painters who went insane and suffered so much nerve damage they painted with a brush tied to their dead hand. Toxic paints, absinthe, syphilis.
Weakness in your wrists and ankles, a sure sign of lead poisoning.
Everything is a self-portrait. Including your autopsied brain. Your urine.
Poisons, drugs, disease. Inspiration.
Everything is a diary.
Just for the record, Detective Stilton is scribbling all this down. Documenting her every slurred word.
Misty needs to shut up before they put Tabbi in state custody.
They check in with the woman at the front desk. They sign the day’s log and get plastic badges to clip on their coats. Misty’s wearing one of Peter’s favorite brooches, a big pinwheel of yellow rhinestones, the jewels all chipped and cloudy. The silver foil has flaked off the back of some stones so they don’t sparkle. They could be broken bottles off the street.
Misty clips the plastic security badge next to the brooch.
And the detective says, “That looks old.”
And Misty says, “My husband gave it to me when we were dating.”
They’re waiting for the elevator when Detective Stilton says, “I’ll need proof that your husband has been here for the past forty-eight hours.” He looks from the blinking elevator floor numbers to her and says, “And you might want to document your whereabouts for that same period.”
The elevator opens and they step inside. The doors close. Misty presses the button for the third floor.
Both of them looking at the doors from the inside, Stilton says, “I have a warrant to arrest him.” He pats the front of his sport coat, just over the inside pocket.
The elevator stops. The doors open. They step out.
Detective Stilton flips open his notebook and reads it, saying, “Do you know the people at 346 Western Bayshore Drive?”
Misty leads him down the hallway, saying, “Should I?”
“Your husband did some remodeling work for them last year,” he says.
The missing laundry room.
“And how about the people at 7856 Northern Pine Road?” he says.
The missing linen closet.
And Misty says yeah. Yes. She saw what Peter did there, but no, she didn’t know the people.
Detective Stilton flips his notebook shut and says, “Both houses burned last night. Five days ago, another house burned. Before that, another house your husband remodeled was destroyed.”
All of them arson, he says. Every house that Peter sealed his hate graffiti inside for someone to find, they’re all catching fire. Yesterday the police got a letter from some group claiming responsibility. The Ocean Alliance for Freedom. OAFF for short. They want a stop to all coastline development.
Following her down the long linoleum hallway, Stilton says, “The white supremacy movement and the Green Party have connections going way back.” He says, “It’s not a long stretch from protecting nature to preserving racial purity.”
They get to Peter’s room and Stilton says, “Unless your husband can prove he’s been here the night of every fire, I’m here to arrest him.” And he pats the warrant in his jacket pocket.
The curtain is pulled shut around Peter’s bed. Inside it, you can hear the rushing sound of the respirator pumping air. You can hear the soft blip of his heart monitor. You can hear the faint tinkle of something Mozart from his earphones.
Misty throws back the curtain around the bed.
An unveiling. An opening night.
And Misty says, “Be my guest. Ask him anything.”
In the middle of the bed, a skeleton’s curled on its side, papier-mached in waxy skin. Mummified in blue- white with dark lightning bolts of veins branching just under the surface. The knees are pulled up to the chest. The back arches so the head almost touches the withered buttocks. The feet point, sharp as whittled sticks. The toenails long and dark yellow. The hands knot under so tight the fingernails cut into bandages wrapped to protect each wrist. The thin knit blanket is pushed to the bottom of the mattress. Tubes of clear and yellow loop to and from the arms, the belly, the dark wilted penis, the skull. So little muscle is left that the knees and elbows, the bony feet and hands look huge.
The lips—shiny with petroleum jelly—pull back to show the black holes of missing teeth.
With the curtain open, there’s the smell of it all, the alcohol swabs, the urine, the bedsores and sweet skin cream. The smell of warm plastic. The hot smell of bleach and the powdery smell of latex gloves.
The diary of you.
The respirator’s ribbed blue plastic tube hooks into a hole halfway down the throat. Strips of white surgical tape hold the eyes shut. The head is shaved for the brain pressure monitor, but black scruffy hair bristles on the ribs and in the hammock of loose skin between the hipbones.
The same as Tabbi’s black hair.
Your black hair.
Holding the curtain back, Misty says, “As you can see, my husband doesn’t get out much.”
Everything you do shows your hand.
Detective Stilton swallows, hard. The levator labii superioris pulls his top lip up to his nostrils, and his face goes down into his notebook. His pen gets busy writing.
In the little cabinet next to the bed, Misty finds the alcohol swabs and rips the plastic cover off one. Coma patients are graded according to what’s called the Glasgow Coma Scale, she tells the detective. The scale runs from fully awake to unconscious and unresponsive. You give the patient verbal commands and see if he can respond by moving. Or by speaking. Or by blinking his eyes.
Detective Stilton says, “What can you tell me about Peter’s father?”
“Well,” Misty says, “he’s a drinking fountain.”
The detective gives her a look. Both eyebrows squeezed together. The corrugator muscles doing their job.
Grace Wilmot dropped a wad of money on a fancy brass drinking fountain in Harrow’s memory. It’s on Alder Street where it meets Division Avenue, near the hotel, Misty tells him. Harrow’s ashes, she scattered them in a ceremony out on Waytansea Point.
Detective Stilton is scribbling all this in his notebook.
With the alcohol swab, Misty wipes the skin clean around Peter’s nipple.
Misty lifts the earphones off his head and takes the face in both her hands, settling it in the pillow so he looks up at the ceiling. Misty unhooks the yellow pinwheel brooch from her coat.
The lowest score you can get on the Glasgow Coma Scale is a three. This means you never move, you never speak, you never blink. No matter what people say or do to you. You don’t react.
The brooch opens into a steel pin as long as her little finger, and Misty polishes the pin with the alcohol swab.
Detective Stilton’s pen stops, still on the page of his notebook, and he says, “Does your daughter ever visit?”
And Misty shakes her head.
“Does his mother?”
And Misty says, “My daughter spends most of her time with her grandmother.” Misty looks at the pin, polished silver and clean. “They go to tag sales,” Misty says. “My mother-in-law works for a service that finds pieces of china for people in discontinued patterns.”
Misty peels the tape off Peter’s eyes.
Off your eyes.
Misty holds his eyes open with her thumbs and leans close to his face, shouting, “Peter!”
Misty shouts, “How did your father really die?”
Her spit dotting his eyes, his pupils two different sizes, Misty shouts, “Are you part of some neo-Nazi ecoterrorist gang?”
Turning to look at Detective Stilton, Misty shouts, “Are you sneaking out every night to burn down
