Tim Green - Exact Revenge

The sky is bright blue between the tall white clouds. We pass Buckingham Palace with its sea of red and yellow tulips, gold gilt statues, cascading fountains, and high wrought iron fence. We walk under the towering London plane trees along the lake in St. James’s Park. Ducks dip and splash in the green grasses poking up out of the dark water. The breeze is warm and cinders crunch under our feet. We cross the gritty Horse Guards Parade, and Helena clings to my arm while we stop to watch the Royal Horse Guards change posts in their blue tunics and red plumed helmets.

Soon we’re passing by the bronze lions beneath Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. I reach out and run my fingers along a cold metal mane. The big black cabs swirl around us like miniature bread trucks. When we mount the steps of the National Gallery, I hurry through the columns and go right to the room where van Gogh’s A Wheatfield, with Cypresses takes center stage. I stand in the doorway and freeze. The trees burning like green flames and the brilliant yellow of the wheatfield fill my mind with thoughts of Lester. He would want me to be here, enjoying this painting, helping this girl. I see his smile and the glint in those magnified eyes.

“Are you okay?” Helena asks.

She reaches up and touches the corner of my eye, and I feel the dampness on my skin.

“Just thinking,” I say.

“Can I tell you what happened?” she asks.

“With you?”

“How he got me.”

“Of course,” I say. I take her hand and start to move through the rooms of paintings.

“I was supposed to be with my mother,” she says. “She was an actress from Montreal. She left my father when I was eight and we went back to Canada. I didn’t see him much, but she got a part in an off-Broadway show, so I was staying with him. I didn’t find out until a lot later, after I ran away, but she died in a car accident on that same tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was ten.

“My father was a bookie. I didn’t know that when I was a kid, just that he was on the phone all the time talking about games and he always had money around the house and a gun. Actually, when I went to look for my grandmother and found out that she was dead, I also found out about her brother-my dad’s uncle. He had something to do with the casinos down in New Jersey.”

She looks up at me, and I give her hand a squeeze. We stop in front of Monet’s Houses of Parliament, Sunset , dark and forbidding.

“Anyway, I was walking home one night from a friend’s,” she says. “It was winter and raining little pieces of ice. I heard a gunshot half a block from my house and saw people running. By the time I got there, a police car came around the corner and ran into the snowbank. A cop got out and ran into the house.

“At first I couldn’t move,” she says. “I actually wet myself. The cop, he went in with his gun. He was big and he had on a black leather coat with his badge on his hip. It all happened fast.”

We move from the Monet into a room with a special exhibit on Joseph Turner. I see The Slave Ship on loan from Boston and move toward it. It’s the original of the print Lester had hung over my bunk in A block. Carnage and horror in an angry sea. The sun going out on the horizon like the last tail of a gas flame.

“I think I know who he was,” I say.

“I’ll never forget his face,” she says. “My father was on the floor. He was bleeding and there was a gun. That cop, he picked it up and he and my father started to argue. They knew each other. I knew that because they were talking about being partners. And then they started shouting and he shot him. He just put the gun right up to my father’s head. I tried to scream.”

I look from the painting to Helena. Her eyes are shiny and brimming. She wipes them with the back of her hand and her voice breaks.

“Then he took me,” she says. “I didn’t move. I couldn’t. He just picked me up under his arm like some ogre. He dumped me into the trunk of that police car. He said, ‘Pretty little thing.’ Smiling like I was a doll or something, and do you know what I said?”

She laughs. A harsh grating sound like the cries of the ravens at the Tower of London.

She looks at the painting, nods, and says, “‘Policemen are my friends.’ That’s what I said.

“I learned it in school.”

I’VE SEEN AN OCCASIONAL TEAR from Helena before, but nothing like this. She starts sobbing loud and hard. People move away from us in ripples. I hug her tight and sit her down on a bench, stroking her hair until she stops shuddering. During it all, a white-haired guard clears his throat and starts toward us, but I back him down with a glare.

She grows quiet and I say, “Better?”

She nods her head and says she’s fine.

“Come on,” I say, taking her by the hand. “I’ve got a surprise.”

We catch one of those big black London cabs back to my flat.

On our way up the elevator, Helena sniffs and looks up at me without raising her chin. I smile and wink. She smiles back and slaps my thigh.

The flat is decorated in antiques, velvet, rich-grained wood in dark hues, marble tops, and swirling gold gilt. The ceiling is a rococo sky with puffy white clouds and feathery angels. A strange collection of men and women are clustered about the furniture near the white marble fireplace. When we go in, they stop talking and turn to stare.

Several teacups clink as they’re put back onto their saucers. A tall thin man with a mustache clears his throat and fiddles with his ascot tie. A round little man in a dark suit with wispy hair and liver lips steps forward with a scowl and in a thick Manchester accent says, “What’s this all about?”

“Helena,” I say, turning to her, “meet Peter Darwin. He’s your manager.”

“Is this really serious ?” Darwin says, snorting and choking at the same time.

“No,” I say. “When I said a million up front, I meant two.”

Darwin’s face relaxes and then blooms into a smile.

“Well, well,” he says, opening his arms. “You should have said so. Let me shake your hand.”

We both shake his hand and then I lead Helena into the midst of the others. The tall ascot tie is her lawyer. The chunky pink-haired woman with cat glasses is her clothes coordinator. The effeminate wisp of a man in black with the shaved head and tortoiseshell glasses is her hairstylist. The pretty green-eyed woman in the sweatsuit is her choreographer and trainer. The white-haired black man is her voice coach. And the little old lady with the straight back and the napkin laid out on her lap is for etiquette.

Helena shakes their hands and nods her head. The little old lady tells her to look people in the eye, dear, and Helena sticks out her tongue, then grins at me.

“Just money,” I say to her, then I turn to them. “Thank you all very much for coming. You’re here because you’re the best. Everyone’s getting the same thing. A three-year contract at ten times your normal fees. From what I know about your talents and hers, Helena will be the biggest star the music industry has seen since, who? J-Lo?”

“Honey,” says the hairstylist, “with those cheeks and a few highlights she’ll make J-Lo look like the tramp she is.”

The old lady sniffs.

“You’ve got three months,” I say. “We need an album and an act. I’ve already booked a studio at Warner Bros. to shoot the videos with Joe Pytka. I’ll make my G-V available, so going back and forth will be easier than getting to Scotland. We’ll release the first single in late December.”

Someone whistles and I hear the words “fast track.”

“That’s why you’re getting the big money. So, I had lunch brought in for everyone and then you can get right to work,” I say, leading them to the dining room, where a buffet in shiny silver service waits for us.