“He couldn’t do what you did,” I said. “Break away from the South Side, I mean—he went to Mandel & McClelland out of law school and he’s still down there, working for his father. But why did he get stuck with Stella Guzzo’s defense?”
A wind was starting to rise off the lake. Rafe pulled his silk jacket across his bare chest. “Joel thought Sol made him defend Stella as a punishment for being queer, although I thought it was because Joel had a crush on Annie and Sol wanted her to himself.”
That startled me so much I lost my balance on the boulder and slid onto the sidewalk. “Annie was having sex with Sol Mandel?”
Zukos hunched a shoulder. “I don’t know. Joel thought she was. Or he thought Mandel was a predator trying to seduce her.”
“I thought your family had moved to the North Shore years before Annie was murdered. He talked to you during the trial?” I picked myself up from the sidewalk and dusted the seat of my jeans.
“Joel and I stayed in touch. For a while. Force of habit.” Rafe was speaking slowly, as if the words were being squeezed from his diaphragm. “We were in the same bar mitzvah class, our parents sent us out of the neighborhood to the U of C lab school, we went off to Swarthmore together. I was doing an MFA in curatorship at the Art Institute when Joel was in law school. We’d meet for dinner and he’d whine how much he hated the law.”
The wind was getting stronger. Clouds blew in, like a conjuror’s trick: in an instant, the sky, which had been cornflower blue over Ira Previn’s office, turned gray.
“Rafe!” Ken was leaning over the side of the balcony again. “Are you coming in or do you want me to bring down a pullover?”
Rafe looked at the sky, at me shivering—the wind was coming straight in across the water. “Come in and see the art,” he offered unexpectedly.
BRUSH WORK
I followed him around the lake side of the building to the entrance, which opened into a living area that seemed part museum, a gold kimono dominating it from one wall, a scroll of geese taking flight on another, and in between stands holding lacquer or pottery.
The furniture was severely modern, which seemed to suit the art. I recognized an Eames chair, and supposed that the sofa, thin tan leather with chrome tube arms and legs, was also designer work. How had a rabbi’s son come by the money for this?
As if he’d read my thoughts, Rafe said, “Ken’s an artist—you’ll see his work upstairs. I was a curator and a collector and a wannabe—it was hard to admit that my only talent lay in admiring it in others. Anyway, I was working at the Field Museum, they were doing a special exhibit on the history of calligraphy as art, and two of Ken’s pieces were included. And then I had an incredible piece of luck: I recognized a raku pottery cup at a garage sale. Seventeenth-century work, very rare,” he explained, seeing my blank expression. “I bought it for a dollar and sold it for—let’s just say enough to buy this building and start collecting and selling.”
I made the noises we always make when we know nothing about the subject someone else is passionately discussing. Rafe led me up a broad wood staircase, pointing out lacquer in niches along the wall. The top of the stairs opened onto Ken’s studio, where Ken, in jeans and a sweatshirt, was closing the big glass doors to the balcony. Rafe went to help him and then introduced us—Kenji Aroyawa.
Rafe went to an alcove and fussed with a charcoal heater to make tea, leaving Kenji and me watching the lake through the glass window: it was starting to boil up, waves rocking back and forth, spume beginning to form.
“When it’s like this, it’s like Hokusai’s print of The Wave—you’ve seen it? The great wave that looks as though it could swallow the world?”
“Do you try to paint the water?” I asked. “I don’t know how an artist captures the motion.”
“Like this.” Ken turned to an easel set back from the front. He dipped a brush in a pot of ink and after a few short strokes, the water came to life on his sheet of paper.
My enchantment with seeing him work took my mind briefly from the question I’d been chewing on since Rafe’s comment about Mandel and Annie.
“You like it?” Ken said.
“I’m completely blown away,” I said. “I won’t pretend I can make an intelligent response, though—it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of painting.”
Ken laughed and clapped his hands.
“You brought me a new disciple, Rafe,” he called. “Now sit down—what do we call you? Vic? I think Rafe has finished smelling up the place. Powdered green tea—I hate it, maybe from too many obligatory events as a child—my father was in Japan’s diplomatic service—but green tea is part of Rafe’s attempt to remind me I’m Japanese, or maybe to turn Japanese himself.”
He gave another loud laugh, then said he assumed I wasn’t with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, since Rafe had spent so much time with me.
“She works with another kind of witness,” Rafe said. “You know, law, courts.”