which were made of a deep amber wood. Bern put the key in the lock and went into a small entry with a tessellated floor of black-and-white tiles. There was another frosted-glass door in front of him, and to his left the stone stairs ascended sharply in a turn to the second floor.
He started up the stairs, his shoes scraping softly on the stones. For some reason, he counted them, but when he reached the top, he didn’t even remember how many there had been. The landing was small, illuminated by the soft glow from a globed light over the door. A window looked out on Parque Mexico. There was a portrait, a pencil drawing, on the wall next to the doorbell. It depicted a young man whose hairstyle and clothes seemed to place him in the 1930s. No signature.
Bern put the second key in the door, unlocked it, and pushed the door open. He stood there a moment, looking into the darkness. The anxiety he felt had nothing to do with fear. It was the anticipation of walking into a paradox, the life and world of a stranger he knew intimately. Already he could smell the rooms in the darkness in front of him, and they reminded him of the apartments in Paris that he had lived in, the odors of old wood and paints and canvas and cigarettes. .. and, yes, of the faint presence of women.
He fumbled along the wall and found the light switch. He was in a small entry hall, which had glass panels above the wood wainscoting. There was mail scattered all over the floor. But not enough to be six weeks’ worth. Someone had been picking it up every few days, he guessed.
He closed the door behind him, stepped over the mail, and went into the front room. Comfortable furniture, the walls covered with framed pictures-drawings, oil paintings, pastels, along with some black-and-white photographs. He went straight to the artworks. They seemed to be of every age and era, but a few contemporary ones bore the signature of Jude Teller. Eagerly, he looked closely at these. Jude had been good, as Mondragon had said. His classical training was indeed evident in the portraits, and even in the few nudes. His eye was fresh, and his style was sure and confident.
Art magazines were scattered about the room, and a few small sculptures stood here and there. One bust. Bern went over to it. Bronze. This, too, bore Jude’s signature, a woman’s head, as well as her neck and the tops of her breasts. As he bent down and studied the work closely, he was surprised by the admiration, and maybe even a twinge of envy, that he felt. Jude had been very good indeed, and Bern doubted if he could have accomplished the quality of animation that this bust exhibited. Jesus.
He turned away and scanned the rest of the room. Every wall bore some kind of artwork. The room was also divided by wainscoting with glass above. On one side, a stairwell ascended, turning to the right. A short, wide corridor led past a dining room, a bathroom across the hall, and then to a large kitchen that looked out over an inner courtyard on the ground floor.
Bern returned to the front room and went up the stairs, turning on lights as he went. The stairs opened into a spacious third-floor studio scattered about with the paraphernalia of an artist’s craft and smelling of wood and resins and oil paints. A row of windows looked out over the treetops of Parque Mexico.
There was a bedroom off the far side of the studio; it was a long one, with windows on the street end that had the same view of the park as the windows in the studio. The other end of the room opened onto a rooftop terrace. This was Jude’s bedroom. His clothes were in the closets. Bern checked the sizes in the suits and the shirts. Same as his. The styles and colors would suit his own tastes exactly, and they could easily have been found in his own closet.
He went to the bathroom and stood at the sink. Jude’s razor was there on the marble countertop in a green glass bowl, just the right shape for it. There was a tall, cylindrical black-and-gold tin of talcum powder. An amber bottle of cologne. Bern picked it up and swept it under his nose. It was the saddest fragrance he could imagine.
The place was instantly saturated with familiarity, as if he were in his own home after his own death, longing to be alive again, and sad beyond expression to have left so much behind.
Suddenly, he thought he heard the door downstairs. Startled, he held his breath and touched the sink to ground himself, to steady a slight dizziness.
“Jude?” A woman’s voice. “Hey,” she called, “when did you get in?”
He heard the door close and her footsteps crossing the wooden floors of the rooms. She started up the stairs.
Chapter 19
Bern froze, looking at himself in the mirror as he listened to her footsteps ascending the stairs and growing nearer. What the hell should he do? Her footsteps hit the landing in the studio.
“Jude? Why did you just step right over your mail?”
He heard her starting across the studio, having seen the light on in the bedroom, he supposed. Turning away from the sink, he hurried out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, reaching the door to the studio while she was still a few feet away.
“Hey,” she said, breaking into a huge smile as he stepped out of the bedroom. She came up to him and kissed him with unexpected gentleness and then embraced him tightly, nuzzling his neck.
He put his arms around her, her shape new and strange to him. He was tense, half-expecting her to recoil at any moment, realizing he wasn’t Jude. But she didn’t.
“It’s been too long,” she whispered, her face still against his neck. He could smell her hair, and he felt the softness of her breasts against him. He recognized her face from the bronze bust, and from two of the nude studies among the drawings downstairs.
There was a moment’s hesitation before she pulled away and looked at him quizzically, her arms still around him, her face just inches from his.
“Are you okay?”
She was Mexican, in her early thirties. Her shoulder-length black hair was thick, parted casually in the center, and framed a noticeably asymmetrical face. Her eyes were large and black, the pigment of the surrounding flesh subtly shaded. Her lips were full and evenly proportioned, with a distinctive philtrum in the upper one that was immediately appealing. There was a very slight upturn at the outside corners of her mouth that did not suggest a smile.
All of this he captured in the brief moment that she had her arms around him, her face so close to his that his first instinct was to bend and kiss her.
“Just tired,” he managed to say, again expecting to see in her eyes a startled reaction to the sound of his voice. But there was none.
“Well, let’s have a drink,” she said, letting her arms slide down along the sides of his body, as though she couldn’t get enough of touching him. “Let’s catch up on what’s been happening.” Her voice was in the lower registers, not husky, but mellow.
She walked across the studio. She was high-hipped and wore a knee-length charcoal skirt and a white blouse.
“I was at Claudio’s all afternoon,” she said wearily as she opened a wooden cabinet near the windows and took out a green bottle of gin. Next to it was a small refrigerator, from which she took ice and then dropped a few cubes into each glass as she closed the door with her hip.
“How was your trip?” she asked, sloshing some gin into each glass. She opened a small paper bag that she must have brought with her and took out a lime, which she sliced. She squeezed the two wedges simultaneously, one with each hand, into the glasses.
She turned around and held out a glass for him, shaking her dark hair out of her face. They looked at each other.
“What,” she said, “is something the matter?”
This felt impossible to him, but he managed to make himself go over to her and take the glass. Who the hell was this? Did she live with Jude? He hadn’t thought to check for women’s clothes in Jude’s bedroom. Why hadn’t Mondragon at least mentioned that Jude was living with someone?
He had to say something, for God’s sake.
“And what were you doing at Claudio’s?” he asked. He was so self-conscious that he thought his voice had
