Sylvia stares at him for a second, then shakes her head and says, “You talk about this individual as if he’s not only a first-rate artist, okay, but as if he’d moved beyond that status. Like he’s some kind of visionary. You might disagree with my phrasing, but your whole group here feels a little cultish. I don’t mean to be insulting. I’m just asking why, until very recently, I’d never even heard of Terrence Propp? Never seen any of his work. I’ve never read an article about him. Never heard him mentioned anywhere in the media. And I’m not exactly an uninformed person.”
Gaston keeps a poker face and says, “We each come to Propp when we’re ready. That’s the beauty of the whole phenomenon.”
“That’s an answer?”
“I don’t expect you to understand yet,” he says. “And I may have made a very large mistake bringing you in ahead of time—”
“I don’t want in.”
“But in fact, you made a statement earlier—”
“A statement?”
He looks at her oddly, squinting his eyes.
“You said you had something that belongs to Propp.”
Did she say that? Sylvia can’t even remember now, but she must have. She doesn’t want to mention the Aquinas prints, so she shakes her head and says, “I thought that would get me a name, you know. I thought it might buy me a connection. I lied. And it worked.”
It’s clear Rory Gaston doesn’t like this answer.
“I’ve just seen a few things,” Sylvia says. “I’ve just discovered a few pieces. Yesterday. For the first time.”
“And where,” Gaston says, “was your first exposure?”
Sylvia hesitates, then says, “Excuse me?”
She feels him tensing up.
“You just said you’d never seen any of Propp’s work until yesterday,” Gaston says.
Sylvia nods.
Gaston’s hands come out into the air, questioning. “Where did you see Propp’s work? Where were you?”
She meets his stare and says, “The Skin Palace.”
He looks confused. This wasn’t the answer he was expecting.
“Herzog’s,” she says. “The movie theatre.”
“You saw a Terrence Propp in Herzog’s?”
Sylvia nods.
Gaston starts to shake his head and says, seemingly to himself, “I’ve made a huge mistake here.”
He walks to the door and unlocks the bolt, pulls the door open, turns and stares at Sylvia.
“What’s the problem?” she says.
He doesn’t say a word, just stands next to the door waiting for her to leave.
And the light-headedness returns, as if carried in on a draft of air from outside.
She gets up, a little wobbly, moves across the room and says, “Look, I’m sorry if I—”
“Just get out,” Gaston whispers, “before someone sees you in here.”
12
The back door is open. Sylvia comes into the kitchen and sees the bottle of Dewar’s, uncapped, sitting on the counter. She can hear the TV from the living room but she can’t make out the words. She takes off her coat and hangs it over the back of a chair, walks down the hall and finds Perry sitting on the edge of the old leather hassock that had been her mother’s. His suitcoat is tossed on the couch. He’s leaned forward staring at the screen, a fogged-up water glass between his hands. His hair is a mess and his shirt is half-untucked. He’s squinting at the TV screen, looking like he’s trying to decode hieroglyphics.
He’s so intent, she feels like she shouldn’t interrupt him, like he’s in a state of frantic prayer. She’s never seen him looking this way in front of the television. Usually he’s just the opposite, close to narcoleptic, one eye on a game that he lost interest in a half hour ago.
“Perry,” she says from the doorway.
“Jesus,” he flinches and rears back, tossing some of his drink into his lap.
“Shit,” he yells, standing up, trying to get his balance, pulling at his pants with his hand.
Sylvia starts to go to him but then she gets a look at his face and stops. He’s furious. His head is bobbing in that way that she knows means trouble, means he’s beyond annoyed and deep into a full-blown temper tantrum. They could have some wall punching any minute.
“What,” she says like a scared kid, like she’s broken curfew for what will absolutely be the last time.
He’s sputtering, he’s so mad. He starts biting in on his top lip and his arm comes up and starts pointing at the screen. She steps to the side a bit and looks to see this morning’s riot outside Herzog’s.
“What the hell happened?” he snaps, but instead of answering, Sylvia just stares at the screen. It’s an unsettling experience. She’s seeing everything she just lived through about five hours ago, but she’s seeing it from another perspective. The riot’s been filmed with a hand-held camera and the picture has that feeling of ongoing immediacy, that voyeuristic aura that’s spliced with both attraction and repulsion, as if anything is not only possible but probable. And as if you’re in the eye of a maelstrom, adjacent to disaster but chronically protected. She’s seeing all kinds of things that she missed the first time around. She’s seeing more small pockets of skirmishing, more people trading punches and losing blood. And she’s hearing noises that she never picked up. Dozens of screamed exchanges studded with a censor’s bleep, voices at differing distances from the microphone creating a cacophony that tells more than any narration could.
Perry plants his now-empty glass down on the floor and picks up the remote control. He hits a button and the images on the screen start to race by, obscured into a hyperriot, bodies now flying at speeds more laughable than tragic.
“You taped this?” is all she can think to say.
He doesn’t respond, but squints down at the screen and then at some right moment, he thumbs down on another button with such emotion and emphasis you’d think he was launching warheads from hidden silos. The picture calms back to normal speed and clarity and there’s Sylvia, wrestling with the cop over the camera.
“Oh, God,” she mumbles.
“That’s it,” he says, head still wobbling over his neck, face flushed to a murky red, “Oh, God, huh?”
She looks from his face back to her own image on the screen and in the most sarcastic voice she can summon, she says, “Sylvia, are you all right? Were you hurt? Is there anything I can do?”
His arm shoots up and a finger is pointed out at her. “Don’t do that,” he says, trying and failing to get a grip. “Don’t turn this around. Don’t try and put this on me. You didn’t even call me. It’s been hours, for Christ sake. I called the hospitals. I had Ratzinger phone the police station. You didn’t even call me, Sylvia.”
“How was I supposed to know I’d be on TV?” she says but it’s weak and they both know it.
“I’ve been pulling my hair out of my goddamn head—”
“You’re right,” she says, suddenly feeling guilty and wishing they could end the argument immediately. “I should’ve called.”
“Should’ve called,” he roars and she knows they’ve got some bad hours to go through. Maybe some bad days.
“What the hell happened, Sylvia?” he says, wiping his face with his hand and trying to calm down.
Sylvia extends her arms toward the TV.
“You saw what happened, Perry. I went down there to pay for the camera and the next thing I know I turn a corner and the street is filled with all these people—”