Tightrope Show

WHAT A MISTAKEN EXERCISE. Not only did the paintings hold no clue, but they fell to pieces before her eyes. They were not at all as she remembered. When she’d worked on them she’d felt so inspired. But hadn’t the upcoming wedding festival glittered through her veins during all those days? Hadn’t dreams involving the Italian fevered her to do this work so unorthodox, so winged and free? Now they struck her as messy, overblown, self-indulgent. “Boh,” she said, echoing Marta. Who does the Signora think she is? She felt sick with disappointment.

She spread the paintings out again, wondering why they should strike her this way now, why the courage and boldness she’d felt in the meadow should be replaced by a critic sitting on her shoulder. A critic in a Borsalino hat?

But a vehicle was turning into her lane. Nikki Stockton, the ballet woman, jumped out of a large orange van.

TODAY NIKKI STOCKTON WAS wearing earrings put together out of gilded nuts and bolts, a short flared scarlet skirt and long black tights, bare feet in the kind of high cork-soled platform sandals that could do her a lot of harm if she were to fall from them. She had a big leather satchel slung over one shoulder. Wide brass bangles shimmied as she strode forward, arms out to the side as if this simple activity were an unconscious tightrope show.

Clare scooped up her paintings. It was foolish to imagine that Nikki might catch some clue in them about what might lie underground in the meadow — though come to think of it her husband had been prowling in the area of the Etruscan paving, along with Anders. But she didn’t want Nikki to see the paintings anyway; she didn’t want anyone to see them.

NIKKI HAD DRIVEN OVER to invite Clare on an excursion to the dig at Poggio Selvaggio, in three days’ time.

She said she’d come over personally — she dipped in a mock curtsey, as if Clare were royalty — because she’d phoned Clare some days ago, about something else, and left a message on an answering machine. Then later she realized that she must have had the wrong number. A bright grin.

Clare felt herself flush, remembering how she’d played the message over, listening for a hint of pain in the cheery voice, the memory of the scene in the woods flaring up again, Nikki’s husband fucking the Danish boy.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, “I didn’t even realize I had a message machine. Since I got here, I’ve been out and about so much!”

“No problem,” Nikki said. “I’ve been angling for an excuse to get together. Besides,” she patted the satchel, “I’ve brought your book, which I’m hoping you will sign for me.”

Then she asked how Clare’s new work was going.

Clare gave a shrug and spread her hands. “I’ve been so busy with research that I haven’t even opened up my art supplies.”

She caught Nikki’s glance at those hands so deeply smudged with ground-in paint. She rubbed her fingers together, shaking her head. “Italian newsprint! It’s even worse than ours at home. Look at these hands.” She gestured to where her uncle’s newspaper clippings still lay scattered. “I’ve been poring through my uncle’s columns, which I know your husband disapproves of. Serves me right!”

The phone rang. As Clare hesitated, thinking she’d ignore it, the machine kicked in and with perfect timing there was Luke Tindhall saying that he hoped she’d got the phone message he’d left a few days ago. That the newspaper clippings he’d delivered in her absence had proved to be useful.

The voice paused, maybe waiting for her to pick up. “Right,” he finished off. “Now that I’m back from Rome, if I can be of any more assistance, do give me a buzz.”

NIKKI WAS FIDDLING WITH a strap on her sandal, pretending she hadn’t heard.

“What’s the deal on this Tindhall character, anyway?” Clare said. “He made that date to show me around the other day, then gave a phony-sounding excuse to back off.” (This was getting worse and worse, Clare realized, given how William had backed off from that date too.) “So, should I give him a buzz?” She mimicked Luke’s tone.

“Luke Tindhall!” Nikki tossed her long pigtail.

