The Snow Garden

  Clearly Eric wasn’t going to make small talk, so Hawthorne folded his hands on his desk and cleared his throat. “This is a small town, Eric. That’s why I asked you here. Sometimes I wonder why a city of Atherton’s size even has a local news station. But that being said, it should come as no surprise to either one of us that the local news media would attempt to . .. exploit the sensational details of your wife’s death.”

  “You’ll have to tell me what they’ve written. I haven’t read any of it.”

  “Unfortunately, one of the most egregious articles happened to run in our student newspaper here on campus. Which makes it more manageable.”

  “What exactly do you need to manage, John?” Eric’s tone was stiff enough to raise Hawthorne’s eyebrows.

  “Manage is probably the wrong word to describe my role here. It’s my job to stand by you during all of this.”

  “Protect me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “From what?”

  “Opportunistic journalists,” Hawthorne answered flatly. “The reporter covering Lisa’s death for the Journal is a pretty well-known staff writer. Richard Miller. The guy has a reputation for being a muckraker. I don’t know if you remember the river refurbishment scandal. Scandal that wasn’t, I should say. Miller was going to run an article on how the city was trying to lowball the contractors when their estimates didn’t fit the budget. He had quotes from a bunch of John Does, so the paper wouldn’t let him run it. He got his revenge by leaking it to Channel 2, and Channel 2 got theirs when it turned out the quotes were all from contractors who didn’t get the bid. Sending camera crews to city council members’ houses without any cause.”

  Hawthorne sounded as if he was recounting the massacre of children by terrorists.

  “At the end of the day, Channel 2 takes the fall. And Miller gets the satisfaction of watching the tempest in a teapot he’s created without having to endure any of the fallout.”

  “You think he’ll do the same with Lisa.”

  “I think the man’s unethical, and he’s covering the death of your wife.” Hawthorne scrutinized him, and Eric realized he wasn’t finished. 'Your wife’s death is no longer being considered a homicide.”

  “I wasn’t aware it ever was.”

  “Patricia Kellerman is a homicide detective. She questioned you the night of the accident,”

  Hawthorne took the surprise on Eric’s face as an adequate response. “In any instance of sudden death, suspicion is always cast on the spouse. The next of kin, even. That’s not the issue, Eric. Your wife’s death was considered a possible vehicular homicide for the last three days. However, the lack of any evidence of a collision with anything other than . ..” Hawthorne stammered and stopped.

  “She went into the river, John.”

  Hawthorne’s eyes shot to his. “I appreciate this might not be the time . ..” He shook his head. ‘You’re tired. This is draining, I know. Let me cut to the point. There’s a reason I’m being overly cautious here. Richard Miller also covered Pamela Milford’s death. Back in eighty-three.”

  Eric worked to draw in a breath.

  “Two deaths you have been involved in. Both were covered by the same reporter. I have to have a contingency plan in case this guy tries to draw some inane connection so he can write something that will land himself on Dateline.”

  “You do?” Eric asked. “Or I do?”

  “I know it’s unfair, Eric. But live with caution right now. Until this dies down. Which will be soon enough. But just in case, if there’s anything Richard Miller could find on you if he looked hard enough, I’d like to know about it before he does.”

  The urge to get out of Hawthorne’s office was so strong that his lie came easily. “My closets are empty.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Hawthorne said.

  Eric turned and saw the skepticism on his face. Of course the man had no way of knowing it was a lie, but perhaps it was the abruptness of Eric’s declaration that had made him suspicious. Eric bid him good-bye as quickly as possible before fatigue let anything else slip.

  His palms sweaty and the sound of his pulse beating in his ears, Eric first noticed the furtive glances sent his way when he fell in with the afternoon throng moving up Brookline Avenue: the girl waiting at the stoplight who had pivoted her head on her neck when Eric looked at her, the group of students who went silent as he passed, their whispers audible in his wake. By the time his walk turned into a labored shuffle in front of the campus bookstore, real and imagined stares were igniting the hairs on the back of his neck.

