‘That’s not necessary,’ Luke said.
‘Glad we agree. Let’s go. I’ve got an art studio over in Wicker Park. We can talk there.’
‘Wicker Park.’ He had heard of it. ‘Very hip, right?’ If this guy had a high-end address and money to risk sending to online friends, he must be a successful artist. So why would he be spending his time posting hate and anarchy and revolution? What was he so angry about?
‘Wicker’s so ancient now,’ Chris said. ‘It’s all going corporate.’
Feeling like he had no choice, Luke followed Chris to a car. A polished new Porsche. They pulled away from the bus terminal and headed north, past downtown. Luke stayed low in the seat, wondering if Chris was the only extremist he’d found who drove a rich man’s car.
The Texarkana barkeep finally said to his wife, over cigarettes and coffee before going in for his next evening’s shift: ‘That young man on TV. The one who shot the homeless guy down in Houston.’
‘Who?’ She did not follow the news much; she found it depressing, and the recent chlorine attack in Ripley only confirmed her pessimism.
He told her what he had seen on the news and that one of his customers from a day ago sure looked like that young man. ‘He wore sunglasses inside. Weird unless you’re blind.’
‘Maybe he was blind.’
‘It’s preying on my mind, I should call the police,’ the barkeep said.
‘I seriously doubt you saw a fugitive,’ the wife said. Her practicality was a gift to the marriage. ‘I mean, all the bars in the world, and he comes into yours. While there’s a news story on about him. Please.’
‘He’s got to be somewhere when the news is on. I can’t quit dwelling on it. He had a knapsack. We get business when the buses come in the late afternoon.’
‘A fugitive on a bus. I thought they always stole cars.’
‘That’s the movies. Do I call the police or the FBI?’
‘The FBI,’ she said. ‘If you saw him, he’s already crossed a state line. No one runs to Texarkana and stops.’ She lit another cigarette, watched him stand before the phone as though deciding on a vote. She gave him a gentle nudge, for the sake of family peace. What harm would a phone call do? ‘If you’re right, and they catch him, you’ll be on CNN this week. Of course they’ll be no living with you then.’ She loved him a lot and she smiled.
The idea pleased the barkeep, but he just made a grunt, and he picked up the phone and opened the phone book. ‘I’ll call the cops first. Out of respect. Cops come into the bar and I’ve never seen an FBI agent there.’
The wife shrugged, went back to proofing their teenage daughter’s essay on Alice in Wonderland for her English class, only half-listening to her husband start to explain his silly, overwrought suspicions.
16
Chris worked near the heart of Wicker Park, not far from the Damen train station, in an old building converted into retail on the first floor and office and loft space above. The exquisite metal carved sign mounted on the brickwork read BENNINGTON GALLERY. Next door stood an open-air coffee shop, with idlers on laptops soaking up the nice sunny day; on the other side was a high-end martial arts center that looked like a Japanese spa. Behind the building, Chris eased the Porsche into a reserved parking spot below an old iron fire escape. As they walked inside a nervous doe of a woman hurried toward them. She was in her forties, dressed all in black, skinny as a teenager, with an elfin face that looked like a kinder version of Chris’s stony stare.
‘Hi, Chris, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ She gave Luke an uncertain smile that seemed to beg Luke to be Chris’s friend. But almost like she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet any friend of Chris’s. A conflict of emotions swirled on her face.
Chris’s eyes hardened at the word sweetheart and he said, ‘Yeah, he’s a friend, and fuck the hell off, Mom.’
Luke froze. He had fought plenty with his mother through the years, but he never would have dreamed about speaking to her that way. Chris’s mother’s smile wavered and then withered but didn’t entirely vanish. Chris gave his own little smile as if to say: just what I expected.
‘I’m sorry,’ Luke said. He didn’t know why he was apologizing but he felt someone must. ‘I’m Warren. It’s nice to meet you.’ He gave his father’s name again.
‘Nice to meet you,’ the woman said and hurried off, toward a wall of multicolored smears of abstract art. No customers were waiting. She simply retreated from her son’s ugliness.
‘She’s useless,’ Chris said. ‘Come on. My studio’s up here.’
‘This is your mom’s place?’
‘Yeah,’ Chris said grudgingly.
The irony that she was providing Chris studio space above her gallery, when it could probably command a substantial rent, was not lost on Luke. The whole interchange had the feel of a high schooler mouthing off to his mom, trying to look cool in front of a new friend and revealing that he was simply an insecure jerk. But Luke said nothing.
Chris had five locks on the door and it took him a minute to work all the keys.
Five locks, Luke thought. What are you up to that you need five locks?
Inside, the studio – which doubled as a living space, with an unmade bed shoved in a corner – smelled of paint, of stale coffee and weed, of unwashed shirts. Exposed brick walls and clean skylights were the best features. It was expansive, room for a big talent to spread its wings, but the art Chris painted was very bad. Angry. Smears of red and black, a brown earth hanging above a closing red hand, penciled figures of suburbanites running from flowering napalm fires. Ugly, Luke thought. Another painting showed an array of fists, connected with a spider’s web of lines, flame arcing along the threads. A graffiti swirl of paint, spelling an obscenity in cheerful rainbow colors, in a font favored for children’s books. A final one, two teenagers, scowling, fire erupting from their heads as though they were volcanoes. The two painted faces looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place them.
‘Nice.’ Luke didn’t know what else to say and he was afraid to make no comment at all on the art. How did one compliment death? Did this crap sell?
‘ Nice? It’s not at all supposed to be… nice.’ Chris’s face reddened.
‘I’m sorry. I meant to say it looks accomplished. Insightful. Compelling. Forgive my exhaustion.’
Chris took a deep breath, as if drinking in the praise through a straw. ‘I’m influenced by the photojournalism of war, and I transpose that on an American setting.’
‘I’m sure they must sell well,’ Luke lied.
‘Hell no. They’ll never sell. They’ll be recognized as great art one day, but not while our diseased culture remains.’
‘How do you pay the bills?’
‘My dad builds homes. Thousands of them.’ Chris smirked. ‘You can’t believe the waste you see in the modern suburban home. The sheer extravagance of it all. Money that could feed half the world.’ He shook his head.
‘Well, but people need houses,’ Luke said.
A light flared in Chris’s stare. ‘Build large apartment buildings. Much more convenient, much less ecological impact. Burn the cities to the ground, man, and stack the apartments high. Much less waste.’
‘That’s grim,’ Luke said. ‘You would have been a good architect in the Soviet Union.’ He wandered past the paintings and as he turned back to Chris, Chris was less than a foot away, a devil’s curling smile on his face.
‘After I help you,’ Chris hissed. ‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No. Not at all. I’m sorry.’ He’d made a misstep. Chris didn’t carry the single-minded stare that he’d seen in Snow and Mouser. The light in his eyes was something entirely different in its heat. He had to make Chris tell him what he needed to know, but carefully. ‘I’m really surprised you trusted me with the money. You don’t know me.’