The Prodigal
Forty-four
FIRST FRIDAY ART WALKS are a tradition in Spokane, a city with civic pride and a cool downtown. Clarice scored the Dormann Gallery for Kate, right in the heart of downtown. People walked from one gallery to the next and made a night of it. I doubted that there would be a lot of sales, but the gallery was busy from the time we got there about three in the afternoon. Jack left the boys with Molly in Seattle and joined Clarice and Paul, her lawyer. When she was comfortable that Kate was settled in, the three of them took a quick tour of the other venues. This wasn’t at all like the shows in New York and San Francisco. The exhibit had been installed flawlessly without us having to be there. The gallery owners were nice to Kate and extended a welcome to all the rest of us in her entourage. And people were enthusiastic.
When Kate had voiced her fears about Neil billing her for his commissions, Clarice had simply said to let her take care of it. We were all a little nervous, but decided to just trust our agent. That was a big step for Kate. I saw Melody give her a sip of her champagne when she thought no one was looking. I checked with the gallery manager to be sure there was sparkling Catawba and poured a glass to take to Kate. When I turned back to where she was, I bumped someone aside in my rush to get to her. Neil Stedman was standing in front of her.
“Is this what you want? Podunk, Nowhere and you call this an art show? This is ridiculous. I’ve been looking for you for two months. We need to get you back on track.”
“I’m not yours, Neil,” Kate said. “I don’t need you.”
“You have a contract.”
“Did you not hear the lady?” I asked. Where the hell was Clarice?
“You lost, little man. Katarina gave herself to me.”
“Yeah, I heard all about how you raped her. You’ve got some guts showing up, but no brains.”
“Rape? Is that what she said? This little slut was begging for it. ‘Please, Neil. Make love to me.’ She used her cunt on you when she got back, didn’t she?” He reached out and grabbed Kate. “Let’s go, slut.”
I’d pulled my hand back to slug him, but he doubled over before I could swing. Everyone spun around as Wendy pulled her foot back from his crotch and danced into a fighting pose.
“Get out of here, you filthy son of a bitch!” she yelled at him. “You don’t own anybody.” She took another swing at his left cheek.
“You cunt!” he snarled. He punched at Wendy, but Lissa stepped in to separate them and took the blow straight to the solar plexus.
It was my forehand first. Then backhand. I couldn’t see anything but Lissa doubled over in pain. The walls disappeared. I spun and laid an elbow into his face. I should have stopped, but I couldn’t. My left came up into his gut and as his face came forward, I brought my knee up to meet it.
“Freeze! All of you!” I was going in for another, but felt Kate’s and Wendy’s hands pulling me back. Melody was kneeling over Lissa and I dropped to my knees crawling to her.
“It was him!” Kate screamed. I hadn’t even seen the officer, yet, just assumed he was there. I cradled Lissa in my arms and rocked her as Melody petted her face and kissed her.
“They attacked me. And so did she!” Neil cried. What a shit.
“Let’s take this one at a time,” the officer said. “You! Stay sitting right where you are.” I could hear a siren somewhere way off in the distance, but we were on the second floor of a downtown mall. It would take them forever to get here for Lissa. “Young woman, you first.”
“Excuse me, officer,” I heard Clarice’s voice. “I think I can help.”
“You saw what happened?”
“No, I just got here.”
“Then please step aside.”
“This man is wanted for fraud in three states,” she went on. “We’ve issued cease and desist orders to three galleries within a block of here exhibiting forgeries he gave them. We’re filing charges here as well as a civil suit for five million dollars for tortious inducement to breach a contract. We are ready to present evidence to the District Attorney.”
“He tried to grab me and take me away.”
“He punched my wife!” Melody yelled.
“Do I understand we have assault, attempted kidnapping, fraud, forgery, and a civil suit?” The officer asked. We all nodded. “Sounds like you’ll go from the hospital to jail.”
Neil decided to run, stupid person that he is. There was a wall of people in front of him, including the lawyer, Jack, Bob Bowers, and Doc Henredon, who had just walked in. The lawyer shoved papers into Neil’s chest so hard he fell backward.
“You’ve been served, Neil Stedman,” he said.
Jack was pushing his way forward and soon knelt beside me, one arm around me and one hand on Lissa’s. Before Neil was a step farther, he was in handcuffs. An ambulance gurney rolled up and Neil was pushed down on it and cuffed to it. Another gurney rolled up beside us and a gentle EMT nudged us aside to examine Lissa.