  Seeking some sort of refuge, he entered the bookstore. The first floor resembled a Barnes & Noble, with potential best-sellers stacked on display tables. He had never been a lover of fiction, so the front sections of bookstores always seemed foreign to him. Lisa had been the reader of novels. She devoured several mysteries a week. When Eric had picked up the paperbacks off the nightstand, he had discovered, to his surprise, that his wife’s tastes ran to hard-boiled Los Angeles detectives and corpses baking in the Southern California sun.

  He wandered down one of the aisles, feeling dizzy and short of breath. Confident he was hidden, he reached out for the edge of a magazine rack, drawing a few deep and labored breaths. He felt the oxygen return to his brain. Composing himself, he looked up to find one word leaping out at him from the row of glossy covers. PRICELESS!

  The name of the magazine was Blunt, and it was ludicrously thick for what its cover claimed it contained. A glossy, high-fashion tome, its cover featured some nymphet of a rising film star holding a lollipop inside her mouth so that it made a suggestive lump against one cheek. But it was the headline that had caught his attention. FROM SOHO TO SEATTLE, MICHAEL PRICE LIKES THEM BIG!

  His suspicion confirmed, he flipped pages until he found a table of contents. The profile of Michael Price began on page 222. He pondered flipping to it and then glanced around, feeling strangely like a kid perusing porn. Buying it in public would be enough of a chore. Reading it was something he would have to do in private.

  Kathryn turned Randall’s burned hand over in hers. “Jesus,” she hissed.

  “The moral of the story is, Don’t touch the heating vent.”

  Kathryn released his hand so he could take his first bite from his gyro. “Mine doesn’t get that hot,” she said, turning away from the sight of the long blister extending between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Maybe ours is broken,” Randall said between chews.

  “Randall?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “You have gay eyes.”

  Randall’s gyro stopped halfway to his mouth. “Are you stoned?”

  “No. It’s just something I noticed.”

  Randall nodded and went back to eating.

  “All right. Spill it,” she demanded.

  White sauce Kathryn didn’t know the name of had squirted from her pita onto her fingers and she wiped her hands with a napkin, waiting for Randall to snap out of his funk. They were the only customers in Lance’s Gyros.

  “Huh?”

  “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  Randall briefly looked as if he smelled something foul, and then his face went blank. Kathryn folded her arms on the counter, hoping that her expression struck Randall as playful and not demanding.

  “Where did this line of questioning come from?” Randall asked.

  “From you getting home last night at three.”

  “Jesse . . .” Randall muttered under his breath before taking a bite.

  “I heard you leave.”

  “And you waited up until I got back? How sweet.” His smile was tight and forced, and Kathryn felt herself buying Jesse’s theory that Randall was keeping his late-night rendezvous secret for a reason.

  “Fine. Jesse told me what time you got home.”

  “Just told you out of the blue?”

  “Randall!”

  “All right already. But if I tell you about it you have to promise not to get mad.” Randa
ll turned his stool to face hers, waiting for her to agree. She gave him a weak nod. “Tim and I are giving it another shot,” he said and then sagged as if a shotgun had been removed from his back.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I said you weren’t allowed to get mad,” he warned in a singsong voice.

  “I'm not mad. I'm just.. . How? Has he agreed to stop talking?”

  “I know how to keep him in line,” he said. She must have looked floored, because his eyes shot to hers. “Are you mad?”

  “No. It’s just weird. I thought you weren’t interested.”

  “So did I. But Tim has ways of arguing his case, if you will.”

  “You mean he gives good blow jobs.”

  “Unfortunately, that burden usually falls on my shoulders.”

  “You mean tonsils.”

  Randall dropped his half-eaten gyro. “All right. You’re pissed.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Kathryn, when you break with character and mention sex acts, that means you’re pissed.”

  All she could do was roll her eyes. It wasn’t that she felt lied to, or even that she disapproved of Tim. They just didn’t seem like a match, and she had enough respect for Randall that she didn’t want to see him settle.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it.” Randall went on. “I didn’t think you would approve. That's why I didn’t tell you. But you’d better think twice before you listen to what Jesse says.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the guy’s a borderline sociopath. He’s got no friends, so he sees what you and I have and it makes him sick. No wonder he’s trying to mess with it.”

