Before the Fall(108)

“Couldn’t find it?” he says, and the boy shakes his head.

“Okay,” says Scott, “let me look.”

He sits the boy at the kitchen table. Outside a mail truck pulls up to the driveway. The mail carrier wears an old-school pith helmet. Past him, Scott can see the raised dishes of the news trucks, parked at the end of the cul-de-sac, waiting, watching. The mailman opens the mailbox, puts in a supermarket circular and some bills, oblivious to the drama inside.

From the living room, Scott hears Doug say, “We were fine before he showed up. Happy.”

Scott digs through his bag, looking for something he can claim is a present. He finds the fountain pen his father gave him when he left for college. A black Montblanc. It is the one thing Scott has kept through the years, his fortunes rising and falling, the one constant as he fumbled his way through spells of drinking, through his great painter phases, kamikaze-ing into periods of abject terror, numbing himself with booze, zeroing in on failure. And then through his rise from whatever ashes were left to a new body of work. A fresh start.

Through his lowest point, when he threw all his furniture out the window, every plate and dish, everything he owned.

Except the pen.

He signs his paintings with this pen.

“Here,” he tells the boy, pulling it out of his bag. The boy smiles. Scott unscrews the cap, shows the boy how it works, uses it to draw a dog on a paper napkin.

“My father gave it to me when I was young,” he says, then realizes the implication, that he is now passing the pen on to his own son. That he has adopted the boy somehow.

He has the thought and pushes through it. Life can paralyze us, freeze us into statues if we think about things too long.

He hands the pen to the boy, arguably the last piece of the man he once was, his spine, the only thing about him that has stayed straight and true, unfailing, reliable. He was a boy once himself, an explorer setting out for undiscovered lands. Not a single cell of that boy remains now, Scott’s body changed at the genetic level, every electron and neutron replaced over the decades by new cells, new ideas.

A new man.

The boy takes the pen, tries it on the napkin, but can’t get a line.

“It’s—” says Scott, “—it’s a fountain pen, so you have to hold it—”

He takes the boy’s hand, shows him how to hold it. From the kitchen he hears Bill Cunningham say, “—so first he befriends the sister—a wealthy woman—and now that she’s dead and the money has passed to her son—suddenly he’s in your house, and you’re sleeping in an old truck.”

The boy gets a black line out of the pen, draws another. He makes a happy sound. Watching him, something inside Scott snaps into place. A sense of purpose, a decision he didn’t even know he was making. He walks to the phone, like a man on hot coals, determined not to look down. He dials information, gets the number for ALC, then asks for Bill Cunningham’s office. After a few misdirects, he finds his way to Krista Brewer, Bill’s producer.

“Mr. Burroughs?” she says, sounding breathless, as if she has run a great distance to reach the phone.

Because of the nature of time, the next moment is both endless and instantaneous.

“Tell him I accept,” says Scott.

“Pardon?”

“The interview. I’ll do it.”

“Wow. Great. Should we—I know we have a news truck nearby. Do you want to…”

“No. Stay away from the house, from the boy. This is between me and the gargoyle. A conversation about how maybe bullying and belittling people from a distance is a bullshit coward’s way to be a man.”

The quality of her voice, in the next moment, can only be described as elated.

“Can I quote you on that?”

Scott thinks of his sister, her hands crossed, eyes closed. He thinks of the waves, towering, and the struggle to stay afloat, one arm dislocated.

“No,” he says. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”





Chapter 41


Painting #5



We are sorry for your loss.1

1(White letters on black canvas.)





Chapter 42


The History of Violence



Gus is on Second Avenue headed back to the hangar when the call comes.

“Are you following this?” Mayberry asks.

“Following what?” he says. He has been lost in thought, ruminating about his meeting with the state attorney general and heads of the FBI and the OFAC. The copilot was high. He crashed the plane deliberately.

“It’s turned into a real soap opera,” Mayberry says. “Doug, the uncle, went on TV to say he’d been thrown out of the house and that Burroughs had moved in. And now they’re saying Burroughs is headed into the studio for an interview.”

“Jesus,” says Gus. He thinks about calling Scott to warn him off, but then remembers that the painter has no cell phone. Gus slows for a red light, a taxi merging signal-less in front of him, forcing him to slam on the brakes.

“Where are we on the flight recorder?” he asks.

“Close,” says Mayberry. “Ten minutes maybe.”

Gus joins a line of traffic headed for the 59th Street Bridge.

“Call me the second you have it,” he says. “I’m on my way back.”