with tears.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
She wiped her eyes with a finger and sat even straighter. “Thank you
for coming.”
Silence filled the room and made it seem even colder. She wiped her
eyes again and laced her fingers.
I said, “You have a beautiful home.”
She lifted her hands and made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know what
I’ll do with it.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“Just one year. larry owned it long before that, but we never lived in
it together. When we came to California, Larry said this should be our
place.”
She shrugged, raised her hands again, and let them drop back to her
knees.
“Too big, it’s really ridiculous. . . . We talked about selling It
Shaking her head. “Please-have something.”
I took an apple from the bowl and nibbled. Watching me eat seemed to
comfort her.
“Where did you move from?” I said.
“New York.”
“Had Dr. Ashmore ever lived in Los Angeles before?”
“No, but he’d been here on buying trips-he had many houses.
All over the country. That was his. . . thing.”
“Buying real estate?”
“Buying and selling. Investing. He even had a house in France for a
short while. Very old-a chateau. A duke bought it and told everyone
it had been in his family for hundreds of years. Larry laughed at
that-he hated pretentiousness. But he did love the buying and
selling.
The freedom it brought him.”
I understood that, having achieved some financial independence myself
by riding the land boom of the mid-seventies. But I’d operated on a
far less exalted level.
“Upstairs,” she said, “is all empty.”
“Do you live here by yourself?”
“Yes. No children. Please-have an orange. They’re from the tree in
back, quite easy to peel.”
I picked up an orange, removed its rind, and ate a segment. The sound
of my jaws working seemed deafening.
“Larry and I don’t know many people,” she said, reverting to the
present-tense denial of the brand-new mourner.
Remembering her remark about my arriving earlier than expected, I said,
“Is someone from the hospital coming out?”
She nodded. “With the gift-the certificate of the donation to
UNICEF.
They’re having it framed. A man called yesterday, checking to see if
that was all right giving to UNICEF” A man named Plumb?”
She closed her eyes again.
“Did the two of you meet there?”
“No. We met in my country-the Sudan. I’m from a village in the
South.
My father was the head of our community. I was schooled in Kenya and
England because the big universities in Khartoum and Omdurman are
Islamic and my family was Christian. The South is “No. . . I don’t
believe so. A long name-something German.”
“Huenengarth?”
“Yes, that’s it. He was very nice, said kind things about larry.”
Her gaze shifted, distractedly, to the ceiling. Are you certain I
can’tget you something to drink?”
“Water would be fine.”
She nodded and rose. “If we’re lucky, the Sparkletts man has come.
Beverly Hills water is disagreeable. The minerals. Larry and I don’t
drink it.”
While she was gone, I got up and inspected the paintings.
Hockney verified. Watercolor still life in a Plexiglas box frame.
Next to that, a small abstract canvas that turned out to be a De
Kooning. A Jasper Johns word salad, a Jim Dine bathrobe study, a
Picasso satyr-and-nymph gambol in China ink. Lots of others I couldn’t
identif’, interspersed with the earth-toned batiks. The wax pressings
were tribal scenes and geometric designs that could have been
talismans.
She returned with an empty glass, a bottle of Perrier, and a folded
linen napkin on an oval lacquer tray. “I’m sorry, there’s no spring
water. I trust this will be acceptable.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
She poured the water for me and took her seat again.
“Lovely art,” I said.
“larry bought it in New York, when he worked at SloanKettering.”
“The cancer institute?”
“Yes. We were there for four years. Larry was very interested in
cancer-the rise in frequency. Patterns. How the world was being
poisoned. He worried about the world.”
Christian and animist-do you know what that is?”
Ancient tribal religions?”
“Yes. Primitive, but very enduring. The northerners resent that-the