession-proof limos. Over the years, she'd developed a very versatile and effective stratagem for avoiding arguments. When a disagreement loomed, she simply ignored it and went on to announce her intentions. "The gallery has seventeen major works on hand," she told Nina Silver. "Collectors have so far agreed to lend another dozen. If you'd consent to lend the canvases you have, we'd of course pay shipping and insur-"
"Claire, this is all just business, isn't it? This is no homage, no tribute."
"Nina, your husband's reputation-"
"My husband doesn't-didn't-particularly give a damn about his reputation. I think we agree that was part of his charm."
"We can't all afford to be quite so cavalier about it, Nina. Let's be professional here, shall we? As Augie's agent, I'm asking you to lend the paintings. Will you?"
"No."
"I'll ask another time, when you're less upset."
"Don't bother, Claire."
"And one more thing, Nina. Did Augie in fact make no pictures at all the last three years? Was he perhaps working quietly-"
Nina Silver hung up the phone. She didn't slam it down, didn't even drop it with particular suddenness. She placed it gently in its cradle, crossed her arms against her midriff, and blew out a long slow breath.
On 57th Street, Claire Steiger stared blankly at the dead receiver in her hand and wondered for just a moment if her unaccustomed desperation had led her to a rare strategic blunder. But she allowed herself little time to linger on the question. She had other calls to make.
Nina Silver, like most Key Westers, went most places by bicycle.
Her bike was an old fat-tire one-speed, powder blue, with a corroded wire basket and a rusted bell whose clapper stuck after three weak and un-resounding taps against its casing. She'd had the bike eight years and found it a perennial source of mind-easing delight. It wasn't that the bike reminded her of childhood; rather, it leavened her notion of what it was to be a grownup. It was impossible to take oneself too seriously while astride an old fat-tire bike. The world, and the sense of one's place in it, came back to scale and flooded in as one pedaled by at eight miles an hour, with a vantage point some four feet off the ground.
As the widow cruised slowly up Olivia Street, the sun's last low rays were slanting in from the Gulf side of the island, and the light was so soft yet compelling that the pink and red oleanders seemed not shined upon but fired from within. Confident dogs sprawled in the street, serenely nestled against the tires of parked cars. Stray cats missing patches of fur and pieces of ears mixed democratically with brushed pets in the shady places under porch stairs. Amorous doves puffed up on wires and hopefully sang out: ta-fee-ya, ta-keeya. And with a sometimes audible creaking and squeaking, the old wooden houses of Key West began to recover from the daytime baking that had swelled their window frames and bowed their doorjambs, made their beams and joists as painfully taut as a fat man's ankles.
Nina chained her bike and climbed the three front stairs, took a last look across her porch rail at the splendid light, and slipped her key into the lock. She was a half-step into her living room, looking down as she replaced her key ring in her bag, when out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a male form in the kitchen. Her feet froze, her throat clamped shut as if squeezed by a cold hand, her heart stalled and then began to hammer.
It was Reuben the Cuban.
He was standing at the counter, a dish towel in his hand, drying glasses. "Hello, Meesus Silber," he said. "I run berry late today."
This was a lie. Reuben never ran late. But on Tuesdays, the day he cleaned the Silvers' house, he often stayed overtime because he thought it might be a comfort to the widow to have someone there when she arrived. She might need something moved. She might need an errand run. There might be any number of things that needed doing, and Reuben wanted to be the person to do them if he could.
Nina moved slowly into the house, still waiting for her pulse to slow.
Fred the parrot greeted her. "Awk. Jack Daniel's. Where's Augie?"
The widow sat on the edge of the sofa. Her legs were warm from biking, and the upholstery felt good. "Someday," she said, "I'm going to strangle that bird."
Reuben the Cuban reached up and put a glass on a high shelf. Then he moved gracefully to Fred's cage and offered the parrot a knuckle to peck. "Thees bird, he love you and Meester Silber too. He not try to make you feel bad."
Nina kicked off her shoes and reflected that there are people who think the worst and people who think the best. Even about parrots. "You're a very kind person, Reuben."
The young man absorbed the compliment with great solemnity. He'd glided back to the kitchen and was now buffing flatware and putting it away. He took care not to mar the moment by jangling forks and knives.
The widow leaned back on the sofa and let her head fall against the top of the cushion. The light in the living room was so soft it had turned grainy; the brighter glow from the kitchen made the house seem cozy and safe, inviolable. Nina was ready to think about the day just ending. "Reuben," she said softly, "what's a friend? What do you think a friend is, Reuben?"
The young Cuban dropped his cloth, pondered a moment, then absently began polishing the countertop with slow round movements. He hadn't known a lot of friendship in his life. He had a father who was so ashamed of him that Reuben couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the old man's eyes, and a mother who claimed to love him but was always praying on her swollen knees for a miracle that would make him other than he was. He had a brother who'd promised to kill him if he showed his faggot face in certain places, and he'd had lovers who had promised him romance and devotion, then easily cast him aside. He was too bashful and unfinished to be at ease among the smart, theatric Old Town gays, too tender and too dignified to seek solace in the shadowy places where lonely young men collided. In Key West, a town that prides itself on having room for everyone, there didn't seem to be a spot for him.
But there is as much wisdom in pure yearning as in flawed experience, and on the subject of friendship Reuben had strongly held beliefs. "A friend," he said, "is when you cry, the tears fall in his heart. When he laughs, it is bread and wine, it is like food, enough for happiness. A friend, you would do anything, you would look for more that you could do, you would watch the world like a fisherman watches the sky to see if there is danger, to keep your friend safe by watching closely-"
The housekeeper suddenly broke off. He was unaccustomed to talking so much; he was still making slow circles with the dishcloth. In the dark living room, Nina Silver had become a silhouette, a still dim outline against the furniture. "You ask a lot," she said. "Of yourself."
"Yes," said Reuben.
"You should," said the widow. Then she thought of certain people with whom her life had been very much involved and whose goodwill she was each day less sure that she could trust. "Only… only, if you ask so much of a friend, I'm not sure anyone really has one. I don't feel that I do."