The Poison Artist Read online

  “He took my drink. I wasn’t quite finished with it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I thought this seat was empty.”

  “Your seat was empty. I was sitting here.” She reached out and used a lacquered fingernail to trace a small circle on the bar top in front of her. “And there used to be a drink sitting here.”

  She spoke with an accent he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a voice that came from another place, but maybe a voice that came from another time. Or maybe that was the dress she wore, and the choker of pearls, and that dark perfume. As if she’d stepped out of a silent film, or crawled down from one of the alcoves where previously she’d been holding up a bronze olive branch, casting light and shadow. She could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-five, but whatever her age, she didn’t belong to this year or even this century. She reminded him of a painting, but he couldn’t wholly remember which one—maybe it was one he’d just dreamt. Seeing her was like finding something that had been lost for centuries, then restored to its rightful place: he was in the hush of a museum near closing time. He felt the distant heat of the overhead spots and the spent awe hanging in the gallery’s air, like old dust.

  He leaned toward her.

  “What were you drinking?” he heard himself ask. It didn’t take much more than a whisper—the room was that quiet. “I’ll buy you another one.”

  “Berthe de Joux,” she said. “French pour.”

  He waved the bartender over and repeated the name of her drink; the man nodded and came back a moment later with a tray. He put a clean reservoir glass between Caleb and the woman, poured an ounce of the green absinthe into it, and set the silver slotted spoon across the top of the glass. He put a sugar cube on the spoon and then set a small carafe of ice water on the bar. He nodded at Caleb and then went back to the group at the other end of the bar.

  “You pour it,” she said. “I like to watch the louche.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Drip the water over the sugar cube, until I say when.”

  “All right.”

  The carafe must have been in a freezer before the bartender filled it with ice water. His fingertips melted through a scrim of frost when he picked it up. He held the carafe above the sugar cube and began to tilt it, but she stopped him. Her fingers were light and cool on his wrist.

  “Higher,” she said. “It has to be a little higher.”

  She moved his hand until the lip of the carafe was nearly a foot above the sugar.

  “That’s right,” she said. The way she let go of his wrist was like being kissed by her fingers. “Go on. The slowest drip you can.”

  He watched the sugar cube melt through the slotted spoon into the absinthe. The liquid in the glass changed from green to milky white, the cold water precipitating something from the spirit. He could smell a mix of bitter herbs now. Wormwood and rue. Anise.

  “Stop.”

  He put the carafe down. She took the drink and dipped in the slotted spoon to get the rest of the sugar, and then she sipped it with her eyes closed. Her eyelids were dusted with something that might have been crushed malachite. When she opened her eyes, she smiled again and put the drink down.

  “Your forehead,” she said.

  She reached to him and touched the wound with the tip of her forefinger and then showed him the drop of blood. It looked black in the darkness of the room.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She rubbed her forefinger against the pad of her thumb until the blood was gone, and then she took another sip of her absinthe. He had never seen anything like that. Anything like her. She finished her drink in one last sip and set it down. Then she stood from her stool. Her clutch was still on the bar. She put her hand on the back of his neck and leaned toward him until her lips were next to his ear.

  “I have to go,” she whispered. Her perfume wrapped him like a cloak. Her left breast brushed his arm, nothing between her nipple and his skin but the slippery silk of her dress. “But maybe I’ll see you sometime. Thanks for the drink.”

  She stood and took her clutch. He watched, immobilized almost, as if she’d struck him with a curare-tipped dart.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She smiled, that same half-smile that crossed Bridget’s face when a painting was almost done, when whatever final form she’d held in her imagination was about to pass over into the canvas.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Next time. Maybe.”

  She turned and left, her hair swaying against her naked back as she walked away from him.

  Two

  THE KNOCKING WOKE him up. He came from somewhere deep and black and finally opened his eyes, rolling in the bed to look first at the door and then at the window. The light outside was very bright, and the knocking started again. He looked at his watch and saw it was noon.

  “Housekeeping.”

  The door opened an inch and caught on the chain. The maid shut it, then knocked again.

  “Housekeeping. Sir?”

  “Gimme a sec,” he said.

  He looked down. He was still dressed. He stood and went to the door.

  “I’ll be out in ten minutes,” he said.

  “That’s fine, sir.”

  He pushed the door to be sure it was locked and then he went into the bathroom. He bent to the sink and washed his face, then took one of the glasses and stood drinking tap water. One dream still lingered, clinging to him like a film of night sweat: the long series of knocks on the door, and how he’d climbed from the bed and crossed the room, entranced with sleep but believing he was awake. He’d put his eye to the peephole.

  She was in the hallway, curved and distorted by the fisheye lens.

  Not Bridget, but the woman in the black silk dress. He’d stepped back and watched the door handle move until the lock stopped it from going any further. It came up, then twisted down, harder this time.

  He hadn’t moved. He’d been holding his breath and leaning against the wall for support because he was still too drunk to stand unsupported. Finally he heard her walk away, and then the chime of the elevator and the creak of its doors parting. It was only then that he went back to bed.

