“I’m sorry, Annie. Truly. I shouldn’t make assumptions about your life.”
“It’s not that I don’t want—”
“People have been making assumptions about me for years and, frankly, I’m sick and fucking tired of it. And that’s why I wanted to ask you a favor.”
“A favor?”
“I want you to write something about me.” He looked at her. “I know you want to.”
She stood there; he had her now.
“Maybe you haven’t admitted it to yourself,” he went on. “But that’s who you are. You can’t help it, and I wouldn’t expect you to be any different. And it’s a good story. People have been trying to get it out of me for years. Well, guess what, I’m ready to spill the beans.”
She swallowed hard. She felt a little sick. “I wonder what’s so interesting about a middle-aged artist on the verge of extinction?” She was testing him now.
“That’s just it,” he said. “That’s the part they like most—the scent of failure. It’s quite intoxicating, actually.”
“You don’t believe that. And anyway, you’re not a failure.”
“Thank you, Annie. It means a lot to me. But as we’ve already established, you’re a romantic. You always see the best in people. It’s liable to get you into trouble.” They looked at each other and he sighed. “Assuming you would agree, I took the liberty of arranging an editor. I hope you don’t mind. She’s a friend of mine.” He handed her a slip of paper with a name and phone number on it. “She’s at Vanity Fair.” He glanced at her for a reaction, which she would not supply, and he frowned with obvious disappointment. Annie could tell he had expected more from her, but with calculating measure, she showed him nothing, not even the slightest glimmer of pleasure, and it clearly agitated him. His voice soured. “I said they could have the interview on one condition, that you be the one to write it. I have to warn you, it took some convincing. Your name didn’t ring a bell. She had to look you up on the computer. Said she wasn’t sure you had the experience, didn’t know if you could handle it. I gather you’re not quite in the loop.” He smiled coldly. “She’s waiting for your call.”
“She was right,” Annie said. “You’re out of my league. You are one tough subject, Mr. Haas.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“You’re the only one I trust.” He seemed utterly pleased with his tactics of manipulation.
“Don’t kid yourself. I’m as cutthroat and heartless as all the rest of them. In fact, I’m worse.”
“I have feelings for you, Annie.” He reached out and cupped her chin in his hand. “I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“Please stop dreaming,” she said softly. “It’s time to wake up.”
Leave it alone, she told herself. Stay away from him. But that afternoon, she found herself dialing Vanity Fair from her office telephone. She asked for Tina Chase and was connected with her secretary, who asked Annie to identify herself. To Annie’s surprise, the secretary put her through right away. “I’ve been reading over some of your work.” Chase spoke with a British accent and had a deep smoker’s voice. “Strong stuff. If you can pull this off before the retrospective, I imagine you’ll be fairly desirable to have around in the future.”
Retrospective? “Forgive me, but I’m not aware of a retrospective.”
“At the Whitney. The first week in April, I believe. They’re doing a whole thing on the body painters. They’re doing Haas, Lucian Freud, Fischl, Pearlstein, a whole bunch of fabulous people. Lots and lots of naked bodies. It should be very exciting.” She hesitated, inhaling a fresh cigarette. “We’d like to print your piece right before the show. That gives you about three months to finish it. It’s not much, but I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Sure. No problem,” Annie said, trying to sound confident when in fact she was trembling.
“I hear he’s quite the animal.” Chase waited for a reply.
“Well, yes,” she said, “he has that reputation.”
“Makes for good storytelling,” the editor said. “Don’t be shy, Ms. Knowles.”
“No, of course not.”
“Righto, then. Keep in touch. Best of luck.”
The woman hung up. It came to Annie that this was the break she’d been waiting for. She hadn’t earned it, not really, but she’d grabbed it just the same. She’d been waiting for something like this for a long time. Now that it had finally come, it was impossible to resist. But it wasn’t something to celebrate, not like this.
Rain began to fall outside the South Cottage. When she stepped into the courtyard Simon Haas was waiting for her. “You didn’t mention a retrospective.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“That’s very exciting.”
“So you’ll do it? You’ll write the article?”
“Yes, but don’t expect anything more from me. And don’t expect me to thank you, either.”
He smiled, watching her closely.
“I mean it.”
“No you don’t. Why can’t you just admit it to yourself.”
“Simon. Please.”
