Chapter 19 Lily
LILY
ON MY NEXT SHIFT I waited until Emily was on her lunch break, then clicked around on the security system to see if there was any chance of looking at the archived footage—the system let me access the past twenty-four hours, but nothing beyond that without a supervisor’s password.
We were able to access the hotel’s records to help with our scheduling and billing, but we could only see who was in the hotel at that moment—not who had stayed in the past or when.
Just in case, I searched the name “Peaches,” but as I suspected would happen, the system didn’t turn up any results.
Clara had wanted me to text her, though I found myself holding out.
I was worried that once I told her I didn’t have news she could use, she would bail.
And I wanted to keep her close, watch over her.
I couldn’t stop picturing that man who had come into her shop.
Couldn’t stop picturing Steffanie, the way that, before that night at the club, she used to snort when she laughed.
I was struggling, too, to find anything else about the artist and the paintings from Mil’s.
I had gone back to her house to take photos on my phone.
As I crossed the street, I’d worried that they wouldn’t be as striking as I remembered, that I had only been impressed by them because they’d been so unexpected.
Mil surprised me by greeting me with a hug. She was wearing a stack of bangles that clacked against my spine.
“Sorry, I’ve got my armor on today.”
“Oh, do you have plans? I can come back another time.”
“Not at all. But you know how it is. Some days you just need a little … fortification. I’m so glad you like those paintings, but it makes me miss my husband is all.”
“Oh Mil, I’m so sorry. We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“Don’t be silly. He would love this, a professional like you taking an interest in his stuff.”
I winced. In New York, I was still best known as a hysteric or a pawn or, maybe the worst, a co-conspirator—someone just as cynical as Matthew who had accepted her role in the whole mess. “Mil, I work at a spa. Not sure how much of a professional I am anymore.”
“Nonsense. You’re brilliant and you know it. You head on up, and I’ll get us some iced tea.”
As I made my way through her house, I braced myself for disappointment. Back up that narrow, creaking stairway, wallpapered in a faded blue floral, into the little square of a bedroom with its chenille spread. I stood in front of the closet and held my breath.
But as I brought the paintings out of the closet, propped them up along the wall of the bedroom to look at them in the light, I felt the same thrill, the same hum of purpose in my chest. The artist’s use of color was extraordinary, vivid and unexpected and strange.
The painting Mil had mentioned, the demolition of the Traymore, showed clouds of gray dust lined in neon pink.
It seemed to hint at the garishness to come, the blaring neons and gaudy mirrors, the pandering, hypersexed billboards.
One of the paintings of the diving girl was done exclusively in shades of blue, invoking a somber, melancholy impression.
Even her perfect smile was shaded a lovely, sad periwinkle. A smile full of secrets.
After several failed attempts to dredge up anything remotely relevant via Google, I decided to go to the Atlantic City public library before my next shift at the spa.
Someone had to know something about this painter—Atlantic City is too small a town to hold that kind of a secret.
Someone would recognize the signature or point me to a tiny vanity-press book about local artists.
I asked the librarian on duty who I could talk to about the paintings.
I told her I thought that the painter might be working from photographs, at least for some of the paintings, given the time span they covered.
“Well, I’m afraid that due to the latest round of budget cuts, the woman who maintains our archives is now only here on Mondays and Fridays. She’s the expert, but maybe I can help?”
I scrolled through the images on my phone: the Victorian ladies on the promenade, the portraits of the soldiers and nurses, the sleek chrome-accented cars of the 1920s, the first Miss America contestants in home-sewn costumes—until I found several shots of the signature.
The woman squinted at the screen, then frowned.
“I’ve never seen anything like these before. Where did you say you came across them?”
“In my neighbor’s house. Her husband used to collect them.
She said he bought them from a man who sold used furniture and odds and ends on a street corner, but she has no idea who the man was or where he set up shop.
Her husband passed away years ago. She’s going to dig through his papers, but my impression is he was something of a pack rat so it might take a while to find anything like notes or a receipt. I figured I would try you here.”
