He thanked me for my time and began to descend the stairs, and then he stopped, and turned back.
“You wouldn’t know where I might find him?” he said. “I have some questions for him.”
Officer Paul’s radio issued a burst of static, and his presence transformed the familiar stairwell to reveal the worn banister, the railings’ peeling paint, the stair treads scraped of their varnish. “I haven’t spoken to him,” I said. “Not for months.”
It felt wonderful to tell the truth.
Officer Paul seemed convinced. Maybe that was all it took—a statement that wasn’t rearranged to stand in for the truth. He jogged down the stairs, and I was grateful that William’s hat was gone from the hook at the bottom.
Once Officer Paul had left, Geoff came out of his apartment. I had my door open. I sat on the floor, packing William’s things, eager to get them out of the place, but uncomfortable handling them. Geoff leaned in the doorway.
“What in God’s name was that?” he said. “Did you call him to report your theft?”
I folded a pair of corduroys, the knees worn, feeling disoriented. “He was looking for William.”
Geoff didn’t come in. From the doorway he rolled a cigarette and handed it to me, like a peace offering. I didn’t have the heart to refuse it. Then he rolled one for himself. William’s things were scattered about. We smoked quietly, tipping our ashes into a teacup.
“How did Anne ever meet the girls from town?” I said.
Geoff exhaled. “She was always looking for models for her paintings,” he said. “And I’d see a pretty girl in town, and start a conversation—get around to asking if she wanted to pose.”
“For Anne,” I said.
I hadn’t seen a lot of Anne’s work—the one nude of Mary Rae, a few studies upstairs in the guest room—but I understood that was her subject, and that William had, in a way, patterned his own work after hers.
“Funny how easily girls are swayed when you tell them they’re beautiful,” Geoff said. “When you say there’s an artist who wants to use them as a subject.”
Being approached by a wild-haired, older man with a British accent might have seemed thrilling to the girls. He’d invited Del and me to the All Hallows’ Eve party, and Anne had immediately asked us to pose.
“Not for William?” I said.
Geoff had wood chips in his hair from working in his shop. I resisted the urge to brush them out. “Why no,” he said. “What makes you say that? I thought he was more of a landscape type?”
“Maybe,” I said. Mary Rae must have known the girls were being pawned off on William, talked into being part of his work, and she’d resented them.
“He left a lot behind,” Geoff said.
I hadn’t thought about how it would look—having all of William’s things in my apartment, and I cursed myself for not getting rid of everything sooner.
I stacked folders of his notes one on top of another. “Well, he never came by for them, so I’m getting rid of them,” I said.
“Will you go now, too?” Geoff slid down the door frame and sat half-in, half-out of my apartment.
“Yes, I guess.” He would need to know the date I was leaving so he could rent the place. I flipped my cigarette’s ash into the cup and took another drag. The smoke burned the back of my throat, but I liked the light-headedness the cigarette gave me. I felt almost happy, almost free.
Geoff leaned over and grabbed the teacup. “And what about your husband? No chance he’s coming back?”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
Suzie lay patiently near Geoff’s apartment door. The cool spring air came in through the window screen, smelling of lilacs.
“I’ll give him a piece of my mind, if he does,” Geoff said.
I laughed and dropped an ash into a box of William’s sweaters, and before I could put it out, it singed the wool. I dumped the box and his battered camera fell from where I’d hidden it at the bottom, the film dangling out its broken back. Geoff slowly extinguished both of our cigarettes in the teacup. He bent down and picked the camera up, hefted it in his hands. “He must have gotten a new one?”
“He must have,” I said. I gathered the sweaters and began to refold them.
“He wouldn’t go anywhere without this,” Geoff said, fingering the film.
“He probably has a new favorite,” I said.
Geoff dropped the camera back onto the pile of sweaters. “It’s funny, though,” he said. “Can’t see him letting his film get spoiled.”
We both knelt over the box, and Geoff’s eyes seemed darker, almost sly.
“No,” I said. “You’re right. He was very fastidious about his film. But I was also surprised he seemed so eager to move on.”
Geoff pushed off the floor and stood, his joints cracking. “As if he just dropped the camera and kept running.”
“Maybe,” I said. I finished replacing the sweaters in the box. Geoff held his hand to me and pulled me up.