The plastic box seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Augie and Nina just stared at each other, and after a few seconds Joe Mulvane hung up. A moment passed, then the dial tone kicked in. It was a rude and ugly sound, urgent as a siren as it blasted through the reedy speaker. Nina got up silently to turn it off. 'What now?' she said.
Augie blinked up at the ceiling. Fear and bafflement had combined in his brain to produce something verging on indifference, a numbness that allowed for certain threads of clarity running through a fabric whose larger pattern had stopped making sense. 'Let's call Natchez,' he suggested. 'He'll know where Ray is, if anybody does.'
Nina dialed. Then she switched the speaker on and nestled next to her husband. The phone rang two times, three times, and on the fourth it was picked up; there followed the telltale pause of an answering machine.
Then the poet's voice, somber and imperious, filled the Silvers' living room.
'You have reached the home and workplace of Roberto Natchez,' it said. The R's had a lot of tongue, the O's were round as sea-tossed stones. Augie and Nina stared first at each other, then at the phone.
'I do not often take calls,' the message continued. 'I make no promise to return them. I have much to do. You may leave a message if you wish.'
In the short space before the beep, Augie tried without much luck to collect his thoughts. 'Natch, it's Augie, call me' was all he could manage to say.
Nina went to the phone, pre-empted the intrusion of the dial tone. 'He sounds deranged,' she said.
Augie didn't answer. He was thinking at that moment not about Natchez's sanity but his own. Not so many months ago, he'd been walloped on the head, had a concussion and amnesia. His brain had been blood-starved, sun-baked, desiccated. How sure could he be that he'd ever quite recovered? Suddenly he was scared in a different way than he had been before. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. His voice was soft and a little shaky.
'Nina,' he said, 'if something was wrong with me, with my mind I mean, you wouldn't hide it from me, would you?'
She moved to him quickly, her feet made no sound on the floor. She squatted down in front of him and took his hands. 'I don't understand.'
'I would want to know. If I was going crazy, if I was crazy… Promise me you'd tell me, you'd help me understand that much at least. Promise.'
She held his eyes. In her gaze was love and respect and no false kindness.
'Good,' said Augie. 'Good. 'Cause, Nina, all of this is seeming very strange to me.'
35
It was the same shy, modest Reuben who knocked first, then unlocked the front door of the Silver house at eight o'clock on Monday morning. Heroism had not changed him, because it hadn't dawned on him that he was a hero. What he'd done did not require courage, as he saw it, but only vigilance and loyalty. Those qualities the young man did credit himself with having, but he didn't regard them as anything that should be thought of as rare. They were the basic things a friend should be. If bold acts followed from them, it was only because circumstance had allowed a friend to be a friend.
He was surprised, therefore, when Augie, dressed in shaving coat and slippers, came sweeping out of the bedroom and took him in his arms. The painter pressed the housekeeper's lean chest against his own, swayed with him a moment as in a slow dance, and kissed the top of his head. 'Reuben,' he murmured. 'Reuben, what a fellow you are. Machisimo. '
The young man allowed his hands to rest lightly on his friend's back, his cheek to he against the painter's shoulder. Augie smelled like soap and toothpaste, the moist warmth of a shower was still pulsing off him in waves. Reuben was happy. He felt that he was getting back more than he possibly could have given. When Augie at last withdrew from the embrace but still held on to Reuben's arms, the young man's eyes were gleaming, his heart was healed, his lips arced in a small smile that was as solemn as it was joyful.
'You are feeling all right?' he asked.
Augie did not immediately answer. Rather, he spun toward the living room, an unaccustomed manic edginess making his movements angular, abrupt. 'Today?' he said. 'Today I feel fine. Full of fight. But yesterday, Reuben, yesterday was one of the worst days of my life.' He perched briefly on the arm of the sofa, then sprang up again, weakly but not without a certain jauntiness. 'Did you ever have a day, Reuben, when it suddenly seemed that you'd been kidding yourself your whole life long, that you've been mistaken about everything and everyone, that everything you've believed in has been wrong?'
Reuben looked at him. He was sorry Augie had felt bad, glad that Augie was telling him. It did not occur to him that maybe the question was not meant to be answered.
'No,' he said.
Augie pulled up short.
'The things I believe,' Reuben went on, 'there are not many, but I never doubt them. Maybe they are not possible. But I know that they are right.'
The words soothed Augie like a rubdown; the tightness went out of his posture and he sat. 'Yes, Reuben,' he said abstractedly. 'Yes. Damnit, that's exactly as it should be.'
There was a long silence except for the dry rattle of the palm fronds, the soft scrape of leaves against the tin roof. Then Reuben said, 'Where is Nina?'
'In bed,' said Augie. 'She had an awful night. Come here, Reuben. Sit down.'
He patted the sofa next to him, and the housekeeper very tentatively parked himself on the edge of it.
'I know what's going on, Reuben,' the painter said. 'Nina and I have spoken. We've talked to the police.'
The young man looked at the blond wood floor between his feet. 'Were we wrong-'
Augie waved the question away. 'Not at all, not at all. But Reuben, here's the thing. Yesterday I was so glum, so rattled, I almost forgot to be pissed off. Then all of a sudden I said to myself, Wait a second, someone's trying to kill you, and your reaction is to get depressed? That's too much philosophy where your balls should be. So I got mad. Very mad.
'Reuben, the auction is one week from today. Between now and then, I'm gonna find out who's after me, I'm gonna find out why, and I'm gonna put that person out of business. I don't know how, but I'm gonna do it. Nina's closing the gallery for the week. We'd like you to be here with us. Can you move in for a while?'
The young man puffed with pride and sat up very straight. 'Of course,' he said. 'Of course. Later on I'll get my things.'
Then he stood, moved lithely to the kitchen, and put his apron on. Hero or no, it was still his job to dust, to do the dishes, plump the pillows, and arrange the flowers.
Art happens when a person of talent is seized with nervous energy and discovers that he or she has nothing to do except create.
At around 9 a.m., pacing aimlessly along the blind paths of his newfound rage, Augie decided he wanted to paint. He wanted to work on something big, something bright, something that would confirm him in his resolve while at the same time providing respite from his preoccupation and his fear. He asked Reuben to scavenge through the storage room and pull out the largest easel he could find, along with a huge canvas, eight feet by five, that had been stretched and gessoed ages ago and never used.
Not till the canvas had been set up in the shade of the poinciana tree did Augie have the faintest notion of what the painting's subject would be; and then he knew at once. It would be a picture of Fred, an hommage to the murdered parrot who had died as a proxy for its master.
'Green,' the painter said to Reuben. 'I'll need a lot of green. And a ladder. I'm starting at the upper left. There's jungle there, can you see it, Reuben? Vines with purple flowers. And berries tempting as tits. Parrot heaven. Maybe some monkeys peeking out, very small.'
He climbed the ladder, his wizened legs twitchy in the khaki shorts, and he began to work. Extravagant leaves appeared, veined and pendant; suggestions of muted sunlight filtered through from everywhere. Augie hummed as he painted; he didn't seem to know it. He smacked his lips as here and there he plopped down dollops
