“I don’t remember, and it’s none of your business, anyway.”
The lurching of the bus meant I couldn’t keep my eyes on her face, but I thought Clara looked more scared than angry despite her defiant words.
“Your mother says she called Nadia when your sister was seen on YouTube painting on the Body Artist. How did Nadia respond?”
“Have you been talking to my mother? She has enough to worry about without someone like you butting in.”
“Karen Buckley put on a special program in your sister’s honor last night. Karen’s the Body Artist who came to your sister’s funeral.”
“I remember who came to my own sister’s funeral.”
“What did Nadia tell you about Alexandra’s death?”
At that question, Clara definitely looked more frightened than angry.
“I told you we can’t talk about Allie, so butt out!”
“All right, if we can’t talk about Allie, let’s talk about the Body Artist. How did Nadia find her?”
Clara looked at me but didn’t speak. One of the boys near her left the bus. I took his place.
“The club was full last night for the Artist’s program in your sister’s memory. Rainier Cowles brought a party; one of the men—”
Clara bounced to her feet and bent to stick her head in my face. “If you’re a pal of Rainier’s, you can leave me alone. Go back to Prince Rainier and suck his dick.”
The raw language was meant to shock. She stared at me for a few seconds, hoping for some sign that she’d hit home. When I only smiled sadly because her youth and pain were so poignant, she marched to the front of the bus, deliberately shoving people, as if vicariously punching me.
Her friends gave me the kind of frigid looks I remembered from my own adolescence. They sniffed as if smelling garbage and pointedly turned away from me, then started giggling loudly.
“It would be more to the point if you’d help Clara,” I said. “She’s frightened and lonely.”
This made them laugh more loudly.
The bus was stopped for the light at Nineteenth Street. I pulled out one of my business cards and scribbled on the back, “Rainier Cowles is not a friend or business associate of mine, and I would never repeat anything you told me. Call or text me when you feel up to talking.”
Enough kids had left the bus that it was easy for me to walk to the front and stand next to Clara. Her rigid posture, despite the weight of her backpack, told me she was very aware of my presence. I tucked the card into her parka pocket, but she refused to turn her head. I got off at the next stop and crossed the street to pick up a northbound bus.
As the winter twilight closed in on me, I rode buses and trains back to my office. My leasemate Tessa was hard at work, her half of the building flooded with spotlights and the flame of her blowtorch.
My own half was dark. I didn’t bother turning on a light, just took off my boots and sat with my feet curled up under me on the sofa to warm them, trying to decode Clara Guaman’s response to my questions.
Allie’s name is sacred.
Clara had been told never to discuss her sister. But why? Because the family was afraid Alexandra’s sexuality would leak out? It was hard to accept that a parent still thought of homosexuality as so shameful, but of course many people do.
Clara thought, or feared, I was connected to Rainier Cowles. Last night at Club Gouge, he had claimed he was there to make sure the club respected Nadia, but he and his friends had definitely felt they were on a boys’ night out and not at a wake.
Nor did I place any credence in Cowles’s casting himself as an honorary uncle; lawyers like him bill themselves at five hundred dollars an hour or more. They don’t waste their time on the families of baggage handlers. But if he wasn’t protecting the Guamans, what was he doing hanging around their lives? He was certainly protecting something, and that something had to be himself, or possibly a high-flying client.
Allie, Nadia had cried. She wanted her sister, not her mother, as she was dying. Or she knew she was dying and hoped Alexandra would be there to greet her in the country of the dead.
At length, I turned on a light and walked over to my computer.
“Find me Alexandra Guaman. Fetch, boy!”
The floor was numbingly cold underneath my panty hose. I rummaged in my back storeroom and found an old pair of running shoes to wear as slippers.
While LifeStory was searching out Alexandra Guaman’s details, I logged on to embodiedart.com, the Body Artist’s website. I wanted to look again at the paintings Nadia Guaman had made on the Artist to see if I could understand why they had roused Chad Vishneski so thoroughly.