Patterson took a step towards her, but she held up the clay-cutting wire, pulling it tight between her hands again.
“Don’t even think of it,” she told him, her own voice hard.
She watched him recover, watched him harness the red anger until it was only a burning coal in each of his piggy eyes.
“Now, that wasn’t smart,” he said. “You forget who I am, who I know. I can break you without even breathing hard. After today, the only commissions you’ll get are from the scum on the street to whom you’re so ready to lend a helping hand.”
So he read the human interest section of the newspaper and had seen the piece on her and the homeless man she’d saved the other night. Big deal.
“Guess I’m due for a change,” she said with more bravado than she felt.
“And you will hear from my lawyers.”
“Can’t wait. Here,” she added as he started to turn for the door. She shoved the lump of clay that had been his face towards him with her foot. “You’re forgetting something.”
He looked down, but he was so in control of himself now that when his gaze rose back up to meet hers, there wasn’t even a hint of rage left in his piggy eyes. His face was still flushed. Sweat still beaded his brow. But his features were calm, expressionless.
“Let me tell you something, little lady,” he said, smiling as she gritted her teeth. “I always come out ahead.”
Then he turned and left the studio, closing the door softly so that the lock engaged with only a very civilized click.
Ellie stared at the door for a long moment, then down at the now-unrecognizable face of her sculpture where it lay by her feet. Tossing the clay-cutting wire onto her worktable, she walked slowly over to her couch and sat down. The adrenaline rush that had propelled her through the last few minutes left her. She felt weak and a little dizzy, and her legs wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Shit,” she said softly. “Shit, shit, shit.”
What had she been thinking? Yes, he was an officious little prick—make that an officious fat prick—but now what was she going to do? She’d have to return his deposit. She might even have to return the deposits of some of her other clients if he really had the kind of pull he claimed he had. And he probably did. Hadn’t he gone on and on about sitting on the board of this and that company, how he owned this, was buying that. All the commissions she’d gotten to date had grown out of referrals. The last thing she needed right now was to have someone like Patterson bad-mouthing her to all and sundry. If her other commissions canceled out on her and also wanted their deposits back, she’d be in deep trouble.
Where would she find that kind of money? Everything she’d taken in had already been spent on supplies, rent, living expenses. And if she couldn’t get any more commissions…
“Shit.”
She looked across her studio at the line of portrait busts in various stages of completion on the back of her worktable. She felt like destroying them all, each and every one of them.
What was she doing anyway, taking all these commissions, doing work she didn’t even care about in the first place? When she compared them to the busts farther along the table of Donal and Sophie and other friends, it was like seeing the difference between night and day. That one of Tommy—she couldn’t wait to cast it. It was so individual, so Tommy. The commissioned portraits were all of a kind, almost interchangeable. Inoffensive and a little stiff, but safe. The ones of her friends, even the self-portrait, which she wasn’t all that fond of, were infinitely more interesting. Varied. Full of life and expression.
Her legs had stopped trembling, but she still had a shaky feeling inside, a pressure behind her eyes.
No, she wasn’t going to cry. She wouldn’t give piggy-eyed Henry Patterson that satisfaction. But what was she going to do?
What she should do was another bust of him, this time staying relentlessly faithful to his likeness. Do him with those bloated features and the bulbous nose, the flapping jowls, little piggy eyes and all. Then when Patterson took her to court, she could wheel it out as “Exhibit A.” She’d point at it, then at Patterson. “Your honor,” she’d say. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Is it still defamation when all I have done is copy what nature has already provided?”
Better yet, take a great big lump of clay and drop it on his head from, oh say, the top of one of those buildings he owned downtown. Hide out on the roof, thirty stories up from the street, and just let it go, bombs away.
Yeah, right, she thought. I don’t think so.
She sighed and pushed herself up from the couch. What she really had to do was get out of here. She put on a pair of boots, collected her parka and knapsack, and left the studio to wander aimlessly through the wintered streets of Lower Crowsea. Anything to get in a better mood than this.
This being January in Newford, it wasn’t warm, not even close, but she didn’t mind so much today. The bite in the north wind helped clear her head, though after a while her forehead and temples got that feeling like an iced Slushie drunken too fast. She didn’t have the streets to herself either. A winter’s Saturday in the Market couldn’t compete with a busy summer weekend, but the streets were still crowded. What always surprised her was how not even the frigid temperatures could keep the itinerant vendors from selling their wares, everything from fresh vegetables—imported, of course—cut flowers and various maple syrup products, to clothing, antiques, and a surprising diversity of arts and crafts.
The fast-food carts braving the weather were doing a booming trade with line-ups four or five people deep. There were even some buskers out, though the two she saw were standing over hot-air grates in front of the old Keller-man’s Department Store. The long, brick building now housed a half-dozen smaller businesses, from a pawn shop on one end to a wonderful Italian grocery store on the other, with two restaurants, a gallery, and a used record store in between. One of the buskers was good—a Native fiddler playing those strange syncopated versions of Kickaha jigs and reels with their odd jumps where you felt a few notes were missing. The other was the inevitable folkie butchering Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
The shakiness that Ellie had suffered in the wake of her dispute with Patterson finally dissipated after a couple of hours of walking. All that remained was this sense of impending doom. The whole thing was so depressing. Not only the business with Patterson this morning, but how he might very well be able to scuttle what had developed into a fairly lucrative sideline for her. She’d worked hard to get the kind of commissions she was getting now and it wasn’t fair that he might be able to take it all away, just like that, with a wave of his hand and the flapping of his jowls.
She caught herself staring at the icy pavement as she walked along, not even paying attention anymore to all the flurry of life bustling around her.
Enough, she told herself. This is just letting Patterson win.
She looked up to find herself back on Lee Street once more, just across the street from the Rusty Lion where she spied Donal sitting at a table by himself in a window booth. He was reading a newspaper, the remains of either a late breakfast or an early lunch on his table. Crossing over the street, she went into the restaurant and made her way through the tables to where he was sitting.
“Were you saving this seat for me?” she asked.
Donal lowered the paper to look at her. “Jaysus, Ellie. You look worse than I usually feel.”
“Well, thank you for sharing that.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He folded his paper and set it aside on the padded seat beside him. “Sit down.”