She said that for two years in a row she had spent weeks writing up applications to the Plank Foundation. And what came of it? Nada. Zilch! And now Tindhall, the Plank Foundation’s representative, was actually out here, supposed to be looking for worthwhile projects to fund, and had he even responded to Nikki’s repeated invitations to come up to the site? Oh, he was happy to be taken out to lunch on the project’s limited funds and eat his way through the entire Tuscan menu, starting out by mispronouncing “bruschetta,” which drove William wild, but would he even deign to come over to the lab to look over their finds from previous seasons? No, he was totally evasive.

“Of course my husband doesn’t exactly suffer fools gladly.”

“And he thinks Luke’s a fool?”

Not exactly a fool, Nikki said. Luke was alarmingly knowledgeable, but such a show-off. On that lunch when William corrected his Italian, Luke had started going on about how he’d eaten all around the world and never once been called on his pronunciation, “… and then he started spouting bits of Arabic and Finnish and goodness knows. The type of person that William absolutely cannot stand. Of course there aren’t really a lot of people that William can stand.”

A little laugh, as if this was the drollest thing.

Nikki began circling the room, arms out and tilting this way and that, as she explained how she, herself, had to be the glue that kept the whole excavation project together — a sticky business, the many things that she, as that glue, had to do. It wasn’t that William couldn’t be bothered, but that his mind was always several levels higher than every other mind, and someone had to tend to the everyday details like, for example, being nice to people.

“Ecco!” She took a bow.

Those people who had to do everything. Nikki’s performance reminded Clare, uncomfortably, of her aunt — another who’d had to do everything, and so could never keep any employee, because no one else could do it right.

Nikki stopped pacing. She gave her braid a tug, as if to keep herself still. “About Luke Tindhall, though,” she said, “Now here is a funny thing.”

SHE SAID THAT LUISA had told her that Federica had told her that on the day following their dinner party, Ralph Farnham had been meeting someone at the airport in Rome, and he had spied Luke printing out a ticket at the automatic booking kiosk.

And then, somehow, as Nikki put it, Ralph had found himself peering over Luke’s shoulder. The ticket was for Ankara.

“Would the Plank Foundation be spreading its wings to the Middle East, do you suppose?” Her look implied that Clare was sure to know.

Clare realized that she’d been glad to see Nikki arrive, that all the time Nikki had been striding around her room and ranting she had been imagining how they might actually become friends, do fun things together, maybe even today. Go out somewhere and have lunch, a fine antidote to the disappointment she’d felt when she looked at her work again. She’d been so alone, so self-focused, slogging through a swamp of emotions too. Coming face-to-face with that sour-looking man in the Borsalino hat when what she’d always hoped, she realized, was that he’d made something joyous out of his life.

But pal-ship was not why Nikki was here. Nikki was here to make use of Clare’s supposed special relationship with the great Plankish Potentate.

How would Nikki ease into it? How many more circuits of the room would it take?

Nikki pulled out one of the chairs by the oak table and sat down primly, knees together, back very straight. She simply said, “Look, I’ve been hoping you could help.”

What she hoped, Nikki said, was that when Clare came up to the dig — and if indeed she did find the work of value, of course — that she could pass the word along to Sir Harold Plank directly.

“And then we could do an end run around Luke Tindhall altogether.”

Clare smiled a smile she hoped befitted her role as the protegé of a British Peer. She ran her hands through her hair. She said, “That would involve doing an end run around Lady Plank, of course.” Nikki’s eyes widened, so clearly tickled to see where this would lead, that Clare couldn’t resist expanding on the just-invented Lady Plank. “I gather she’s one of those formidable Nordic types. Aesa her name is. Harry says it means ‘Stirs Up War.’ But sure,” she added, “I’ll do what I can.”

THE FINAL PAINTING IN Clare’s book of Amazonian travels was the one she considered the most powerful. In it, a decaying tree hosted the rare Selenicereus wittii, a plant with uncanny writhing pleated wrinkles and protrusions, the whole merging from green to red. Ghostly trees stood behind, in swampy water. Smoke filtered through. Between the dead trees were glimpses of animals fleeing fire, the terrified face of a spider monkey, the singed wing of a macaw.

