Brush Back

“Don’t preach to me. You don’t know what it was like growing up down there. The hypocrisy, the fear, not knowing who was part of what clique, who might beat you up after school because you were Jewish, or black, or a nerd who liked Japanese art.”

I looked up. “I grew up near Ninetieth and Commercial, Mr. Zukos. You can’t tell me much I don’t know about being a child down there. My middle name is Iphigenia. Kids used to dance around me shrieking ‘Iffy Genius’ at me because my mother had college ambitions for me.”

“It’s not like being beaten up because the other boys think you’re a pansy or a sissy,” he said, his voice low, shaking with passion.

“Maybe not. I’m afraid my reaction was to do as much damage as possible as fast as possible to anyone mocking me, instead of following my mother’s advice, which was to hold my head high and pretend it wasn’t happening. And she had her share of violent bullying in Mussolini’s Italy, so believe me, everyone has a hard story buried in them. Right now, today, I don’t care about your private life, what you did with Joel, or didn’t do. You seem to have made a good life for yourself.” I waved an arm at his building. “Joel’s a sad case; he lives inside a bottle, not a private art gallery.”

“Joel.” Zukos’s lips tightened in a bitter line. “Joel didn’t know who he was or what he wanted. Maybe he turned to me because he was unsure and was testing the water, although I thought he was trying to shock his father and mother: he had to be the role model for African-Americans, so that the people in the congregation who muttered against Eunice wouldn’t have any grounds for saying they’d been right all along, black people were rude or dirty or criminals. He had to be a model Jew in the black world so the goyim couldn’t say Jews were cheats or obsessed with money.”

“Heavy load.”

“I never knew what Joel wanted and he couldn’t figure it out, either. I don’t know what Joel looks like today, but back then he was pudgy, flabby. He was bright but the kids today would call him a geek. Girls didn’t respond to him. The only reason I did—all those years ago—I needed someone. And I hated being the rabbi’s model son; I could relate to Joel hating having to live up to Ira Previn’s halo.”

“He couldn’t do what you did,” I said. “Break away from the South Side, I mean—he went to Mandel & McClelland out of law school and he’s still down there, working for his father. But why did he get stuck with Stella Guzzo’s defense?”

A wind was starting to rise off the lake. Rafe pulled his silk jacket across his bare chest. “Joel thought Sol made him defend Stella as a punishment for being queer, although I thought it was because Joel had a crush on A

That startled me so much I lost my balance on the boulder and slid onto the sidewalk. “A

Zukos hunched a shoulder. “I don’t know. Joel thought she was. Or he thought Mandel was a predator trying to seduce her.”

“I thought your family had moved to the North Shore years before A

“Joel and I stayed in touch. For a while. Force of habit.” Rafe was speaking slowly, as if the words were being squeezed from his diaphragm. “We were in the same bar mitzvah class, our parents sent us out of the neighborhood to the U of C lab school, we went off to Swarthmore together. I was doing an MFA in curatorship at the Art Institute when Joel was in law school. We’d meet for di

The wind was getting stronger. Clouds blew in, like a conjuror’s trick: in an instant, the sky, which had been cornflower blue over Ira Previn’s office, turned gray.

“Rafe!” Ken was leaning over the side of the balcony again. “Are you coming in or do you want me to bring down a pullover?”

Rafe looked at the sky, at me shivering—the wind was coming straight in across the water. “Come in and see the art,” he offered unexpectedly.

BRUSH WORK

I followed him around the lake side of the building to the entrance, which opened into a living area that seemed part museum, a gold kimono dominating it from one wall, a scroll of geese taking flight on another, and in between stands holding lacquer or pottery.

The furniture was severely modern, which seemed to suit the art. I recognized an Eames chair, and supposed that the sofa, thin tan leather with chrome tube arms and legs, was also designer work. How had a rabbi’s son come by the money for this?

As if he’d read my thoughts, Rafe said, “Ken’s an artist—you’ll see his work upstairs. I was a curator and a collector and a wa

I made the noises we always make when we know nothing about the subject someone else is passionately discussing. Rafe led me up a broad wood staircase, pointing out lacquer in niches along the wall. The top of the stairs opened onto Ken’s studio, where Ken, in jeans and a sweatshirt, was closing the big glass doors to the balcony. Rafe went to help him and then introduced us—Kenji Aroyawa.

Rafe went to an alcove and fussed with a charcoal heater to make tea, leaving Kenji and me watching the lake through the glass window: it was starting to boil up, waves rocking back and forth, spume begi

“When it’s like this, it’s like Hokusai’s print of The Wave—you’ve seen it? The great wave that looks as though it could swallow the world?”

“Do you try to paint the water?” I asked. “I don’t know how an artist captures the motion.”

“Like this.” Ken turned to an easel set back from the front. He dipped a brush in a pot of ink and after a few short strokes, the water came to life on his sheet of paper.

My enchantment with seeing him work took my mind briefly from the question I’d been chewing on since Rafe’s comment about Mandel and A

“You like it?” Ken said.

“I’m completely blown away,” I said. “I won’t pretend I can make an intelligent response, though—it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of painting.”

Ken laughed and clapped his hands.

“You brought me a new disciple, Rafe,” he called. “Now sit down—what do we call you? Vic? I think Rafe has finished smelling up the place. Powdered green tea—I hate it, maybe from too many obligatory events as a child—my father was in Japan’s diplomatic service—but green tea is part of Rafe’s attempt to remind me I’m Japanese, or maybe to turn Japanese himself.”

He gave another loud laugh, then said he assumed I wasn’t with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, since Rafe had spent so much time with me.

“She works with another kind of witness,” Rafe said. “You know, law, courts.”

Ken cocked his head at Rafe. “Is someone suing you? Do you need to put all the art in my name?”

Rafe gave a perfunctory smile. “She’s a detective. She cares about a very old case where I was a witness to the torment of one of the lawyers.”

“Joel?” Ken asked.

Rafe turned his teacup round and round without looking at either of us. “I believe the dead past should bury the dead, but Vic wants to dig it up. I thought someone from my father’s old temple had sent her here to paw through old gossip about Joel and me, but she’s after different gossip. What exactly are you hoping to learn?”