“Please what?” He came toward her, backed her up against the building, the old brown stones, and moved his enormous hands under her coat. “Please what?” he repeated, urging her back into the vestibule, into the small hallway where the bathrooms were. Now they were kissing, consuming each other, and he pulled her into the men’s room and locked the door. She didn’t look at him; she couldn’t and he seemed to know this, and kept his eyes on her body, which shook in his hands. It was quiet, and nearly dark, just a rectangle of light in the small window, and all the faucets were dripping, gossiping, and he kissed her violently, working her body into a funnel of pleasure that begged to spin apart. I will not do this, she thought.
“I can’t.” Annie pushed him away, roughly, but then her voice crawled out weakly. “I can’t, Simon. I really can’t.”
“You can.”
“No.”
She left him there and ran out into the cold, across the quad to her car, hoping he wouldn’t follow, knowing, somehow, that he would not. The quad was empty, silent. A thin layer of mist hovered over the grass. She got into the car and locked the doors and sat there for a moment, trying to collect herself. Her body rushed with anticipation. The awful thing was that she did want him. Her body would not let her deny that.
Annie started the engine and turned on the heat. She felt as though she were caught between her two selves: a wife and mother versus the woman underneath. Was it so wrong to want to be with another man? she wondered. Was it so wrong to desire someone other than her husband, and to be desired? Was it so unnatural? It didn’t feel unnatural, but it went against everything she’d been taught.
What are you doing, Annie? she asked herself, and for the first time in her life she didn’t have a clue.
“I have some news,” she told Michael when he got home from work. She handed him a beer.
“Are we celebrating?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” She clinked her bottle against his. “I’ve been asked to write an article about Simon Haas.”
“You mean the dead artist?”
“He’s not dead, Michael—don’t be mean. It’s for Vanity Fair.”
“Wow. Hot shit. How’d you swing that?”
“He asked me to write it. He chose me.”
“Really?” he said. “That old fart’s trying to get into your pants.”
“You may be right,” she said seriously.
“He’s not exactly your type, is he?”
“Not exactly. So, do you think I should do it?”
“What? Let him into your pants, or write the article?” He smiled and she found herself smiling back.
“Both.”
“Hell, yes. Go for it.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re not that desperate, are you?”
“I just may be,” she said.
23
SIMO
N HAD LEARNED early in the game that it was always best to be honest with Lydia, lest her imagination get the better of her, so that morning over coffee in the kitchen, he told her about the article Annie was going to write.
“I’ve consented to give an interview to Vanity Fair magazine” was how he put it. “It’s about us.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s not about us, really. It’s about me, my work.”
“Your work?” She stood up and went to the window, watching the finches in the bird feeder. “I am your work.”
Summoned by her small, indifferent back, he went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s important for me. It’s important for the new paintings.”
“I don’t give a damn about the new paintings.”
A dark mood circled over his wife’s head like a vulture. He put his lips to her neck and kissed her gently. “Please, Lydia. Please don’t be sad.”
“How can I help it,” she said desperately, and twisted around in his arms. She looked like a little girl again with the soft sunlight on her face, and it brought him straight back to the awful day they’d met. “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”
“Because of who?” he said, feigning confusion, but he knew exactly who she meant.
“That woman. That new professor you like.”
She knew him well, he gave her that. He also knew that each word he spoke was for her a jagged little knife opening a wound. “Well, yes, actually. She’s a journalist. She’s the one who’s going to write it. Frankly, I think that’s the real reason she’s teaching at the college. Not that she’d ever admit to it.”
Lydia’s face went dull and she spoke so softly he could barely hear. “You got her?”
“I had nothing to do with that,” he said defensively. “That was the magazine, not me.”
She sniffled uncertainly. “She’s going to interview you?”
“Just a bit. Nothing to worry about, though.” It was time to go, he thought. He pulled on his coat and filled his cup with coffee.
“Nothing to worry about?”
“I don’t plan on discussing anything personal, if that’s what’s worrying you. I don’t plan on going into any detail.”
Lydia stole a look at him.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’m late.” He kissed her and her hand flew up to her cheek as if to catch it, as if to keep the small token of love from flying away. He drank the coffee in one gulp, swallowing the burning liquid willingly, a punishment for the sins he would soon commit. Then he set down his cup and walked out, feeling her eyes on the back of his head, a sniper aimed and ready. One day she would finally pull the trigger, he thought, and it would not surprise him if it were soon.
