Love Maps Read online

  “Sorry, Mr. Clark. I meant to do a song for you, but I got more inspired by my sister.” Her behavior isn’t hostile. She’s acting like Ma—wary, protective, good mannered.

  Sarah wishes that Philip would smile back, but he’s embarrassed by the curious-envious eyes of Maya’s fans.

  He pulls himself together and flashes a smile of his own. “How could I blame you? She’s a far better muse.” Maya gives him an approving nod.

  Wow. They did it beautifully. Sarah sinks into her seat, limp and dazed. Philip didn’t get scared. There was none of that weakening that she’s seen in other men. He seemed more dislodged by the audience, something she understands well. She slips her hand into his.

  Maya moves on to the next song. Sarah hums along under her breath. Not Philip. She’d hoped that live, in concert, he’d be able to appreciate what he couldn’t on the record, but he really doesn’t seem affected. He doesn’t look bored exactly; he looks, well, neutral, like Switzerland or Sweden, some blond country observing from a safe distance. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know the song. The next number he has to know. “Old Man River”—everyone knows that. Sarah gives him a gentle smile. Listen. Listen! That’s my sister up there. You’re allowed to fall in love a tiny bit. His hand finds her thigh. His fingers are light and playful, but they do not move in time with the rhythm, and when Maya gets a pair of maracas and switches to bossa nova, they do not register that either. He’s hopeless, but only in the music department. His fingers slip down the slope of her thighs, tease the crease between her legs. She opens slightly and he dips in, smoothing the silk against her skin. She squeezes her legs shut, trapping him. Up till then, he’s remained Switzerland, observing the stage, but now he’s turning, a spark in his eye. His hand digs deeper. It feels like he’s going to plunge right through the fabric.

  “Philip, you dog!” Maya leans over the table, damp, slightly out of breath. Her set has just ended, and the applause is still going strong. “You’ve stolen her heart. How did you do it?” Her lids sparkle from silver glitter. Her irises flash with something other than sauciness.

  Philip eyes her back, once again surprising Sarah with his self-assurance. “Good show,” he says. “I didn’t know people still sang cabaret.”

  “Oh yes. It doesn’t go away.” Maya slides in beside Sarah. “Ma always said, you stick to the classics, you’ll be okay.” She nudges her sister, her silver suit rough against Sarah’s bare arm. “Remember that?”

  “Of course.” Sarah smiles, trying to convey that she loved the set, every single moment. “Thanks for my song. It was perfect.” She smoothes a fleck of silver off Maya’s cheek.

  “Ma had a great disdain for the idea of keeping up with the times,” Maya tells Philip. “Take the circus—has it ever gone out of style? No. Been around in Caesar’s day and it ain’t going anywhere. Why? Because it doesn’t deviate. It’s got everything you need: beauty, talent, and danger.”

  “An interesting trinity,” Philip says. “I see it for the circus, but I’m not so sure about your act.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “Danger,” Philip says.

  Maya tosses her head. “He’s right. I’m a toothless, danger-less triangle. How depressing.” She puts a cigarette to her lips and a bearded man lunges across the aisle to light it for her. “Thanks,” she murmurs.

  “I love you,” the man whispers.

  Maya releases him with a smile that she developed particularly for this sort of occasion, inspired by her brushin with the lunatic. A masterful expression so intimate and ironic and ultimately kind that the bearded man crows with victory even as his friends drag him away. She turns back to Philip. “You’ve got the same problem. Your buildings are beautiful—I didn’t need Sarah to tell me that, although she did, of course. So you’ve got beauty, and naturally you need talent to design them, but you’re into security. Ta-ta danger.”

  “But I’m not a showman.”

  “He needs a different trinity,” says Sarah. “Light, charm, absence of leaks.”

  “A decent address. Are you going to build Sarah a house?”

  Philip smiles. “I hope so.”

  “Build me one while you’re at it. I’d like to live in a minaret. Can you do that?”

  “I could try.”

  “With a courtyard outside where the faithful can prostrate themselves. I’m going to be innovative, have them pray faceup instead of belly-down, cloud-gazing instead of ground-grazing, eyes-to-the-skies as I ululate away.”

  “I don’t think the Muslims would like it.”

