Picture This

Susie sat back in the seat of the cab. Outside it was dawn, the hazy blue light she loved for how it transformed the mundane into the mysterious. The streets populated only by the occasional weary partygoer emerging from a darkened entrance of a club, the homeless drifting like zombies down the abandoned walkways, a street-cleaning van crawling along the tarmac. As the cab turned right into Houston she was sure she caught a glimpse of Maxine, standing on a corner by a yellow water hydrant spouting the rainbow of a broken water main. Her ghost, dressed in the same denim jacket she always wore, was gazing over at her, the long blonde hair dripping water on either side of her face, her eyes wide and pleading. Falling back into shadow, she disappeared.

*

Over in the apartment on Central Park South, Felix woke for a second and then went back to sleep.

*

The painter stood in the centre of the studio, dog-tired, his skin still blistered from the South American sun; the flight had landed at 4am and his nerves were jangled with jet lag. He dropped his rucksack, then walked over to the fridge. The milk was cheese, and there was some stale muesli. He pulled it out and started eating it from the package anyhow. The two paintings he’d been working on before he’d had to leave were still propped up against the wall; the oil paint was still slightly tacky to the touch.

Gabriel Bandini sat down at the Formica table with the muesli package balanced between his knees. Outside the morning light had started to creep over the neglected window box and the straggly weeds that had sprung up in the dusty soil. He’d come back spontaneously, without anyone’s knowledge, bored out of his mind by the relentless sun, finding the insistent chatter of foreign voices bewildering and exhausting. The bright colours that had burnt into his retinas had bleached both his imagination and his dreaming, and the artist had found himself yearning for the tones of New York: the blues, the purples, steel and glass, the clean, flat skies. He found himself craving conversation he could understand; the touchstone of knowing you were still human. He craved the embrace of the man he still considered his lover. He had grown tired of being the outsider.

By coming back he risked his life, he knew it, but, he rationalised in soft muttering thought, by staying away he risked his soul and that was the only thing he had left that belonged to him.

He looked back at the paintings, calculating what areas he might start working on later that day, falling into the wonderful seduction of routine. Normalcy, something he hadn’t experienced in months, began to flood his body like a drug. Just then something on the carpet caught his eye. It was the outline of a footprint; a footprint made by someone who’d had some yellow paint under his or her shoe-sole. Startled, he went over to examine it.

The footprint was large and broad and it definitely hadn’t been made by his own foot. Shocked, he swung around. Now he noticed the tiny changes in the apartment, evidence that someone had been in while he was away. The chair on the other side of the table wasn’t up against the wall like it usually was; a corner of the box he normally kept well hidden under the bed was now poking out from under the bedcover, and someone had left a tea towel by the sink. Grabbing his key, he began to make his way down to the janitor’s office on the ground floor.

*

‘What do you mean, an aunt? I don’t have an aunt. I have a mother, but she’s 70 and lives in Chicago. She hasn’t visited me in years.’

The janitor, dressed in cowboy boots and a short silk robe with the effigy of Bruce Lee embroidered on the back, stood in the doorway of his apartment, smoking nonchalantly.

‘Aunt! Aunt! She told me aunt! What could I do, Mr Bandini? Family is family in my culture.’

‘But I gave you strict instructions! No one was to come into my space while I was away.’

‘It’s not your space. Is landlord’s space and he very unhappy. He want you out.’

‘That’s between me and him. Jesus, Chung, I gave you extra money and everything so this wouldn’t happen.’

‘Why big deal? Just woman, just your aunt, although I did think it funny she black—’

‘Black! She was black and she told you she was my aunt! Chung, do I look mixed-race?’

The janitor peered at the painter critically, then blew smoke in his face. ‘I dunno, Mr Bandini. All Westerners look same to me.’

‘Okay, I give up. So did this woman, this intruder who was allowed into my property illegally, say what she wanted?’

‘No. Maybe money? Everybody else want money from you, why not her?’ the janitor concluded philosophically.

‘And what did she look like?’

‘Big. Like bear, like she could take you out with one swipe. She walked bad with stick. Maybe 60 years old. But her eyes… her eyes like lasers, she see through lies. You be careful. She gonna get you, your aunt,’ Chung concluded with dramatic satisfaction.

*

Back in the apartment Gabriel locked the door behind him and, for good measure, pulled the blinds down, then reached for his mobile phone.

*

Felix was in the middle of a meeting when his mobile phone rang. He glanced at the incoming number and called the meeting to a premature close. After the three junior directors had left the office, he returned the call.

‘I told you not to ring me on this number.’

‘I wouldn’t, but this is an emergency.’

Gabriel’s voice sounded close. Felix thought he could detect the roar of a city in the background.