When Nikki pulled out her copy of the book for Clare to sign, she asked Clare to sign that particular painting as well. “Ever since the night I met you, I’ve looked and looked at this. The way you make one smell the terror and feel the pain. I feel like I was there with you, plunged right into that scene of fire and burning flesh.”

Fire and burning flesh.

Her voice was that same un-nuanced brass, but illogically Clare felt the temperature dip, the way a sudden chill is said to fill a room as some unseen presence passes through. How foolish to think that a particular need had been loosed here of some all-consuming sort. Did Nikki imagine a hot cord between them? That if Clare could paint a scene that radiated such pain, she would understand how Nikki was peering into the shadows of her marriage? Clare took a deep breath of the suddenly altered air, and breathed in Nikki’s almost rawhide smell, which she hadn’t noticed before.

They’d been bending together as Nikki turned pages of the book. Clare pulled back and reached for her fountain pen. “Yes of course, sure, I’ll sign this one, if you like.”

Each full-page illustration was set into a thick white border. Clare inscribed her name with a flourish, and drew in the little stick figure. She loved the feel of the fine pen, which she’d bought for herself when the book was published. She had intended to use it for drawing, too, because — unusual in fountain pens — it worked well with India ink. But so far she hadn’t used it for anything but book signing. It was a talisman, a treasure, one of the few expensive things she’d bought for herself.

Nikki took up the pen, weighed the fine balance of it, admired the sleek black shape, the gold nib.

“Does this accompany you on all your travels?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Clare said. “It’s had a very adventurous life. It even fell overboard once — a bit scary, diving into piranha-infested waters to get it back. I wrote the entire first draft of the manuscript with it.” She laughed. “A word of warning, though. Never try to carry a fountain pen through airport security in Brazil. They’re terrified you’ll barge up into the cockpit and try to write a sonnet.”

Before Nikki drove away, she mentioned the collection of botanical paintings that were kept in the archives of the museum. She said she’d been thinking it might be helpful to Clare if they went there together. She could help Clare wend her way through the archival chain of command. These things weren’t always straightforward over here. She said that if Clare was free, they could go up to the museum tomorrow. She began leafing through a notebook, pushing ahead to set up this plan. She tore out a page where it seemed she’d written the museum’s number even before coming here.

“How about if I call and make an appointment, right now?”

“Oh, my!” Clare said, “Accidenti, as they say here! Tomorrow I’ve finally got an appointment with that lawyer.”

WHY HAD SHE DONE that?

She could perfectly well have gone with Nikki to the museum. There was no appointment with the lawyer, whose important family business was taking a good long time. Clearly Nikki needed someone to talk to. In a society where everyone found out your business even if you went as far as Rome, maybe she had pinned her hopes on Clare as a seasoned outsider, a world traveller who could help her navigate the foreign land she’d surprisingly stumbled into upon discovering her husband was in love with a pretty boy? And God knows, Clare thought, I could do with a friend. But how could she hope to have a friendship with someone she’d lied to so many times in just half an hour? Inventing Lady Plank. Giving Lady Plank the name of the Rottweiler her ex-husband had got rid of when it bit the postman!

She caught a flick of movement on the ceiling. The jewelled lizard beady-eyeing her again. Flick! Gone! How did they manage to come and go before her very eyes? Like the truth of any other thing. She turned and looked into the sideboard’s cloudy mirror. She started twirling, as she had that first day, round and round. There and gone, there and gone. She sank, dizzy, onto the couch. When she rose, she saw Nikki had left the page with the number of the museum archives. She decided to go there tomorrow anyway, on her own. She called, and a Dr. Ruccoli, who spoke excellent English, said yes of course, certamente, she could see the ancient volumes, though, he emphasized, she must come promptly at ten.

It wasn’t until Clare reached for her beloved pen to record the appointment that she realized it too was gone.