  “We won’t tell them. We’ll keep it very, very secret.”

  Sarah sips her champagne, grateful to them both. Philip’s knee rubs against hers, a fond bump-bump, but he’s paying the proper attention to her sister. Now they’re groaning about some over-the-top golf club. Now he’s complimenting her on her investments. This must be how he talks to clients. His tone is different—not formal, but bluff, cordial, confident. When he’s talking to her, his voice is softer, with more cracks and fissures. He doesn’t seem cowed at all. Her boyfriends don’t act this way with Maya. Then again, she’s never had one with a tin ear. She puts a hand on Philip’s thigh and squeezes Maya’s hand with the other. She can’t talk; there’s too much inside, a heady glee, the possibility of an almost inconceivable fullness.

  A man in a black turtleneck winds through the narrow aisles, compact and graceful, coming toward them. “Franco!” Maya’s arm shoots up. He bends down to kiss her. Maya grabs his shoulders and won’t let him go. “I’m so glad you came! Look at you! Can I just look at you for a minute?”

  “Look away, honey. I’ll send you a bill afterward.”

  He catches Sarah’s eye, rewarding her with a fan of wry smile lines. Your sister’s insane, help! She likes him immediately, but Philip is pale and tense. She nudges him, wondering what’s wrong, but he just drains his champagne. Maya scoots in, making room for Franco, so that they are all squished together on the curved banquette.

  “You’ve got to have a drink with us. Is there any more champagne?” Maya lifts the bottle from the ice bucket. “These bottles are so small. They used to be bigger, didn’t they?” A waiter hurries over, bearing more. Maya stretches out her arm, showing off a delicate silver watch. “Franco made this, can you believe it? By hand, each little gear.” She pops open the watch face to expose the workings inside. “Don’t you love this, Sarah? Isn’t it amazing? He learned how to make watches in prison, in this great rehab program they were doing out in California.”

  Franco snorts. “Do you have anything else to tell them?”

  “I do like to chat, don’t I? But you must understand—Sarah is a passionate critic of the penal system. She should know that positive things can happen in prison. It’s not all oppression.”

  “Yeah, there’s a strong artisan network,” says Franco, straight-faced, making Sarah wish that Philip would relax. She can’t stop grinning. She could so easily see Franco at their place on 155th, smoking cigarettes on the stoop, chatting with Max about nothing in particular. He might have sold him a hot car. He might have been banned by Ma. There were the girls. There was Ma’s implacable respect for the law. But even Ma would have liked him. A shard of jealousy cuts through her, that Maya could still have friends like this, in spite of her tony crowd.

  “Franco,” Maya announces rather ceremoniously, “I wanted you to come tonight because Sarah’s new fellow specializes in security. Philip, Franco is starting a consulting business. Thief-proofing from an ex-thief’s point of view.” She looks terribly pleased with herself; she’s gloating. “I thought you guys would be a natural fit.”

  Philip glares at her, unabashed and livid. The flare of dislike between them is so strong and sudden that Sarah is disoriented. She focuses on the tablecloth, dark burgundy damask lightly scattered with ashes that didn’t hit their mark.

  Franco whistles. “Philip? Philip Clark? Man, long time.”

  “Hi, Franco.”

 
“It’s good to see you,” Franco says, as if he means it. Philip nods grimly.

  “How do you know each other?” Sarah asks when the silence becomes unbearable.

  “We met out in the desert,” says Franco. “At Marshall Conningsby’s. Do you know him?”

  “I did,” says Sarah. “Do you know that he died?” Franco looks startled. “I’m surprised Maya didn’t tell you.” Sarah now realizes how very deliberate this meeting must be.

  Philip stands abruptly and takes out his wallet.

  “I’ve got it,” drawls Maya.

  Philip is calmer now, magnificently disdainful. He tosses some twenties on the table. Sarah follows, casting an apologetic glance at Franco. His gaze is intelligent and interested, not confused. Sarah is the one who is confused.

