Before the Fall(74)
“Wow,” says Eleanor. “I don’t know what to—”
It hangs between them, this miracle worker exchange. Scott doesn’t want to talk about it. The fact that the boy will speak to him and no one else is simply a fact, as far as he’s concerned, without what psychologists call meaning.
“I told him I’d visit,” says Scott. “Is that okay?”
“Of course. He’d—we’d like that.”
Scott thinks about the inflection of her voice.
“What about your husband?” he asks.
“There are very few things he likes.”
“You?”
A pause.
“Sometimes.”
They think about that for a while. From the bedroom, Scott hears a sigh, but he can’t tell if it’s a human noise or a sound effect off the screen.
“Okay,” says Scott. “Sun’ll be up soon. Try to get a nap today.”
“Thanks,” she says. “Have a nice day.”
A nice day. The simplicity of it makes him smile.
“You too,” he says.
After they hang up, Scott lies there for a beat, flirting with sleep, then climbs to his feet. He follows the sound of the television, peeling off his T-shirt and dropping it on the floor, then takes off his boxers and walks to the bedroom, turning off lights as he goes. Layla is half under the covers, posing hip-up—she knows what she looks like, the power of it—her eyes arranged coyly on the screen. Chilly now, Scott climbs into bed. Layla turns off the TV. Outside, the sun is just starting to rise. He lays his head on the pillow, feeling first her hands and then her body move toward him. Waves climbing a white sand beach. She arranges herself across his hips and torso. Her lips find his neck. Scott feels the warmth of the comforter pulling him down. The white box has been vanquished. Limbo is now a place. Her hand touches his chest. Her leg floats up along his shin and settles across his thighs. Her body is hot, the arc of her breasts flush against his arm. She nuzzles and whispers into the groove of his neck, taking her time.
“You like talking to me,” she says, “right?”
But he is already asleep.
Chapter 27
Painting #4
At first it looks like a blank canvas. A long white rectangle covered in gesso. But stepping closer you can see there’s a topography to the white, shadows and valleys. White paint has been built up in layers, and there are hints of colors underneath, the blush of something hidden. And you think, maybe the canvas isn’t blank after all. Maybe the image has been covered, erased by white. The truth is, the naked eye alone will never be able to uncover the story. But if you take your hand and run it over the valleys and ridges of gesso, if you close your eyes and allow the topographic truth to seep through, then maybe the contours of a scene begin to leak through.
Flames. The outline of a building.
Your imagination does the rest.
Chapter 28
Public / Private
A car horn wakes him, long and insistent. Layla is gone. The horn comes again. Scott gets to his feet, walks naked to the window. There is a news crew outside, satellite van parked on the curb, dish deployed.
They have found him.
He steps back from the curtain, finds the remote, turns on the television. The image of a house appears, a white three-story with blue windows and black stars on a tree-lined street in New York City. It is the house he’s standing in. A news scroll slides along under the house, displaying words and numbers—the NASDAQ down 13 points, Dow Jones up 116. On the left-hand side of the screen, Bill Cunningham occupies his own box, leaning into the lens.
“—he’s shacking up, apparently, with the famous radical heiress, whose father gave over four hundred million dollars to lefty causes last year. You remember, dear viewers, the man who tried to buy the 2012 election. Well, this is his little girl. Although—not so little anymore—look at these pictures of her from a film festival in France earlier this year.”
Onscreen, the house slides to a smaller box, replaced in the main window by still images of Layla in a series of revealing ball gowns, clipped from style sheets and scandal rags. There is a bikini shot long-lensed from an actor’s yacht.
Scott wonders if Layla is in the house, watching this.
As if hearing his thoughts, the apartment door opens. Layla comes in. She is dressed for a day of meetings, it appears.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” she says. “I swear.”
Scott shrugs. He never assumed she did. In his mind they are both an endangered species, discovered mid-molt by a curious child with poor impulse control.
Onscreen, he watches fifteen curtained windows, a narrow front door painted blue, two garage doors, also blue. The only thing shading his safe house from view is a narrow sapling, just a stick really with a halfhearted spray of green leaves. Scott studies the house he’s in on TV, concerned but also strangely fascinated, like a man watching himself being eaten alive. It seems he cannot avoid becoming a public figure now. That he must participate in this commercial dance.
How strange, he thinks.
Layla stands beside him. She is thinking about saying more, but doesn’t. After a moment she turns and wanders out of the apartment again. Scott hears the apartment door close, then the sound of her heels on the staircase. He stands staring at the house on television.