A Paradise for Fools Read online

  “The man’s in the art business,” Kenzo marveled. “Where’s the suit? The shoes?” He looked down at Fred’s well-scuffed loafers, the absent socks. “What are you, in disguise? Another fucking art dealer, but this one’s in disguise. I love it.”

  Given that Fred had nothing, there was nothing to lose in the modified, limited hang-out, as an old master of deceit had used to call that feint. Fred said, “I ran into a girl from up here, with the start of some ink Arthur is doing, based on a painting…”

  “Who’s the girl? Tell me about it,” Kenzo said.

  “On wood. Fantasy stuff. Weird figures…”

  “I take it you want this painting,” Kenzo said.

  “I want to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious,” Fred said.

  “I will take your curiosity under advisement,” Kenzo said. Stephanie, poking her bleached head into the compartment, said, “Your two o’clock, Kenzo.”

  “Leave your name and the rest of it at the desk,” Kenzo said, standing. “This was fun.”

  “Wherever it is, I’ll drive up to take a look,” Fred said. “Any time.”

  “If I’m interested,” Kenzo said. “A girl with the start of some ink, you said? From up here? Friend of Arthur’s? Go on, talk.”

  His tone managed to be both lazy and menacing.

  “Shooting the breeze,” Fred said. “I get distracted. What I heard was, Arthur was working from a painting…”

  “Beats me,” Kenzo cut him off. “If I think of something I’ll have Stephanie call you. Leave who you are. What firm you’re with. The rest of it. If you have one with you, a card. What are you, Sotheby’s? In case I give a shit. Or remember something. Or run into something. Or you give me a better idea how interested you are, this painting you haven’t seen, you drove all the way up here to ask about, that I haven’t seen. I’m busy. Tell Stephanie.”

  The arriving client, a large man, clanked with chains, his leather squeaking. He growled as he entered Kenzo’s work space, “Fucking bluebirds are a mistake. She wants vultures.”

  ***

  Fred had not expected Central High to be in session, but the gross brick building was actively inhabited. Summer school. The pick of the golden youth of Nashua was inside seeking redemption for past sins in retaliatory summer classes. Only as a last resort would Fred seek help from the office bureaucracy. He had no standing beyond curiosity.

  In the parking area back of the building he pulled in next to the ancient white sedan on whose roof a triangular sign balanced as if it delivered pizza. The sign warned, student driver. A young girl dressed as jail bait climbed out of the driver’s side—small shorts on long legs, a skimpy top, the skimpy braids that claim, “I turned thirteen.”

  “Same time tomorrow?” she called and ran around the building. More slowly, from the passenger’s side, a skinny man, also dressed for summer, was unfolding himself. White polo shirt, tan pants, white tennis shoes. Worryingly tan of skin with too much white hair that someone had styled to go with an expensive car. He was not, to look at him, one of the five Hawaiians.

  “Mr. Z?” Fred strode toward him, holding out his hand. “Zagoriski. Am I right?”

  The waitress had even spelled the name out on a napkin.

  “If you’re with that van’s insurance company, move on,” the instructor said with a distinctness meant to irritate while it impressed. Despite his precision in pronunciation, he was maneuvering quickly to outflank Fred. “I’ve told you people, I don’t talk to you. I talk to the school’s lawyers, the school’s lawyers talk to you. The matter is out of my hands.”

  “Fred,” Fred said, his outstretched hand still ready, “Insurance? I know nothing about insurance. I’m doing a story. Research, talking art appreciation in the hinterlands, your name came up. If you’re done for the day, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Mr. Z stopped cold, staring. He took Fred’s hand and shook it in a perfunctory way.

  “My project. I’m from Boston,” Fred said. “The way I see it, art appreciation is as vulnerable a subject as you are going to find in the public school systems, more vulnerable than music, am I right? Things being like they are these days. That makes the teachers of art appreciation a dying breed unless we reverse the trend. Where’s a quiet place we can sit? Unwind?”

  The man had gotten half Fred’s bulk into about the same height. He posed, where standing would have done the job. It was remarkable, even based on this brief encounter, that his high school students had not eaten him alive.

