Paint It Black Read online

  Macy to Mission, the foot of the concrete mountain that was LA County General. The coroner’s office wasn’t up at the hospital, it was down at the bottom, with the trucks and light industrial, a boxy two-story government building, the lettering painted right on the side of the building, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CORONER, MEDICAL EXAMINER, FORENSIC LABORATORIES, PUBLIC SERVICES.

  Pen left the Impala parked sideways across two spaces and they dashed into the foyer, all brown marble and beige linoleum and patched acoustic ceiling, like the lobby in a building full of cheap dentists. At the counter, a heavy black woman looked them up and down, Pen’s purple hair and black lipstick, Josie’s punked-out bleach job, her yellow fake fur. Like they were a sideshow act.

  “I got a call,” Josie said.

  The woman just stared.

  “From some Inspectorman —” Pen said.

  “Brooks —” Josie said.

  “Across the breezeway.” The woman pointed to the twin building out the smudged glass doors. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  They waited on cloth chairs in a smaller lobby, Josie’s hands crammed deep into the pockets of her coat, her whole being reduced to a pinpoint of fear, like the nucleus of an atom about to be split and blow up the world. She had no mind at all, just the tremor in her right foot that would not stop.

  “You’re okay,” Pen said, stroking her hair, her neck. “You’re breathing, you’re okay. What’s taking this fucking creep so long anyway?” She got up, shook the locked knob, kicked the metal door with her Doc Marten, sat back down next to Josie.

  “Light me a ciggie,” Josie said, her hands in tight balls in her pockets. She could feel every hair follicle in her scalp.

  Pen dug around in Josie’s schoolbag purse, found her cigarettes, Gauloises Bleues, lit her one, put it between her lips. Josie forced smoke into her lungs, the cigarette helping her remember how to breathe. She removed a hand from her pocket to take it on exhaling. Her mind was a fist, no thought would enter, except no no no. It was the longest five minutes in history.

  “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to get through,” Pen said, lighting one of her own Camel straights, and their smoke filled the small waiting room. Outside the winter sky turned to rose. If I finish this cigarette before the guy comes, it won’t be Michael.

  “I hate places like this,” Pen said. “I’d like to blow this place up.”

  They watched the heavy door into the hall, a little caged window. Before she was even halfway done with her cigarette, a black man in a blue blazer opened the door and stepped into the lobby. “Miss Tyrell?”

  Josie stood up.

  “Can you come with me? Both of you.”

  They walked down the hall, the fluorescent light bathing them in its weird green glow. Inspector Brooks’s office was windowless, small, vomiting books, papers, folders, the walls covered with charts and a list on a blackboard, initials and magnets. They sat in two metal chairs, and he took a seat at his desk. “Are you all right, Miss Tyrell?” he asked.

  “No, she’s not the fuck all right,” Pen said. “Can’t you see she’s practically puking? Can we get through this already?”

  Josie lifted a shaking hand to her lips, toked on her cigarette. If he didn’t like her smoking, he didn’t say anything.

  “When was the last time you saw your boyfriend, Miss Tyrell?”

  She saw the standing ashtray, flicked ash into it, her upper lip stiff and bowed and frozen in its downturned U. “Five days ago. Wednesday.”

  “And when did you realize he was missing?”

  Josie just stared at the lit tip of her cigarette. How long was he missing? She hadn’t known he was missing at all. She had just let him go. “I didn’t. I still don’t.”

  The man pursed his full lips together and pulled out some white cardboard. “I’m going to have you look at some photographs,” Inspector Brooks said. “I want to warn you, they’re pretty disturbing. But it’s important to know, for everyone.”

  White squares in his hands, the backs of two photographs, as he went on talking, talking, explaining about what she would see, the bullet entered the mouth and exited the back of the head, effect of the gunshot wound . . . She nodded, not listening. She wanted to rip those pictures out of his hands. Finally he laid them in front of her on the metal desk.

