She lay motionless, face down, her battered body twisted like a broken doll, blood forming a dark pool around her head.
Sonja waited for the applause to subside as she stood on the small podium at the front of the gallery. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘first of all I would like to thank the board of this exciting new treasure house of contemporary art,’ she turned to smile at the two women behind her, ‘for the honour they have done me in asking me to open the series of shows dedicated to living women working in sculpture. This will, however, be an occasion of endings as well as beginnings,’ she went on, ‘because as well as inaugurating a chapter in the work of this great new gallery, this evening will mark the end of my career.’ She delivered the words in clear, ringing tones, knowing that they would take everyone present by surprise. ‘My work has been my tyrant, my torturer, and it has come close to being my murderer,’ she went on. ‘It did not exorcise and transform the dark parts of myself, it fed and magnified them, and it has left me to live with the result, which is what I, and the man who has been brave — or foolish — enough to make a commitment to me, now intend to do.’
Somehow it was the mention of Arthur, of her private life, that turned the murmuring and head-shaking to hissing and booing: Sonja looked at the audience with the gaze of a heretic, hearing the crackle of her reputation burning around her.
Rosie was first up the steps. She knew something was wrong: Tiger was barking and yelping frantically, running from the open front door to the apartment and back inside. Rosie called Lorraine’s name, but when she made it to the top of the steps she started to scream.
Lorraine lay slumped by the side of the front door, her face unrecognizable. Her shirt and shoulders were soaked in blood, which had sprayed up the walls and splashed over the door, and formed a puddle beside her head. Rooney pushed her out of the way and knelt down beside Lorraine, feeling for the pulse on her neck, then her wrist, shouting instructions to his wife to call the emergency services. He could feel only a faint throbbing, so faint that at first he had thought Lorraine was dead. ‘She’s alive — get me blankets, hurry. Are they on their way?’
Rosie was weeping, nodding, running into the bedroom. Rooney had to knock Tiger out of the way as he tried to get to Lorraine, then growled at him. He had to shout to Rosie to get the dog out of the room.
Rosie rode with Lorraine in the ambulance to the nearest hospital, St John’s in Santa Monica, and Rooney followed behind in his car. He felt icy cold, shaken to the core, and he doubted that Lorraine would survive.
Jake had to sit down, his whole body shaking. It was some time before he could speak. ‘How bad is it?’
Rooney wanted to weep, but gritted his teeth. ‘She’s hurt real bad. She’s in a coma and they’ve taken her into Intensive Care.’ He swallowed as the tears welled up. ‘It’s bad, Jake, real bad. They don’t think she’s gonna make it.’
‘I’ll be with you in ten, fifteen minutes depending on the traffic’
Jake let the phone drop back onto the cradle. His body felt stiff and his mind blank. He was unable to take in what Rooney had said. He made himself go over the call again, then picked up his coat like a robot, and walked out. She was not going to die, he told himself. She was going to be all right.
Rosie handed Rooney a cup of coffee from the machine and sat close, resting against him. ‘She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ He sipped the lukewarm excuse for coffee. ‘She’s as strong as an ox. She’s gonna be okay.’ But his words sounded hollow. Rosie’s tears trickled down her face. They had been waiting for news, any news, for fifteen minutes.
Jake walked in, his features drawn and frightened. ‘How is she?’
Rooney stood up, offering his hand. ‘We don’t know — they told us to wait here.’
‘You want to tell me what happened?’
‘We don’t know. We got to her apartment and found her. At first I didn’t think she was alive — she’d taken one hell of a beating. He used a baseball bat, left it by the door.’
‘Who did you call?’
‘Local guys, Pacific Area Homicide. They were on the spot within minutes, so were the paramedics. They brought her into Accident and Emergency to get her blood matched for a transfusion, and did some X-rays.’
Jake sat down and clasped his hands. ‘You get a name? Someone I can talk to?’
Rooney wiped his face with his hand. ‘Yeah, officer said his name was Larry Morgan.’
‘I’ll go call him.’
Jake was gone for several minutes. When he came back there was an almost pleading expression on his face — begging for news, good news, but there had been none. He sat down beside Rooney. ‘They’ve taken the baseball bat for finger-printing, and they also got some bloody shoe-prints, some kind of sneaker. It looks like he broke in and was lying in wait — they found some screwed-up cans of Coke by the bed, as if he’d been waiting for her in the bedroom.’
Rosie said, ‘I was there yesterday. I watered the plants, and there were no Coke cans then. I’d have seen them, put them in the trash can.’
There was an awful silence, as all three sat staring straight ahead.
‘I’ve put out a warrant for this Lee Judd guy’s arrest,’ Jake said softly.
‘Good,’ Rooney said.
‘You think it was him?’ Jake asked, frowning.
We’ll soon find out. They get prints off the Coke cans?’
‘Too early yet — it’ll take a couple of days.’ Jake got up, then sat down again.
Rosie took out a tissue and blew her nose. She had been crying off and on ever since she found Lorraine. No sooner did she get a grip on herself than the tears poured down her cheeks again.
Rooney lit a cigarette, ignoring a prominent ‘No Smoking’ sign. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, inhaling deeply and hissing out the smoke. He could think of nothing more to say to Jake, could think only about the lady he had grown to love and admire so much, sure that this couldn’t be the end: life couldn’t be that cruel.
Jake sat straight-backed, gripping the arm of the grey airport-style armchair, still in shock, still unable to believe that he might lose the woman he felt it had taken him his whole life to find.
The three sat in silence, but all with the same hope, that Lorraine would live. They were each wrapped in their own thoughts and memories of her, knowing there was nothing they could do but wait. That was the worst part of it all — the awful waiting, and the helplessness.
‘Perhaps I’m addressing myself particularly to other women artists,’ Sonja said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the critical rumblings from the crowd gathered around the podium. ‘The relationship of art to life is a complex one, on which wiser commentators and greater artists than myself have expended a considerable amount of thought. Whatever else is true of art, it is true that its practice changes the nature of one’s relations with other people — and I think it deprives those relations of precisely the qualities of equality and reciprocity which women, in particular, cherish as ideal. For those reasons I think some women artists are not kept out of art by hostile conspiracies, but choose to remove themselves from it — as I now choose myself.’
The room erupted into chaos: Sonja’s face had returned to mask-like impassivity, and she stood motionless on the podium, as people continued to shout, jeer, and hurl incoherent questions at her.
As she turned to descend the steps, the crowd parted with ill grace to allow her to pass. She made her way to where her latest work was waiting to be unveiled. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to face the crowd.