Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception (3 page)

I tried to pretend I still believed that when we walked into the reception. Heels were clicking. Jewelry was dripping. Perfume polluted the air.

Hudson knew I was about to bail, because he grabbed
me by the arm and pulled me along. “I tried to warn you,” he whispered. “But you are here for an education, so let's consider this the first lesson learned.”

Yeah. Next time, stay home.

We weren't actually even
in
the Vault yet. To get to the gallery, you have to go through a coffee shop called—get this—the Bean Goddess. The Bean Goddess is decorated in faux-funky Bohemian. It's too clean to actually
be
funky Bohemian, plus the furniture's some hybrid of wood and resin and the Roman columns are some wimpy whitewashed fiberglass. I know. I knocked on one and it made a real hollow
thonk-thonk-thonk
sound.

The plants are all fake, too, and they're everywhere— in big pots, little pots, hanging from shelves, winding around columns—everywhere, faux. At the counter there's a newspaper rack with about twenty different papers poking out of it and a long cooler with quiches and cheesecakes that look like
they're
plastic, too.

I guess the three of us were acting a little lost, because a man in super-shiny brown-and-white platform shoes dashes up to us and says, “Helloooo there! I'm Jojo Lorenzo, your host. And may I say, welcome, welcome!” He shakes Hudson's hand and then Grams', and it's the weirdest handshake I've ever seen. It's a
horizontal
handshake. Like instead of shaking hands so the thumbs are up, he twists everything so his hand is on top, then kind of flaps like a seal.

When he gets to me, his eyebrows go up as he checks me over. Then he giggles and gives me a horizontal handshake. “New to art, are we?”

I pulled my hand free. “Uh, this kind, yeah.”

“Maaaarvelous. Please, please, sign in at the reception table, then go on through to the gallery.” He makes a grand sweep of his horizontal hand toward an archway with THE
VAULT painted over the top of it, then gives me a wink and says, “We don't have milk and cookies, but there's complimentary champagne for adults, and of course help yourself to our fine assortment of pungent cheeses and earth-stone crackers.” Then off he goes to greet a couple coming in behind us.

“Yum,” I grumbled. “Stinky cheese and rocky crackers.”

“It's an acquired taste,” Hudson whispers. “And no one's requiring you to eat.”

Now, from the way Grams and Hudson are looking at each other, I can tell they're thinking that maybe I'm not ready for this. Not
mature
enough for this. So I whisper back, “Okay, okay … I'll try to keep an open mind,” because that's what Hudson's always coaching me to do.

“Thatta girl,” Hudson says. “After all, you're here to learn, not criticize.”

We passed through the arch and into the gallery, where there were lots of people with little paper plates of stinky cheese milling around. The paintings were mounted on three walls, and to our left there was a big wooden table with a cash register and one of those old-fashioned gold-and-white phones. You know, the kind that scoops around under your chin when you talk and sits on a big stand with a couple of mini-goalposts when you're done with it?

Anyway, seeing one of those was nothing new, but what I hadn't ever seen before was a table like the one it was
sitting on. It was really dark, with spiraling legs and big clawed feet, and had fierce looking bat heads popping out at the corners.

It was the scariest piece of furniture I'd ever seen.

Hudson must've noticed me gawking because he whispered, “It's an antique, Sammy. Probably out of an old English castle.”

I shivered.

“Probably meant to keep away evil spirits.” He guided me along, saying, “Why don't we start here and work our way around?”

When I finally tore my eyes away from the table, I found myself face to face with something even scarier.

A big orange splot.

I jumped back a little, then tried to figure out what it was. Or, at least, why it was hanging on the wall. I mean, if you saw a five-foot splot like that on the floor, you'd say, Whoa, now! Get me a mop! But here they'd framed it and named it and … I noticed the price tag. “Eight
thousand
dollars? That's crazy!”

Grams elbowed me. “Shhh!”

“Well it is!” I whispered.

“
Citrus Sun
, by Tess Winters,” Hudson said, reading the plaque. He took a step back and shook his head. “Well, I must agree with Sammy. I don't see—”

“Shhh!” Grams said again, practically jabbing Hudson, too. “I think that's the artist, right over there!”