  A face. Black eyes, like they’d been in a terrible fight. Swollen closed, though they weren’t completely closed, God, they should have closed the eyes. Whoever’s eyes they were. Not his. It couldn’t be. She could only see a little of the hair, there was a sheet all around the head, and those black eyes, a slight rim of blood around the nostrils, the mouth, no, she didn’t recognize him, it wasn’t Michael, and yet, how could she be sure? How could she know? He was alive the last time she saw him. “I can’t tell. I just don’t know,” she whispered.

  The inspector gathered his Polaroids and put them aside with a folder, John Doe. “Does he have living parents?” Inspector Brooks asked.

  “His father’s Calvin Faraday, the writer. He lives in New York.” Inspector Brooks wrote it on a legal pad, with the case number at the top, Michael’s name and notes from their phone call. “His mother is Meredith Loewy.” She spelled it for him. “She’s in South America. On tour.”

  “Well, first let’s see if it’s him.” He dialed his pea green phone. “Yes, we’re ready,” he said into the receiver, and stood up. Josie crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and they stood and walked back across the breezeway. She clung to Pen, using her like a Seeing Eye dog. All she could see was the image from the Polaroid, the black eyes, she hadn’t even thought to look for the little scar on his upper lip. This wasn’t real. Michael was alive. He was up at his mother’s house, painting in the room off his childhood bedroom. She pictured him painting there in all the detail she could muster. The oaks outside the windows. The brightness of the winter sun. How they would laugh about this later. Imagine, for a split second I thought you were dead. If only she could see it clearly enough, it would be true.

  Pen never let go of her hand, let her crush the hell out of it. She could smell the leather of Pen’s jacket.

  “Whatever this is, we’ll get you the fuck through it,” Pen said. “You hear me?”

  Inspector Brooks came across from the other building, and let them through a doorway in the brown marble. They walked down a dirty hall, pinkish beige, the doors all had black kickmarks at the bottom. They came to an elevator, Inspector Brooks held it for them, got in and turned a key in the operating panel, the door shut and the elevator descended. Josie stared down at the streaky linoleum. Please God. Let this not be happening.

  The doors opened, and right there, against the gray wall, against a busted water fountain, on a gurney, lay a human form under a white sheet. She held Pen’s arm, or was Pen holding hers, and the smell was different from anything she had ever smelled before, dirty, like old meat, and Inspector Brooks was saying, “He’s not going to look like they do in the funeral home, they’ve cleaned him up some but he’s going to look like the photos, all right? I’m going to lower the sheet now.”

  He folded back the top of the sheet. The body lay wrapped in another one, a knot like a rose at the chest, the arms folded in, the head covered, there was blood on the sheet, don’t look at that, don’t look, only the face. The bruised eyes, bruised mouth, lips dark as if he’d been drinking ink, the dark stubble, the handsome eyebrows, the eyelashes, his eyes were not closed. She slipped hard to her knees. The Inspector and Pen caught her but not in time. “His eyes . . .” The most diabolical thing she had ever seen. She threw up, on her coat, on her knees, on the floor. A project I’ve been thinking about. Some time to concentrate.

  They picked her up and helped her into a chair. She sat with her head between her knees. Pen crouched next to her, holding her, vomit all over. His body. She was shaking, she couldn’t stop. His body, goddamn him! HIS BODY! Inspector Brooks was covering him again, she got up and yanked down the sheet and laid her fa
ce against his sweet horrible one, then recoiled. It was hard, cold. A thing. He’d turned himself into a thing. A goddamn thing. “MICHAEL, YOU FUCK, YOU STUPID GODDAMN FUCK!” she was screaming into his face, but it didn’t change. He didn’t wake up. He just lay there with his black eyes and the whites showing, and Inspector Brooks covered him up, his hand dark and alive against the sheet.

  “Let’s go.” Pen threw her arm around Josie’s shoulder. Brooks held open the elevator, and a brawny man with a beard brought a mop, and then they were going up again. Through the pink hall.

  He indicated the bench in the brown lobby. “Please.” And then they were on it, she just sat next to Pen, shaking, her teeth chattering, trying to breathe. “Is there anything you’d like to know, Miss Tyrell?”

  How could she make this not be happening? How could she turn this movie off?

  “What happens now?” Pen said.

  “We’ll be notifying the parents, they’ll make the arrangements, I’m sure they’ll let Miss Tyrell know what they’ve decided.”

