door and a smaller door beside it. He punched a couple of buttons on the keypad. Only silence, so he did it again. “No answer from Anna. I assume we want to get in even if she’s not here?”
“As opposed to coming all this way,” I said, “exchanging rocks and bullets with who knows who, and then going home empty-handed? You better believe it.”
He read down the list beside the keypad, pressed another combination, and when that didn’t work he tried a third.
“Who’s there?” squawked the speaker.
“Francie, it’s Jack Lee. Can you let me in?”
“Jack Lee? What are you doing in an outer borough at this hour? Don’t tell me there are no hip parties in Manhattan tonight.” The buzzer buzzed and Jack pushed the door open.
We walked into a cavernous space, windowed along the long walls from waist height to the overhead steel beams hung with metal-shaded lights. The broad entryway held a few sagging chairs and battered couches, a bookcase, and a bulletin board covered with announcements and flyers. Off it, in both directions, corridors turned the corner and ran past a series of large, ceilingless cubicles in the center of the paint-splattered concrete floor. Skylights punctuated the roof. The place smelled of turpentine, sawdust, and frying garlic. I could hear the high- pitched whirr of some industrial tool, drifts of music, various bits of unidentifiable clatter, and the opening of a door. Then footsteps, and a compact, cheerful-looking Asian woman appeared around the corner, bowl in one hand, chopsticks in the other.
“Hi, Jack. Want a dumpling? Oh, you didn’t say you brought people. Hi, I’m Francie See.” She shifted the chopsticks to her left hand where the bowl was and stuck out her right.
“Lydia Chin,” I said as we shook. “And this is Bill Smith.”
“Good to meet you. You folks want some dumplings? I have lots.”
“No, thanks,” Jack said. “We just had some great noodle soup.” I was a little sorry to hear him turn her down; the dumplings, seared and glistening with sesame oil, looked great.
“At Lucky Gardens?” Francie See asked.
“No, in Manhattan.”
“Oh, right, I should have known.”
“You outer-borough people, so touchy. Listen, Francie, we’re looking for Anna Yang. Is she here? Bill and Lydia wanted to see her work.”
“I don’t think so. Unless she came back.” Francie See stepped back to peer down the corridor. “Her door’s closed. Want to see mine instead?”
“Sure,” said Jack, as though seeing art were why we’d come. “Still doing landscapes?”
“In a way.” She led us back in the direction she’d come from. “That’s Anna’s studio, down there past the kitchen,” she said over her shoulder. “She came in this afternoon and I thought she was staying to work but she left pretty fast. I got the feeling she was upset about something. Did she know you were coming?”
“No. Bill and Lydia just met her, and we were in the neighborhood so I suggested we come over. Is she okay?”
“I don’t know what’s going on. You could ask Pete, they’re pretty tight.” Francie See turned through an open door. “Voila.” She waved the chopsticks, then used them to lift a dumpling. “Hope you don’t mind if I eat. I’m starved.”
“No, go ahead,” I said, looking around. Pinned to the walls, covering a table, and on three easels, were watercolor paintings, in every shade of blue imaginable, and all of them paintings of water. Oceans, fog, mist, clouds, waves, pools, pounding rain, racing brooks, water in every possible form, including glaciers, steam, and ice cubes. Serene, threatening, chilly, boiling, soft, hard, fast, and slow, changing from painting to painting but all water and all blue.
“Wow,” said Jack. “This is what one of my professors would’ve called ‘bloody-minded.’”
“Just tightening my focus,” Francie said. “It’s all about water, Jack. The twenty-first century’s all about water.”
“You always were so cutting-edge, Francie.”
“I am, aren’t I? Besides, something’s got to wash down these dumplings. You sure you don’t want any?”
The guys shook their heads, but I couldn’t stand it. “I’d love one.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Francie grinned and pointed to a jar of chopsticks beside a can of brushes.
“I don’t believe you,” Jack said. “After that soup?”
“Adrenaline makes Lydia hungry,” Bill said.
“Adrenaline?” Francie asked. “You get a rush looking at art?”
I fetched some chopsticks and dug a dumpling from the bowl she held out.
“Bill does,” Jack said. “The jury’s still out on Lydia. But we had some excitement on the way here. We were sort of mugged.”
“Seriously? Are you okay?”
“We’re fine,” I said, biting down on the salty, gamey dumpling. “
“Ooh, Jack, you caveman, you. But you’re okay?” Francie asked me.
I nodded, swallowed, and said, “This is great.”
