I spent several minutes trying to dope out the entries, but beyond “Rem to H*” possibly referring to a Remington, and the few references that looked like payments and splits, I had no clue what they meant.
The next morning Tert presented me with a check for three thousand dollars (drawn off his business, Krehbeil Gallery, Philadelphia), which he suggested might cover my initial fees and expenses (I guess Faye had told him I was broke); shook my hand (although I would have preferred to stick it in a jar of eels), and caught an early flight home to Philadelphia. And that, I hoped and prayed, was the last Salt Lake City would see of Tert Krehbeil. Faye seemed a bit let-down for a day or two, but she did not broach the subject of their acquaintance, and neither did I. She went on about her life, which involved going to a lot of yoga classes and disappearing for long hours with the baby in the jogger, and I went back to my schoolbooks, or tried to. Bit by bit, I began to get over the shock of losing the ranch. Unfortunately, part of how I got over that shock was to throw myself into my work, which now included Tert’s painting.
I shall be candid. I dove into the job like any other form of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, first rationalizing that I’d pick up the books I needed while studying other things, and then using my growing interest in artists’ pigments as a carrot on the end of the stick to reward myself for doing other tasks—as in,
I’ll read one more chapter in my geochemistry text and then I’ll let myself kick back and fiddle with pigments some more
. In no time at all, I was fully out of control, taking every available moment to mess with the project, rationalizing that I was working on my thesis, but knowing full well I was digging at some kind of crime.
I hungered for another look at the painting, but alas, Mr. Gray Eyes had taken it with him, leaving only a tiny sample of each major paint color. These we had carefully chipped from the extreme edges of the painting where it had been covered by the frame. It was easy to see where the frame had lain because the colors were a bit brighter there, which suggested that the painting was not brand-new.
I kept the paint chips in little glass vials to keep them pristine. I spent an inordinate amount of time studying them with my hand lens, dreaming dreams of Remington. Had this bit of color flowed from his brush, or from that of an impostor? I laid plans for getting time with the analytical equipment in the Geology Department, and imagined hugely magnified views of my tiny charges.
As the weather was nice, I got to sitting out on the front porch with my books. That’s where I was the middle of the following week, when Fritz Calder happened by on his way home from a run.
“Good morning,” he said. “You’re Em, right?”
“Yes. And you’re still Fritz.”
He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, assumed a pose of thoughtfulness for a moment, and then nodded decisively. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But then, Kafka woke up one morning feeling bugged, and it was true.”
“Are you feeling bugged?”
He smiled. “Nah. It’s just embarrassing that I have trouble remembering peoples’ names.”
I changed the subject. “Did your kid come back from Germany yet?”
His smile broadened to an expectant grin. “Two more days and he’ll be home. He’ll be here for the weekend.” He turned and moved toward me, his running shoes scuffing the sandstone flags of the walkway. He came up on the porch and sat down next to me, his greater weight moving the swing to a different plane of motion. “What you reading there?”
“Stuff.” I turned over the book so he could see the cover. It was
A Concise Encyclopaedia of Artists’ Materials
.
He took the book and began to flip through the pages. Unconsciously he set the swing into a gently spiraling motion. I found this soothing. He read around in the text for a while and I soaked up the comfort of having a big, warm body near me. Trying to focus again on the book, I said, “Like I said, stuff. But fascinating, eh?”
“‘Mediums and Adhesives,’” he said, reading the chapter headings aloud as he went. “‘Pigments.’ ‘Solvents and Diluents.’ Diluents? Huh, I thought the word would be ‘dilutents.’”
“That’s not a word. I looked it up. ‘Diluents’ looked weird to me, too.”
“‘Supports,’” he read. “Is that like the canvas?”
I said, “Canvas, wood, cardboard, paper …”
“‘Tools and Equipment.’ I can get that part. That’s paintbrushes and such.” When he had turned to the last page he pointed to the illustration printed on it and read the caption aloud. “‘Containers for oil paint:
(a)
the skin or bladder in which the mixed and ground paint was kept, with a tack-like piece of bone to puncture the skin;
(b)
the firm metal tube with piston and refilled with paint;
(c)
the collapsible metal tube in use today.’”
I leaned in close to get a look at that illustration. “
‘(a)’
and
‘(b)’
are pretty bizarre, huh? I guess screw caps are a fairly new invention.”
He skimmed the adjoining text, and read, “‘The development of collapsible
tubes as containers for colors occurred largely during the middle of the nineteenth century. Bladders were still listed in catalogs until 1840.’”
I looked askance at him. “You seem genuinely interested in this stuff.”
He shrugged his athletic shoulders. “Sure. I read that book … you know,
Girl with a Pearl Earring
.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“Oh, it’s a novel about this fictitious girl who worked for Vermeer. The part I liked best was where she used to hang out in his attic grinding the pigments for him. She really got into it. Very sensual scene.”
“What was she grinding? Was it a mineral pigment?”
“Some semiprecious rock,” he said. “I forget the name of it. He used it to make ultramarine-blue.”
“Lapis lazuli.”
Ultramarine, the color of the Madonna’s robe
. I thought of Sloane Renee and looked at my hands to cover my feelings.
Fritz turned to me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Hey, I meant to get you over for a meal before this. Are you free tonight?”
“No, but I’m reasonable. What brand of microbrew shall I bring?” he asked.
He hadn’t been sure what my name was, but he had remembered that I preferred beer to wine. As I noticed that, I realized that it had in fact bothered me that he hadn’t been sure of my name. Why? “I like the Polygamy Porter they make at Squatter’s,” I said, immediately wishing I had named a different label.
