This Crumbling Pageant Read online

  “I’m sorry, honey... Just one second...” Then she cried out, “Sweetie! I got an email from one of the museums I sent my résumé to! They want me to make an appointment for an interview.”

  “That’s awesome! Which one?”

  “Wait—let me read the whole thing. Oh God, it’s so formal! The language is so flowery!”

  Scott let her read to herself for a while. He stepped out onto the street again, but then had to skip back out of the way of a small moving van trying to park in front of the building. All around the neighborhood people stood in pairs and trios talking to one another. Everyone looked so quietly happy, and old. Scott felt happy, too. For his wife.

  Then he felt something ominous.

  “Is this that museum Luca San Michele was talking about?” he asked.

  “No, this is another one. The Morandi Museum. I went there before. It’s small—just a few rooms, but it’s a beautiful collection. Oh man,” she said yearningly, “I can’t even imagine working there.”

  “Did you ask Luca about the—”

  He went silent. During the phone call, Scott had been keeping half an eye on the moving van. Two men had jumped out of the front with a b-bang of the doors, and were rather painstakingly extracting from the cargo area an old and cumbersome wardrobe, when a voice called out from on high:

  “Scoozi! Scoozi! Hey, you two! Watch how you’re taking it out of the truck. You’re gonna break the glass! Sheesh!”

  Scott hung up the phone.

  It was the woman. New Jersey. Her disembodied voice had come from the very building whose portico he was lurking under.

  The movers began carrying the wardrobe up the steps to the massive front door. Scott pretended to talk into his phone.

  “Si, si, si,” he said.

  The men were buzzed in and the door rumbled shut behind them. Scott pocketed the phone and strode over to the buzzers and went down the list of names. He was hoping to spot an American-sounding one. They were all Italian-sounding. Only one name—J. Brillo—stood out, and that was because he knew there was no “j” in the Italian alphabet (he had learned that much of the language on the plane ride over).

  He stood there woolgathering for several minutes when the door creaked open and a little granny in a black shawl appeared. Scott stood at attention and held the door for her. She smiled at him appreciatively. He let her pass, no hurry, then stepped inside.

  A lofty corridor rolled ahead of him. Directly on the right was a marble stairwell. Scott followed the noises echoing down, climbing the melted-looking steps all the way up to the fourth floor. He had no idea what he was going to say. He was going to wing it.

  The owner of the painting by John Frederick Kensett was bossing around a plumber, a housekeeper, and a pair of winded deliverymen when Scott came knocking on her open door.

  She greeted him with a snide “Yeah?”

  “Hi!” he said, crossing the Rubicon. “Sorry to bother you, but I heard English, and—”

  Just then a great, lively rumpus erupted inside the apartment. One of the movers, while backing across the room, had started losing his grip on the wardrobe, and was shouting at the second mover to stop pushing, and the second mover, who was having issues of his own negotiating his steps through the cramped apartment, was defending himself staunchly and arguing instead for the first mover to keep moving.

  “Don’t just stand there,” the woman said to Scott. “Give ‘em a hand!”

  He rushed in to assist, and together the three men eased the heavy old piece down. The movers straightened their backs and mopped their brows and wandered off to collect their thoughts. The pretty housekeeper was fluttering in and out, spiriting away countless little knickknacks and anything else likely to get demolished in the wardrobe’s path. The plumber disappeared down a hall with his tools. Two birds were squawking out of all proportion in a cage by the front door. The mistress of the house had gone down the hall, squawking at the plumber. Scott stayed where he was and twiddled his thumbs. On the outside, he looked well behaved. On the inside, he was ransacking the room.

  It was a very large, open central room with yellow-and-red wall plasters, a fireplace, three brooding windows along one wall, and a timber-beamed ceiling hung with plants twelve feet from the terracotta floor. The place looked, predictably, like a bric-a-brac market. Find the hidden object. His eyes danced over the walls. There was so much old-timey stuff hanging on them it was worse than a Friday’s restaurant. The whole room, in fact, was such a jumble Scott was afraid he would never find the painting, or the exit.