  “I think that’s a little extreme. And what happened to being Jesse’s biggest sympathizer?”

  “Kathryn, why would he go to you and tell you what time I was coming home if he didn’t—”

  “I asked him.”

  Randall’s blue eyes met hers, widening slightly with some mixture of indignation and fear before his teeth sank into his lower lip. He was fighting anger.

  “Look, Randall, he asked me this weekend if you were seeing someone because you’d been leaving the dorm late at night. ...”

  “Exactly. He just told you this—”

  “Wait. All right. Jesus, chill, it’s not that big a deal. . . .”

  “Kathryn, you thinking less of me because of what someone else said is a big deal. Especially someone who doesn’t even know us.”

  “All right, you know what? I’m sorry I brought it up. Because you’re freaking out over nothing.”

  Randall took a deep breath, turning his gaze to the window and Brookline Avenue’s deepening evening shadow. “He’s jealous of us, Kathryn,” he said after a long pause.

  “Randall, please, let’s just move on.”

  . “Why would he tell you any of those things? To imply that he knows me better than you do,” Randall said, “That’s why. And he doesn’t.”

  “I think you’re being paranoid. And I don’t think less of you.” Whatever she’d said had worked its magic, because he bowed his head in what looked like shame, then took a breath that raised his shoulders. Despite his anger, she could sense how much he valued her opinion of him. But this defensiveness on his part suggested that maintaining her positive perception of him might be more important to him than their friendship occurring at the expense of honesty. Jesse’s words returned to her. Did she feel that there was always a part of Randall that he kept just out of reach? Sadly, she couldn’t have come up with a better way to phrase it herself.

  “I should have told you,” Randall finally said, looking out at the foot traffic on Brookline.

  “Yeah. It would have been nice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said, grabbing him by the shoulder as she slid off her stool. “Hey, there’s an upside for me here. Now that he’s getting the goods, Tim will stop harassing me at parties for info on you.”

  Randall’s short laugh was strained, as if he didn’t believe her sudden good humor was sincere.

  They walked back to Stockton without speaking, without Kathryn groping for a good conversation topic. “Hey, I have some news too,” she finally said.

  “Share.”

  “I got a guy’s phone number today.”

  “What did you have to do for it?” Randall asked teasingly.

  “Just a minor discussion on the evils of Michael Price. I think you might know him.”

  “What?” Randall asked sharply.

  Kathryn turned to see Randall had stopped, his eyebrows pinched, “Sorry. What did you ...”

  “His name’s Mitchell.” Kathryn said.

  “Mitchell Seaver?”

  She felt herself bristle at his disdain. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Nothing. I. . .”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “I barely know him.”

  “Then why do you look like you’re passing gas right now?” “Kathryn, I don’t want to rain on your parade,” he told her, dismissive and parental as he moved to walk past her.

  “We had one conversation. I wouldn’t call it a parade,” she called after him.

  He stopped and turned, lips pursed as if he was trying to hold his words in. But it didn’t work. “I don’t know him that well. But he’s managed to rub me the wrong way a few times.”

  “I’ll take that into account.” Her words were icy with sarcasm. Randall groaned in defeat and approached her, curling an arm around her waist. “You don’t have to take anything into account. He’s just not my type.”

  “Good! Cause he didn’t give you his phone number.”

  “That’s right, babe.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m jealous.”

  He released her waist and she followed him to the entrance door. He slid his ID card through the reader and held the door open for her.

  She hesitated. ‘You know maybe it might be healthy for both of us to start coming home at three in the morning.” Halfway through the door, she caught his . wrist before he managed to slap her on the behind.