  Pen snorted. “Oh yeah, sure, they’ll be right on the phone. Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’ll call then, when I know anything, all right?” he said, crouching, putting his living hand on Josie’s. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to punch his fucking face in. She hated him for being warm when Michael was hard as wood, wrapped in a sheet. “Anything I find out, I’ll call you, Miss Tyrell, I promise. I’m sure it won’t be long.”

  What won’t be long? What was he talking about?

  “Where’d you find him?” Pen asked.

  “In a motel. Out in Twentynine Palms. Believe me when I say how sorry I am you have to go through this, Miss Tyrell.”

  Michael, in a motel in Twentynine Palms, a gun in his hands. Not at Meredith’s, painting in an explosion of new creation. Not over on Sunset, digging through the record bins, or at Launderland separating the darks and lights. Not at the Chinese market, looking at the fish with their still-bright eyes. Not at the Vista watching an old movie. Not sketching down at Echo Park. He was in a motel room in Twentynine Palms, putting a bullet in his brain.

  “Let’s go home,” Pen said.

  He didn’t even drive, how could he have gotten out to Twentynine Palms? None of it made any sense. It didn’t make sense. Where did he get a gun? She didn’t want to go home. Where could home be now, with Michael here in the basement, tied into a white sheet that was seeping blood? There was no home, only that body, the lips like black leather, dark smudge of beard shading his jaw, dark circles around his eyes against the drained yellow wax of his skin. Though somewhere in Twentynine Palms was a motel room splattered in the most precious scarlet. Suddenly, she wanted to go there, to be the one to clean it. Unthinkable that a stranger, some poor woman with a bucket, would look at his blood and think, Christ, that’s never coming out. Having no idea this had been Michael Faraday, no idea just what had died in that stinking motel room, bleeding to death onto the moldy shag.

  She drew her knees up inside her coat and lay on the bench, shaking, she couldn’t stop. Her head on her red schoolbag purse, she fought the urge to vomit again. She hid her face in the furry collar of her coat. Registered as Oscar Wilde. She wanted to wake up like Dorothy and see Michael’s face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. Why, you just hit your head. But it was no dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back.

  2

  Pool

  She awoke on the blue couch, in a shadow-filled room lit by a single lamp, wrapped in a granny-square afghan. At the other end of the long couch, Pen lay passed out, snoring drily. Josie blinked, trying to remember, why was she sleeping in the living room? And what was Pen doing here? She sat up on one elbow. The lights from the stereo gleamed, and the lamp reflected harshly in the darkness of the uncurtained windows. Iggy was playing on KROQ. Iggy wanted to be her dog. Bow wow wow. She rubbed her face, rubbery, cold, and reached for a ciggie. As she lit it with her father’s Ronson, it hit her, real as rain. Pen, sleeping on the end of the couch, the dials, the ashtray, the voddy.

  No, that was wrong. He was at his mother’s. A bad dream. He was up at Meredith’s, painting, he was coming home soon, he said he would be. He would walk right through that door. And she’d tell him, They thought you were dead . . .

  But he wasn’t coming. He wasn’t up at his mother’s. He’d gone to Twentynine Palms and shot himself in the head.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her forearm across them. In her head, a line repeated. Never and never . . . A line from some poem. Never and never in the something something . . . What was that? Michael would know. Michael would know, but he was dead.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  He was just here. He was coming back. But he wasn’t. You asshole. You asshole! You stupid goddamn fuck!

  The clock on the piano read 3:10. The world had changed but she couldn’t feel it. He was dead but she just couldn’t get it. After a couple of Percocets, she should have been out like roadkill, like Pen, but she was awake in the middle of the night and Michael was never coming through that door again.

  She lay on the couch, smoking her Gauloise, the cigarettes he smoked. The smell of Paris. They were going to go to Paris . . . But no, they weren’t. You goddamn stupid motherfucker. What did he think he was doing? What was on his fucking mind? Here, here’s my dark world. You carry it for a change. I’m out.

