When I’ve finished and washed my hands, I almost collide with Gemma Zhang. I suspect she was waiting outside the bathroom to orchestrate just this sort of meeting.
“Mara Eldritch,” she says, holding out a freshly-manicured hand. “The woman of the hour.”
“Gemma, right?” I say, taking the hand and shaking it.
“Did Sonia warn you about me?” she smiles slyly. “She’s quite the guard dog for Cole Blackwell. Can’t take a step in his direction with Sonia barking at you.”
“She’s good at her job.”
I’m trying to decide how I feel about Gemma. She’s quite lovely, elegantly dressed in her silk jumpsuit, but there’s a wicked edge to her smile that doesn’t put me at ease.
“You must see a lot of Sonia,” Gemma muses. “While you’re seeing a lot of Cole. Living together already, aren’t you?”
There’s no point denying what everyone already knows.
“That’s right.”
“That was fast. Love at first sight?”
“Not exactly.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Cole in love at all. Is this all part of the rivalry?”
“What do you mean?”
“My sources tell me that it was Alastor Shaw who took an interest in you first.”
“Your sources are wrong. I’ve barely spoken to Shaw.”
“But he did date your roommate …”
“I don’t want to talk about Erin,” I snap.
“Of course,” Gemma offers an expression of sympathy I don’t quite believe. “What an awful thing. I’m sure you heard about the girl they found down by Black Point … people are saying she was posed like a painting.”
“That’s what I heard,” I say stiffly.
“Can you imagine if an artist was doing all this?” Gemma pretends to look around us. “They could be here right now.”
“Are you writing about the murders?”
“Actually …” Gemma smiles brightly. “I’m writing about you. San Francisco’s newest rising star!”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Oh, it’s certain. Look at these paintings! Just stunning. Drawn from personal experience, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“Why so many references to childhood?”
“Childhood shapes us all—the events we remember, and even those we don’t.”
“It’s shaped you as an artist?”
I shrug. “Remedios Varo learned to draw by copying construction blueprints her father brought home from work. Andy Warhol was a sickly child who spent his days drawing in bed, surrounded by celebrity posters and magazines. Our history always influences our aesthetic.”
“These don’t look like happy memories.”
“That one might be,” I nod toward the painting nearest us, which depicts a girl and a cat curled up asleep in a bed of tulips.
When I was very young, maybe three, I woke up from a nap in an empty apartment. It might have been the silence that woke me. I slipped off my little mattress and wandered through the apartment, which didn’t belong to us, but where I’d been staying with my mother for several weeks. I navigated the empty bottles and trash scattered everywhere, afraid to call out and break the eerie silence.
I found the front door, which stood partially open.
I wandered out into the hall, and then down the stairs, never seeing another person.
When I came out onto the sidewalk, a large calico cat sat waiting on the steps, gazing at me with unblinking eyes. Being three, I was certain the cat waited for me. It jumped down off the step and began strolling around the corner. I followed after it.
Eventually, it settled down in the tulip bed of the back garden, stretching out in the sunshine. I climbed up onto the warm dirt and lay with the cat, my head against its body. We both drifted off with the gentle buzz of bees all around us.
Later, an old woman found me. She took me up to her apartment and fed me coconut cake. I had never eaten coconut before.
That was a memory I returned to in times of stress or pain. I believed the cat was there to take care of me. I believed it for years.
But I don’t tell any of that to Gemma.
“Even that one’s lonely,” Gemma says, tilting her head to the side as she examines The Nap. “The dark color palette … the smallness of the child next to the cat …”
It’s true. The cat is oversized, a calico tiger, larger than the girl herself, who almost disappears amongst the jumbled stems of tulips.