The woman was small, with pouty red lips and long stringy hair. She was wearing black from head to toe and holding a champagne glass with both hands. And she did
seem to be listening to the people gathered around her, but she also kept glancing through the archway into the Bean Goddess.

I shut my mouth and moved over to
Renewal
, a four-foot gash of green on a jet-black background, with “Tess Winters” scrawled in big white letters across the bottom right corner. The green gash had a raggedy thickness to it, and I recognized the smell of linseed oil from art class. It was sweet. Kind of … vapory. Like some sort of industrial perfume.

“This one is
nine
thousand?” I whispered.
“Why?”

#x201C;Shall we move on?” Grams whispered to Hudson. “This really isn't my cup of tea, either.”

But just as we were passing by the pouty-lipped painter, the group that had been talking to her moved on, too. So all of a sudden there she is, you know,
available.
So Hudson sticks out his hand and says, “You're Tess Winters?”

She doesn't shake his hand. She just dips her nose a fraction of an inch and stares at him.

Hudson drops his hand and says, “These are done in oils? Or is that acrylic?”

Her nose goes up a few clicks. “Oils.”

He clears his throat a little and says, “Ms. Winters, we're trying to give my young friend here a little exposure to art. Would you be so kind as to give her some insight into your paintings?”

She just stares at him with her lips clamped tight, then gives me the once-over like I'm polluting the place with my looks. And when she's all done condemning me with
her eyes, she sticks her nose in the air and looks over at the coffee shop area.

Not a word.

So Hudson tries again, “Maybe you could tell her a little about expressionism and how you came to—”

“Excuse me, sir,” she says, her eyes flaring at him. “This is a
reception
, not a classroom. If your little
friend
is truly interested in art, I suggest she spend some time at the library.” Then she looks away. Like he isn't even there.

Now, Hudson Graham is the King of Cool. I have never seen him get flustered over
any
thing. So it didn't register right off that his lips turning thin and white and his eyes squeezing sharp and tight meant he was mad. But Grams did. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away before he could figure out what to say to the Snotty Splotter.

And I did follow along, only I was pretty heated, too. I mean, how snotty could a person be? Hudson had been nothing but nice to her!

So, at the last minute I turned back and said, “I may not know much about art, but I can tell you this—you are one
ugly
excuse for a human being.” I said it like I was cool, too. All full of sass and attitude.

And you know what she did?

She put up a hand like a claw and
hissed
at me.

I laughed at her. I mean, come on. How seriously can you take a woman who thinks she ought to get eight grand for a five-foot splot and
hisses
?

Please.

There were people around who heard, too. And even though they were pretending they hadn't, I could tell by their popping eyes and nudging elbows that they'd seen the whole thing. So I caught up to Grams and Hudson before anyone went to have me tossed.

Grams was still trying to calm Hudson down, but he was steamed, boy. Under that thick white hair of his, even his
scalp
was mad. I could see it, pink as could be.

“Hudson, it's okay,” I told him.

“No,” he said. “It's not!”

“Hey, you know how you're always telling me not to let Heather get the better of me? Well, that Tess Winters is just like Heather … only not as sneaky.”

“Impossible.”

“Seriously, Hudson. As you would say, she's her own worst enemy.”

He was still frowning.

“Are
you
gonna buy any of her paintings?”

“No.”

“You think anyone
else
is?”

His nostrils flared. “How can a teacher behave that way?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn't she some kind of professor? How can she possibly behave that way?”

“
Psst
, Hudson?”

“What.”

“I don't care who she is—that's not art.”

“But—”

“It's not. And I don't need a Ph.D. in Painting to tell you what it
is.
”

He's still frowning, but not as bad.

I lean in a little and whisper, “It's absolute penguin poop is what it is!”

All of a sudden he busts up. Just throws his head back and
laughs.
And pretty soon my grams is laughing, too. And every time one of us looks over our shoulder at the Splotter's wall, we start busting up all over again.

Then a guy with a patch of black fuzz under his lip and a tray of plastic glasses on his hand stops in front of us, saying, “Champagne?”

