Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“I know.” Mac grinned. “You want to see the other picture.”

“There’s another one?”

“I think so. In there.” He gestured with his head toward an open door.

The second room, which also opened onto the deck, was mainly occupied by a low queen-sized bed. Over it hung what was surely, even in the dim light from the shuttered window, Lorin Jones’s lost painting, Aftershocks. Polly recognized it from the blurred black-and-white photo in the files of the Apollo Gallery, but only by the semiabstract seaweed shapes along the lower edge, for this painting had been terribly damaged. There was a raw, jagged-toothed hole in the center, as if something large and violent had burst through the canvas from behind.

“Oh, shit,” she choked.

“What’s the matter?”

“You can see.” Polly was in better control of her voice now, but her head was still full of angry buzzing. “It’s Lorin Jones’s picture, the one that disappeared after her last show, but it’s been all ripped up.” By Hugh Cameron, of course. He was the sort of man who might destroy his lover’s painting and hang the evidence of the crime over his own bed for nearly twenty years.

“Yeah?” Mac came closer. “Looks to me like it was done on purpose,” he said.

“I suppose it was,” Polly said tightly. “By that bastard who lives here.”

“No, I meant by Lor — your artist. Look at the way the words are written.”

It was true; a line of script, not present in Jacky’s photograph, began in the upper left of the picture and continued below the hole, curving up toward the right. To make it out Polly had to lean forward over the platform bed — Mac must be farsighted.

“ You never saw it coming ... till it was gone, ” she read slowly. “I don’t know — I suppose it’s possible she did it herself,” she conceded, realizing as she spoke that if this were so the importance of the work hadn’t been reduced; it might even have been enhanced. “But there’s no way of proving that. I wonder —”

“Wonder about it later, okay?” Mac had moved much closer. He ran his hand slowly down her back; all the way down.

“No, wait. I have to —” Breathing hard, Polly took a step away.

“Come on.” He pulled her to him. “That thing won’t fly off.”

No, it won’t, she thought. But I will, my ticket is for the day after tomorrow. I’ve got to plan. What I need is evidence that the paintings are here. Photographs, I need color photographs. It’s too late today, but I could rent a camera tomorrow, or borrow one — maybe from Lee? Then when I get back to New York —

But she couldn’t think clearly now. Now she was in a bedroom in Key West with a man who was kissing the back of her neck. His mouth was hot, his tongue insinuating. She was leaning toward him, against him.

“Oh, Polly,” Mac whispered, pulling her toward the bed.

Stop, wait, she told herself. But another part of her replied, Why not? It’s what you want. And besides, it’s what Mac wants; even what he deserves for letting you into this house, helping you to find Lorin’s paintings. She swayed and fell slowly onto the rough off-white cotton bedspread.

All right, go ahead, a voice said in her mind. But keep some control of yourself. All right, kiss him, it panted. All right, let him pull open your shirt and lick your breast. But for God’s sake don’t let yourself care about him, or you’ll be hurt and betrayed again. Remember, you hardly know him; remember all the horrible social diseases they’ve invented lately.

But in spite of this good advice, it was Mac who first broke off; he raised himself on his elbows above Polly, then half sat up.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Hold on a sec. I have to tell you something.”

“Okay,” she gasped. Realizing that she had one hand on the paint-spattered bulge in his jeans, she snatched it off as if she had been burned. Dizzy, full of heat, her heart pounding, she moved away from Mac. Herpes, she thought.

“It’s —” He swallowed.

Well, go on, she thought, staring at him, more and more terrified. Gonorrhea, syphilis. Or those awful warts they had now, what was their name? “Yes?”

“I —”

Maybe even AIDS. After all, this was Key West.

“I — I’ve been living with this woman, up on Sugarloaf Key.”

“Well?” Polly said. There was a pause. “And?”

“That’s it. I just thought I ought to tell you.”

“That’s it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay.” She laughed with relief.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Only I thought you were going to tell me you had, you know, some awful infection.”

“Nope.” He grinned. “Far as I know, I’m clean. I’ve been with Varnie over two years, never did anything like this before.” He looked at Polly. “You don’t mind?”

“No. I mean, hell, I’m only here till Sunday morning. I don’t care who you’re living with.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Mac said. Then, under his breath, what might have been “Or maybe I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He rolled back toward her; with one warm, work-roughened hand, he pulled her Banana Republic safari shirt fully open. “Shhh.”

Half an hour later the squares of the straw rug were littered with cast clothes, and their owners lay dizzy and entangled on the rumpled bedspread. Above them, Lorin Jones’s lost painting floated, mysterious and — in spite of the gaping hole in its center — serene. If it hadn’t been for you, Polly thought blurrily, slipping toward sleep, I wouldn’t be here in Hugh Cameron’s bed. I would never have known —

It was weird what she felt, even weirder than what had happened in Wellfleet, though in a way it was like that. It was as if she had magically become Lorin Jones, and the man who lay beside her, with his work-roughened hand loose on her breast and one leg across hers, was Hugh Cameron.

But of course that wasn’t even right magically, because this had never been Lorin’s house. It was only another backwash of all these months of immersion in Jones’s history: a sign of her obsession, her confusion of her own life and Lorin’s, Jeanne would have said.

Half-awake now, Polly unwound herself from Mac and raised herself on one elbow to look at him. Naked, he was a worn and flawed umber above the waist, but smoothly pale below to the ankles. His body, like his face, was long and spare, all steep planes, narrow ridges, and clearly outlined muscles.

Well, you did it, didn’t you, she told herself, and waited to feel shame and embarrassment, but felt only pleasure, joy, and a rush of affection. I like him, it said: I don’t want to leave Key West, I want to stay here with him. ... She shook her head angrily: how stupid and greedy the body is, how careless of the good of its tenant!

She ought to be angry, though; if not at herself, then at the world. Why should it be arranged so badly? Why should it be so much better with a man she hardly knew than with a woman she loved?

A warm shudder of wind bent the branches outside and gushed into the bedroom. Mac stretched, yawned, opened his eyes, and smiled lazily at the ceiling. Then he turned toward Polly, and his expression changed.

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered, and sat up.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He smiled again, but briefly and uneasily. “That was lovely, lovely,” he said, not looking at her.

Yes, Polly thought. Now he wishes he hadn’t. That’s how men are, remember? He wants to get away as soon as he can. She began to rise.

“Wait. Don’t get up yet.” Mac put out one hand to stop her. “You’re so beautiful lying there.” He stroked her near breast with one finger, as if it were a sculpture made of some rare, exotic material, then leaned over to kiss it.