Painting With Fire (10 page)

Chapter 18: Lady Justice

Every now and then Tom would go to Sara Johnson’s hearings about his attempted stabbing. Claudia came with him occasionally.

They sat in the gray, plastic chairs next to all the other witnesses and relatives, fenced in behind the armed guards and a wooden railing, waiting for the judge to arrive.

“You know if you stare at that small blindfolded statue holding the scales long enough, you start to imagine things,” Tom whispered to Claudia.

“You fantasize about lady justice?” Claudia laughed. An old man sitting next to her turned away slightly in his chair.

“I used to stare so hard I’d imagine she started to move,” Tom said, pointing to the small statue. “She’d put down her scales and walk slowly out onto the street, tapping a cane in front of her against the sidewalk, tap, tap, tapping. It takes her an awful long time to find the answers that way.”

Claudia raised her eyebrows at him
. “Just how much time have you spent in courtrooms?” she asked.

She
shifted her gaze as the judge walked in. The procession started and the small crowd hushed down into silence. The offenders were paraded in front of them, and Mrs. Johnson’s case was no different.

The prosecutor and the attorney shuffled up to the podium with their piles of papers clipped together.

As they opened their mouths, Claudia always expected them to say something important, something earth shattering, like “Law and Order.” She would expect them to move forward swiftly and to reach a conclusion in 60 minutes with commercial breaks but instead they’d start talking about their vacations.

“I’m available the week of June 16,”

“No good for me, I’m scheduled to be out of the office on a fishing trip,” one of the lawyers said.

“How about the week of July 5?”

“No good,” the judge said instead. “I’m out most of July.”

“How about August then?”

Her stomach sank deeper into the plastic chair. Each hearing date was only meant to set another hearing date. Nothing else was discussed and no real progress was made. But papers were pushed around and calendars were consulted. It was all very important.

The only important thing that actually happened was in the first hearing when Mrs. Johnson was let out on bail. The woman in the courtroom was professional looking, wearing a black suit and light blue dress shirt, and towerin
g in high heels. Her sleek, red ponytail swished playfully behind her as she turned her head to stare at Tom with blank, wide eyes.

Claudia asked Tom if he was afraid and squeezed his hand. He laughed at her. But she noticed after that that he kept a hammer in his room, with the dust bunnies under his bed. Had it always been there?

She kept thinking about the medical examiner’s statement in the news article, “blunt force trauma to the head.” It could’ve been a hammer. It could have been a lot of things.

Chapter
19: Behind the Locks

Tom kept his room locked when he was working. He didn’t want her to see what he was up to. It seemed to give him the equivalent of writer’s block for painters. Painter’s block.

But Claudia was a snoop by nature and admitted it. He knew this about her, so she didn’t feel guilty about going into his room that day. If he left his door unlocked that was his problem. He’d know it was fair game, she thought. Wouldn’t he?

He had left the window open with the curtains billowing next to his bed. The sheets were crumpled and twisted in a way that made it look like someone had hidden a body under them, Claudia thought. She let her imagination get away from her sometimes.

She pulled the hammer out from under the bed and looked for specks of blood in the cracks on the handle.

Holding the heavy hammer, it struck her that she cared for Tom but until she had answers about his past she couldn’t do anything about it.

Finding nothing, not a hair, not a faint touch of red, she slipped it back under the bed into the dus
t. He always kept his tools clean, whether it was a hammer or a paintbrush. She was being paranoid, she told herself.

Claudia
was having one of those creative days when her mind wandered, when she felt like a ghost looking back at her life. It was one of those days when each ray of sunshine coming in through the window seemed so brilliantly bright she just wanted to can it and save it for a dark moment. It was one of those days when she heard music in her head, like an imaginary jam session between the dead, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. It was one of those days when she needed more sleep, when she was half stuck in a dream.

She found herself humming and going through Tom’s things in an absent-minded state. Crumpled boxers, dirty socks and T-shirts littered the floor. A pair of jeans sat waiting with crumpled legs upright in a short pile, like he jus
t slipped them off and left two denim holes behind. An alarm clock hid behind the stack of murder mysteries on the nightstand.

In the corner, there was an easel with his latest creation. Paint tubes were lined up on a table next to it. She picked them up and noticed the spotless labels, burnt sunset, cayenne red, forest green and ocean blue.

“I’ve got a terrible secret,” Tom whispered into her ear.

Claudia froze and her heart stammered as he placed his hands on her shoulders and stood behind her. Jesus Christ, is he going to kill me, she wondered.

“What is it?” she said.

“Can you guess?” he said. “Take a good look at the picture. “Does something seem a little off to you?”

She leaned forward and stared at the painting, mostly in black and white with touches of color here and there. It was a woman in
gray scale with bright blue eyes and a full, blood red lips and purple hair.

“She’s beautiful, of course,” she said. “The colors seem a little off, gives a feeling of discord to the piece.”

Tom often just picked one color and painted in shades of it. That was his signature style, but it also got him in trouble with critics.

“It’s nice to see you branch out,” she said.

“Does she look like anyone you know?” he asked.

“I don’t know anyone with purple hair,” Claudia said.

“Damn it.” He crossed his arms.

She breathed out.

What are you doing in my room, anyway?”

“The door was open. I was just looking for the scissors. I can never find anything.”

“They’re in the drawer.”

“No they aren’t. I looked there already.”

Tom walked back to the kitchen and pulled open the drawer, rattling all the knives and spatulas as they slid forward.

“They’re right there,” he said. “You’re hopeless. You never see what’s right in front of you.”

Claudia didn’t say anything, but she knew exactly what he meant. Her good friend and roommate Tom, who she kept telling her mother was like a brother to her, wasn’t like a brother at all.