  The woman returned.

  “Gemma,” she said to the housekeeper, “tell that guy in there he better clean up after himself when he’s finished. He’s faking he doesn’t understand me. He’s already got water all over the bathroom.” She croaked in astonishment, “He’s such a slob!”

  The maid hurried off, and the woman looked up at Scott and snarled her lip. “Can you believe these people?”

  Scott gave a laugh that had no voice in it.

  Even with her platform shoes she only came up to his sternum. Despite her potbellied body, she had a scrawny face. Her hair was brittle, scanty, witch’s hair.

  “I’m Scott, by the way.”

  He held out his hand. She consented to take it.

  “Janet.”

  “So anyway,” Scott started over, “like I was saying—”

  “What do you two think you’re doing?” the woman called out. She stormed up to the movers. “We’re not done yet! Stop playing around with my birds. You’re supposed to move it to the bedroom. The bedroom, the bedroom!” She jabbed the air behind her with a stiff little finger. Then she appealed to Scott. “Would you please?”

  He went to work. He was already starting to lift up the far end of the wardrobe, when one of the movers—a stock Italian character with a bushy head of hair and a push-broom mustache—came over and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “Aspett’,” he said.

  He conferred with his friend. Then, on the count of “tre,” they all three hoisted the wardrobe up and began lugging it down the hall. Taking up the rear was the woman named Janet, acting as foreman.

  “Watch the lights… Watch it... You’re gonna go into that room at the end, on the left. Careful you don’t let those doors open. Gemma! Tell that plumber to stay outta the way. Alright now, be careful. You need to turn it through that door. Try not to scuff anything up. No, no, no, you’re doing it wrong!”

  They laid the wardrobe down on its side outside the master bedroom and caught their breaths. It was with some anticipation that Scott had been backing blindly toward the room. Now that he was free, he looked inside from the threshold, and there—as if a sunbeam showed the place—he greeted once more that pretty picture, that lovely shoreline view by Kensett, hanging over a roll-top desk in the corner.

  Janet bulldozed through him. “It’s gonna go where that desk is,” she said to the deliverymen panting after her. “The desk you can move to the spare bedroom later.”

  They moved the roll-top desk aside, and Janet reached up and grabbed the painting with both hands. “Here,” she said to Scott. “You hold this.”

  The movers went back to the wardrobe and, after getting it through the doorway, carried it to the corner. Scott moved out of the way as they raised it up and began positioning it according to the owner’s specifications. He hadn’t stopped looking at the painting in his hands. But soon he became conscious of the housekeeper standing next to him, looking down at the picture, too.

  She glanced up at him shyly. “Bella,” she said.

  Janet interrupted them. “Alright, I’ll find a place for that. I said you can give it back now. Let go!” she wailed at Scott, wrenching the painting free. “Gawd!”

  Now the plumber came strutting out of the master bathroom, showing off a clot of black hair in his rubber-gloved hand.

  “Ack!” Janet shrieked. “Get it away from me! What are you crazy?”


  Then they all heard a sharp crack.

  Not the bushy-headed mover, but the other one, a beefier one—he had been leaning against the wardrobe, and the oak wood had split. The damage was conspicuous: a deep crevice at the top of the central door.

  The phone started ringing. No one stirred. Janet was staring the hapless deliveryman dead in the eyes.

  “Tell them I’m not paying for it anymore,” she said to Gemma. Then she left the room, taking the Kensett with her.

  &

  The plumber had left, the deliverymen had departed in disgrace, while Scott lingered by the door. He was watching a cage fight between two cockatoos. He was thinking he should intervene, but the spatter marks of dried blood on the wall behind the cage indicated this was their normal behavior. Somewhere in the dense apartment the picture had vanished.