  Caleb would have forgotten this dream but for the maid’s knock. Even now it was getting away from him, something slippery and alive that did not want to be lifted from the water. He let it go. There had been others, worse dreams, but those had already escaped and were just ripples now. He checked his back pocket for his wallet, and headed out. Before he got to the hallway, though, he stopped with the door half open. He woke up all the way then, if only for a moment, and felt the shock-current ripple down his spine and tingle through his arms to his fingertips.

  There was a little dot of blood on the door’s white paint, a few inches above and to the right of the peephole. Right where his forehead would go.

  Caleb got out of the taxi on Haight Street, across from Buena Vista Park. He was still a couple miles from his house, but the air inside the cab was close and hot, and he thought if he didn’t get out soon, he’d be sick. It was better once he started walking. Going west on Haight Street brought him out of the sunshine and into the fog.

  Over the course of the next three blocks, someone had taped and stapled identical flyers to every telephone pole and lamppost. They fluttered from all the tree trunks, from the public trash cans at the intersections. They were tucked under the windshield wipers of parked cars, where a passing rain had soaked them to the glass. On each page, a grainy black-and-white photo of a man was topped with the words:

  HAVE YOU SEEN CHARLES CRANE?

  He paused in front of one, looking at the man again. Twenty-five years ago, his own picture might have plastered this same street. A phone number was repeated sixteen times in vertical columns at the bottom of each flyer, and someone—Crane’s wife, perhaps—had scissor-snipped between each number to make tabs that passersby could tear off.

  But every fly
er was intact. No one had taken a number. No one had seen Charles Crane.

  The cold wind helped him keep his pace. By the time he cut through the corner of Golden Gate Park and turned south toward the heights of Mount Sutro, there was rain in the wind and he was genuinely cold. He came to his house the back way, leaving the road behind the medical center and walking along the footpath beneath the eucalyptus trees. The fog here was medicinal, scented with camphor, and he breathed it deeply as he walked. He hopped down a retaining wall and landed on the wet pavement of his own street, and then walked the last bit up to his house. Bridget’s Volvo wasn’t parked anywhere in sight.

  He followed the paving stones through a low front garden and came to his door. He pressed the doorbell, listening to the chimes inside and knowing she wasn’t home. He could walk back to the hospital and call a locksmith from his office. He knew that.

  Because of the incline, no houses were built on the other side of his street. Looking over his shoulder, he saw nothing but the cement retaining wall and a few parked cars. Above the wall was the ascending, forested slope of Mount Sutro. No one would see what he was about to do.

  He balled his fist and swung it at the plate glass.

  The water coming from the kitchen tap was freezing cold this time of year, and he held the fingers of his right hand under the flow and watched the crimson mix of blood and water swirl in the stainless-steel sink basin. He kept his fingers under the stream for five minutes. Then he opened the bottle of peroxide with his teeth and poured it over his hand, watching the effervescence of oxygen bubbling up from the open wounds.

  Afterward, he walked through the house, looking at the empty closets, at the blank spaces on the walls. The bookshelves in the living room were denuded and there were no more art books on the coffee table. In the master bathroom, he opened the mostly empty medicine cabinet and found a bottle of Tylenol.

  Except for the broken glass in the entryway and the blood on the floor that marked his path from the door to the kitchen, the place was perfectly clean. The only painting Bridget had left behind was a well-executed copy of John Singer Sargent’s A Parisian Beggar Girl. She’d painted it herself, as a gift to him, and it still hung on the bedroom wall. The girl stood in dirty white like a cast-off bride, her back against a plaster wall. She held out her left hand, palm up and fingers curled. A hint of blood marked her sleeve, or maybe it was just a strip of red cloth she’d wrapped there. Caleb had never been sure, and he’d never asked Bridget.

  Other than the begging girl, she’d taken every trace of herself out the front door. She’d swept up the broken pieces of the tumbler she’d thrown, had righted the lamp he’d knocked over when the glass hit him.

  She hadn’t left a note.

  When he found his cell phone on the counter, he checked it. There was a message from the lab, asking him to call his graduate fellow. Half a dozen emails from a grant auditor at the National Institutes of Health. It could all wait. There was nothing from her. Not even a missed call.

  He spent half an hour using scrap wood from the garage to board the broken window, and when he finished cleaning up, he went inside and lit the gas fireplace in the living room. He took off his shoes and lay on the couch, pulling a tartan throw blanket over himself. He stared at the redwood beams in the ceiling.

  They used to make love here, on this couch, with the fire going and the lights of the Sunset District down below, the patio doors open so the sea wind could sweep the room. He dug his phone from his pocket and turned it off. That was gone now. Bridget was gone. He could tour the house again and look at all the empty spaces if he needed to prove it. He thought of the woman from House of Shields, the slippery cold silk of her dress when her breast brushed his arm.