  Mr. Z studied the stranger, pursed his lips, shrugged, and concluded, “A drink I could use. And entertainment. Goodness, a new face! In these benighted parts. We take your car. Call me Z. First name’s Zoltan. Z covers it. My own car—it’s a long story.”

  Fred’s old brown car wobbled and creaked as the two men climbed in. “We’ll go to Tina’s,” Z said. “If you’re from Boston you don’t know it. It’s all there is. I’ll direct you.” He leaned back and sighed, accompanying his directions with gestures that were insistently, unnecessarily, graceful.

  Z took them north of Nashua center and into another mall whose establishments looked more aggressive in their expectations of the customers. The take-out barbecue joint was called High on the Hog. Z guided them to the Moonglow Lounge. “Back door,” Z instructed, after Fred parked the car. Fred followed him around the free-standing building that stood at the edge of the mall. The building’s design hinted that it was a failed Ground Round. Z opened the back screen door leading into a kitchen, calling, “Tina?”

  “Come on in, Mr. Zag.” It wasn’t possible to tell which of the three middle-aged Asians had spoken. Vegetable prep was in progress. A woman, coming forward while wiping her hands on a stained apron, said, “Ms. Tina not here, but you come in, Mr. Zag, you want drink.” The two men followed her through the kitchen into a dark lounge area at one end of which a raised stage promised disposable music and—because the architecture clearly suggested it—pole dancing.

  “They call me Zag here,” Z said.

  “We not open,” the woman explained to Fred. Z chose a booth. Fred sat across from him in the cool darkness. “You drink something,” she told Fred.

  “Hot as it is? Beer. A local beer.”

  “Anywhere else in town, I am going to run into a student of mine,” Z said. “Here, Tina won’t hire girls until they graduate, and prove they did. She comes to me for references.” His cheeks developed deep vertical chasms that passed for a smug grin, or rueful dismissal. “Wait a minute.” Z checked his watch. “I need to make a call.”

  The pay phone into which Z dropped his change was not near enough for Fred to overhear his end until his voice, after a muted beginning, gradually rose. “And have it with you. I’ll see you there.”

  Z sat down again with gestures of apology. “Could be my ticket out of town. I’m wasted here. Like everything and everyone else. Between you and me, I’ve thought about Boston. Place like Northeastern, Suffolk, if I have to keep with the teaching. Not like I haven’t tried. It’s too late. Forget it. There’s too much competition in Boston. People want to be where there’s a life…”

  The woman from the kitchen returned with a tray bearing a lowball glass of crushed ice, another lowball glass with a good three fingers of amber liquid—scotch by the smell of it—and a small pitcher of water. For Fred there was a bottle of Old Brown Dog from the Smuttynose brewery.

  Fred said, “What interests…”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Z held up a long hand, forcing a pause in conversation. The elaborate preparations he commenced suggested an almost masturbatory appreciation of the onset of his first drink of the afternoon. After organizing water, ice, and alcohol to his satisfaction, he lifted his glass in Fred’s direction. “Art appreciation,” he said. “Whatever your angle is, it can’t hurt. Wh
at paper you with?”

  “I’m freelance,” Fred said. “Working on spec.”

  Z shook a Parliament from the pack that rode in his breast pocket, and lipped it. “Do you mind,” he declared, careful to avoid any hint of inquiry as he applied the match.

  “Art Appreciation,” Fred said, musing over the projected title, “An Endangered Species. What’s your secret?”

  “My secret? The Nashua Teachers Union. Ha ha. Strike that.” Z’s chuckle was designed for the waning moments of the symposium far from home. “My secret? You mean to suggest that mossy phrase, The Secret of my Success? How did you come to select…”

  Fred interrupted. “You want to know my angle. What with cutbacks, retrenchment, the federal government getting into the act, the rest of it…and it’s not as if Nashua is in the middle of the urban art scene. The students of yours I’ve met…well, I’m impressed. How do you do it?”

  “Students of mine,” Z started warily. He took possession of a lungful of tar and nicotine and hung on to it, waiting.

