Page 24

“You’re breaking my heart,” said Kressler, “not to mention making me concerned about my bill.”

“You’re covered. I said I used up a lot of my ready cash, not pawned everything I owned. And I have other accounts.”

“That’s a relief. You still haven’t answered my question.”

Roland finished the rest of his coffee. Whatever the taste and temperature, the sugar had done the trick.

“I maybe helped some people with a thing,” he said.

“Well, thanks for clearing that up, and so succinctly, too. What people, and what thing?”

So, figuring he had nothing more to lose, Bilas told her.

CHAPTERXIX

A last-minute hitch with one of Moxie’s clients, who was due to appear before a judge that morning but instead decided that flight might be right, meant I didn’t get to Zetta Nadeau’s place until late in the afternoon, but I’d advised her of the delay. Her home and studio lay on the southeast of Cousins Island, not far from the Chebeague Island ferry dock. Cousins Island, part of Yarmouth Township, was connected to the mainland by what was colloquially known as the Cousins Island Bridge. The Cousins Island Bridge was officially the Ellis C. Snodgrass Memorial Bridge, but hardly anyone called it that, with the possible exception of the descendants of Ellis C. Snodgrass himself.

The house was a small A-frame situated on the grounds of a larger property that, had it been advertised for sale, would have promised little change from $2 million. The A-frame might originally have been staff quarters for the main dwelling, but Zetta had cut a deal with the owner to keep an eye on everything during winter and spring. She had also designed and constructed—at a knockdown price, and because the client wasn’t a governor she didn’t like—the gates that guarded the driveway. This was how artists survived. It might also have helped Zetta secure her show at the Triton Gallery, since the cottage’s owner happened to be Mark Triton.

As instructed, I called Zetta on arrival. I didn’t have much choice,as locked security gates at either side of the house denied access to the yard unless I was prepared to scale a boundary fence. I made three attempts to reach Zetta before the call was answered, but they weren’t a consequence of being ignored. I could hear what sounded like an angle grinder at work and pictured Zetta in coveralls and a welding mask, with ear protectors in place—which was essentially the vision of her that presented itself to me a couple of minutes after she finally picked up, except with the mask raised and the protectors hanging around her neck. The coveralls looked too big for her, but then Home Depot probably hadn’t yet grasped the potential of the waif market.

“Sorry,” she said. “Were you waiting long?”

“My clothes were still in fashion when I got here.”

“Unlikely. Still, I bet you’ll be the dandy of your retirement community.”

I followed her behind the house, where the smell of scorched metal was acrid enough to make my eyes water. Zetta’s workspace resembled an auto shop’s cut-up area as much as a studio. Through the open door, I could see what looked like steel fingers or flames linked at the base, each at least as tall as I was.

“What are you working on?”

“I’m not sure yet. It may come to nothing.” She stared at whatever it was. “I’m exploring new possibilities.”

“Why?”

“Did you see the review of my show in theMaine Sunday Telegram?”

“I read it, but I can’t claim to have understood all the big words. Still, everyone likes ‘Local Woman Makes Good’ stories.”

“Is that how you read it?”

“Like I said, some of it went over my head.”

“My pieces were described as ‘impressive but chilly.’ It was suggested that they lacked a human dimension, which is more or less whatThe New York Timessaid in its hatchet job last time out. Even if I felt the new work wasn’t quite what it might have been, I still believed I’d developedin the interim, but maybe I haven’t. I think I need to go in a more radical direction.”

I wasn’t about to get into a discussion about the shortcomings or otherwise of conceptual art. Other than the gates she’d made for her patron, I couldn’t say that what Zetta did appealed to me, but I wasn’t the target market. Zetta was watching me, waiting for a response. I might have said that “chilly” came with her territory, but that would have been a good way to alienate a client.

“I’m not sure you should let them get under your skin,” I said. “In every critic lies a frustrated artist who couldn’t make the grade.”

“Yeah, that’s what we tell ourselves. I don’t know if it’s true.”

She wiped her face on her sleeve. At first, I thought she was removing sweat, but then I realized she was crying—not sobbing, just silently weeping.

“I’d always dreamed of being reviewed inThe New York Times,” she said, and she suddenly sounded very young. “That’s when I’d know I’d arrived. I wanted them to love what I did. Instead, I felt like I’d been nailed to a tree. The trouble is, maybe they were right, and now I’ve started second-guessing myself. It wasn’t the words themselves that wounded so much as the fact they made me doubt the validity of what I was doing. My confidence took a hit.”

She recovered, finding it in herself to smile.

“And those folks under the Russian jackboot think they have problems, right?”