Forests of the Heart (12 page)

Nuala meant well, Bettina thought as she opened the door and stepped into the warm kitchen, but a mystery lay thick around her, too. Of course, that was none of Bettina’s business either, though she’d never let that stop her before. Her sense of curiosity was too strong to let any puzzle remain unchallenged for too long.

“Ah,
chica, chica”
her
abuela
used to say. “If only you were as diligent with what I am trying to teach you as you are with your curiosity for everything else.”

Bettina closed the door behind her and leaned for a moment with her back against its wooden panels. She could almost hear her grandmother’s voice.

jPresta atención!

Pay attention to this, to what is before you, not to every little whim and wonder the wind might blow your way.

“Te echo de menos, abuela,”
she said softly. “I miss you so very much.”

Ellie wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to spend Saturday morning with Henry Patterson, a businessman who’d commissioned a bust of himself from her as a gift to his wife, but she didn’t see that she had much choice. Not if she wanted to keep him happy and collect her money. He was such a control freak—an exaggerated caricature of the sort of client she disliked the most. She supposed his type of person was useful in an office environment, get the job done and all that, though she certainly wouldn’t want to be an employee in that office.

Here, in her studio, his abrasive manner went beyond simple irritation.

He needed to be involved in every step of the process, overseeing all the various aspects as if he knew the first thing about sculpture, which of course he didn’t. The early stages when she was first building up a bust had been the worst. Yes, she’d told him. I need you here for this part of the process. I know there’s no likeness yet, but these things take time. If you’ll just be patient, I’m sure you’ll be more than pleased with the final results.

But patience, apparently, wasn’t one of Patterson’s virtues, if he had any, which Ellie had come to doubt. By his fifth sitting she found herself wondering why he was still alive. He was in his late fifties—surely someone would have strangled him by now?

After every session, he’d go on at great lengths to critique what she’d done so far, showing a complete lack of understanding as to the basics of art in general, never mind sculpture. She could have learned to live with his ignorance except that it was coupled with a pretentiousness that was truly unbearable; it took all her willpower to simply bite her tongue and kowtow—verbally, if not literally. Somehow she put up with his inane and uninformed suggestions as to how she could do her job so much more expediently, so much more
professionally,
if she’d only do this, and perhaps that, and certainly this. Never mind that none of his suggestions would work, because, you see, he knew a thing or two about art, little lady—”Don’t call me that,” she’d tell him, for all the good it did—and on and on he’d go,
ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

All she could do was try to get through the sitting. She’d maintain a stiff smile and fantasize about telling him exactly where he could shove said sculpture. And how she hoped it would hurt.

This morning’s sitting was a complete and utter disaster. Bad enough that he hadn’t had time to sit for her the past week so that she’d had to work from photographs. But when he stepped through the door of her studio and saw what she’d done so far, he had the nerve to immediately begin haranguing her about how she was deliberately making the portrait as unflattering as possible. It was almost funny coming as it did from someone like him, where ugly would be a compliment.

He was a hog of a man, puffed up with his self-importance, which translated physically into a grossly overweight specimen of dubious manhood squeezed into a suit that must have cost a fortune, but might as well have been made of sackcloth for all the good its classic lines did him. She couldn’t believe he was complaining. Had he never looked in a mirror? She’d already made his nose smaller, tightened up the flapping jowls, and plied any number of other tricks to retain a likeness that would also be flattering.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, keeping her temper in check with an effort, “but-—”

“Don’t you think for a moment that I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“If you’ll calm down, we can—”

“You’re mocking me, plain and simple. This, this …
thing”
He pointed a fat finger at the bust, face red, sweat beading on his brow. “I suppose you consider it to be some sort of artistic statement, a bohemian criticism of the corporate world—is that it? The creative individual standing firm against the fat cats of big business. But you listen to me, little lady. So far as I’m—”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” she broke in “Don’t call me a ‘little lady.’ “

“Don’t
you
interrupt—”

That was it, Ellie decided.

“Look,” she said. “Just shut up.”

He blinked, small pig eyes widening with surprise. His flushed face grew redder, jowls quivering with outrage.

What’s the matter? Ellie thought. No one ever stood up to you before?

“If you’re this bothered by how the sculpture’s turning out,” she went on before he could speak, “I’ll simply return your deposit and we can call it quits. I’m sure we’ll both live happier lives knowing that we’ll never have to see each other again.”

He shook his head. There was a cold look in his eyes now.

“And leave you with this mockery of a portrait?” he said. “And let you display it in some gallery for all the world to see and laugh over? I don’t think so.”

Like anyone she knew would even know who he was. Like they’d care. Like she’d take the time to finish it.

Ellie shrugged. “If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get it.”

“I don’t think so,” he repeated. “I won’t be leaving here without it.”

“Jesus. Are you so cheap that you’ll pull something like this just to get it for the hundred bucks you put down on deposit? It’s not even finished yet.”

“I will have my deposit from you,” he told her in what she assumed was his boardroom voice. Cold, firm. No give. “And I will have that travesty of a sculpture, or you—” Now the chilly smile. “—little lady, can expect a visit from my lawyers.”

“Oh,” Ellie said. “Well, if you put it like that…”

She stepped over to the table and picked up her clay-cutting wire, a length of copper wire with short wooden dowels tied on either end. Pulling the wire taut between her hands, she laid it on top of the brow of the sculpture and with a quick downward jerk, sliced the face right off. The clay fell to the floor and she mashed it under her foot. Stepping back, she gave Patterson a sweet smile.

“Go ahead, fat man. Take it.”

“You—”

“And then get your sorry ass out of my studio.”

“My lawyers—”

“Send ‘em by.”