She shook her head. “Sue might know. I would let you look at the archives, but I’m the only one here today and I can’t leave the desk.
Unfortunately only a small fraction of our collection is digitized.
We just don’t have the manpower to get most of it online.
But she’s in, let me see, Friday at eleven. Can you try to stop by then?”
My first bit of luck so far: I had a closing shift that day and would be able to pop in again before I headed over to the spa. “Sure, that works for me.”
“You can try to research in our databases, too, but so many of our subscriptions have been slashed.”
“Friday sounds great, thank you so much. I’ll come back.”
“A few years ago, we would have been able to do so much more, but …” She shrugged and looked up. I became aware of how warm the library was, the muggy air pressing on my arms, and wondered if their air-conditioning had been cut, too.
I left unsure as to whether I should be hopeful or depressed.
Maybe Mil would find something useful. At least the name of the person who sold the paintings to her husband, any scrap of information I could grab on to.
Though a part of me also felt apprehensive about finding out who the artist was.
After New York—where everyone was climbing over one another to get their name out, to trade in on favors and name drops to get laid, to get money, to get attention—there was something so appealing about the anonymity of this painter.
The way he or she had continued to document and interpret the shifts and moods of the city, whether ever recognized for it or not, had integrity.
It was humbling to see the care the artist had put into these paintings, and I loved the way they opened up the city, the layers of the past that were invisible otherwise.
Like the city’s memory of my father—lost.
I MOVED through the casino with the paintings still on my mind, seeing the casino and the people in it as the painter might have seen them.
The senior citizens squinting at the slots.
The rumpled-looking dealers at the empty blackjack tables.
The hotel clerks bent toward their computer monitors.
The exercise lent a strange dignity to everyone, made them seem worthy of being memorialized.
That’s what I loved about portraiture—how it captured the way a person’s personality, their past, their secrets, their desires or disappointments, settled into their body, their face.
Good portraits, like the ones Mil had, did that—they raised a single life, even an ordinary one, to the light.
When I got to the spa, I stood in front of the door and stared through the glass, studied Emily standing at the desk.
I wondered how the painter would have captured her.
I knew she wasn’t religious anymore, and she would have hated to hear it, but there was a holy aspect to her face and hair.
It had to do with the way the light came down from overhead.
But that wouldn’t be the right way to paint her—there would need to be a hint of her slyness, her humor.
That sneaky smile, the knowing, witty shine of her eyes.
She looked up and saw me standing there, pulled a grimace, waved at me to hurry inside.
Behind her, Luis was working a mop back and forth through the boutique, leaving wet zigzags on the floor.
“I’m glad you’re here. There’s so much to do. We have a visit from corporate next week. Monday. Even Whitney will be here. Just got word from Deidre down in Charlotte. Carrie knows, too, of course, but naturally she doesn’t give a shit so it’s all on me—us—to make sure everything goes smoothly.”
“Who’s Whitney?”
“Christ, someone didn’t pay attention during training!” That was true. “Whitney is our COO.”
“Okay, and what is she going to be doing here?”
“Each spa location is rated on a points system across six different categories. Service, retail, facility, customer engagement, teamwork, and operations.”
“Oh God,” I said.
“Exactly. Poor Luis here is getting worked to the bone getting this place in shape. I’m coordinating with each department head—skin, nail, hair, and massage—to make sure we ace the service aspect.
Mostly everything else is up to us. It’s going to be a nightmare.
Anyway, we can talk more about that throughout the day—I’ll probably need to lean on you a lot.
” Luis looked up and I saw that he had a cut on his left cheek, a bruise on the underside of his arm.
I wondered if he had gotten into a scuffle.
His mood seemed sour and he frowned as he worked.
I would have to ask Clara more about him—why he seemed to make her nervous, what secrets she thought he kept.
“Sure, let me know what I can do.” She studied me for a minute, a little smile coming into her face. “What?” I asked.
“You’ve got some bounce in your step. You get laid or something?”