“You look too small to build houses,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was accusing me of something or trying to make a joke. She put another handful of what I could now see were almonds and raisins in her mouth and headed toward the studio, scuffling across the gravel as if she weren’t lifting her feet at all.
I spun around to take in the property. Everything was damp from the morning fog still lingering on the ridge across the valley—incidentally, the ridge where I had grown up—and I saw a gap in the thick cluster of trees where I could just barely make out the roof of my old house. My mom, Ingrid, had sold the place back when I was in college, right before she remarried and relocated to Dallas. I hadn’t laid eyes on it in years.
The woodsy, mossy smell of my childhood lingered in the air, and that, along with the quick glimpse of the house, caused me to experience a pang of Mill Valley hiraeth that was both crushing and comforting all at once.
“I forgot to ask you on the phone,” Rae said as she opened the door. “Are you good with dogs?”
I didn’t have time to answer her before the tallest, gangliest dog I’d ever seen came rushing in our direction. So enormous, it didn’t even seem like a dog; it seemed like a furry, prehistoric creature. I stood still while it sniffed my fist and wagged its yardstick-long tail.
“This is Diego. He looks intimidating but he’s a giant baby.” Rae held her bag of snacks up over her head so the dog couldn’t get to it.
The dog’s head reached my ribcage, and I was certain it outweighed me, probably by twenty-five pounds. “I’ve never seen a dog this big.”
“Irish wolfhound. Tallest breed in the world.” The dog ran off as we walked into the studio and then trotted back with a thick piece of rope in its mouth.
I played a quick game of tug with Diego and glanced around the room, which smelled like turpentine, hot metal, and palo santo. The studio was a big, loftlike space—probably once a barn—with a high ceiling, the center of which held two large skylights that were littered with fallen branches, dead leaves, and other random forest detritus that I silently vowed to clean if I got the job. I could see a portioned-off film set in the back, decorated to look like an old suburban living room: lots of grandma patterns and textures, only with fake blood splattered on everything, like a crime scene. A camera sat on a tripod in front of the little alcove, and a small lighting rig was set up to the side.
Another prop I noticed in the makeshift room was a beautiful old Gibson Dove that sent a shockwave to my heart. It had been years since I’d taken my guitar out from under the bed, and seeing one without warning was like running into an old, unrequited love.
The canvases up against the wall were in various stages of being built and/or drawn, but not yet painted. They were clearly part of a series and had gigantic sketches of vintage boats on them, with ship-related phrases stenciled on top of the images. The first one I saw read, “I’LL SINK THIS SHIP IF I WANT TO.” Another said, “SAILING ON A SHIP OF FOOLS.” And another, the one that spoke to me with poignant and rather heartbreaking significance, even then, said, “BOY DID YOU MISS THE BOAT.”
October’s back was to us as Rae and I approached. She was sitting on a stool in front of a long steel table, clear safety goggles on her face, using a small blowtorch on a canvas.
The first thing I noticed about October was how small her hands were. Then I noticed everything about her was small. Her wrists, her ears, her shoulders. Coupled with what she was wearing—hickory-striped overalls streaked with dirt, paint, and grease, over a big, threadbare sweatshirt that reminded me of the one Cal wore all summer the year he and I met—she could have passed for a tomboyish teenager and wasn’t at all what I had expected.
Rae tapped October on the back. October looked over her shoulder, and I caught her eye for half a second. She looked down to turn off the torch and then spun back around as if she’d been awakened by a hypnic jerk.
She stood and pulled the goggles off, causing her dark, sun-streaked hair to fall down over her shoulders. Soot and splotches of paint smeared her face, and half-moon indentations marked her cheeks where the goggles had been pressing into her skin. With her head tilted to the side, she pushed her fringy bangs away from her eyes and looked sideways at me.
“This is the guy who called about the job,” Rae told her.
“Joe Harper,” I said, extending my hand.
She took my hand and held it flat between both of hers.
“Joe Harper,” she repeated. Her voice was low and soft. Then “Joe Harper” again, the second time with a more curious inflection. She was still holding my hand, now squinting hard at me, as if I were a spoon she was trying to bend with her mind, and my first thought was This woman is a little odd.
Finally, she let go of my hand. Then she took an elastic band from her wrist, wrapped her hair up in it and said, “Tell me about your relationship to art, Joe Harper.”
That caught me off guard. It didn’t seem like a topic I could address without a lot of thought. “Tell me what it means to you,” she added.
It had been