24
A WEEK AFTER the mailbox incident, the phone rang at quarter to six in the morning. When Michael answered it, he heard Celina crying on the other end. “You’d better come down here,” she told him.
Even from two blocks away Michael could see the confusion in front of the clinic. There were cop cars and television trucks, and a helicopter hovered overhead. The place was swarming with reporters. A cop stopped him at the parking lot and asked to see his ID. Through the windshield Michael could see that someone had spray-painted across the front of the building: AS SURELY AS I LIVE, I WILL GIVE YOU OVER TO BLOODSHED AND IT WILL PURSUE YOU. SINCE YOU DID NOT HATE BLOODSHED, BLOODSHED WILL PURSUE YOU.—EZEKIEL 35:6. The paint was red and dripped down the cement like blood.
He found Celina in her office, sitting behind her desk, a wreck. “Do you think we should cancel appointments?”
“We’re not canceling anything,” he said. “You’ve got a waiting room full of people out there.”
She looked at him, her face ashen with fear. “I’m scared.”
“We need more security here. We need a guard out there full-time. I found a Web site that sells bulletproof vests.”
“Where’s the money coming from for all this protection?”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“No, Michael,” she said. “I never should have dragged you into this. I don’t feel right about it. You’ve got kids. I never should have asked you for help. It was selfish of me. I regret it.”
“Celina, you know I can’t let you do this alone.”
“I have this guilt.” She made a fist against her heart. “I have this guilt in here, over you.”
“Don’t.”
“I feel like I’m messing with your life, and I don’t like it. I don’t want you to feel like I took advantage of our past.”
“I’m helping you because I think it’s important. Not because of what we had. I’m not doing you any favors. My time’s too valuable for that.” He stood up. “Speaking of which, we’ve got people waiting out there. Let’s get to work.”
25
IN PREPARATION for the article on Simon Haas, Annie spent hours in the campus library trying to dig up information about him. Very little had been written; his entire youth remained a mystery. She found a few scant pieces in The New York Times, Art Monthly, Art in America. The few pictures of him, taken years before in his studio, showed Haas as a gangly young man with leonine hair and brooding eyes, wearing a white T-shirt and trousers, his bare feet splattered with paint. There was the ever-present cigarette, the demeanor of gloom. One of the featured paintings, Disposable Love, portrayed a man with silver loins in a motel room with a young girl—it was Lydia—who sat on the floor, naked, Indian style, eating French fries out of a cardboard container while watching the Road Runner cartoon on TV. The relationship between the two figures was left ambiguous. One did not know if they were lovers or not. One did not know if the girl was a prostitute, or a runaway, or even, perhaps, the daughter of the naked man. The suggestion of impropriety left the viewer hanging. Simon did not judge his subjects, nor did he judge his viewers for wanting to look.
Sifting through the photographs, she felt herself wanting to be the one person who could know him better than anyone else. His asking her to write the article had been a calculated method of seduction—she was certain of that now—and it provided each of them with a perfect excuse to spend time together. And she wanted that. Oh, yes, she wanted it. She had not chosen him, yet curiously he had come into her life. He seemed to know her in some significant way; he seemed to know her, voraciously, fundamentally, better than Michael did. How strange, she thought, remembering his hands on her body, urgently taking ownership.
She returned to her office and began to write an outline. There were gaps, of course, things she needed to find out. His life with Lydia was a mystery. Why had he dropped out of the art world so suddenly?
The phone shook her alert. A woman’s voice came on the line. “This is Susannah calling for Simon Haas.” The woman had a deep, velvety voice. “He’d like to know if you’d be willing to have lunch with him.”
Momentarily disarmed, Annie said, “What?” Who in God’s name was Susannah? And then she added uncertainly, “Lunch? Sure, what time?”
The woman muffled the phone with her hand and Annie could hear some giggling in the background. “One o’clock. He’ll meet you on the path halfway.”
Annie hung up, annoyed. Why hadn’t he just called her himself? She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t planned on seeing him today and now regretted the old black turtleneck, the jean skirt that had seen better days. On her feet were a pair of clunky Bean boots and indecently holey wool socks. Her lipstick, which might have salvaged her appearance, was somewhere in her car, having rolled into the sticky abyss beneath her seat.