  Michael Price stared down into a lens that was angled so that the twenty-five story Bowery Tower seemed to be sprouting from his back. His black flattop of hair was riddled with gray. His cartoonish bulk had to be the result of steroids; his chest was too tweaked, his jawline too statuesque. It was Michael’s face, though, narrow slits for eyes, a lip-less mouth that looked like a thin slash above his jutting chin.

  “Rise to it or get the hell out of bed,” the quote exclaimed, running down the margin of the photo in enlarged text. “If my dreams can’t fill the room, I leave.”

  The article, called “The Price of Everything,” was what Eric had expected, general ass kissing tempered by occasional flashes of sarcasm directed not at the cooperating subject, but at his critics, complete with a photo spread of Michael’s penthouse atop the Bowery Tower.

  Three years ago, all of Manhattan’s city-makers had marshaled forces against architect Michael Price. His design for the 25-story Bowery Tower drew the ire of politicians and preservationists alike. “A dagger impaled in the heart of downtown,” The New York Times called it. Others were less kind, dubbing Price’s erection “the work of the devil” and Price “the Donald Trump of the visual arts.” And when the building’s construction was abruptly approved, rumors flared about behind-closed-door dealing at City Hall. Op Ed columns decried the sudden elasticity of zoning ordinances bent to accommodate the advance of high-rise architecture in a neighborhood made up primarily of tenements, artists’ studios and warehouses.

  Who would have guessed that three years later, the controversial amalgamation of plate ,glass and steel would become one of Manhattan’s hottest new residential complexes thanks to a design that one critic called “the first 21st-century architectural masterpiece.” The man who stood at the epicenter of controversy has ended up living at the very top, literally, of New York’s art scene.

  Michael’s penthouse was a vast, loftlike space decorated without discernibl
e color. Absent walls, the living spaces were marked off by metal-framed furniture arranged along axes. A massive chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, which the photo blurb described as “a Gaudi-inspired amalgamation of wrought iron and ceramic, paying tribute to various forms of sea life.” Mutated octopus would have been a better description. The soaring plate-glass windows commanded the downtown Manhattan skyline, and the expansive terrace took up the remaining roof of the building. Eric wasn’t surprised to see that Michael had crowded the terrace with his ghostly white, wax sculptures; a strange carnival of dancing figures that looked naked beneath the sun’s glare.

  Eric fought the flutter of panic he felt every time he was forced to recognize that Michael hadn’t ceased to exist—even though Eric hadn’t spoken to him in twenty years—and continued reading.

  Price grins when asked about the now infamous Village Voice cover, a cartoon rendering of the dashingly outfitted, barrel-chested architect straddling lower Manhattan with the Bowery Tower extending from his groin like a missile. Anyone familiar with the architect’s pedigree knows he has reason to smile . . . and straddle. At the age of twenty-seven, Price was a relative unknown. What name he had managed to make for himself was due to a handful of John Lautner-inspired residential projects throughout the Northeast. His critics accused him of importing the most superficial elements of Southern California Modern to the opposite coast. But it was his bold proposal for the Seattle Aviation Museum that earned him overnight status as the enfant terrible of the contemporary architecture set, vaulting him into the ranks of Frank Gehry and Gwathmey Siegel. The young Manhattan architect beat out several prestigious West Coast firms for the Seattle commission, and seized his sudden celebrity status as a chance to both shape and create trends in a movement considered stale and lacking surprise.

  For all Price’s swagger and courting of controversy, his critics might be surprised to learn that despite his celebrity, the architect still pines for his college days at prestigious Atherton University. He’s completed three commissions for his alma mater at half his normal fee, further inciting critics to speculate on whether or not Price is in it for the art or the glory. Price’s explanation of his nostalgia is brief, almost terse: “I had a tremendous experience there. Why wouldn’t I want to give something back?” While his private life is generally off-limits to journalists—Price adamantly claims He is a workaholic with little of interest to discuss beyond his work—the architect did reveal one of his more personal pursuits. One room of his Manhattan penthouse has been turned into a studio so that he can pursue his undercelebrated talent: sculpture. One can’t help but wonder if the wax sculptures populating his expansive terrace are the only company such a driven public figure can afford.