Frank chose that moment to come back from the bathroom. Both his hands were busy behind his back, probably buttoning that panel. Mimi said, “I didn’t hear you flush.”
“I didn’t use the bathroom,” he said.
“Then what were you doing?”
He brought his hands from behind his back, and held out a pair of scissors in his right hand. In his left was my kidnapped hairbrush. “Quite by accident I found these at the bottom of my laundry basket.”
I’d done the laundry yesterday, and they hadn’t been there then.
Mimi sighed. “Well, I guess I didn’t look everywhere for those scissors after all.”
( 10 )
HE’S HERE,” FRANK said.
“Who’s here?”
“Xander.”
That day I’d left Frank in his Teddy Roosevelt rig on a bench outside the ladies’ room at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for probably less than a minute. We’d decided he was too old to go in with me and stand outside my stall just so I could be comforted by the sight of his puttees while I peed, so I transacted my business, washed my hands and dried them on my shorts as I rushed out the door. I was so relieved to find him where I’d left him that at first I couldn’t take in what he was telling me.
“Xander?”
“XYZ,” Frank said.
“Huh?”
“Examine Your Zipper. Xander. Given name, Alexander. My piano teacher. Not Alexander the Great, although there is a sculptural representation of that Alexander here as well.”
I yanked up my zipper and sat beside him. “Your Xander? Where?”
“He was over there. He’s gone now.”
It was hard for me to believe anyone could appear and disappear so quickly, unless Xander just happened to be as fast on his feet as Frank. I have to confess I’d been doubting Frank’s overall score on the truth-o-meter that day already, ever since we’d paused on our gallop long enough to examine an early Picasso together. I’d figured out by then that to slow the boy down all I had to do was ask questions. Question, really—one was usually enough to root him behind an imaginary lectern long enough for me to catch my breath. I may have mentioned that the depth and breadth of Frank’s knowledge was as dazzling as it was tedious.
“What do you know about this painting?” I asked.
“Picasso executed over twenty thousand works of art during his lifetime,” Frank said. “I use the word executed in the sense of ‘creating’ rather than in the cigarettes-blindfold-and-firing-squad-at-dawn sense. Most of Picasso’s paintings are considered brilliant. Some, mediocre. A few, tiresome. Take this one, for example. It used to hang over our fireplace until just before you came to stay with us. My mother got sick of looking at it so she gave it back to my father and he had so much Picasso already that he decided to give it to the museum.”
“What?” I felt like I’d jerked awake in one of those snooze-inducing stadium lecture halls in college moments after the professor finished outlining the answers to every question on the final. “Your father? What are you talking about?”
“Anonymous Donor. My father doesn’t like calling attention to himself.” Frank held his busted-out pince-nez in front of his eyes like a lorgnette and peered at the label posted on the wall by the painting. “That’s why he’s listed here as ‘Anonymous Donor.’ He’s a major collector. When he gets bored with stuff, he gives it to museums.”
I couldn’t get any more out of him, which was frustrating as heck, since Frank generally left no fact unturned. I’ll say one thing for the kid. When he was done talking about something, he was done.
But I wasn’t done with Xander yet. “Okay. If Xander’s here, where is he?”
Frank shrugged. “I called his name and waved like this,” he said, throwing his arms around as if he were having a seizure from the waist up. “But he was wearing a headset. I don’t think he heard me.”
“Why didn’t you get up and go tap him on the shoulder?”
“Because I was under direct order to stay on this bench. Can we look for him now?”
“Of course. Except I don’t know what Xander looks like.”
“Oh, I can fix that. Follow me.”
The Rough Riders would have had a hard time keeping up with Frank. A couple of guards on the other side of the esplanade called, “Hey, kid, no running!” I prayed I’d catch him before he knocked somebody over or palmed something he wasn’t supposed to touch.