2 Landscape in Scarlet (2 page)

Most of the residents of
Bartholomew’s Wood were participating
in the event
, so Juliet recognized many of the other booths and wares. Two tents down, under the green awning
,
was Hans Dillmeyer. He carved crèches and pipes. He had done a few of what he called goblin pipes for the
occasion
. They were made of burl wood and had leering faces worked into the grain.

Right next to Hans was Carrie Simmons. She made rubber
stamps of amazing detail and elegance. The lady herself was also amazing, but not in such a good way.
Fifty was too old to dress like a Spice Girl
and her behavior toward attractive men was not always clothed in good taste. Sometimes not even a fig
leaf
.
Her front and rear elevations were equally impressive and augmented.
Juliet stared
in disapproval
and tried to imagine wearing that many foundation garments
.

Perhaps Carrie was trying for Halloween chic, but her bright orange corset made her look like an inverted traffic cone. Filled with brea
s
ts.
The stupid woman would wear a bikini in the arctic and fur in the Sahara if she saw it in some magazine.

Carrie laughed with one of the fair organizers
,
l
aying a hand on his arm
. It was her practice
d
, sexy laugh that released brain-fogging pheromones that clocked the males of the species. Her real laugh was more like a parrot having hysterics
so she only used it in private or with people (i.e. women) who didn’t matter
.

Rose sighed and dropped her eyes. She was too nice to say anything about Carrie
,
who she hung around with
, but she didn’t approve of her either
.
It had to be a strange kind of friendship. Carrie was full of unwarranted enthusiasm and self-confidence and Rose’s spirits were usually about as buoyant as a brick.

After Carrie
Simmons
, in the corner booth
,
was a glassblower who did delicate, fairytale pumpkins. Juliet hadn’t introduced herself yet. Everyone said that Lulu Weston was very shy and always had an assistant deal with the public at street fairs.

After the elusive Lulu was Darby O’Hara. The retired veterinarian did large sculpture
s
in both wood and stone. She wa
s being assisted by her composer
boyfriend, Harrison Peters
,
who had a few CDs for sale
.

Beside her was
the
potter from Santa Cruz. Samuel Levy of the shining bald pate did whimsical animal cookie jars, though he had added a few orange squash
vessels
with elfin faces just for the autumn event.
He was there as a replacement for Mickey Shaw who had gotten an offer to go on some kind of all expenses paid fishing trip and decided that he needed a trip more than he needed money.

The south side of the square was populated with food tents
that
sold things that no one would consider eating at any other time and place. Like deep-fried Twinkies
and funnel cakes
.
The food concessions would do well. People, who seemed to slide out of the womb needing sugar and fat, would gobble up the reasonably
priced yummies that their doctors and digestions warned them against. Because everyone knew that calories consumed on weekends while wandering around
a fair
just didn’t count.

Theoretically this was repellant to
the health-conscious
Juliet, but in reality it all smelled delicious.

The west side of the parking lot housed an ironmonger who did lawn ornaments and metal sculptures. She hadn’t met Xander Lawson, but she knew he was the artist because his giant banner said so.

Next to him was the pumpkin patch and then the pony ride, which wasn’t much of
a
ride, just ponies yoked to a large cross of wood that kept them treading in circles. Last was the petting zoo, which consisted of two turkeys
—
kept in a separate area where they were impossible to pet
—
a miniature horse, and half a dozen pygmy goats.

Rounding the corner and heading back toward Juliet w
as
the tarot card reader and palmist
, Madame Mimm
.
Her
tent looked like something out of Hollywood’s version of
Arabian Nights
, though tack
ier
and a little muddy along the bottom
since the ground had been damp when they set up
.

Beside her was the smallest tent, a shabby affair that belonged to the local cat rescue group. It was battered
and faded almost white
because it saw work every weekend
, rain or shine
.
They had first set up near the food tents but it was decided that other vendors needed to be near the electrical outlets and they had been moved.
Juliet hoped they did well. Every cat deserved a good home.

Lastly there was the wine tasting booth. There were only two local vintners and they both had either Halloween o
r
Oktoberfest labels which sold well because the price was moderately low and the wine was moderately good
,
along with having cute
holiday
labels which people bought to give to their friends when they needed a nice but impersonal gift. A few cases of higher
-
end wines were sold, but the best money came from the commemorative wine glasses which were etched with a grinning pumpkin and the year.

The wind kicked up, a swift and petulant breath of cold
greased by frying cakes
that was there and then gone before it could do more than pull down one of Rose’s scarves and make the nearby trees shiver.