  Fred said, “I don’t plan to interview current students in your art appreciation class. That would have to wait for the school year. Unless—you’re not doing make-up summer classes, people who flunked art appreciation?”

  Damp smoke colored and scented the reply. “Summers I’m off. Nothing official for the school. Summers I moonlight. Privately. Driver’s ed, helping the kids get through the permits. I am wasted here. There is nothing in the arts. You might as well try caviar as chicken feed. Caviar? Half these kids wouldn’t know what a chicken is. Sure, there’s the occasional damp kid with a spark. But they can’t get out from under where they are. The spark goes out. Can’t catch. I used to try. Maybe I still try. But it’s hopeless. You mentioned graduates. Alumni of Nashua Central. You’ve met them? Where? In God’s name, why?”

  Fred said, “The way I see it, the arc of the piece goes from art appreciation with Mr. Z at Nashua Central, which we agree is the wilderness, to a profession in the arts that nobody would ever have predicted. And you planted the seed. Mr. Z. Right here. Again, what’s your secret? As an educator?”

  Z leaned back and became expansive, waving the cigarette with his right hand and, more carefully, the drink with his left. “I help the ones I can. My secret is self-expression.” He slid into a reverie that focused on his glass.

  “Self-expression,” Fred prompted.

  “Not my self-expression. Theirs. You think kids want to know what Mr. Z thinks? One condition, all right? I insist. I reserve the right to approve your final text before you publish. It’s a tricky time for me. This other thing doesn’t work out. The article could help, but I’ll be the artistic director. As long as that’s agreed, I can talk straight. Save time. Sometimes, saving time, my phrasing is abrupt. OK, then? Gloves off.

  “You imagine the kids care what I think? Mr. Z? Or have to say? About anything? What I do, I make them write. They hate that, but they know it’s better than math. What they see in a picture. What’s going on. Not slides. Carrying stuff around. Projector. Slides, I tried that. Dark room, guys and girls start feeling each other up. High school. Plus you stand in back, go out of your mind, flicking the switch.”

  The elegant precision of his pronunciation did not change to match the comparative brutality of his words. It was unnerving.

  “No. I keep a stack of pictures. Bring it in. Reproductions, prints, some from magazines. Looking to find or strike a spark, but it’s hopeless. What are the people in the picture thinking? What do they want? I don’t care what the kids write, so long as they write something. Beauty? They could care less. History? Culture? What they are looking for is easy credit in a gut course. I don’t make it easy. What the artist has for breakfast? Whatever, they have to write. Pick up the papers, end of class, you know who was there, check it off, attendance. They didn’t write, it means they didn’t show. That means detention. Next class, make them read what everyone else wrote. The ones that can read. That’s a joke. End of the day. Scratch that. Everyone reads in Nashua Central. Pass it around the class. After you read the paper, write your name down on the back. When everyone’s read it, there’s your attendance on the next class. You taking notes?”

  Fred tapped his forehead. “Up here. Hate to inhibit a witness.” Mr. Z, not even halfway down his first drink, had given the floor to his evil twin.

  “Tell me your own training,” Fred said.

  The question caused a frown that was quickly eclipsed by a petulant smile. “For the record, I love art. Also I love the kids.” He did not need to add, “And I feel the two belong together.” He took a drink. “You mention alumni,” he said. “I am interested. In the Boston area?”

  Fred said, “No, I’m in the Boston area. Maybe three years ago? All in the same class. Eva? Arthur. Kim. They mentioned another classmate, Tippy Artoonian.”

  “Tippy?” Z exclaimed. “Not a success of mine. Poverty makes them blind. They can’t get past it. I thought, I still think, in a few years—but it’s hopeless. She’ll turn out like the rest of them. You could call it one of the arts. The fine arts. Dance.

