Charles Mathes [Girl 04] The Girl in the Face of the Clo

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.Inside the heart she wrote “Love Janie” in the tiniest of letters.“No, Perry, no,” he said in response, oblivious.“You’re a liar, Perry.I know the truth.”“The truth about what?” Jane asked.“No, Perry.Please don’t do it.Please.”Jane left the room dry-eyed, but with a lump in her throat.Benton Contino was waiting for her in the hall.He wouldn’t let her escape into the light of day until she had assured him that she didn’t intend to sue.ThreeAn hour and a half later, hands deep in her pockets, stupid hat squished on her head, Jane climbed the front stairs of her brownstone on West Ninetieth Street.Automatically she checked the mailbox, but of course there was nothing in it.The forwarding order she’d filled out at the Post Office before leaving town last month would be in effect until tomorrow.Nothing of any interest had reached her in Cincinnati anyway.Who but catalogue companies would care that she was now back in New York?Jane stared up the long staircase that stood between her and her apartment on the fifth floor.She hadn’t been gone long enough this time to sublet, and it was amazing how much dust a New York apartment could accumulate in a month just sitting empty.The prospect of a lonely unpacking session followed by an hour of dusting wasn’t much motivation to climb four flights of stairs.On the way home, she had stopped for some gyoza and a California roll at one of the zillion Japanese places on Broadway, then grazed for half an hour at the huge Barnes & Noble at Eighty-third Street.What else could she do to postpone the inevitable?Jane’s keys were still in her hand from opening the mailbox.A small steel one at the end of the ring caught her eye.It was the key to her storage space in the basement.Was there an address book somewhere in the boxes of Dad’s personal things that she had stored down there? Could it tell her who this Perry was that Aaron Sailor was suddenly mumbling about? “No, Perry, no.” Jane had tried to push her father’s words out of her mind, but they kept coming back.“No, Perry.Please don’t do it.” Who was this guy?Not needing further encouragement, Jane unlocked the basement, which took the same key as the front door, turned on the switch that lit a dangling naked bulb, and descended the stairs.The basement of the brownstone consisted of a narrow central passage, off which six storage spaces had been created out of metal link fencing.Jane’s cubicle at the back was triple the size of the others (and as expensive as an apartment in many cities), its cement floor covered with plastic milk crates that she had appropriated from outside a Gristede’s supermarket when she had moved in.Until three months ago, the milk crates had kept eighteen Aaron Sailor paintings off the floor in case the basement flooded.Thankfully, it never had, but Jane wasn’t going to take chances with her father’s work, no matter how many people had told her it was worthless.Ultimately, she had been proven right.The paintings had gone off in February to the Fyfe Museum in San Francisco as the centerpiece of their show on Contemporary Realism.After all these years, Aaron Sailor was finally gaining acceptance from the art establishment that had virtually slammed the door in his face a decade back.For all the good it did him.Jane applied the key on her ring to the padlock and opened the wire door of the cubicle.Without the paintings, the space looked smaller somehow.The lights, ornaments, and the base for the trees that Jane bought herself those few Christmases she was in town (and which took up virtually half her apartment) were stored on the far left side.At the far right were the big garment bags of winter clothing she brought down each April to exchange for her summer stuff—her apartment had less storage space than a Toyota.Four large cardboard boxes of Aaron Sailor’s personal effects sat on a brick ledge protruding from the basement wall.Jane had only vague recollections of what she had taken from the loft before leaving eight years ago.She had tried to push that whole year out of her mind.Having this stuff upstairs would have been too painful, always reminding her of the man who had drunk invisible tea with her at childhood parties, the man who had taught her how to play poker, the man who had taken her to Bergdorf Goodman a month after Mom died and bought her the most beautiful dress she had ever seen.It was too much to bear that she would never see that man again.Jane reached up and took down the first of the boxes, pushing the feelings back before they overwhelmed her.Years of dust had hardened on the top of the box into a gray patina.Inside was a neat stack of sketchbooks, more than a dozen in all.She sat down on a milk crate and leafed through them one by one, amazed after all these years at the subtlety with which her father had seen his world, and the delicacy with which he could render it.One book was filled entirely with drawings of wrists and fingers.Another contained studies of stern-faced men and women from the days when Aaron Sailor had made his living as a portrait painter, before he started doing “real” art.A third had sketches of their old loft, a huge space on Greene Street that Jane still had dreams about, dreams in which she would discover whole new rooms that she had never seen before and find her mother practicing her cello.None of the pads, however, held a clue to the identity of Perry.Jane returned the box to the ledge and took down the next, which contained financial and tax records.Nothing here about anyone named Perry either, just monetary details that had no relevance to Jane or her father or probably even the IRS any more.Each successive 1040 recounted the descent of her father’s earnings after he had given up doing portraits.How long did you have to keep stuff like this, Jane wondered, packing the tax forms back away.Seven years? She probably could throw most of it out now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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