Misty's hippie mom, she used to say it's the American dream to be so rich you can escape from everyone. Look at Howard Hughes in his penthouse. William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon. Look at Biltmore. All those lush country homes where rich folks exile themselves. Those homemade Edens where we retreat. When that breaks down, and it always does, the dreamer returns to the world.
“Scratch any fortune,” Misty's mom used to say, “and you'll find blood only a generation or two back.” Saying this was supposed to make their trailer lifestyle better.
Child labor in mines or mills, she'd say. Slavery. Drugs. Stock swindles. Wasting nature with clear-cuts, pollution, harvesting to extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every fortune comes out of something unpleasant.
Despite her mom, Misty thought her whole future was ahead of her.
At the coma center, Misty parks for a minute, looking up at the third row of windows. Peter's window.
Your window.
These days, Misty's clutching the edge of everything she walks past, doorframes, countertops, tables, chair backs. To steady herself. Misty can't carry her head more than halfway off her chest. Anytime she leaves her room, she has to wear sunglasses because the light hurts so much. Her clothes hang loose, billowing as if there's nothing inside. Her hair . . . there's more of it in the brush than her scalp. Any of her belts can wrap twice around her new waist.
Spanish soap opera skinny.
Her eyes shrunken and bloodshot in the rearview mirror, Misty could be Paganini's dead body.
Before she gets out of the car, Misty takes another green algae pill, and her headache spikes when she swallows it with a can of beer.
Just inside the glass lobby doors, Detective Stilton waits, watching her cross the parking lot. Her hand clutching every car for balance.
While Misty climbs the front steps, one hand grips the rail and pulls her forward.
Detective Stilton holds the door open for her, saying, “You don't look so hot.”
It's the headache, Misty tells him. It could be her paints. Cadmium red. Titanium white. Some oil paints are loaded with lead or copper or iron oxide. It doesn't help that most artists will twist the brush in their mouth to make a finer point. In art school, they're always warning you about Vincent van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. All those 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-mâchéd 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
