The Ruins

Murder is art, life is a canvas.

He had been there since four-thirty in the morning, his car parked anonymously among countless others along the edge of the city’s largest park. He had watched the dawn’s mist rise from the ground like a spirit leaving behind its body, expanding in the cool air and floating into the heavens. Looking over the multicolored treetops, their dew-kissed leaves appearing metallic in the light of the rising sun, he took a quick peek at his watch before returning his attention to the view outside his open window. It was now six-fifteen.

'Park’s really nice this time of year', he thought.

Every year during the early months of autumn, Beal Park transformed into a textured canvas of greens, reds, and oranges; reminding him of the impressionist oil paintings he often admired at the Markham Gallery downtown. Growing up in the barrio –an area known as “the Flats,” where drug dealers swarmed the streets like traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange- Javier Saldivar had dreamed of being an artist. Of creating a masterpiece, perhaps one like his all-time favorite: The Scream, by Edvard Munch.

Javi, as he was known, smiled as he lit a cigarette. The dense smoke circled around him while he exhaled as though he were blowing a kiss. Not a regular smoker, the pack of Marlboro reds had lasted him for months. The stale tobacco burned fast and the taste was like smoking rye grass left too long without water. But to Javi, that bitter, rusted taste was inconsequential. The ritual of lighting up this victory flare, while he watched his art being created before his eyes, that was the true sweetness he savored.

“The Ruins, by Javier Saldivar,” he whispered, thick gray cigarette smoke creeping by his wet lips.

In the park, on a green metal bench along the pavement walking path, lay the dead body of Summer Watson, her mouth open in a perpetual scream.

***

Javi waited there long after the ember glow of his Marlboro had smoldered out in the ashtray of his rented Hyundai. No one noticed him, not even the early morning jogger who discovered the body. It was seven thirty and a parade of medical personnel, forensic examiners, and middle-aged detectives occupied a fifty-foot radius surrounding the body, now covered with a black vinyl sheet.

The yellow-vested forensic staff paced around the bench, like art critics when they critique a sculpture, and Javi beamed at the likeness of the act.

'Metaphors', he thought. 'Art is always a metaphor'.

The detectives scribbled notes on their pads in between jokes. Each time they laughed, it was in spurts followed by swiveled glances to make sure no one had noticed their insensitivities. It was no surprise to Javi that they had not become aware of his collection of art, his masterpieces from which only he drew satisfaction.

The team paramedics appeared equally apathetic. They lumbered around with their expressionless faces, waiting for their orders to remove the body as though they were in a long line for the restroom. One of them was talking on his cell phone, oblivious to the scent of death that surrounded him.

Even the bystanders were only mildly interested, chirping in with a “bless her soul” in between talk of the local economy and the spiraling corruption in politics. Although there were a few that were actually perturbed, but more so because their morning jogging route had been shut down. They their heads without remorse as they walked away from the scene, cursing.

They were all just parts of the picture to Javi. Background, like the dark clouds in the red sky behind the Screamer. Summer’s sacrifice had only set the foundation, the primer, for the real art yet to come. Javi’s masterpiece was just beginning.

The Ruins, was in the earliest of stages.

***

Javi drove home listening to the retro station, humming to the tune of the Billy Joel classic, “Uptown Girl.” He debated whether it would be too soon to turn in the car, and then smiled the smile of a man who had just committed the crime of the century, and had left behind the perfect patsy.

Still, he had to be sure. The car needed to be cleaned, or he might jeopardize his chances of admiring his opus. His confidence convinced him that task could wait til morning. Meanwhile, he began singing in his off-key baritone voice.

“Uptown girl, living in her white bread world…”

Javi laughed at how perfectly those words described the life of Summer Watson. It’s why he had chosen her. Javi knew all too well the seedy undergrowth that hid beneath the façade, like an elegant lace coverlet concealing a rotting corpse.

Her world was one of steaming secrets, painful lies, and permanent mistrust; and Javi had been there to rescue her. A savior not a predator. He thought of himself as the oasis in her desert of despair, and she had only to drink from his waters.

Once again, Javi smiled at the metaphors inherent in his work.

He turned up the music as his memories drifted back to the day he had first made the acquaintance of the recently departed Summer Watson, a brief two months before.