  Chapter 11

  Connecticut, October 1997

  She bundled the towel used to mop the kitchen with Max’s gi and clomped down the basement steps, grit poking into her bare feet. A fat cricket jumped across her path, startling her, but she made it to the machine, dumped in her bundle, sprinkled detergent, then stared at the detergent flakes as if they were tea leaves. It was after midnight now, officially Wednesday the fifteenth, Miercoles, the day of Mercury, god of roads and lies. She closed the washer door and pressed the button. The machine groaned into action. On the way back up, she stopped in front of the storage shelves, shelves she’d built herself, nails poking out preposterously. She’d never been good at hammering; she used to get Gus, then Philip, to do the corners of her frames. The case of shelves that Max had pilfered for its planks sagged against a bookcase lined with canisters of varnish and turpentine, shriveled tubes of paint, canvases water-stained from the last flood. A folded square of better-looking canvas sat on a high shelf. It was still supple. She brought it upstairs, unfolded it on the kitchen table, and ran her palm against the creases.

  The last time she’d stretched canvas had been in New York, seven years ago. Philip was in the desert, about to climb into his hole, and she was in her studio, deadline-edgy, on the verge of the Quetzalcoatl paintings. Not thinking about Philip directly, concentrating instead on the petroglyph she’d seen on Part I of her ruinous trip out to West Texas. From this came the idea of the plumed serpent. She’d mixed the paint with sand from the desert, and ashes—not Conningsby’s actual ones, but a handful she’d bagged at an old fire circle in the canyon. She had primed the canvas, turned off the phone, not left the studio for seven days and nights. And he had emerged, spiraling out of the canvas with his fiery breath—not as she had envisioned him, but as his own majestic, fearsome, self-created self.

  An amazing seven days and seven nights. Aside from Quetzalcoatl #1, she did a study for Quetzalcoatl #2, a sprawling depiction of the Second Era of the Fourth Sun, the end of Quetzalcoatl’s domain when hurricanes blasted the earth and men turned Darwin-backward into monkeys. A joke sketch of the marriage of Maplethorpe and Tlazolteotl, the Goddess of Filth and Purification through Sin. She even took care of business, not a planned thing of course, but the buzzer buzzed and she, on a ciggie break, opted to answer. God. Eddie Kiebbler and Simon Perez, giddy with the success of his second gallery, bursting in, high on something, bearing Kit Kat bars, chanting her name. The Quetzalcoatls were good, fabulous, right on the money. They jabbered about what to serve at the opening. “Aztec, baby. Do it right, pyramids, poi.” “Did they eat poi?” “Better yet, virgins, babes, and boys, toppling from pyramids. In marzipan.” “Who says they were virgins? You can’t tell. It’s scientifically imposs, the membrane pops any old way.” “They didn’t eat marzipan or poi either.” Jeez, that was business? She’d complained about that? What would she have done if she had gotten a glimpse of the assistant principals and sputtering parents, the disputes over soda machines in hallways and Huck calling Jim a nigger?

  The canvas lay on the table, the fold creases stubborn, resistant to her palms. She went back to the basement and searched through the supply shelves, looking for a stretching frame. She’d take one from another canvas. She had a terrible painting by Bambi Peterson. No, she didn’t. She’d given it to the PTA silent auction, and someone had bought it for $175. There were staple guns, a rusty canvas clamper, tack nails, a glue gun, two-by-fours of odd, scrappish lengths. A postcard. What was this doing down here? She sighed. It was a postcard from Gus. A picture of the Maine coastline, a lighthouse on a cliff. He was living up there now, running an artists’ colony in an old boat factory. He’d invited her up. It was a fabulous offer: she’d cook meals in return for a studio overlooking the ocean. She’d said no because of Max. It would be hard for him up there, the nearest school an hour and a half away. And more to the point, she had been afraid of word getting back to Philip. Gus could keep his mouth shut, but a hell of a lot of the other writers and artists who went up there were part of that crowd who had known her and Philip, and she would not bank on them.

  Perhaps word had gotten back to him anyway. Fuck. Her stomach fell right out of her, an eddy of air where flesh had once been. Last year, giving in to Max and his desire for the type of Halloween costume only to be found at the Stamford mall, she’d brought him to that dreadful place, only to run into Clyde Bandersnatch. Smack in the middle of the atrium, pacing around some potted plants, yelling at someone on his cell phone, his hair still red but thinning. She’d grabbed Max’s wrist and hurried on, pretty sure they had not been noticed, but her grip was too tight, resulting in one of Max’s enormous elephant roars. Clyde looked up. He saw. Panic took hold and she sprinted out of there, dragging Max behind her.