“We’ll look at you, but a punch shouldn’t do too much damage,” the EMT said. “We’ll want to check for broken ribs and organ damage.”
“My baby,” Lissa whispered.
“Oh, shit,” the EMT said. “I need assistance and priority,” she said into her lapel mike. “Handcuff him to a lamppost and get us ready to roll.” Another EMT was there in seconds and they were moving.
I didn’t want to leave Kate at the gallery alone, but I couldn’t let go of Lissa. Kate and Wendy followed us to the elevator.
“You need to be with Melody and Lissa,” Kate said calmly. “Wendy will take care of me. She’s my defender. She’s my hero.” I looked at Wendy and could see the Tiger had not been caged. Her lip curled toward me and I left with the gurney.
We were all quiet on the trip back. Lissa would be okay, and so would the baby. Jack had been shocked, but then was ecstatic, congratulating Melody, Lissa, and me.
“Don’t tell Mom, yet,” Melody admonished him. He nodded.
Neil’s blow had been high and Lissa did have bruised ribs, but the doctor said the baby was well-protected and not impacted. I guess the police didn’t tell Neil that. At the moment he thought he might be up on a capital offense—even though a fetal death is not murder in Washington. He had confessed to a lot more than we knew. He hadn’t started looking for Kate until he saw the notices in Art World about her showing in Spokane. He’d been seducing another young female artist and promising her incredible success in New York.
Mr. Armstrong, our attorney, had worked with Clarice to set the trap so Neil could be served in the State of Washington instead of New Jersey. It was a nail in his coffin that he had copies of Kate’s supposed limited edition that he’d managed to place in three other galleries in town so they could “take advantage of her opening.”
Kate sat next to me in front as I we headed west. Lissa was protectively cradled in Melody’s arms and Wendy sat cuddled up to them. It wasn’t lost on her that the blow that Lissa took was meant for Wendy.
“That was not what I expected,” Kate said. “Thank you for defending me… again.”
“I’m afraid Grandpa Ken would be disappointed,” I said. “Though I can’t imagine what solution he might think was better.”
“Let’s not bother to tell him. Tony, you and Wendy saved me—again. I feel so…” she was fighting against tears. I didn’t want to hear what I knew she was going to say. “I’ll never deserve your love. I’ll never deserve Wendy. I feel like such a worthless piece of shit.”
“Enough, Kate!” I said sharply. The three women in the back seat looked at us. “Are you saying Wendy and I are in love with, would come to the defense of, and adore a worthless piece of shit? You don’t think much of our judgment, do you?”
“But… Well… I…”
“Give it a rest, Kate. I’m not going to judge anything you did or didn’t do. I’d ask you the same favor.”
“But he said… I begged for it. I didn’t. Please believe me, Tony.”
There it was. The tipping point. Did I believe Kate? Did it even make a difference? I’d started all this by believing Kate took my stupid goddamned picture. I had the guts to fight for her, forgive her, but did I have the trust to really believe her?
By Thanksgiving, I was despairing of ever getting 40 parables figured out. I’d done sixteen sketches so far. Andy and I met several hours at least twice a week to collaborate on the stories. Basically, I’d start sketching something and telling a story. Sometimes Andy would ask me to clarify and we’d talk about what it all meant to me. Sometimes he’d sit back thinking and say he’d have to do some research. Other times, it was quick.
“The widow’s mite. A great gift because it was all she had.”
“Ri-ight. Is there a Bible story for everything?”
I usually developed the full-size drawings alone—or alone with my models. I was paying a dozen models to pose. Andy wanted to learn more about my process, so he sat with me for the better part of a week after Kate’s show as he just silently watched me work. If I got up to get a cup of coffee or to stretch, he’d ask me a question or two, but while I was working, he never said a word.
“Andy, you might want to skip tomorrow’s session,” I ventured.
“But isn’t the next step drawing the sketch that you’ll transfer?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would I miss that?”
“Well, um, I’ll be using a couple of models.”
“Oh. I suppose they’d prefer privacy.”
“It’s not that exactly. They’re used to working with other people around. But I just figured that with you as a priest and all, you’d rather… or wouldn’t be appropriate… or something.”