First he thinks we’re a gay couple. Now he’ll think we’re a couple of sisters looking for a sire!
“‘Why Have Just One?’” Fritz parried, quoting the microbrewery’s advertising slogan for its infamous porter.
I felt myself turning red. “It’s actually pretty good stuff.”
He gave me a roguish wink. “I like it, too. What time?”
“Seven.”
“I’ll be there.” He got up and headed home to a shower and his afternoon’s work.
WHEN FRITZ REAPPEARED at seven carrying the six-pack, I had completed my Geochemistry reading and started on a take-home exam for Statistics.
I looked up to appraise the candidate. He was nicely turned out in a pressed blue oxford cloth shirt and blue jeans.
I grinned, certain that this six-foot-two-inch stack of manhood would turn Faye’s head. “Come on in,” I said boisterously. “I told Faye you were coming and she took pity on you.”
“Oh? And she exhibits this sentiment how?”
“She would not let me cook. The aroma from the kitchen is her current specialty, pizza and salad. The pizza is takeout from the Pie Pizzeria. The salad she built herself. You can’t burn salad.”
“Unless you put it on the stove,” he said, hurrying into the kitchen. At the precise moment he yanked the wooden bowl off the burner, the smoke alarm started to shriek.
Faye spun around and stared at him. He stared at her. He handed her the bowl. His mouth opened slightly. I thought,
Music up. Close-up on hero and heroine moving helplessly into each other’s arms. They kiss, they fall into bed. End of story as warm Pacific waves wash up on sunset beach
.
Unfortunately, things did not proceed quite that smoothly. On cue, the baby raised her voice from annoyed snit through basic banshee to advanced air-raid siren. Faye took the bowl from Fritz’s hands, lifted to examine the damage to the bottom, and muttered, “Balls!” which caused Fritz to color slightly. Faye charged out of the kitchen and through the dining room at high speed, slammed the salad bowl on the table, and headed down the hall toward the baby’s room.
Fritz turned from his position in the middle of the kitchen and looked at me inquiringly.
I said, “She’s been getting a bit touchy about certain things lately.”
“Such as?”
“Such as fancy kitchenwares given by her Aunt Nancy. You know, stuff you get for a wedding present but you can’t afford to replace. Babies that show up six months after you get married. Things like that.”
Fritz said, “And where is Mr. Faye?”
I moved up close to him so I could answer his question in a whisper. “He’s dead. Died a month before the baby was born. So, you see …”
Fritz moved his head up and down in one long, eloquent
aha
. “Yes …” Then he sniffed the air, turned, and opened the oven door. Smoke billowed out. “I think the pizza’s warmed up.”
“Yes, so it appears.”
He grabbed a hot pad and pulled it out. “Pepperoni and artichoke hearts, my fave.”
“What luck.”
Fritz appraised the smoking slab. “I think if we trim off the edges here it will be fine.”
I let out a ragged breath.
He looks good in blue jeans, he flies a plane, he brings beer, and he knows how to say, “You’re clueless in the kitchen” without it sounding like an insult. Why in God’s name did his wife divorce him?
Perhaps it was he who dumped her
, I decided, falling into one of my itinerant internal debates.
He doesn’t look like the dumping type
, I volleyed.
What do you know? The pendulum of your life has swung way too close to forty without your ever seeing even the front side of a marriage, let alone the back, so what makes you an expert allofasudden?
About then, Faye marched back into the room carrying Sloane Renee, and Fritz went all googly over her. The baby, that is. He took her into his arms and whispered into her tiny shell of an ear. Faye might not even have existed for all the attention she got from him after that. He was pleasant, and said all the right things, but through three pieces of pizza and two beers he bounced that child on his knee, held her over his head like an airplane, played Where’s-the-Baby, coddled, cuddled, cooed, and generally collapsed like a heap of mush around the amazing and remarkable Sloane Renee Latimer. Fritz Calder might be a good-looking buck and an eligible bachelor, but he was a touch too much aware of the baby and a touch too little aware of the mother to register on Faye’s Richter scale. In fact, she excused herself at eight o’clock to put the baby to bed and did not return.
Fritz made no move to leave.
I offered him a brandy.
“No thanks,” he said. “I got to fly tomorrow. You know the drill: eight hours bottle to throttle.”
“You flying somewhere early?”
“Yeah, I have to take the prototype to Denver to show to an investor.”
“Still looking for more funding?”
“Always looking for more funding. Want to come along?”
“A round-trip flight to Denver in a small plane. I used to do that with Faye. It was a blast. Skimming over the high peaks like an eagle, a sense that I owned the known universe. You mean come along just for the ride?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. I can always use a copilot. It gets lonesome up there.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’d love to, but I have a lot of schoolwork to finish.”
“Oh come on, you can catch up over spring break.”
“I can’t. Over the break I have to work for my living.”
“What’s the project?”
I made a zip-the-lips gesture. “Can’t say more, sorry. And besides, I have the little one to care for whenever Faye needs help.”
“Well, let me know if you ever decide to play hooky. It’s Denver tomorrow, then L.A. on Friday, and Baltimore in about a week and a half.”
“What’s in Baltimore?”
“They have lots of interesting things in Baltimore. Like the east end of a railroad line that goes to Ohio. And parts for a widget I’m building.”
“You got to fly all the way there to pick up parts? Why not have them shipped?”
He looked at the floor, his face clouding. “It’s a design meeting. And I have to see some clients. And some money men.”
I nodded. “Military stuff.”
“Yeah.”