***

Javi had read about the upcoming Monet exhibit at Markham’s in the Wednesday paper. By the weekend, he had traded his day off with another construction worker to be able to attend.

In the last few months, the toxic noise of the inner city had once again consumed Javi’s feelings of humanity, and he hoped the serenity of the gallery would restore the his shattered soul.

Stepping out into the street that morning, he heard the familiar snickering behind him.

“Mida, homes, esta La Dreamer,” spoke a voice from a crowd of homeboys on the stoop.

“Odele, vato,” replied a bald, tattooed man in a flannel shirt. He looked almost as amusing as menacing in his khaki pants that were two sizes too large. The homeboys had been calling him Dreamer since grade school, although close runner-ups had been pussy, maricon (fag), and puta (bitch).

“Why don’t you paint this, Dreamer,” he continued, placing two fingers in a v-shape below his lip with his tongue wagging between them. “It’s the closest you’ll come to tasting pussy, pinchi maricon.” Fucking faggot.

The group erupted in laughter.

“Pobre cito, Javi,” the apparent leader began as the last of the chuckling died down. “You need to get laid, homes. Why don’t you take some of that construction money and buy you a chic that’s into to that faggot look you wear.”

Javi had always been considered a pretty boy, his dark eyelashes casting a feminine hue on his soft facial features. His body was sleek yet muscled and he wore form-fitting clothes that made him look like a tourist in his own neighborhood. Before he trimmed his shoulder length black hair to create a more masculine appearance, he often received shouted advances from the older men who routinely drank beer on the sidewalk.

Smiling, Javi observed the leader. His name was Ignacio, but the world knew him as Nachi, and the two had been friends before Nachi dropped out of school in eighth grade. Nachi shook his head while holding back his laughter, a subtle smirk on his face.

Javi remembered the time Nachi threw up on himself and had to wait in the principle's office for two hours covered in his own vomit.

“Simon, homes,” Javi answered, grinning. “I just might do that.”

Once again, the gang roared with amusement.

Javi walked to the corner and boarded the bus to downtown.

***

The bus, with its hard plastic benches vibrating with the feeling of accepted mediocrity, had left Javi feeling numb, as though his skin had solidified into marble. Once inside the gallery, he felt his skin once again become permeable flesh and the surrealism of the experience left him in a state of vertigo. Standing glossy-eyed before a Monet, he saw each color float away from its seemingly three-dimensional surface and pour into his soul. Javi was reborn into life, no longer a marble statue like the ones adorning the front of the building.

Time stood still, and he breathed only out of habit.

Suddenly, a woman’s voice filtered through. “Excuse me sir, may I offer you an audio tour headset? We have them available in Spanish if you’d like.”

Javi looked at her as though she was dancing at his funeral.

“Oh dear, how do I say this…en Espanol,” she continued.

“It’s okay, ma’am,” he said, the world around him beginning to sharpen. “I don’t really speak Spanish that much. I’ll pass on the headset but um, ‘gracias’ anyway.”

They both shared a half-genuine laugh before she continued her duties elsewhere. Once she moved out of view, he began to think of how she had reminded him of Selma Howard’s oldest daughter. Mrs. Howard was the elderly white woman whose journey into the afterlife he had accelerated five months before. She had been his ninth-grade art instructor - a woman who used terms like 'delightful' and 'mercy me' when something excited her - and he had seen her for the first time since leaving school in the pharmacy, just two weeks prior to her funeral. She was in the store to pick up her monthly supply of insulin.

“Sad really,” she told him. “This here insulin is my only excuse to leave the house these days.” She smiled as she looked at him, as though she wanted to pinch his cheeks.

Instead she just slapped his shoulder and started reciting the recent tragedies in her life – the death of her husband one year ago, her retirement the year before that, the absence of her grandchildren from her life since her daughters had moved to New Mexico- telling each story with what might be confused as excitement. Afterwards, she asked how his art was progressing, if he even still harbored an interest

“Of course,” Javi answered. “Took some night classes during the summer, I think I’ve made some progress.”

Mrs. Howard had always thought his work lacked substance, the same as her critiques had. “Good job,” she’d say, nodding her head slowly up and down as though Javi were a two year old feeding himself for the first time. Her praise had been as hollow as her life had become.