  There was no more wine left. She shouldn’t open another bottle. She wasn’t solid on her feet. But it tasted good, the blood of the bull, or the lamb, whatever you wanted it to be. And why couldn’t she have another drink, just one last sip? She was an adult, she could drink as much as she thought proper, and why—while she was on the subject of why—hadn’t she married Gus? Someone who made sense, who she understood, who understood her. Or Carlos, for that matter. He was comprehensible. But Carlos was already married. Their favorite topics of complaint, rivaled only by Connecticut, were their respective spouses. His was some lunatic surgeon who lived down in Peru. You only marry people who drive you crazy. What was the point of all this wine without a cigarette? What had happened to Quetzalcoatl #2, the one painting Maya hadn’t been able to sell? Simon Perez might have it in a storeroom somewhere. There was nothing more depressing than storerooms filled with art.

  She found herself in the dining room squinting at his handwriting. October 15. It definitely said the fifteenth. You might not be able to tell what was going on in his head, but his penmanship was impeccable. He probably knew. That would explain it. Clyde probably told him about Max. Fucker. She wadded the letter into a ball, aimed from the doorway. Perfect shot. Couldn’t be that drunk. She shook the empty bottle onto her tongue, catching the last drops, then filled her glass with water.

  The water tasted good. She peered out the kitchen window, too dark to see anything except the reflection of her face. She rinsed the glass and put it on the drying rack. Something beeped. A warped, strung-out beeaaaaeeeep, beeaaaaeeeep. The washer. “All right, coming.” She hurried downstairs. The machine bleated. She yanked open the door. Silence. A gust of warm, moist air, a smell of manufactured lemon scent. Not a bad smell. A perfume, according to her mother, who had at one point supported the family by taking in laundry and washing it in a big vat over the stove. The day Maya gave her the Maytag might have been one of the happiest of her life. Sarah had been fifteen at the time, embarrassed at her mom dancing around with an enormous box of Tide detergent: “You know how wonderful it is? You put in the soap, cha-cha-cha. You flip down the lid, cha-cha-cha. You press the button. Ta-da!” Her hips swished, no longer shrouded in black. That was in the midsixties, her days of wine and roses. She and Max and Sarah were living easy on West 68th Street. She wore a green muumuu.

  Sarah squeezed the wet clothes to her chest. It was better that Ma ducked out when she did.
She was essentially conservative: spectacles were held under circus tents, real life was led with decorum. You behave. You ignore others’ misbehavior. You don’t mention bodies in pits or sisters with murderous senses of humor. You brush your teeth. You impart the knowledge of the hypotenuse.

  She dropped the clothes in the dryer and went back for the gi. It was heavy and clammy and tangled up with the washer column. She tugged. Her grip slipped and she fell backward. Ma wouldn’t have approved of the wine either. She got up and managed to get the gi into the dryer. What to do? Lie in bed with her head spinning? Music might help—blaring, bone-shaking music—but she couldn’t wake Max, and the best music was Maya’s anyway. Everything else felt second-rate.

  The dryer thumped. She leaned against the folding table. A huge pile of socks rose up, a slithering pyramid. She balled. She sorted. She felt stronger on her feet. Reds with reds, blues with blues, blacks with blacks. At the end, a tube sock with a grass stain above the heel lay all alone on the table. She looked for its match, upturning baskets, crawling around on the cement floor, wary of crickets. She found dust balls, moldy dimes, rusty screws. Sock, sock, where are you? They had a fight. One sock told the other, Go away, don’t come back no more. Ma would have been especially stern about that. You were supposed to forgive people, especially family, especially Maya. She couldn’t help it. Fairy blood. Why had she gone on so much about that fairy blood? She’d half convinced Maya that she was only half human, half other horrible thing. No sock. No sock anywhere. She pulled herself up and brushed the dust from her knees, then squeezed between the dryer and the crumbling, spiderwebbed wall. At the rear was the dryer tube, a grimy, accordion-folded thing that looked like a relic from the Industrial Revolution. The poor sock might be stuck in there, in the dark, all alone. She inched closer.