  “I would have thought her reputation not much more than local, though she travels. North of Nashua. I guess you can call it art. What she does. I can’t exactly take credit…someone like Tippy, maybe I help her get started, we all have to eat, but…your article…we won’t mention…given some pending issues. There’s no reason to hand Mary…I don’t know the direction she’s going to go…the superintendent…I’m in enough…even my union…”

  Fred said, “Arthur’s the one I’m following more closely. I mention Tippy because her name came up. Arthur…”

  “Sure. Arthur Schrecking. Did drawings for the yearbook. Posters for class election candidates. Had a setup where he painted bikes after school. T-shirts. Head stuff. Something came of him? What’s Arthur doing? Arthur went to Boston? I’ve been wondering. You invest so much in a student, then he’s gone. How would I get in touch? You mentioned Kim. Kim? Kim who? Most of these kids, unless they join the service, never get out of town. I’d have thought the west coast for Arthur, but you say Boston?”

  “I’m the one in Boston,” Fred said. “What Arthur has, and I haven’t seen anything like it…”

  “What does he have?” Z asked sharply, sitting forward and looking intently across his glass.

  “He has perfect recall of images he has seen,” Fred said. “He can draw from memory—I saw him do it—for an example, that Botticelli painting, The Birth of Venus.”

  “The one on the half-shell?” Z chortled and took another sip, relaxing. The aesthete had gone completely and been replaced by a Rotarian hopelessly seeking a friend. “That’s a huge favorite. Eye-opener for them, get away with that porno in a high school class. Not in Texas, you wouldn’t. Kids love it. They tried to sneak it, Arthur’s drawing, into the yearbook. Not on your Nellie. Not without a bikini. Arthur’s making a living? In Boston? Doing art?” Z’s surprise was not feigned.

  “Tattoos,” Fred said. “What I thought would give you some professional satisfaction; he’s using images that come out of your class.”

  “Makes sense,” Z said. He drowned the butt of his Parliament by pressing the wet filter against its smoldering ember. “Good luck to him. You mention a couple other names. Eva. I recall Eva. Redhead. That can change, but hers was—she’d be a fool to change that hair. Eva’s into art? My influence? You never know. Who else?”

  “Kim,” Fred said.

  “I don’t recall a Kim. I mean, there’s a hundred thousand Kims, but not in that class.”

  “Hair stylist,” Fred said.

  “That makes sense. Hair stylist. Art. Applied art. I don’t remember a Kim from Arthur’s class, though. They get mixed up.”

  “There’s a rumor,” Fred said. “One of that group, maybe it’s Arthur? Could be in the business.”

 
“The business?” Z said.

  “On the side. Dealing.”

  “They all deal. What’s new?” Z said, impatient.

  “Art, I mean. Arthur. Dealing art. I’m looking for a painting.”

  “A painting,” Z said.

  “Old. On wood. It’s complicated. Lots of figures. Gremlins. Fairies.”

  Z leaned back and rubbed his face. He signaled with a long arm into the dark room. “Arthur,” he said. “Eva? Kim?”

  “On the off chance,” Fred said. “You being the art appreciation teacher, them being not long out of Nashua Central, I figured if Arthur bumped into a genuine painting, wanted to understand what it was, he’d come to you.”

  “All this bullshit about the article you’re writing, that’s bullshit, then,” Z said, following a long pause.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fred took a swig from the Old Brown Dog.

  “You’re working for her,” Z tried.

  The silence in the room was interrupted by the entrance of kitchen staff starting to lay tables. The afternoon was waning toward the moment when the Moonglow’s doors would open.

  Fred said, “Not only am I freelance. I’m independent.”

  “Right. Working for my wife’s attorney. You son of a bitch. If you think I’m paying for these…”

  Fred laid two twenties on the table, tucking them under the ash tray.

  “Tell her, whoever walks out, all bets are off,” Z said. “She’s the one walked out. Remember that. You creeping around with a fake magazine article and the rest of it?” He took an exasperated sip from his drink.

  Fred said, “Not important, but I didn’t claim I was writing an article. You drew that conclusion. I didn’t set you straight, so I let it become a lie. What I said was, I’m working on a project. I am.”

  “The one thing I know, if Arthur’s doing tattoos, he’s not in Boston,” Z said, treating Fred to a smirk. “It’s illegal, tattoos in Massachusetts. What is your so-called project?”