“Well then, you’ll have to come over and show me some samples,” she replied, letting him know she lived just two blocks from the pharmacy. Javi agreed to come on Monday of the next week, the first of his two days off.

“Delightful,” she beamed, “my first company in weeks, other than the mailman.”

He felt pity for her as he watched her walk away, her steps shallow and patient. Mrs. Howard had nowhere to hurry to and no life left to live.

That Monday afternoon, he brought two of his recent efforts to her place, an interpretation of a low-rider car that belonged to a man down the street and his mother cooking flautas in her kitchen. Mrs. Howard marveled at the progress he had made.

"It’s so Picasso, Javier.”

Though she’d offered it as a genuine compliment, the words sliced through his heart. They were the same words countless art agents had used as a primary reason to reject his work. "There is some evident talent here, but its so Picasso," They'd say. "It lacks originality.”

He squeezed a palm full of his pants leg, rage pulsing in his veins.

"Stay for dinner?" she asked.

“Sure,” Javi told her, “just let me run to the store to pick up some wine.”

“Just enough for you though, dear. My diabetes, remember?”

Returning twenty minutes later, he had a bottle of Gossamer Bay in his hand and an insulin vial filled with a concentrated cocaine solution in his pocket, the wine taking him longer to find in the store than the drug on the street.

Javi had named it 'Formality', his second such masterpiece. The name was appropriate, not only because her death was construed as merely a formality given her age, but because every event afterwards was done out of obligation. It was all formality, absent of even feigned sincerity, and Javi had watched it all from the shadows. Mrs. Howard’s death was only the foundation; the real art was always in the aftermath.

Javi smiled as he remembered the final thought she had shared with him. Looking as though she had been peering into the next life, she sighed, “sometimes it seems as though the only thing I have to look forward to is meeting my dear Ralph in heaven, and I try hard not to pray for that time to hurry up and arrive.”

Now, her wait was over, and Javi imagined that she would thank him if she could.

Javi decided to take a short coffee break before walking through the exhibit again, this time without the memory of Mrs. Howard. He walked over to café, near the entrance to the gallery.

It was here that he saw her for the first time, her frizzy red hair curling around her slender shoulders. She was wearing a thin, baby blue sweater and bell-bottomed jeans, her legs looking like pencils and her body like a teenager’s. Her hands were clasped in front of her as her fingers weaved an invisible cloth. She began to look around as though she had just awakened in a strange land, lifting her hands to her pale, make-up free face. She appeared particularly young for twenty, and could have easily passed for sixteen. Looking directly at Javi, she flashed him a tense smile with her thin lips. He held her gaze for just a second before she shuddered, when the tall, well-groomed man behind her touched her shoulder.

“Summer, there you are. I wondered where you ran off to. Did you want some coffee, or something to snack on?”

“No daddy,” she answered, shaking her head so fast that her hair appeared to keep moving a few seconds afterwards.

“You sure? I’m gonna grab me a latte, let me get you a cappuccino.”

Summer lowered her head and whispered, “that’d be great, daddy.”

“Good. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Javi felt compelled to join her. She was finger weaving again when he started her.

“Hi, mind if I join you?”

Summer looked at Javi as though he was a waiter, asking her if she wanted fries or baked, and she couldn’t’ decide which.

“How about I just sit down here, and if it bothers you, all you have to do is look at your watch and I’ll leave," he continued, laughing as he pulled out a chair. "That way, you don’t have to worry about offending me.” Recalling her reaction to her father’s touch, he sat at least fifteen inches from the edge of the table, directly opposite her.

“You enjoy Monet?” he asked.

She looked to the side and nodded quickly.

“Your favorite?”

She paused, then shook her head twice.

“You have a favorite?”

Summer looked out the window to the street, the pain of longing on her face. It was as if she wanted to escape, as if the words she wanted to speak were trapped inside of her and could only be released beyond the boundaries of the glass wall in front of her. She sighed, tearing her gaze away from the window. Javi expected her to look at her watch –perhaps even run away- but instead she spoke, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“I-I like Picasso,” she said, her cheeks becoming blushed.

“What a coincidence,” Javi replied, inching closer to the table. “He’s my favorite too.”

Javi knew he had her.

He spent the next ten minutes opening her little by little. The volume of Summer’s voice increased with each inquiry –questions about art, music, literature, intermittent ones that were more personal- until it finally subsided in a relieved sigh. It was Javi’s last question that had almost left her speechless.

