Then I filled Nate in on the latest, from JM’s concerns, to the series of messengers monitoring my movements at the salon, to the unexpected email from Kiandra. “It must be the same guy, right? A signature that looks like a small bird, those were Kiandra’s words: that must be our guy.”
“It sounds possible, even probable. But one step at a time.” Oh, here he goes again with the alternate theories, I thought, and Nate read my mind. “Now hear me out. Maybe that Blackbird signature is a common sign-off, like an acknowledgment of being a member of AA or some other group your father might have been associated with. Did you check with your mother? If nobody called her Suzannah except this letter writer, then she might know who it is right away.”
Damn. I hadn’t thought of any other possibility besides the most obvious. Maybe it was some secret society sort of thing. And no, I hadn’t checked with my mother, because the last thing I wanted to do was give her any hope about anything—my father’s work, some lost papers, whatever it is that this guy was holding on to. For the second time in two days, I made the decision to keep my mother in the dark. “Why do you have to be so logical? It never occurred to me that the bird thing might be a symbol. That actually sounds plausible. And I don’t want to say anything to my mother yet. I’d like to see the letters first, so I asked Kiandra to scan and send them to me. It’s early on the West Coast, but she’ll be up and at the office in a few hours. I want to make sure the letters are legit before I bother my mother. It’s hard to go back to that place again, do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t really know, but I imagine it is.”
There was a moment of silence between us, not awkward like so many others in the past when the circumstances of my father’s death came up in a conversation with new acquaintance, but a genuine moment, like Nate was truly trying to imagine being in my place. As we crossed the Seine, the spires of Notre-Dame came into view. Almost home at the hotel. Nate gestured toward the envelope in my hand. “Anything new in there?”
“Let’s open it together. Over a bottle of something.”
Nate had checked into his own room at my hotel, much to the amusement of Claude the Front Desk Guy, who seemed to be the H?tel Jeu de Paume’s only employee. Still put out that he’d been interrogated by the police, Claude enjoyed baiting me as he handed Nate his own room key. “I see you and your old friend are very close, but not that close.” To which Nate had answered, “I have restless leg syndrome.” We laughed, but Claude didn’t. He did manage to recommend a neighborhood spot tucked around the corner when we requested a quiet, authentic place for dinner. “It’s a little early for dinner, but you Americans . . .” Then he added, “Maybe some wine will help your leg calm down.”
For the third night in a row, Nate and I were tucked into the booth of a bistro, ordering drinks and food and looking, I imagine, like a regulation tourist couple on a Paris getaway. Nate had showered, shaved, and changed in record time, and I had put on a fitted dark gray sweater and a touch of makeup, as long as my hair looked so good. Our knees touched under the table, and I ran my hand over his thigh. He didn’t flinch. For the tenth time in two days, I wished the theft had never happened, and Nate and I could have spent the weekend any other way but chasing clues. “Shall we?” Nate said, nodding toward the envelope on the table.
While Nate waited for his beer, I opened the third envelope—two sheets of paper, just like the other ones. I removed them carefully and laid them down on the table. One was another notebook page and the other a handwritten clue written in verse. Drawn to my father’s scribble and scratches, I studied the notebook page first. Nate waited patiently. He didn’t grab the other paper or ask questions; he let me be with the material. The drinks arrived, and Nate managed a “merci” for the waiter.
It took me a while to place my father’s drawing, but then I recalled seeing it in one of several notebooks that my father labeled “On Tour.” It was a drawing of the set for David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight Tour. In the corner, there was a tiny notation that read 01/83. The rough sketch was of four tall columns, an oversize hand, and, of course, a moon. There was another note on the top of the page. Moonlight = Sunlight + Starlight + Earthlight. And then a notation that just said, Purkinje Effect. I didn’t know what the Purkinje effect was, but the sweetness of my father’s equation for moonlight made me tear up. I would have been two years old when my father did this sketch. I handed the paper to Nate. “My father did the lighting design for several of David Bowie’s tours. According to the date, this sketch is from the 1983 tour.”
“Serious Moonlight.”
“I’m impressed. Very nice.”
“It’s a recurring Jeopardy! category. And my mother is a Bowie fan. I can’t believe your father did the lighting for David Bowie. That’s very cool.”
“He was cool. He did lighting for about two dozen tours, especially when he was young and wild. Sometimes he did one-off shows when the bands played in LA or Vegas; sometimes he did the lighting design for the whole tour. The Eagles. Stones. Rufus & Chaka Khan. Elton John at the Hollywood Bowl. A bunch of others. That kind of work paid the bills for a lot of years. But once he got married and I was born, he really cut back because it was grueling. And it wasn’t great for his sobriety. Besides, he didn’t need to do it for financial reasons.”
“Because his artwork started paying off?”
“Yes and no. Yes, he made a modest living from his art after Bright & Dark. But also, because he married my mother. She comes from some money and made more modeling than my father did making art. She had some long-term contracts that were fairly lucrative for decades, but not zillions of dollars. My mother used to say, ‘We don’t have Live at Wembley money’—because many of their friends did. Rock and roll made a lot more money than conceptual art. Doing the lighting on tour was his bread and butter for years. I know my parents were able to buy their house in Ojai because of Serious Moonlight. My dad often referred to it as ‘the house that David Bowie built.’ The original tour poster is still in our guest bathroom. They stayed friends, got together occasionally in New York or here. They had a lot in common, including their model wives. And no, I never met Bowie. I had a chance my junior year abroad, but I went to Oktoberfest instead. Me and every other American student in Europe.”
Nate was quiet for a second, then said, “That’s appalling.”
“You have no idea the regrets.” I handed the page to Nate. “Where is this all taking us? Murals, hair salons, Disneyland, moonlight. I feel like I should understand the significance of the Bowie reference or the date should mean something. But it’s another random moment from my father’s life.”
Nate studied the page and then said, “Do you know what the Purkinje effect is?”
I shrugged. “It sounds vaguely familiar.”
Nate tapped away on his phone, then read, “According to Wikipedia, it’s ‘the tendency for the peak luminance sensitivity of the eye to shift toward the blue end of the color spectrum at low illumination levels.’ I guess that has to with how we see moonlight—a little blue.”
Of course, that’s the kind of physiological fact my father would take into account in his work. I should have been listening more closely, as I’m sure he lectured me on the Purkinje effect at some point. It would come into play while lighting a rock concert, accounting for the eye being able to see blue in low light instead of just throwing up a few blue gels and calling it a day. “That makes sense. My father understood how the human eye and the brain perceived light. It was essential to his work. I guess he wanted the audience to see David Bowie bathed in real moonlight, not just blue gels.”