“I’ve watched you develop concept sketches and talk through your storyline. It’s obvious that you intend to paint tasteful nudes in the chapel. Do you expect all the priests to avert their eyes?”
“Well, no, but that’s pictures and not live, naked girls.”
“If your models are okay with it, I’d like to watch.”
“Okay. It’s really kind of boring, but you will be welcome.”
When Whitney found out that night that a priest was going to watch while I painted her in the nude, she almost wet her pants—if she’d been wearing pants and if the liquid dripping from her was… anything but her own potent lubricant. Allison had agreed to pose with her and didn’t care who was watching. She’d finished her show in Portland in a larger theater than the one where she’d opened in Seattle. It had been packed and she’d been cool as a cucumber.
I’d already worked with Whitney on the pose because we had to find a way to support her so I could paint her in the act of going over a hurdle. We had several reference photos to work with and we’d borrowed two hurdles from the school. Working as closely as I could to a photo of Whitney running hurdles, we worked for close to an hour measuring heights and positions of braces that I’d built so the two girls could rest their knees and heels on them with exactly the right extension. Balance was going to be tricky. I put a stand between the two with a padded two-by-four between them so they could both lean against it at their hips. On the far side, I put another brace that helped Allison stabilize against the wall.
Lissa, Kate, Melody, and Wendy all helped us arrange everything while Andy watched. They weren’t just chaperones. For this pose I needed spotters to help the models into the pose and protect them if they fell. We talked about the pose and I asked Whitney to describe as well as she could what it felt like to run hurdles.
“It’s like flying,” she said. “Sometimes when I push off, I feel like I’ll take two hurdles at once, or maybe all of them, or maybe I just won’t come back down. When you watch a tape, it seems like it goes so fast. Twelve seconds. But for twelve seconds, your mind is in flight. My mind is racing down the track ahead of me—my body trying to catch up. Time is meaningless. It’s suspended. I just want my body to soar where my mind is leading.”
Not only was I getting an incredible pose, I had a whole new dimension to the story. When everyone was ready, Allie and Whitney calmly dropped their robes and we helped them mount the contraption. Kate took the reference photo directly over my easel where I could see both of them as if I were along the track watching as they approached. My warm-up sketch was gone in thirty seconds and I started laying in the primary lines of the drawing. A second sketch was torn from my pad in five minutes and lay on the floor to be picked up later. Allison had entered into Whitney’s description like a true athlete and as I looked at their faces, I could see the determination as if they were frozen in flight. We all relived the races we’d watched Whitney run.
“Cramp!” Allie yelled after about ten minutes. Lissa and Melody rushed to help Whitney as Kate and Wendy supported Allison. Andy jumped up and caught Allie as she stumbled off the podium. “Thanks! Oh! My right foot.” The toe had been pointed at maximum extension as she cleared the hurdle. Wendy bent to massage it, digging her strong fingers into the cramped muscle.
“Oh, wow! This is going to be hard,” Whitney said. “Another few seconds and it would have been me yelling.”
“Sorry!” Allie said as she limped around the studio, her magnificent globes bouncing as she passed in front of Andy and then back.
“This might extend to two days if you can only pose for ten minutes at a time and it’s that painful. Do you think you can even continue?”
“Yeah. It’ll get better,” Allie said. “You know how it is in a game. I just need to reach the point where my head is… how’d you say it?”
“Where my mind is ahead of my body?” Whitney suggested.
“Yeah. We have to not see the walls.”
Fifteen minutes was the most they could keep the pose. Each time I started to draw; we checked the reference photos against the scene. It took five to ten minutes to get the girls back in their stretch. It took six sessions with ten to fifteen minutes between each of them and five or ten to get them posed. When I was done, I could see the story.
“Well, what did you think, Andy?” I asked as we closed up the studio. He hadn’t said anything at all today, even during the breaks, though he’d pitched right in to help whenever another hand was needed—especially to steady Whitney or Allie.
“I think I’m going to start going to track meets,” he said.
“You do know they don’t run in the nude, right?”
“Tony, I can see why you paint nudes. Not only are they beautiful, but you can see the muscles, the strain, the shape. Those are two spectacular athletes. But what you captured wasn’t just the body. I could see the story taking shape. I could almost hear you tell it. I’ll be interested to compare my version with yours when you’ve painted the final piece. Going to track meets? I want to feel the story in twelve seconds.”
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