“Ever feel alone in the world, like you were born in the wrong place or the wrong time?”

After exhaling in a long, slow gasp, she looked into Javi’s eyes and mouthed: “yes… (a single nod and then)…yes”.

Seeing her father at the register paying for their coffees, she hurried through some brief instructions on how to get in touch with her.

“Never let my father know we talked by the way,” she added. “He’d kill me if he knew.”

Javi watched her body curl into itself, approaching her father as though she were walking into a blizzard. She cringed when he put his arm around her. He recalled the way she had answered his last question. Watching her drag the soles of her shoes as she left the gallery, he knew that she once again felt alone.

***

Over the next few weeks, Javi adhered to her instructions of only calling her during the day –preferably in the late morning- and they shared many intimate conversations during his work breaks. With each conversation she revealed a little more, tantalizing Javi like no one had before. The tragedy. The torture. The secrets that no one knew about the daughter of Cade Watson, M.D.

Being captivated by her story and her life, Javi was drawn to her. Summer could talk for hours on Picasso –rattling off a list her favorite works like a ten-year old boy would with the stats of his favorite baseball player. Girl Before a Mirror, Seated Woman, Dreamer. Javi laughed at the mention of Dreamer and they had talked about it at length, discussing parallels between the painting and Javi’s life. He told her the story of the homeboys, and how they had called him Dreamer since third grade.

“You kinda look like that guy,” she said.

“You mean Picasso? Nah, not at all.”

“No silly,” she giggled. “The Dreamer!”

“Summer, the Dreamer’s a girl.”

Summer started laughing as though she had ten years of punch lines stored away inside of her, and Javi did the same. He wondered if she could hear the distinction. Summer had been honestly humored; Javi felt as though he were back in front of his house with el vatos loco looking down on him.

Pinchi maricon. Fucking faggot.

They continued to another topic, the cold sting of Javi’s anger abated by her ongoing innocent banter. Summer told him about her favorite Picasso work, although Javi had already guessed which one it was, for the painting could have been of her. It was called Nu Ne Dos. The painting was of a woman sitting naked, hiding with her face on her knee, scared in a world absent of form and substance. She was alone, as though she was trapped in a dungeon, as though she was being punished by her very existence. Nu Ne Dos was in essence, a portrait of Summer Watson.

Javi was the only one who knew.

To her family and friends –although Summer really had no friends, just kids of other doctors and lawyers and various professionals that she huddled together with at dinner parties- she was a debutante, an 'uptown Girl living in a white bread world.' Her father was one of the most prominent surgeons in the city, and there was talk of a run for the city council.

“Strange thing,” she said. “More than anything, I hope he makes it. I know he will never stop. But maybe if he does become city councilman, it might slow down, he wouldn’t do it as much. Just having him gone more…God! I don’t know what to think, it’s so hard to have hope anymore.”

Summer explained how her father was a blackness turned hers into a life of misery. She cried while whispering a truth that not even mother acknowledged.

She had chronicled each event in a journal. Her subsided as she read an entry dated December 24, 1993. Summer had been thirteen years old.

“I don’t know why, Mama,” she stopped to let Javi know that although she did not know the reason, she always wrote to her mother in her journal. “But I still believe in things I shouldn’t, now that I’m in junior high. I don’t tell anyone. Who would I tell anyway? I doubt sometimes the girls in school even want to share the same building with me. They are all cats. I think they would claw my eyes out if I got anywhere near them. The boys, well, Daddy won’t have it. I won’t either. I don’t want them touching me, and if they talk to me, I will be able to feel their stares as they look at my chest. I could probably tell them I have a booger in my mouth and they would just nod their chins up and down. They just want to get me out behind the school during lunch to make out. All they want is to touch a boob, or grab a butt while they slobber on your lips. I think it’s gross. I think the whole concept of touching people is gross.

“Last night,” she paused for about five minutes of terrified silence, as though she knew that once those words were spoken, old wounds would open and the pain would crawl back into every crevice of her body. Javi said nothing. He just listened to her breath, then sob, then clear her throat to continue. “Last night, he touched me again. Dumb me. I thought it was Santa Claus sneaking into my room a day early to bring me a new daddy like I’d asked for. Why am I so dumb that I still believe in Santa Claus?

