There were also things not even prehistoric man, in his limited wonder, would have classified as art, however he might’ve defined it: urine-soaked rocks, plaster casts of naked feet, stacks of rocks, crude tools fashioned from wood and stone, like the spear hung in the north wing attributed to a Daniel Marbury, branch manager of a Wells Fargo Bank in town.
Much of the exhibit was mock cave art. Given Ritter’s loose familiarity with the work, he assumed it a quirky homage to the origins of the creative mind, to the species’ first Rembrandts. Showing, tongue firm in cheek, the strides humankind had made in technique and vision.
He noticed the sign:
After 40,000 years, Art still asks the same Questions.
“Excuse me, sir?”
A young man’s voice. Ritter turned—a boy stood before him, college-age, black spiky hair and clad in a suit one size too big.
“Are you a member of the press?” the boy said.
Ritter wrinkled his brow. Goddammit just leave me alone.
“I am, yes.”
“What outlet, may I ask?”
“Direct Canvas. It’s a magazine.”
“Oh, of course. Los Angeles, right?”
Ritter nodded.
“Did you know Clifford Feldman is going to make an appearance tonight?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Along with our other featured artists. You picked a good day to come.”
“Who are you, exactly?”
The boy smiled. “I’m working on it.”
What?
“Would you like to interview any of the featured artists?” the boy asked.
Ritter checked his watch. There was a glazed detachment in the boy’s eyes, a moist idealism that bothered him.
“Sure. I’d appreciate that.”
“Mr. Feldman isn’t available right now. He will be, though. I don’t know who you’re most interested in talking to but—”
“Any of them would be fine,” Ritter said.
“Let me check on either Krauford or Wilson. See if I can’t scrounge them up for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
The kid moved away, enveloped in the night-fragments of formalwear. Ritter idled in the corner, near a velvet rope cordoning off a rock. A rock. Uprooted from the soil, still caked with mud and dirt and stringy roots and even sporting tiny, visible bugs. The lithic surface decorated with the crude, chalky likeness of a human figure and a shape that resembled a butterfly.
“Sir?”
The boy and his brisk return.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Wilson is willing to conduct an interview with you. If you’d like, I can bring you to him.”
“Well, where is he?”
“You can meet him in the lounge of the TwiFalls Inn over on Keller Avenue and Eighth. I’ve told him you’re coming. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.” He glanced around the show floor. “You’ll be able to drive me there?”
The boy nodded furiously.
In the few steps between the museum and the car, part of Norman Ritter wanted to run away, never to be seen or heard from again.
***
Karen leaned forward, peered through the drizzle-dotted windshield. “Where are the falls?”
“There’s a canyon just beyond the town,” Dwayne said. “Right over that way. You can’t see it well from here, but they’re about a fifteen-minute hike in.”
Fog dressed the air, obscuring Max’s view of the town, though he kept watch as the van rumbled lonely down the winding mountain. A clocktower jutted from the center of town, at the northwestern base of which spread a residential labyrinth mingled with the evergreens of the bordering forest.
“Anyone notice we haven’t seen another car for a while?” Max said.
“It’s a bit of a hidden place,” said Dwayne. “That’s sort of its charm. It’s a popular spot with artists. I know why, too.”
“Why?” Max said.
“There’s a magnetism here. A gravity. It’s a brothel of muses, this place. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s bullshit and all suggestion, or if there’s really something here. I don’t care. I just know it always gets me going. And I’m feeling it already, that itch. What about you?”
“Not feeling any itch,” Max said, watching the window. “And I’ve haven’t heard that about Twilight Falls.”
Dwayne shoved a stick of gum into his mouth. “Well, as you once put it to me, inspiration hides in the unknown, unseen, unheard.”
***
II
In many places, Max had encountered the phrase bustling small town, but had never experienced such a sight for himself, not in any California area and certainly not in quiescent Arondale. Yet “bustling” was quite an apt description of this heart of Twilight Falls. People walked, ran, strolled, biked, chatted on a bed of palpable energy. They existed in some sort of matrix, all things precise and calculated. There was a rhythm to it all. Almost a contrivance, as if all this were staged.
“This place is strange,” Max said. “I feel like we’re driving into a rehearsal for a play.”
“Funny how crowded this section is, huh?” said Dwayne. “Downtown is a million times different than the rest of town.”
“Where’s the Peters Museum?”
“I think it’s on Kingston Avenue and Sixth.”
“You know where that is?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there before. Always need a little refresher, though.”
They rolled onto a street toward the town’s quieter residential limbs, the electric buzz of downtown simmering. As they drove, Dwayne played occasional tour guide. Along the way they saw signs promoting the Peters’ Neo-Naturalism show, as well something called the “Mind Splash Festival.”
“It’s a fairly new thing, I think,” Dwayne said of Mind Splash. “Kind of an urban Burning Man, minus the giant burning, well, man.”
“Not sure how that’d work,” Karen said.
They turned on Kingston and traveled four and a half blocks before reaching the Peters Museum, a square brown building more resembling a high school gym. Dwayne pulled up alongside a red curb and idled with the engine running.
“Here we are. What’s the plan, folks?”
“Well, we have some time, don’t we?” Karen said. “Before Feldman is supposed to show.”
“I actually don’t know exactly when that is—I think in the early evening sometime. I’m sure they’ll tell you up there.... But I actually have something I gotta do here, if you both don’t mind....”
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“It’s just...something. It’s a long story. Kind of a tradition when I come here, and I’d prefer to do it alone. It won’t take long—well, I hope
