Shut Your Eyes Tight

couldn’t have cost less than a thousand dollars. There was neither jewelry nor makeup to distract from her perfect olive skin.

“What are you looking at?” Her voice was playful, her eyes sparkling.

“You. You look… great.”

“I should be mad at you, you know that?”

“Because I stopped producing pictures?”

“Of course because you stopped producing pictures. Wonderful pictures. Pictures I loved. Pictures my customers loved. Pictures I could sell for you. Pictures I did sell for you. But with no warning you call me and you tell me you can’t do it anymore. You have personal reasons. Can’t make any more pictures, can’t talk about it. End of story. Don’t you think I should be mad at you?”

She didn’t sound mad at all, so he didn’t answer, just watched her, amazed at how much bright energy she managed to channel into every word. It was the first thing that had seized his attention in her art-appreciation class. That and those wide-set green eyes.

“But I forgive you. Because you’re going to make pictures again. Don’t shake your head at me. Believe me, when I explain what’s happening, you won’t shake your head.” She stopped, looked around the little dining room for the first time. “I’m thirsty. Let’s have a drink.”

When the pink-haired girl reappeared, Sonya ordered a vodka with grapefruit juice. Against his better judgment, so did Gurney.

“So, Mr. Retired Policeman,” she said after their drinks had arrived and been sampled, “before I tell you how your life is going to change, tell me about the way it is now.”

“My life?”

“You do have a life, yes?”

He had the disconcerting feeling that she already knew all about his life, complete with its reservations, doubts, conflicts. But there was no way she could know. Even when he was involved with her gallery, he’d never talked about those things. “My life is good.”

“Ah, but you say this in a way that makes it not true, like it’s something you’re supposed to say.”

“Is that the way it sounds?”

She took another sip of her drink. “You don’t want to tell me the truth?”

“What do you think the truth is?”

She cocked her head a little to the side, studied his face, shrugged. “It’s none of my business, right?” She looked out at the pond.

He consumed half his drink in two swallows. “I suppose it’s like everyone’s life-some of this and some of that.”

“You make this-and-that sound like a pretty grim combination.”

He laughed, not happily, and for a while they were both silent. He was the first to speak.

“I find that I’m not so much of a nature lover as I hoped I might be.”

“But your wife is?”

He nodded. “It’s not that I don’t find it beautiful up here, the mountains and all, but…”

She gave him a shrewd look. “But it gets you tangled up in double negatives when you try to explain it?”

“What? Oh. I see what you mean. Are my problems that obvious?”

“Discontent is always obvious, no? What’s the matter? You don’t like that word?”

“Discontent? It’s more like… what I’m good at, the way my mind works, isn’t very useful up here. I mean… I analyze situations, unravel the elements of a problem, focus on discrepancies, solve puzzles. None of which…” His voice trailed off.

“And, of course, your wife thinks you should be loving the daisies, not analyzing them. You should be saying ‘How beautiful!’ and not ‘What are they doing here?’ Am I right?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“So,” she said, changing the subject with sudden enthusiasm, “there’s a man you must meet. As soon as possible.”

“Why is that?”

“He wants to make you rich and famous.”

Gurney made a face.

“I know, I know, you’re not very interested in getting rich, and famous you’re not interested in at all. I’m sure you have good theoretical objections. But suppose I were to tell you something very specific.” She glanced around the dining room. The older couple were standing slowly, as though getting up from the table were a project to be undertaken with care. The BlackBerry couple were still at whatever it was they were at, texting away rapidly with the edges of their thumbs. The antic idea that they might be texting each other across the table popped into Gurney’s mind. Sonya’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Suppose I were to tell you he wants to buy one of your portrait prints for a hundred thousand dollars. What would you say to that?”

“I’d say he was crazy.”

“You think so?”

“How could he not be?”

“Last year at an auction in the city, Yves Saint-Laurent’s office chair sold for twenty-eight million dollars. That might be a little bit crazy. But a hundred thousand for one of your amazing serial-killer portraits? I don’t think that’s crazy at all. Wonderful, yes. Crazy, no. In fact, from what I know of this man and the way he operates, the price of your portraits is only going to go up.”

“You know him?”

“I just met him face-to-face for the first time. But I know of him. He’s a recluse, an eccentric who every so often emerges, shakes up the art world with some purchase or other, then disappears again. Dutch-sounding name, but no one knows where he lives. Switzerland? South America? Seems to like being a man of mystery. Very secretive, but more money than God. When Jykynstyl shows interest in an artist, the financial impact is huge. Huge.”

Cute little Pink Hair had added a chartreuse scarf to her eclectic ensemble and was clearing dessert plates and coffee cups from the vacated table across from them. Sonya caught her eye. “Darling, could I have another vodka grapefruit? And, I think, for my friend here, too?”

Chapter 27

A lot to think about

Gurney didn’t know what to make of it. On the drive home that afternoon, he was having a hell of a time staying focused on anything.

The “art world” was not a place he knew anything about, other than suspecting that it was populated by people as different from policemen as parrots were from rottweilers. The brief dip of his toe into the water a year earlier with his mug-shot portraits had not exposed him to much of that world beyond the university-town gallery scene- not exactly the playground of eccentric billionaire collectors. Not the sort of place where a dress designer’s chair would sell for twenty-eight million dollars. Or where a mystery celebrity by the unlikely name of Jay Jykynstyl would offer to buy a computer-manipulated picture of a serial killer for a hundred thousand dollars.

On top of that-the rather fantastical business deal she was placing in his lap-the lubricious Sonya herself had never seemed more available. She’d even hinted that she might rent a room at the Galloping Duck, which was also an inn, if she ended up drinking too much at lunch to drive legally. Walking away from that not-especially-subtle invitation had demanded a level of integrity he wasn’t sure at first that he had. But maybe integrity was too big a word for it. The simple truth was that he’d never lied to Madeleine, and he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of starting now.

Then he wondered if he were honestly walking away from Sonya’s invitation or simply postponing his acceptance. He had agreed to meet the wealthy and weird Mr. Jykynstyl over dinner that coming Saturday in Manhattan and listen to the full details of his offer-which, if legitimate, would be hard to refuse-with Sonya acting as