Free Samaritan by Richard Price Page B

black-and-white tile floor of the sun-blasted living room and stepped out onto the cement-and-Astroturf terrace to gawk at the Statue of Liberty, gently hovering over its star-shaped base like a rocketship about to touch down.
    Utterly jazzed, she just stood there, elbows on the rail, wondering if there was anyone in the world who couldn’t be made happy by the sight of moving water, imagining herself waking up here, opening her eyes and there it would be, tossing up diamonds, slapping itself silly and making every day feel like Day One.
    Then, reentering the apartment from the terrace, she gave the living room a fresh look. Minus the caustic reek of mothballs, and discounting the faint arcs of black fingerprint powder that still clung to the front door and the wall around it like the mysterious markings of a prehistoric civilization, the place had the same vaguely geriatric un-lived-in feel as Mrs. Kuben’s digs next door; everything color-coordinated and spotless to the point of sterility, as if cleanliness itself were a school of style.
    Giving Ray the benefit of the doubt, she imagined that he had simply left everything the way he found it when he moved in three months ago; the only two objects that caught her eye as probably coming in with him were an old-time full-length funhouse mirror mounted on a wall in a heavy wooden frame, the ancient silvering on its bulbous rolling surface peeled and browning in all four corners; and, at the opposite end of the man-toy spectrum, a fifty-four-inch flat-screen television, the whole of it no thicker than a hardcover book and so recently purchased that a few minute shreds of static-charged packing foam still clung to the gunmetal-gray frame.
    Taking her time, looking for whatever, she began to roam the room as if she were in a museum, first checking out what hung on the walls. Three paintings: one, a hokey Paris street scene, all slanted umbrellas, quaint cafés and the base of the Eiffel Tower; two, a portrait of an aged Jew, gray-bearded, shawl-draped, an open prayer book in his gnarled hands; and last a stylized portrait of a wistful waif fondling a flower, the long-necked child so almond-eyed, almond-headed, that she seemed more alien than orphan.
    The only thing that spoke of Ray on these walls was a certificate announcing his Emmy nomination for writing
Brokedown High.
Nerese had heard enough about the show by now, but in truth had never seen it save for a few minutes now and then while channel-surfing, although she could imagine easily enough what it was like.
    Beneath this framed smidgen of prestige, on a low corner table that filled the square gap created by two couches positioned at right angles to each other, a modest accumulation of variously shaped vases sprouted like a miniature skyline; the original location of the one snatched up as a weapon indicated by a relatively dust-free circle.
    The large TV centered a floor-to-ceiling wall unit that extended the length of the living room, Nerese perusing the shelves now: novels, biographies, no double-takes there; a few hundred CDs; fifty or so movies on tape, mainstream stuff—
Braveheart, West Side Story
and the like—Nerese popping a few from their boxes to see if the cassette inside was in fact what the packaging advertised; everything checking out, no secret porno stash; and then she came upon two framed photos nestling on a shelf, one of his daughter—Ruby, Mrs. Kuben had said—playing basketball for her school; a graceful lanky thing, caught here airborne and arched like a bow during the tip-off. Her opposite number was a black girl with flying hair extensions who matched Ruby’s taut symmetry like they were twin folds of an inkblot, both kids wide-eyed, mouths agape, the basketball a pebbled moon inches above their extended fingertips.
    The second photo was a head shot of Ray’s ex-wife, blue-white skin, long reddish hair carelessly arranged and clear confident eyes, her mouth thin but with the slightest uptick