The cloud of rage that swept over his features was like nothing she’d seen before. The only thing that came close was the time that she and Tommy had been forced to hold down this raging schizophrenic in an alley off Norton Street, trying to keep him from hurting himself—and anybody else—while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Patterson took a step towards her, but she held up the clay-cutting wire, pulling it tight between her hands again.

“Don’t even think of it,” she told him, her own voice hard.

She watched him recover, watched him harness the red anger until it was only a burning coal in each of his piggy eyes.

“Now, that wasn’t smart,” he said. “You forget who I am, who I know. I can break you without even breathing hard. After today, the only commissions you’ll get are from the scum on the street to whom you’re so ready to lend a helping hand.”

So he read the human interest section of the newspaper and had seen the piece on her and the homeless man she’d saved the other night. Big deal.

“Guess I’m due for a change,” she said with more bravado than she felt.

“And you will hear from my lawyers.”

“Can’t wait. Here,” she added as he started to turn for the door. She shoved the lump of clay that had been his face towards him with her foot. “You’re forgetting something.”

He looked down, but he was so in control of himself now that when his gaze rose back up to meet hers, there wasn’t even a hint of rage left in his piggy eyes. His face was still flushed. Sweat still beaded his brow. But his features were calm, expressionless.

“Let me tell you something, little lady,” he said, smiling as she gritted her teeth. “I
always
come out ahead.”

Then he turned and left the studio, closing the door softly so that the lock engaged with only a very civilized click.

Ellie stared at the door for a long moment, then down at the now-unrecognizable face of her sculpture where it lay by her feet. Tossing the clay-cutting wire onto her worktable, she walked slowly over to her couch and sat down. The adrenaline rush that had propelled her through the last few minutes left her. She felt weak and a little dizzy, and her legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Shit,” she said softly. “Shit, shit, shit.”

What had she been thinking? Yes, he was an officious little prick—make that an officious fat prick—but now what was she going to do? She’d have to return his deposit. She might even have to return the deposits of some of her other clients if he really had the kind of pull he claimed he had. And he probably did. Hadn’t he gone on and on about sitting on the board of this and that company, how he owned this, was buying that. All the commissions she’d gotten to date had grown out of referrals. The last thing she needed right now was to have someone like Patterson bad-mouthing her to all and sundry. If her other commissions canceled out on her and also wanted their deposits back, she’d be in deep trouble.

Where would she find that kind of money? Everything she’d taken in had already been spent on supplies, rent, living expenses. And if she couldn’t get any more commissions …

“Shit.”

She looked across her studio at the line of portrait busts in various stages of completion on the back of her worktable. She felt like destroying them all, each and every one of them.

What was she doing anyway, taking all these commissions, doing work she didn’t even care about in the first place? When she compared them to the busts farther along the table of Donal and Sophie and other friends, it was like seeing the difference between night and day. That one of Tommy—she couldn’t wait to cast it. It was so individual, so Tommy. The commissioned portraits were all of a kind, almost interchangeable. Inoffensive and a little stiff, but safe. The ones of her friends, even the self-portrait, which she wasn’t all that fond of, were infinitely more interesting. Varied. Full of life and expression.

Her legs had stopped trembling, but she still had a shaky feeling inside, a pressure behind her eyes.

No, she wasn’t going to cry. She wouldn’t give piggy-eyed Henry Patterson that satisfaction. But what
was
she going to do?

What she should do was another bust of him, this time staying relentlessly faithful to his likeness. Do him with those bloated features and the bulbous nose, the flapping jowls, little piggy eyes and all. Then when Patterson took her to court, she could wheel it out as “Exhibit A.” She’d point at it, then at Patterson. “Your honor,” she’d say. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Is it still defamation when all I have done is copy what nature has already provided?”

Better yet, take a great big lump of clay and drop it on his head from, oh say, the top of one of those buildings he owned downtown. Hide out on the roof, thirty stories up from the street, and just let it go, bombs away.

Yeah, right, she thought. I don’t think so.

She sighed and pushed herself up from the couch. What she really had to do was get out of here. She put on a pair of boots, collected her parka and knapsack, and left the studio to wander aimlessly through the wintered streets of Lower Crowsea. Anything to get in a better mood than this.

This being January in Newford, it wasn’t warm, not even close, but she didn’t mind so much today. The bite in the north wind helped clear her head, though after a while her forehead and temples got that feeling like an iced Slushie drunken too fast. She didn’t have the streets to herself either. A winter’s Saturday in the Market couldn’t compete with a busy summer weekend, but the streets were still crowded. What always surprised her was how not even the frigid temperatures could keep the itinerant vendors from selling their wares, everything from fresh vegetables—imported, of course—cut flowers and various maple syrup products, to clothing, antiques, and a surprising diversity of arts and crafts.

The fast-food carts braving the weather were doing a booming trade with line-ups four or five people deep. There were even some buskers out, though the two she saw were standing over hot-air grates in front of the old Keller-man’s Department Store. The long, brick building now housed a half-dozen smaller businesses, from a pawn shop on one end to a wonderful Italian grocery store on the other, with two restaurants, a gallery, and a used record store in between. One of the buskers was good—a Native fiddler playing those strange syncopated versions of Kickaha jigs and reels with their odd jumps where you felt a few notes were missing. The other was the inevitable folkie butchering Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

The shakiness that Ellie had suffered in the wake of her dispute with Patterson finally dissipated after a couple of hours of walking. All that remained was this sense of impending doom. The whole thing was so depressing. Not only the business with Patterson this morning, but how he might very well be able to scuttle what had developed into a fairly lucrative sideline for her. She’d worked hard to get the kind of commissions she was getting now and it wasn’t fair that he might be able to take it all away, just like that, with a wave of his hand and the flapping of his jowls.

She caught herself staring at the icy pavement as she walked along, not even paying attention anymore to all the flurry of life bustling around her.