Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(24)
Author: C.D. Reiss

CHAPTER 24.

MONICA

Feran, a handsome Middle Eastern guy in a black jacket and pants, was waiting in the navy blue Audi sedan. I didn’t know Audis came that big, but the equipment fit in the back, with one of the back seats folded down. I told Darren to sit in the front, and we were off to the museum.

Vancouver was huge in a different way than Los Angeles, more vertical. The towering glass buildings clumped together like schoolchildren lining up for home room. The lower architecture was old, with brick brownstones backed by narrow alleys. Parking lots were few and far between. I guessed that posed a problem people were willing to live with because the streets were wall-to-wall humanity, even at eight in the morning.

About a minute passed before both my and Darren’s phones dinged.

—He never checked into the Marriot—

“Shit, Darren,” I said.

“Yeah, I got it. What could have happened to him?”

“Why are you asking me?” I had an unjustified defensive reaction, as if somehow it was my fault he was M.I.A. because I didn’t sleep with him.

“I’m not asking you.” Darren twisted to face me. “I’m asking generally. What could have happened? He doesn’t miss shit like this.”

I said what I wouldn’t have said if he really had accused me. “It’s not because of the other night? Do you think?”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled around. “Get over yourself. Let me make some calls.”

And call he did the whole way to the museum. A virtual glad-hand and polite, warm ends to conversations allowed him to make four calls in fifteen minutes.

We pulled up to the loading dock behind a blond stone building. Though the museum itself was new, the old warehouse in the center of town was a hundred years old if it was a day, gutted and repurposed to save it from extinction. That was when Darren got through to someone who knew something.

“Geraldine, hey, man,” Darren said as we got out and Feran started unloading. “Have you heard from Kevin?”

I ignored the pause because I already expected the call would be a dead end.

But Darren bent his neck to the sky and closed his eyes, mumbling, “Oh f**k.” Then he put his arm around my shoulders. That did not bode well. “Did you get him one?” I heard her voice through the phone, with its New Yawk twang and fast talk. “Why didn’t you call us? We’re sitting here—”

He obviously got cut off. Geraldine’s voice came through loudly in a machine gun fire of clipped consonants. “Fine, fine. No, it’s okay… We don’t blame you. Can you call me if you hear anything?” He hung up soon after. “We’re f**ked.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s alive. He called Geraldine for a lawyer since she has family in Idaho.”

“He’s in Idaho?”

“He got himself on some international watch list. When he was stopped at customs, they found out he had open warrants and shipped him to the state where the crimes were committed. Back home.”

“Crimes? Watch list?”

“He was on parole. He skipped when he came to L.A. We’ve hit the end of my knowledge. ”

I was glad he was okay, at least. Not hurt or dead. Not drunk in an alley. And though it was egotistical and narcissistic to even consider it, I was glad he didn’t stay away because of what had happened between us.

“We can do it. Right?” I said, taking a box from Darren.

“He has the diagrams.”

“Do you remember how it goes together?”

“I want to say yes,” he said without confidence.

“Me too. We can do this.”

“Yeah.”

We were relieved of the boxes of equipment as soon as we got into the guts of the building. Four men in dark blue suits and badges opened the boxes, checked them, checked our ID, and asked a ton of questions.

“Unnamed Threesome. Where’s the third?” asked a bald guy who looked as if he was made of lead.

“Late,” I auto-lied. “We need to check on the rest of the piece? It was coming through L.A. Special Transport?”

“Do you have the tracking numbers?”

“No.”

“Commercial invoice?”

“No.”

“Customs transfer certificate?”

“Look,” Darren cut in, “the guy with all the paperwork got held up with an immigration mix up. We have the sound equipment and specs for it, but that’s it.”

“Mister Rivers!” A man in a black turtleneck and wire-framed glasses approached us. He seemed to be in his mid-fifties, with a close-shorn head of grey hair. Darren recognized him. They shook hands.

“Monica, this is—”

“Samuel Kendall, your curator. You must be the lady without the passport.”

“I fixed that.”

“Obviously.” What could have been an insult actually wasn’t. He said it with a slight bow of his head and a little play of a smile. “I heard what happened to Kevin. We actually have a problem far more serious.”

As if a mask had been removed without him moving a muscle or changing his expression, I saw that Mr. Kendall, under his veneer of jolly intelligence, was livid.

“How serious?” I asked.

“Career-ending serious.” He smiled again in that same way. “Please, follow me.”

Darren and I walked down a long hall with him. He spoke with his head half-turned, his words echoing against the cinderblocks. “We allocated space for this piece, and a ton of it. We have financiers who expect a full show, and collectors waiting to see a whole piece.”

We entered a larger, unfinished space with exposed ventwork and sprinklers. Crates and boxes stood everywhere. Kendall found three crates close to the loading dock and indicated them. Two were eight-feet tall. One was as big as a kitchen table.

Kendall stood by them and smiled, tilting his head. “What the f**k is this?”

Darren picked up a clipboard from the short crate and flipped though the paperwork. I never realized how brave and unflappable he was. At least in situations that didn’t involve me or his sister. Or his sexuality. He was as easy to throw as anyone, just not in matters of his career. Bless him, that was the only place I felt as though I had the wrong time signature.

“We’re missing four crates.” He flipped through the pages. “A page of the commercial invoice is missing.”

I inspected the tall crates. They’d all been labeled and numbered to match the assembly instructions. Kevin had reviewed it with me for no other reason than to sate my curiosity.