  Janet stood near him, still on the phone. She was on the line with somebody named Richard. He sounded like he might be her lawyer, but Scott couldn’t be sure, because the talk alternated between business-talk and talk of what an idiot Richard was for not picking up some food she had made and which had therefore gone to waste.

  She hung up and glared at Scott. “Unbelievable! You men are so stupid!”

  “You definitely have your hands full,” he said. He awaited the inevitable “Now what the frick do you want?” Instead, she touched his arm with two manicured fingers.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said.

  She had a dainty hand. Scott didn’t fail to notice the gesture. In his toastiest voice, he told her it was his pleasure. Then an idea presented itself to him. He began to sniff audibly.

  “Mm, something smells good,” he said.

  Janet folded her arms and treated him to a frisky smile. “I was frying eggplant all morning.”

  “Oh, man!” Scott was practically sobbing. “Eggplant!”

  “You like eggplant?” she asked coyly.

  “Oh, I love it!” he sang. She’s not even curious what I’m doing here, he thought.

  “Well, I make it the best,” she stated.

  “Really?” he gasped.

  “Really.”

  “Oh, boy, I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had some really good fried eggplant!”

  There was a brief lull in this stimulating discussion.

  “Oh alright!” Janet broke out. “I guess you could come over for dinner tonight.” She pursed her lips in thought. “It wasn’t your fault what happened.”

  Scott thanked her for seeing it that way, and said he would love to come over for dinner that night. What a trusting soul this lady is, he thought. What an easy mark!

  “Six o’ clock,” she told him, going over to the door.

  He stepped out into the hall and turned to offer one last effusive thanks.

  She curled her lip. “Welcome to the building,” she said, and closed the door.

  7

  Holly wanted this job at the Morandi Museum so bad. Except for a five-minute break to sweep and mop the floor, she had spent the entire afternoon studying up on the celebrated still-life painter, Bologna’s favorite son, whose cool-hued representations of humdrum objects—bottles, jugs, candlesticks—were like an antidote after viewing the dizzying achievements of the Old Masters.

  She went over again and again what she was going to say on the phone the next morning. Then she prepared for the possibility that the phone call to make an appointment for an interview might turn into the interview itself. She composed some thoughts, which she shaped into phrases, which she then proofed diligently in her head for mistakes. Pacing the length of her closet, she deliberated over what to wear, in case they wanted her to come in right away. The name in the email had been a woman’s, and already Holly was scaring herself with images of a cold and tasteful bitch whose laser eye would scan the interviewee’s outfit and unfailingly detect the split seam, the disappointing color choice, the wrong everything.

  That evening, while Scott was showering, getting ready for his date with Janet, Holly heard him make a horrible sound. She poked her head into the bathroom. “Scott? Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” he said from behind the curtain. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  “I heard you say something. Did we lose hot water again?”

  “Oh.” He gave a sheepish laugh. “No, I was just thinking of something embarrassing.”

  Lately, Scott’s mind had been using the time in the shower as an excellent opportunity to pore over his every little disgrace. This country hatched thousands of them for him. He could be lathering himself up, deep in meditation one moment, only to break his silence with an outlandish yowl the next.

  On this occasion, he had been remembering those kisses that he and Luca San Michele had, earlier that day, given each other on both cheeks. How was Scott to know you didn’t actually kiss, but only touched cheeks? Gamely he had gone in and delivered four wet smacks to Luca San Michele. So embarrassing… And gross! Scott could still feel it on his lips, the sensation of Luca’s smooth skin.

  He finished showering, put on his Sunday best, and gave Holly a peck on the forehead before running out the door with a bottle of red wine. Holly sat in the swaddling glow of the laptop, the dog curled up on her lap and a stoneware mug of hot cider on the table. She was tailoring her cover letter to yet another museum, the Museum of Antiquities. It wasn’t exactly where her interests lay, but she was going to be proactive and not pin all her hopes on this one interview.

  &

  Janet bustled in from the kitchen with a gargantuan chip bowl.

  “I been putting in a lot of work for you.”