“I think I’ll see how Raphael and Asher are getting on,” Juliet said
, unable to find a single thing to fold or arrange
.

“And Esteban.
He’s there too.
” There was nothing sly in Rose’s tone. She didn’t do innuendo
, but like many of Juliet’s neighbors,
she
thought that there was something between Esteban and Juliet
.
And of course there was, but it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with Juliet saving his life.

Not that there was anything wrong with Esteban
that would make him an ineligible partner
. He was a fine specimen of hard-bodied manhood. Hard-headed too.

“And Esteban
—
though I don’t much like his puppets
. They give me the shivers
.”

“He’s a visionary,
I guess,
” Rose said kindly. Then frowned. “You can’
t c
atch mad cow disease from bones, can you?”

“No.” Juliet had no idea if you could but figured it was best to head Rose off
before she worked herself into a tizzy
. “
And he uses
sheep and goat bone
anyway
.”

Juliet scooped up her purse and wended her way
past Madame Mimm’s
colorful tent
. She stared critically at the loud canvas, but the tent ignored her censure.
She could hear the palmist inside. She spoke in a medium
-
range monotone, the voice completely uninflected, as though she were trying to hypnotize someone rather than tell their fortune.
Maybe she was just ordering lunch.

Juliet walked through
the petting zoo
of unfriendly
and indifferent
animals
that hated people and especially children,
and then entered the
s
tables. She kept her mocha for warmth but was growing tired of the cloying sweetness.
It was time for some protein.

The stables looked
suitably
creepy. Of course, they always looked that way
to a certain degree
, especially when the windows were shuttered.
There was also a
certain dissonance, a
mixed message with the eyes saying it was a gallery and the nose, catching the last whiffs of straw sealed inside decades ago, announcing that it was a barn.

Juliet’s
eyes were assaulted first thing by the life-size bone baby riding in an old
-
style
wicker
pram. It was surrounded by to
rn
and dusty drapes of faded red velvet that must have come from some old theater. The puppet was dressed in a yellowed Christening gown and swaddled from the waist down in old flannel blankets. Juliet found this piece to be particularly gruesome,
a baby plucked from the grave
and strung up with wires
,
but then that was probably the point of ambushing people
with it
as they came through the door. It was
almost
Halloween. They wanted to
be
scared and horrified
and maybe even disgusted
.

“Juliet,” Raphael said, and she warmed at the sound of his voice
, seeking him in the dim light. The painting
s on the battered wall
were lit, but the floor was not
.
The
y
were trying for a kind of haunted house motif
and achieving it
.
“Have you come to see if I’ve accurately
preserved your image
for posterity?”

Raphael sometimes used her as a model when he was doing matriarchs of the Bible.

“I wouldn’t dare utter a word of protest
even if you gave me a mustache
,” she said
,
turning and walking toward him.
He
spun
his wheelchair to face her.

And she
truly
didn’t want to
protest
. Raphael
always
managed to paint her as if she were lit by divine fire
and surrounded by
the
heavenly host
singing paeans of joy
.
He never made her feel
—
on canvas or in the flesh
—
that she had been catalogued in his mind as middle
aged, middle
talent
,
or middling boring. Even if it was
all
probably true.
She was sure that in real life she had never looked so luminous
or wise
.

The painting
on display on the withered wood wall
wasn’t one of her favorites though
,
being it was of John the Baptist’s head being offered up to Salome. Juliet was
painted in
as the mother, Herodias, not the infamous dancing girl
,
and she looked great for being married to a tyrant
—
but it was still one of her least-liked Bible stories
and canvases
.

The painting was for display, not sale
,
and had a small NFS card on it
. Its new home would be in a church in San Francisco where it was headed on St. John’s feast day.
Raphael
had two others for sale though, smaller pieces, that flanked the canvas with the severed head. Juliet was in neither.

Next to Raphael’s painting was a medium
-
size work that Juliet recognized as belong
ing
to Asher Temple. It was a mass of angry reds that somehow suggested a stream at sunset.
It was called
“
Landscape in Scarlet.
”
As usual, she liked the frame more than the
canvas in it
. Asher’s mother did wonderful work.

“Oh good!” Juliet said, seeing that one of Elizabeth Temple’s quilts was hung on the wall. When Elizabeth wasn’t carving frames for her son, she made quilts out of tiny dots of fabrics that ended up looking like they
had been worked by
Monet.
Usually she resisted exhibiting, but had probably given in because the festival was so important to the town and she knew where her civic duty lay.

“I’m thinking of buying it,” Raphael said. “I don’t have any of her work and this one is exceptional.
It looks
like
the
autumn
woods after a storm.”