40
Arty Magnus did not often pull rank on his subordinates. It made for bad morale around the newsroom, and besides it was extremely rare for there to be a story that the editor had the faintest interest in personally covering.
But when Joe Mulvane called late on Tuesday to say that Nina Silver had asked his advice about who her husband should speak to at the paper, Magnus decided to assign the interview to himself. Famous painter returns from dead to real or imagined attempts on his life. This was a cut above the promotional pap and small-town politics usually covered by the Sentinel; this might be of interest more than a few mile markers up the road. Freddy McClintock, the eager and deficient young reporter, would briefly sulk at his boss's usurpation, but he'd get over it; young reporters always did.
The interview was scheduled for three on Wednesday afternoon.
In preparation, Reuben had taken down most of the paintings that had hung in the Silvers' living room since the eve of Augie's memorial. The painter no longer wanted them there. If he was bothering to give interviews, he didn't want to talk about the past but the future-the new phase of his work that was being exuberantly launched with the huge odd portrait of Fred.
Not quite finished, the flamboyant canvas had been moved near the sofa, it leaned back on its spattered easel and dominated the house. There was a lot of birdness in it, Augie thought, but he allowed himself to feel there was more in it as well. God knows how, he had managed to put some disturbing knowledge into the parrot's red eyes, some wisdom about the lush and sensual death grip that was the dark side of the seduction of the tropics. Then again, it was hardly a tragic painting. In fact, minus the solemnity that seized people when they thought they were beholding Art, it was more or less hilarious: a giant bird the color of some sickening candy, out of all proportion to a berserk forest full of fake fruits and sham creatures…
'Nina, what the hell am I supposed to say about this thing?'
She patted his arm as he leaned back on the couch. 'You'll think of something clever, something quotable,' she said. It was a quarter till three. Ceiling fans were giving an illusion of freshness to the stultifying air. Reuben was putting up coffee. Nina looked with pleasure at the oleanders in their vases. She was glad people were coming to the house. It was nice to have some distraction, to be doing something, anything, besides worrying about her husband dying.
Punctually at three, a pink taxi pulled up in front of the Silvers' home and Peter Brandenburg got out. Fussily handsome and almost as tan as a local, he was wearing an off-white linen suit over a shirt of cotton oxford; he carried a notebook bound in cordovan leather, along with a German tape recorder of space-age design. He paid the driver, straightened the collar of his jacket, and was approaching the porch steps just as Arty Magnus pulled up on his bicycle. It was brutally hot and Magnus was wearing shorts and sandals. In his bike basket was a cardboard- covered spiral notebook, the kind with the wire that always catches things. 'Hi,' he said. He held out a hand as he deployed his kick-stand.
Nina had apparently been right: Brandenburg seemed miffed at having to share his interview time and appeared to loathe his small-town colleague on sight. He shook hands briefly and limply. 'Peter Brandenburg,' he said. ' Manhattan magazine.'
This last was without doubt an act of aggression, meant to establish his dominion over the other man. Magnus, a graduate of Columbia Journalism, did not roll over.
'Arty Magnus. Key West Sentinel.'
They went together to the front door. Reuben ushered them through to the living room, where they stood awkwardly for a moment, dwarfed by the painted parrot and uncertain who should speak. Magnus introduced himself, shook hands with Augie and with Nina, and Brandenburg, in another gambit to assert his preeminence, made it clear that they had met before. 'You've lost weight,' the critic said to the painter.
Augie ran a hand over his sunken chest and wizened tummy. 'I've put a fair bit back on,' he said. 'But sit down, sit down. Coffee? Wine? What would you like?'
'Nothing for me,' said Brandenburg. He picked a solo chair, took a gold pen from an inside jacket pocket, and started setting up his tape recorder.
'Coffee'd be great,' said Magnus. He plopped down on the edge of a love seat and shook a stub of pencil out of the spiral binding of his notebook; the metal flange that held the eraser had been bitten flat.