  The phone in the kitchen had only finished half of the first ring before he was awake and rising from the couch, throwing the blanket aside and coming around the living room wet bar to enter the kitchen. He got it by the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Caleb.”

  He leaned against the wall and then went to the floor. The sound of her voice, just the one word, his name coming from her mouth, was that strong.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “In my studio. But don’t come here.”

  He didn’t know what to say. It had gotten dark while he’d slept, and the only light came from the fire in the living room. From his low angle on the floor, he saw a drop of blood he’d missed earlier. A little splash on the baseboard, close to the china cabinet. It was black in the firelight.

  He found his voice.

  “Will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But not soon.”

  They were silent a long time, but he could hear each breath she took.

  “Why’d you call?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m glad to hear you think so.”

  “Wait—don’t hang up.”

  He waited, not sure if she’d cut the connection or not. He looked at the blood on the baseboard and thought of what he’d seen on the hotel-room door, above the peephole. The question slipped out before he knew he was going to ask it.

  “Do I sleepwalk?”

  “Jesus, Caleb.”

  “When we—”

  But she hung up before he could finish. He wasn’t even sure what he meant to ask. The microwave clock said it was nine p.m.

  He hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours. Maybe he was ready for something. He looked at the bare tabletop and listened to the silent house. The only sound was the low whoosh of gas in the fireplace. A clock ticking in his upstairs study. There was food in the refrigerator, things he could just heat up. He took a step further into the kitchen, then stopped.

  Nothing was going to make this feel any better, but staying here would be the smart thing. And he had to go to work in the morning.

  Instead he walked down the hall to his bathroom, turned on the shower, and stripped down. In fifteen minutes he’d showered and rebandaged his fingers, changed into fresh clothes, and put on a jacket. He went into his garage and backed his car into the street.

  Three

  THE PIED PIPER wasn’t crowded, and he easily got a spot at the bar. Will came and was about to say something, but the words stopped and his eyes flicked down to Caleb’s right hand. There were little circles of blood at the top of each bandage. He must have been squeezing the steering wheel too hard. But he couldn’t remember the act of driving here, couldn’t say what route he’d taken or how long he’d spent. The only thing he remembered was parking on New Montgomery.

  “It’s nothing like that,” Caleb said. “So don’t go there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I didn’t have my keys, and she was gone. I didn’t want to call a locksmith.”

  “I hope you own and don’t rent. So she left, then? Bridget?”

  “Yeah,” Caleb said.

  “Maybe this time, you wanna look at the menu?”

  “I think I better. I’ll skip the Jameson, but a Guinness would be good.”

  “You got it.”

  Will handed him a menu and went to draw the beer.

  The steak held his interest for at least the first half, but after that he slowed down and worked on the Guinness, splitting his attention between the painting and the doorway. Sitting up every now and then and closing his eyes, trying to recreate in his mind the scent she carried. He didn’t know if nightshade was a flowering plant, or if its flowers bloomed at night, but the word was right. It was dark, something occulted. You might lose yourself in the shadows just looking for it. Looking for her.

  “Refill?”

  He looked up and saw his empty glass in Will’s hand.

  “Yeah.”

  “No problem. Steak okay?”

  He nodded, then turned back to the door.

  When Will came back and put the Guinness down, Caleb turned to him.

  “Last nig
ht, that girl who came in here, the one in the silent-film-star dress—you seen her before?”

  Will drummed his fingers on the bar top.

  “Last night. Girl. Silent-film-star dress. You gotta be more specific,” he said. “Five hundred people came through last night. Lot of them were girls. In dresses.”

  “She walked in, walked out. When there were just three people in here. Right before you told me your name.”

  The bartender just looked at him and shook his head.

  Caleb understood. He had cuts on his fingers and his forehead, and a pair of thin-sounding explanations. If Will didn’t want to tell him anything about one of his other customers, that was probably just good sense. He let it go.

  “Then let me ask you this,” Caleb said. “Absinthe. That’s legal now?”

  Will relaxed and moved down the bar. He came back with a deep green bottle in each hand.

  “Law changed five, six years ago.”

  “This is the real stuff? What Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec drank?”

  “The real deal, from France. Made with wormwood.”

  “You got Berthe de Joux?”

  Will looked at him for a second before nodding.

  “Not many people ask for that one.”

  Caleb pushed his plate away and put his elbows on the bar.

  “Probably not.”

  “You’ll want the French pour, I guess. That’s with a sugar cube—”

  “And ice water,” Caleb said, finishing for him. “There must be oils dissolved in the alcohol, and the sugar and cold water precipitate them out of solution—that’s what makes it cloudy, right?”

  “You a chemist?”

  “Sort of.”

  “When it gets cloudy like that, when you mix in the ice water, the French call that the louche.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Will shrugged. He took the two bottles and put them away, then came back with the Berthe de Joux and the rest of the paraphernalia of an absinthe cocktail. He poured an ounce of absinthe into the glass and laid the slotted spoon atop it. He set the sugar cube on the spoon and handed Caleb the carafe.