  She sat up, rubbed her face, gazed out the uncurtained windows, lights glowing in the hills. Cars trickled by on the 5 and the 2. Iggy wanted to be her dog, and Michael was out there lying on a rack cold as meat. She tried not to think about the way his face looked, but her mind kept looping back around to it, like a piece of paper he once showed her that looped around to where you began. What the hell, Michael? What did you think you were doing?

  Against the wall, his piano waited, keyboard open, for him to come and play it. She could see him sitting right there, playing his Twenties blues, Big Bill Broonzy, Lucille Bogan . . . Tricks ain’t walkin’, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more. Showing off that rolling blues style. And the way they danced. Sun filtering through the eucalyptus. Naked except for her orange kimono. His hard-on knocking against her. And I’ve got to make my livin’, don’t care where I go . . .

  Her lungs closed around the air hard, like fingers slammed in a car door. Goddamn you, Michael, goddamn you to hell. She reached for the Stoli, unscrewed the cap and took a great swallow, set the bottle on the floor so she could reach it easily. Pen was snoring with her mouth open. Josie could see her fillings. Say, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

  He’d thrown Montmartre away, Blaise and little Jeanne, everything, just like that. As if his life was a drawing that didn’t turn out right. But you can’t start again, Michael. There was only that one.

  Suddenly she thought, what if he’d been murdered? What if it wasn’t what it seemed?

  But she knew it wasn’t murder. Knew the second she saw him. He just threw her away. Everything they had been, could have been. For she is my love, and other women are but big bodies of flame. Who in the world would have thought of her like that? When was the last time someone thought, I know what Josie will like. A book. Yeah! A poem, by a dead Frenchman. Who else in the history of the world? When most people looked at Josie Tyrell, they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. But Michael saw past the mouth and the eyes, the architecture of the body, her fleshly masquerade. Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body’s shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self. But what good was it if he was just going to leave her behind?

  She took another drink from the Stoli, let it burn all the way down. She wanted it to burn more, she wished it was hot wax, boiling oil, gasoline, she could drink it down, let it burn out her guts, then it would feel real. He’d always seen her. The only one. With those eyes the color of aquari
um glass seen sideways. That day she’d lingered behind in the Otis drawing studio. The students filtering out, but she’d waited, lighting a cigarette, so he could catch up with her, the boy in the tweed jacket with the glass green eyes. He’d brought her a Danish from Victor Benes. Of all things. Not the usual boyish gifts, a hemp necklace, a seedy joint, a ticket to a free concert. A fancy cheese Danish stuffed with white raisins. Even then, sensing her hunger.

  They’d walked out onto the street together, where a silver-gray Jaguar waited across the street, a dark-haired woman at the wheel. A rich lover, she’d assumed. Though it was mostly gay boys who had them. She’d put on her dark glasses, so he wouldn’t see how intimidated she felt. And he’d hung back, embarrassed, waiting for her to leave first, so she wouldn’t see him get into that car.

  Josie gazed at the painting hanging opposite the couch, the one he called Civilization and Its Discontents. Blind women climbed the white stairs through a ruined city in moonlight, carrying fruit and lizards in their arms, books and babies and the head of Sigmund Freud. And their faces all were Meredith’s. Josie leaned over and dug through Pen’s purse to see if she had any more Percocets, but they’d done the last of them.

  On the footlocker next to Pen’s bag lay the bowl of mail. Michael Faraday, Michael Faraday, Mr. Michael Faradaz. Junk mail, an Art News. A package from France, special gum erasers, and a kind of pastels he liked that you could only get in a certain shop in Paris. When they’d sent them, he was alive. Why’d you have to buy these fucking erasers if you were just going to kill yourself, Michael? Another girl would open it, but not Josie. She never went through his things. It was part of the way she loved him. She let him have his secrets.

  You stupid fuck. You ignorant fucking twat.

  She let her eyes wander the bowed bookcases, stuffed with paperbacks white with wear, old books of pebbly leather, crumbly calfskin embossed in gold. Books from his mother’s house, books that had followed him home like stray dogs. Michael couldn’t pass a hippie with three books on a blanket without rescuing one. Crime and Punishment for twenty-five cents? Can you believe that? And on the top shelf, the line of black journals, which she had never read.