The woman in the picture was another version of her, but she had no idea what she wanted to do about it.
Maybe this was normal when you live with an artist, to be turned into a subject, she thought. But something told her no.

For a moment she was haunted by Steve Jackson. A small warning sounded in her stomach that it was dangerous to trust anyone who might have done it, however unlikely. She wanted answers and Kevin’s impending arrest was not enough.

In reality, she still couldn’t imagine Tom killing someone so it was irrational not to trust him. But it would be reckless to get involved with a man with a criminal record, reckless and stupid. Then again, she was already living with him.

But when she looked at Tom, all she saw was someone standing by her when times were hard, her best friend in the whole world. She didn’t want to screw it up. That was the real fear.

So she said nothing. Judging by his scowl, it was the worst thing to say at all.

Chapter 20: Divine Love

One of the benefits of unemployment was Claudia had plenty of time to attempt jogging. She wondered how long it would take her to run a mile these days.

One of her tennis shoes squeaked in a slow steady rhythm as she loped through the neighborhood. She lost track of the blocks as she passed rows of houses and humming lawn mowers.
It was 83 degrees and the wisps of hair frothed around her face. She stopped and wiped the sweat and hair back, leaned down to touch her toes and took deep slow breaths. Maybe this was a bad idea.

She started to walk, feeling the side stitch climb up her gut. Up ahead, she spotted the
four giant Roman pillars of an old, abandoned church and wondered if it was the church Alice was working on. It looked like the picture on the brochure but in worse shape. She sat down on the crumbling steps.

Claudia had had enough of her talk of divine love and yet she couldn’t seem to escape it. The walls were covered with tendrils of half-dead ivy snaking across the stone and yet she could still make out the inscription. “Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need
” – Mary Eddy Baker.

Who was she and what would she think of these ruins? Claudia wondered. What would she think of the crumbling stairs leading to chains on weathered wooden doors, the rusted railing,
and the broken panes of glass? Vacant homes littered the block.

The house of God was all boarded up with a no trespassing sign hanging on its doors. Above the doorway, pigeon spikes adorned decorative baskets of stone fruit, like old Christmas lights left up long after the season was over.

Vacant lots formed a small urban prairie around the building with tall grass and wildflowers bowing with the wind. Many of the posts holding up the chain link fence had toppled, leaving slouching metal borders in between.

After a slo
w walk home and a shaky ascent up the stairs to their apartment, Claudia swung open the door.

Tom immediately sniffed the air. He was sitting on the couch with a remote in each hand.

“You stink,” he said playfully with a smirk and turned off the TV. “I can smell you all the way from here. What were you doing out there?”

“You should be proud of me. I got my lazy ass off the couch and ran all the way to the old church, the one Alice’s always talking about.”

“I’d like to see the inside of that building,” he said. “I think I dream about it. Do you think it’s really the way I dream it?”

She sighed. “Who would believe you if it were?” she said.

“I’ve already started painting it. I think I have anyway, you never know for sure. It could always be a different old church somewhere else,” he said. “We could go over there and take a look. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks.”

“You know I don’t have that kind of money,” she said.

“I accept other forms of payment,” Tom said, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Just kidding, but not really.”

“I don’t know if I should take that bet,” she said. “If you’ve seen one old church, you’ve seen them all, haven’t you?”

Later that day, they drove by the old church and couldn’t help but stare. Men in grubby work clothes streamed in and out the back entrances. The front wooden doors were still chained closed, but they could see the dusty footprints going around the back. Piles of wood and junk overflowed from the dumpster at the side of the old brick and stone building. Old wooden chairs were stacked by the dumpster, as well as pieces of wood trim with the paint peeling off.

From the outside, no progress had been made, but Claudia could feel something had changed. It had a different vibe. The building was
no longer abandoned and dying. There was a new, mysterious life breathing inside it. The smell of paint and chemicals hung in the air.

Two days later, Claudia found Tom in the hallway talking with Alice. He had his arm against the wall and the two of them were laughing in a nervous way.

“Why won’t you let me see it?” he pleaded.

“I will eventually when it’s open to the public,” she said, smiling. “But right now it’s not really all that safe and it’s covered in peeling plaster and paint. After the contractors found the asbestos, things got complicated. They make it sound like we’ve got building inspections every other day.”

“What if I volunteer? I could help paint the inside. Interior paint isn’t that different from oils and acrylics. I’m good with a brush. Maybe I could restore some of the old artwork, too?”

“To be honest, I haven’t even been allowed inside for more than a month,” she said. “It’s just the contractors in their masks at this point. It seems like it’s going to take an eternity, but I’ll let you know when they say it’s OK to have people back in.”

Alice gave a nervous laugh and shot an exasperated glance in Claudia’s direction.

“Thanks for the offer,” she said. “I’ll let you know when your services are needed. There will come a time.”

“How long do you think it will take? I’ve got a running bet with Claudia about what it looks like on the inside.”

“Might be months or a few years,” she said. “A lot depends on how structurally sound it is. But I can’t go having you falling through floor boards and breaking your neck, especially a nice neighbor like you.”

“I promise I won’t sue,” Tom said, winking.

“I really can’t,” she said, smiling. “You have no idea how high the insurance is and the liability.”

Once they got back into their apartment, Tom showed Claudia the canvas and frowned.

“It really is driving me nuts,” he said. “I know it shouldn’t look like this but I keep seeing it this way. I have to see the inside.”

Broken glass, pigeon shit and kitty litter at the feet of a shrugging, open-armed bleeding Jesus Christ.

“He looks like a heroin addict or something,” she said.

“I know,” Tom said. “Do you think I’m going to hell for painting it?”

“Maybe,” Claudia said, patting his arm. “You are a twisted soul.”