Elaine was in the back of Harriet’s apartment with a few other women. They were making watercolor paintings, splashing colors on yellow paper to the sounds of the radio. They had the windows wide open, with electric fans at full blast. They projected their voices over the noise, which lent some excitement to the gathering as they painted away in the warm indoor winds of the evening.
Harriet came around with a platter of little buns, and Elaine ate with gusto. She was making up for lost time, eating. She gripped her bun in one hand and held her paintbrush in the other.
Everyone was talking about who they were dating.
“I actually went on a date last night,” Elaine admitted, blushing.
She had been a little more open lately. Maybe it was that expensive psychoanalyst, though she had been to only a few sessions.
“Spill the details!” The ladies sat on their heels, watercolor brushes in hand.
“Well—” She faltered as they stared, ready to latch on to every word. “He’s very nice. David is his name. He’s a reporter at the Chronicle. Very intelligent.”
“If he’s so nice, then why wasn’t he taken yet?”
“He was married, actually. His wife died a few years back.”
“Oh.”
The room fell quiet with a fragile silence. The women returned to making art—soft, watery applications of paint on the creamy white paper.
“His wife died in childbirth,” she told them. “He has a daughter—his mother watches her while he’s at work.”
“How sad.”
She and David had dived deep on their first date. She had refused to go out with him at first, but he’d kept asking her—and he really did seem funny and friendly, with a lightness that Tommy had never had. On a whim she had finally agreed to go out with him, and they’d enjoyed a very pleasant evening at a restaurant. They had dined slowly and chatted, allowing time to swirl around them as they talked about their lives.
Elaine was surprised to find herself talking about Tommy, but David didn’t flinch; he even spoke about his own late wife.
They talked about everything: hobbies, the cinema, the Chronicle.
It was all very normal. A functional conversation. He seemed to understand Elaine on another level, in the way of those who had felt grief in their own times.
“Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I think so.” She painted a pink heart on her paper absentmindedly. Catherine noticed and teased her, spilling a little of her red wine and smudging it on the borders. Elaine surprised herself by laughing.
From inside, the door to Harriet’s apartment kept opening and shutting as more women entered.
Lisa arrived, and she entered the painting room shortly thereafter. She looked fair and even more dainty than usual in a pretty pink outfit.
She glanced around Harriet’s apartment with hesitation, raising her heels to avoid stepping on pieces of art.
“Hullo! How are you?” Elaine put her hand on Lisa’s arm to put her at ease. “We’re having a little art time! Care to join?”
Lisa accepted some paper and brushes without paying much attention to the materials. She sat next to Elaine and made little jabs at her paper with a brush.
After some time, she darted her eyes about and whispered to Elaine, “I went by the Starlite before I came here.”
Elaine gulped. “You did? I can barely bear to look over there.”
“There were ash marks on the window, traces of something. I don’t know what.”
“Someone had a smoke outside?”
“More like fire had been on the window.”
“Vandals of Brooklyn.”
“Why would anyone want to mess with that empty place? She’s dead!”
Elaine shuddered. “It could be an ugly reminder for some people. The empty shell of a place that belonged to Madeline. And she got all that attention after she died.”
“What are you saying? Who do you think could have done something like that?”
“Who knows? Maybe Fred Abbott?”
Lisa paused her brushstrokes and swallowed. “You think Fred went there and did that himself?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t step foot near that place.” Elaine was still painting. She made a big black X to cross out the images. As if it wasn’t enough to have it all gone, someone was trying to mar the shell of the Starlite.
The other ladies weren’t hearing any of it as they argued about Marilyn Monroe, debating the cause of her death, shaking their paintbrushes in frustration.
“I don’t think Marilyn could have done that to herself. It had to be someone else, someone who was jealous of her.”
“How do you know what she was thinking?”
“She wasn’t the melancholy type. People who would do such a thing are usually the melancholy type.”
Elaine slid herself into the debate. “You never can know what’s going on inside someone’s head.”
Outsiders had mostly seen Tommy as suave, lively, and intelligent. And that was how he was—before the fourth drink.
“Of course you don’t know what someone’s thinking, but Marilyn was different,” Gloria argued.
Elaine looked over for Lisa’s response—but Lisa had left the room, abandoning her smudged artwork.
Nothing was ever in full color. Even if they tried to pretend.