  The way she said it, Scott felt strangely indicted. He’d been promenading around, perusing the room with his hands behind his back. Janet shoved the chip bowl into his stomach and then ran back into the kitchen, flinging her hands up into the air.

  “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with yourself. I’m still not done with the—” She was shouted down by the crackle of cooking oil.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me!” Scott hollered. He sampled a greasy potato chip, and found a place for the bowl on the old, rude dining table, now draped in a white tablecloth and missing two of its four chairs. “I can entertain myself!”

  The lights in the room were dimmed, like a romantic steak house. The windows were black, the hallway haunted. The birdcage was cloaked, the plants seemed asleep. Scott assumed the painting was in the spare bedroom now, hanging over the same roll-top desk. Maybe later, when the woman was less harried, he could ask for a tour of the apartment. Then he could try expressing interest in the painting. Gauge her reaction.

  Only the doorway to the kitchen shone brightly, with a yellow light. It sizzled like the inferno.

  “I hope you’re hungry!” threatened the voice from within. “I’m not gonna be able to eat all this myself!”

  Scott looked at her bookshelf, stocked uniformly with movies in their original plastic. And it made him stop to consider this crazy lady. She bought, it seemed, whatever she looked at. And her looks, apparently, went everywhere. Anything, she would buy. Anything to fill the void.

  And that explained the Kensett. Odds were that if she rooted around long enough, sooner or later she would nuzzle out of the mossy earth a valuable truffle.

  Janet returned from the kitchen and dumped a tray of silverware onto the table. “I don’t know why I’m putting in all this work. It’s so hard trying to keep everything warm at the same time.” She looked at him with a huge, scary knife in her hand. “There’s no microwaves in this ridiculous country!”

  Scott shook his head sympathetically. He figured this was just her belligerent way of apologizing in case any of the dishes were cold. He was starting to understand the woman.

  “And wait till you see how bad the electric is in this building.”

  “Actually,” Scott said, “I don’t live here.”

  Janet’s face clouded over. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.
I was just here to buy something off one of your neighbors. I’m trying to decorate my apartment and they were selling some of their antiques.” He gave her some time to absorb this. Slowly, she put the knife down. He wandered toward the kitchen. “Speaking of which, I love your place!”

  She smiled primly and straightened a fork on the tablecloth. “Thank you.”

  “So tastefully decorated. See, this is exactly how I would like my place to—” His lips closed, mummifying his tongue. He was looking into the woman’s roomy, modern kitchen. He had located the painting.

  She had placed the thing over the damn stove.

  The frame was leaning against the wall on a broad shelf ranged with plates, salt mills, pepper grinders, and a mortar and pestle. At that moment, Kensett’s luminous landscape, with its three elements—sky, sea, and spit of land—was being enveloped in an evil and relentless cloud of steam issuing from an enormous pot that spat and burped and spewed forth tomato sauce.

  Scott had put a lid on it and was standing before the stove when Janet came in. She opened the fridge and took out a platter of olives and cheeses.

  “You know,” he mused, “I like this painting.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said archly. “Nice try. Now get away from that sauce. It’s not even ready yet.”

  Scott laughed. “You got me,” he said. “But seriously, you know who would love this? My mother. You wouldn’t want to sell it to me, would you?”

  He had intended on building up to this moment, by degrees, first after gaining her trust, then after buttering her up a bit. But screw it. This was a rescue mission now.

  “No way!” Janet replied, with a quick stubbornness that scared the living daylights out of him. “I just bought it.”

  “Oh, of course. I understand. It doesn’t matter. It’s not that important. But... do you think it’s wise to keep it above the stove?”

  “Why not?” She didn’t seem to like the implication that she wasn’t wise. “I like it there.”

  “But don’t you think—”

  She thrust the platter under his nose. “Here. If you’re hungry you can have some of this to tide you over. I was just about to put it on the table. Jesus, you can’t wait two seconds! Now come on, get out of my kitchen. Let’s go.”