Hudson says, “Thank you,” then snags two glasses and hands one off to Grams. “Here's to a child's perspective.” They both take sips, then he says, “Well. Shall we move on?”

The next group of paintings were mostly desert scenes. Ones with pueblos and buffaloes and very serious looking Indians. Not a smile in the whole bunch. But the prices were way lower than the Snotty Splotter's. They ranged from a few hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars. The fifteen-hundred-dollar ones were big portraits of Indian chiefs or braves, and there were little pin lights hanging from the frames, shining right into their eyeballs.

“That's a bit eerie, don't you think?” Grams whispered to Hudson, and I added, “And the pupils are way too big. They'd be all constricted in that kind of light.”

“Here,” Hudson says. “Stand back a little. And don't go for the technical … see if it evokes some mood in you.”

So I stand there, trying to
feel
something, but the more I look at this Indian chief with the oversized pupils, the more it seems like one of those paintings of Elvis on velvet.

Then a man with white cowboy boots, a white cowboy hat, and the orangest tan I'd ever seen comes up to Hudson with a lopsided grin, saying, “Hey, partner. Love those skins.”

Hudson looks down at his feet. “Picked them up in Ecuador. Soft as kid gloves.”

“I'll bet.” He sticks his hand out and says, “Say, I'm Austin Zuni. This is my work. Glad you could come out tonight.”

So Hudson introduces us, then says, “Samantha here is interested in knowing more about art, and we thought it would be a good experience for her to—” but all of a sudden Super-Tan Man puts up a finger and says, “Excuse me,” and hurries away.

Now we're all just standing there blinking at each other, when we notice that the Snotty Splotter has abandoned her post, too. And both she and Super-Tan Man are heading straight for the scary table where Jojo is giving a very enthusiastic horizontal handshake to a guy with a big black shoulder bag.

“Well,” Hudson says. “So far, this has been most disappointing.”

“But interesting,” Grams says with a smile. Then she adds, “Why don't we get a little something to eat?”

So we head over to a round table full of stinky cheese and stony crackers, and one whiff tells me I'm not having any. Pee-yew! But Grams and Hudson put little chunks of this and that on little plates and then we snag a group of folding chairs and sit down. And while they nibble and sip
and make polite conversation, I watch the action over by the scary table.

First it's just the guy with the big black bag, Jojo, the Snotty Splotter, and Super-Tan Man. And get this—the Splotter is
smiling.
Her pouty red lips are flying up and down, whipping around all over the place! And Super-Tan Man's acting all chummy and jovial, too, tilting back his hat and looking like, ee-haw!

But pretty soon lots of people are gathering around. And I'm just realizing that this one lady in a tight knit dress and slicked-back hair standing near Tess Winters is Miss Kuz
kow
ski, when a soft voice in my ear says, “Did you really tell her she was an ugly excuse for a human being?”

I jerk around, and standing right beside me is a woman with soft fluffy ringlets of reddish-brown hair. And I guess I was looking a little worried, because she pats my shoulder and says, “It's all right. I haven't had such a good laugh in ages.”

Now, this woman has the most amazing eyes I've ever seen. They're blue, but not a regular blue. There's a definite tint of
purple
to them. And her posture is very regal. You know—straight up and down, but in a relaxed way. And she smells powdery—soft and sweet and … nice.

She puts out her hand and smiles. “I'm Diane Reijden, and you are … ?”

“Sammy,” I tell her. “Sammy Keyes.”

“Sammy,” she says with a little twinkle. “Short for Samantha?”

I nod.

“And these are your grandparents?” she asks, smiling at Grams and Hudson.

“Yeah. I mean, well, this is my grandmother and this is our friend Hudson.”

Grams shakes her hand and says, “Rita Keyes,” then adds, “Pronounce your last name for me again, would you?”

“Reijden,” she says, then laughs. “Like ‘ridin' a bus.' But please, call me Diane.”

Hudson stands and shakes her hand, saying, “Hudson Graham. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Reijden. We haven't had the chance yet, but we're looking forward to viewing your installation.”

So, ding-dong. It's finally sinking in that this woman with the purple eyes is the third painter, when I notice that Hudson is
still
shaking her hand. Like he's having trouble letting go.