There was a moment's small talk, then Peter Brandenburg crossed his legs, straightened his linen trousers, cleared his throat, and gestured noncommittally toward the looming canvas. 'Why don't we begin,' he said, 'with your decision to start painting again. How did that come about?'
Augie ran a hand over the crests and troughs of his wavy white hair. 'Well, it happened when I was stranded down in Cuba-'
'You were shipwrecked, weren't you?' put in Arty Magnus. 'Marooned?'
'Yes,' said Augie. 'Right. I guess I really should begin with that. Back in January…'
The New York critic briefly shut his eyes, shifted impatiently in his chair. He was there to talk about art, not shipwrecks. He knew as much of the shipwreck tale as he needed and he had a tight deadline to meet. Besides, he'd already decided what the gist of his story would be; all he needed was some quotes to flesh it out.
'… so by the time I came around,' Augie was concluding, 'I'd decided I'd been a perverse and arrogant ass to give up painting. I felt that I was shirking in some way. Not a way that mattered to anybody else-'
'Apparently it does matter to someone else,' the local newspaperman interrupted. 'Isn't it true that there've been threats against your life?'
Nina was sitting next to Augie on the couch. They took a moment to consult each other's eyes. They hadn't been able to decide in advance how public they would go, what, if anything, they'd refuse to divulge.
'Something about a poisoned bird?' pressed Arty Magnus. 'About an attempted hit-and-run?'
Peter Brandenburg dropped all pretense of hiding his restlessness. He squirmed, his face grew petulant and sour. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but I thought we were here to talk about your work, not indulge in sordid gossip.'
The tone was meant to offend, but the sharpness of it was blunted by the humid air, heavy as wet wool, and Augie answered not with umbrage but with a languid irony. 'It would be nice to have the luxury to separate the two.'
There was an uneasy silence. Arty Magnus sipped coffee, Peter Brandenburg watched his tape recorder futilely turn. Nina tried not to sound like she was scolding. 'Peter, if Augie's in danger, that's more important than any-'
'Of course, of course,' said Brandenburg. He tried to sound conciliatory and almost managed. 'But in the meantime-'
'In the meantime you've got your story to do,' said Augie mildly. 'I understand. So let me say this about the work. I live in the tropics. Almost the tropics, if you want to be technical. And fact one about the tropics is that they are unbelievably fruitful. Everything grows here. Everything overgrows here. And not all of it is beautiful. Or gentle. Not by a long shot. You've got ugly choking vines, rubbery things with varicose veins. You've got soupy marshes that stink and reflect a putrid glare. You've got biting spiders, carnivorous plants, fish with spike teeth, shrubs with barbed thorns. And the lesson that goes with that? It doesn't so much matter if something is pretty, if it's benign; it matters that it's there, that it hangs on, that it produces-'
'So you're saying,' Brandenburg coaxed, 'you want to be as prolific as the tropics?'
Augie cocked his head and let that settle in his ear. 'That's impossible,' he said. 'But yeah, it'd be a worthy thing to shoot for. As prolific and as accepting.'
For the first time in the interview, Brandenburg wrote something in his leather notebook. But when he looked down to do so, Arty Magnus recaptured the initiative. He gestured toward the unfinished, unframed painting on its vast untidy easel. 'This picture,' he said, 'this bird here. This the bird that ate the poison?'
Brandenburg stiffened. He'd finally worked the conversation around to art, and now it was being dragged down again to gutter level. He slapped his pen against his notes and lectured: 'It's obviously a universal-'
'No,' said Augie, 'it's not a universal. As a matter of fact, it's Fred.'
Stung at being contradicted, the critic fell instantly into a sulk. Nina saw the narrowed eyes, the tightened lips, and flashed a look of mute advice to her husband.
Augie backpedaled. 'It's both, of course,' he said. 'I mean, it started as Fred, but then… Look, if you only paint what you already know, you're in a rut. Why bother? You paint to find out what you know. You see what I'm
