“Celebrate what?”
“That he’ll be able to breathe again. So will Anna. As soon as Jon-Jon packs up his mangy hides and moves out from the studio between them.”
We left Francie’s studio and headed along the corridor. “That was cool,” I said. “I always wondered where artists get their ideas.”
“Just turn on the faucet, they flow right out,” Bill said.
“I was surprised she barely knew who Chau was, though. I guess you’re right—this generation doesn’t necessarily know him. That would explain how Anna could have a couple of Chaus, real or fake, pinned to her studio wall and no one here would notice.”
“It explains how she could, but it doesn’t explain why she does.”
Jack stopped at a black door that said ANNA YANG in small neat red letters and, below them, in equally precise Chinese characters. He knocked, then tried the door, but it was locked. “Well, she’s not here to ask.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Do you have her phone number?”
“Yes. But I want to talk to Pete before we call her.”
Bill, examining the door, said, “Maybe not too bad.”
Jack looked at Bill. “What?”
“No one’s here on this end of the building,” Bill pointed out. “Except that guy Pete, who you’re going to see. Francie’s all the way down there with the water running and someone on the other side has music on. Why don’t you two go talk to Pete?”
Jack frowned. “I don’t know.”
“No. And what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Go.”
So we went, past the studio that was still, briefly, Jon-Jon Jie’s—with a curling fragment of brown and white cowhide tacked to the door—and knocked at the open door of the studio beyond it.
Inside, a thin young Asian man in a blue work shirt sat drawing loose, fast pencil lines on a sheet of paper. He glanced up sharply. His intense, silent stare made me think maybe we should get lost. We might be interrupting an artist in the middle of an inspiration. But he relaxed, though he didn’t smile. “Jack. Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey, Pete. This is Lydia Chin. Lydia, Pete Tsang.”
“Hi,” I said. Pete Tsang, sharp dark eyes on me, nodded.
“We were looking for Anna,” Jack told him, “but Francie See said she came and went. She also said she seemed upset. I just wanted to make sure she’s okay.”
Pete put his pencil down. “I didn’t see her, just heard her. Sometimes when she gets in I take a break, we have coffee or something before she sets up. I was half-waiting, but she just locked up again and left.”
“So you don’t know what was wrong?”
“Could be nothing’s wrong. Maybe she just came in to get something.”
“When we saw her before she was headed here, said she had a lot to do. But maybe you’re right. I’ll call her.” Jack turned to me. “Pete’s a painter.” I might have guessed that from the two large canvases, one in burning yellows, one in jagged reds, on opposite sides of the studio. Jack asked Pete, “What are you working on? Anything new?”
“Nothing right now. Planning something out, but I’m not ready to start.” Pete didn’t elaborate, and his glance flicked back to the sketch on his desk. He seemed taut, Pete Tsang did, like an arrow waiting for the bowstring to snap.
It occurred to me, if this case didn’t end soon I’d be talking in nature metaphors, myself.
That wasn’t my immediate problem, though. That was that it was clear Pete Tsang would rather we left. Which would leave Pete Tsang alone with his studio door open, two down from Anna Yang’s, and who knew what was going on there? Jack, obviously thinking along the same lines, had strolled over to examine the yellow canvas. I looked around. There was nothing remotely intelligent I could say about Pete Tsang’s paintings. That was my lack of art vocabulary, not the paintings. I liked the huge range of colors I could now see within what had seemed at first like two or three shades of a single color; and I liked the suggestion of small, shadowy human forms I thought I saw. The canvases struck me as radiating the same tightly coiled vigilance the painter did. Maybe; but that wasn’t a promising conversational path. Then I spied a flyer tacked to the wall: a photo of a handsome young Asian man with wire-frame glasses, smiling on a sunny day. Below the picture, heavy black type read FREE LIU MAI-KE! At the bottom was a Web site address.
“Mike Liu,” I said. “Are you involved in that?”
Pete looked me over as though maybe he’d missed something the first time. “You know about him?”
“He’s that poet. He’s married to Jack’s friend Anna, who we came to see. ‘The world calls this China’s century, but if China’s people are denied the right to think and to express their thoughts, if they cannot count on basic human rights and human dignity, China’s century will be worthless dust.’ He got seven years.”
Jack’s eyes were on me. Pete Tsang asked, “Are you an artist?”
“No. But I’m Chinese.”
“You followed Mike’s case?”
“The sentence was outrageous. It would have been a joke if it hadn’t been a tragedy.”
Pete looked at me another few moments, then reached to a long counter holding neat cans of brushes and pencils. He picked up a couple of sheets of paper, which turned out to be the same flyer as on the wall. “Have you been to our Web site?”
