“Well, come on then. Let’s see how quickly we can get it done.”
It only took a half hour before the studio was back to normal—or at least as normal as it ever got. It was still a mess, but an organized mess, as Izzy always liked to put it.
“I should get back to the island,” Cosette said when they were done. “Rosalind will be worrying about me. I didn’t tell her where I was going.”
“How will you get back?”
Some of Cosette’s normal bravado had returned. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m in and out of the city all the time.”
“Well,” Izzy said dubiously. “If you promise to be careful ...”
“I’m always careful,” Cosette began; then she looked around the now-tidied studio. “Well, almost always.”
Izzy couldn’t help but laugh. She walked over to her worktable and picked up an empty sketchbook and a couple of pencils.
“Here,” she said. “Take these.”
“Really?”
“Really. I want you to practice your drawing. If you need any help, just come and see me.”
“I’d rather be able to just do it,” Cosette said.
“Wouldn’t we all. Do you want some paints as well?”
“Oh no,” Cosette told her, clutching the sketchbook to her chest. “This is wonderful.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You won’t tell Rosalind, will you? She’d be so disappointed in me.”
“I won’t tell her,” Izzy said.
“Oh thank you!” She gave Izzy a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know, you’re not at all like John says you are.” And with that she seemed to spin like a dervish and whirl out of the door.
Izzy stood in the middle of the studio, regarding the door that Cosette had left open. It swung back and forth before it finally settled in a half-ajar position. “I wish John realized that,” she said softly.
Early in September, Izzy ran into Rosalind while on a sketching expedition in Lower Crowsea. She’d been out all morning trying to get a few good views of the old fire hall for one of her Crowsea Touchstones paintings when she spied the numena across the street. Rosalind noticed her at the same time and crossed over to join her at the bus-stop bench where Izzy was sitting.
“I wish Cosette had your discipline,” she told Izzy.
“I take it she’s not practicing.”
Rosalind smiled. “She feels that she should be able to do it immediately and since she can’t, why then she’ll never get it so why bother trying?”
“I was hoping she’d come by again to show me what she’s been working on. I offered to help her.”
“I know you did. She was so excited when she came home from her last visit.” Rosalind sighed. “But by the next day she’d torn the book up, thrown the pencils away and was busy making a giant bird’s nest with Paddyjack.”
“Well, it’s not something you can force someone to do,” Izzy said. “You either have the desire and drive, or you don’t.”
Rosalind nodded. “But it’s so frustrating because I know how badly she wants to be able to do it.”
Izzy put a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry. She’ll settle down with it when she’s ready.”
“I wonder.”
“Would you like to take home another sketchbook in case she decides she does want to try it again?”
“No. If she wants to that badly, let her come back and get it from you herself “
They sat quietly together for a while, enjoying the crisp September weather and watching the people go by. As they sat there, Izzy wondered if people could see both of them, or did they only see her, talking to herself?
“You haven’t seen Rothwindle lately, have you?” Rosalind asked after a few minutes had gone by.
Izzy shook her head. “I hardly see any of them anymore. Just Cosette a couple of weeks ago and Annie still comes to visit, of course, but that’s about it. But now that I think of it, Annie was asking about her, too. Why, were you looking for her?”
“I wanted to ask her to come stay with us on the island for a little while. I know she’s happy in the city, but apparently she’s become such a hermit of late that I’ve been worrying about her.”
“Maybe she’s met another gargoyle. Kathy’s always saying that some of them wake up once the sun sets and they go wandering. She even wrote a story about it.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” Rosalind said. “She’s such an innocent—like Paddyjack is. I’d hate for her to have gotten in with the wrong crowd.” Izzy had to smile. “You sound like a mother.”
“I feel like a mother sometimes,” Rosalind said, returning Izzy’s smile, “but I don’t mind. I like feeling needed. Useful. And speaking of which,” she added, rising to her feet, “I should finish the rest of my errands.”
“Well, if I hear from her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her,” Izzy said.
Rosalind smiled her thanks and wandered off down the street, her features creased with uncharacteristic worry lines. Izzy closed her eyes and pictured
“You’ve got quite the collector interested in your work,” Albina told Izzy a few weeks after the Crowsea Touchstones show had closed.
Once Izzy had gotten past the flurry of excitement and work that had gone into the opening of the Newford Children’s Foundation, the rest of the summer and early autumn had proceeded at a perfect, lazy pace for her. She painted in her studio, with Annie for company as often as not, and went out sketching on location, visited with or was visited by Rushkin and Tom Downs and her other friends, and spent all sorts of time with Kathy when Kathy wasn’t busy writing. The two of them often spent evenings at the Foundation, sorting clothes and doing the behindthe-scenes work so that the counselors could concentrate on their clients. The only thing lacking in Izzy’s life was a romantic relationship, but even that wasn’t enough to spoil the sense of peace that had settled over her. So many of her friends were single that it didn’t seem odd for her to be that way as well. They filled up the holes in each other’s lives and managed to pretend, most of the time, that they didn’t need anything else.
That the Crowsea Touchstones show had done so well simply seemed to fit into the natural progression of positive events that made up this particular year of her life. Kathy would tease her about it sometimes, but it wasn’t so much that she was becoming blase about her success as that she wasn’t really paying attention to it. So when Albina brought up the idea of a serious collector of her work, Izzy couldn’t quite seem to muster up much more than an idle curiosity in the subject.
“How so?” she asked after taking a long sip of the tea that Albina had brought along on her visit to the Kelly Street studio.
The two of them were sitting in one of the disused rooms in the old factory building that the various tenants used as sitting rooms because their studios, like Izzy’s, were usually too much of a mess. The windows here gave out upon a long view of alleys and backyards, with office complexes rising up behind them in the distance. Albina poured herself another cup of tea from her thermos before she replied.
“Well, he’s been buying one or two of your works from every show—and they’re always the most expensive ones.”
“Don’t tell me,” Izzy said. “Let me guess. He’s a doctor, right?”
Albina shook her head. “A lawyer, actually, although I think he’s buying the work for a client, so maybe you’re right. It could be a doctor.”
But Izzy wasn’t listening to her anymore. A deep stillness had settled inside her at the word lawyer.
“What ... what’s his name?” she asked in a voice gone soft.
Albina smiled, unaware of the change in Izzy. “Richard Silva,” she said. “Of Olson, Silva and Chizmar Associates. You asked me about them before and I couldn’t remember the name, but I’ve cashed so many checks