“He made me swallow it again. I hate when he does that. I wish I could somehow choke on it, die right there with him standing over me, grabbing me by my hair. It hurts so bad. I used to cry, but he’d pull my hair and slap my face. Tell me good girls don’t cry. Good girls make their daddys happy.

“But I’m not a good girl, Mama. All I want is for daddy to die. All I want is for Santa Claus to bring me a new one. Why do you take those pills, Mama? They make you sleep too much. You never hear him when he leaves the bed. I wish you would hear him Mama, stop him and tell him to quit being bad. I wish just for once I’d choke. I don’t wanna be a good girl. I just wanna die.”

Javi listened as the last walls of her fortress crumbled and she sobbed uncontrollably into the phone. He smiled. He pumped his free hand in the air. He felt like laughing.

Beautiful, he thought. This, the shattered voice of a woman trapped in a life she could not bear to be a part of, this was art.

The idea screamed at him. “The Ruins!"

“Can you meet me tomorrow night?” he asked.

“But, my dad will…” she had begun to answer over her tears. Javi cut her off.

“I don’t want to hear that,” he said, speaking to her in a stern voice for the first time since they’d met. “Meet at Beal Park, tomorrow night. Eleven o’clock.”

“Okay,” she answered, sounding strangely relieved.

“One more thing,” he added, before making one final request.

They both hung up, and Javi took a long cold shower.

***

Making two stops on the way from the car rental shop, Javi arrived at the park ten minutes late. Spotting Summer sitting nervously on the bench, Javi felt his skin tingle with anticipation. He stepped out of the car and nearly spilled the cappuccinos as he shut the door behind him. Pausing for a moment, he breathed in slow long breaths. The excitement was overwhelming.

Summer looked up as he approached, tapping her feet on the ground like drumsticks. Javi handed her the cappuccino and sat down beside her.

“Waiting long?” he asked, taking a sip from his cup.

“I-I was just about to leave,” she replied, spinning her cup in her hands.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” Javi said, turning to look directly at her. “You can’t go on like this, Summer. You are a grown woman now. It’s time for your father to pay for what he’s done. It’s time for your nightmare to end.”

“I know you are right. I just...I have been so scared for so long. I don’t even know how to live any other way. I keep thinking, sitting here,” she brought the cup to her lips, “that if he knew, he would literally kill me.”

Javi watched as she took a long drink of cappuccino.

“He already has, Summer."

He was smiling as she began to choke.

"He already has.”

***

The memory of the events surrounding his masterpiece had lasted the whole trip home. He looked in the backseat –frowning at the mess he had made when he put the ant poison in her cup- and then stepped out. The homeboys were on their stoop.

“Hey Dreamer, you need to throw some new rims on that mothafucker, homes.”

“Yeah and a badass system in there. Chics love bass.”

They laughed and high-fived, all of them drinking beer although it was only a little before noon. Nachi stood and looked over to the car. He raised his eyebrows, placing his hands on his hips.

“2006, homes? Not bad, Dreamer.”

“It’s not mine,” Javi answered. “Just borrowing for today.”

“Steal the fucker,” one of them hollered as Javi walked inside his place. Their laughter faded as his front door closed.

Javi sat on his couch, hoping his mother wouldn’t call. He tossed the pack of Marlboro’s on the coffee table and turned on the television, placing his his feet next to the cigarettes. He found the local news and crossed his hands behind his head. Smiling, he thought about the last request he had made during the phone call two nights ago.

“Even those dumbasses had to have found it,” he said laughing. He hoped his answer would be revealed shortly as the anchorwoman returned to the screen.

“In early morning news, the body of Summer Watson was found this morning in Beal Park, the victim of an apparent homicide. Just one hour ago, her father - local surgeon and candidate in the upcoming city council election, Cade Watson – was seen being taken away in handcuffs from his practice downtown. No word yet on whether he has been charged in the murder or if he has even been listed as an official suspect. We will bring you further details as they become available. In other local news, a fire has ….”

Summer had brought it, just as Javi had asked. She never even took it out of her bag, its pink fabric binding contrasting with the black canvas.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Ruins, the signature work of Javier Saldivar.”

Javi lit his Marlboro, and dreamed.