Izzy had finished the painting that brought this numena over two days before hanging her show. She hadn’t named the piece yet, but seeing the woman in the flesh, admiring the fluid movement of her musculature as she glided by, she decided to call it simply Grace. She wished she’d thought to set the main figure off against a crowd the way she appeared here on Lee Street, rather than having her leaning against the base of one of the Newford Public Library’s stone lions as she was in the painting.
“I’m truly sorry,” Albina said.
It took Izzy a moment to realize that Albina was speaking to her. Alan smiled.
“She’s become far too successful now to talk with plebes like us,” he said. “Haven’t you, Izzy?”
“Ha-ha.”
“The next time,” Albina went on, “we’ll definitely ask for more.”
“Yes,” Kathy declared loftily. “We must ask two or three times the current price for subsequent shows. We have here the makings of a true artiste to whom all the world will one day bow in homage.”
“Oh, please,” Izzy said, aiming a kick at Kathy’s leg under the table, but she blushed with pleasure.
Kathy moved her leg and all Izzy succeeded in doing was stubbing her toe on the rung of Kathy’s chair.
“Now, now,” Alan told her. “You don’t see Van Gogh carrying on like this.”
“That’s because Van Gogh’s bloody dead,” Kathy said. “Don’t you keep up on current events?”
Alan’s features took on a look of exaggerated shock. “You’re telling me he’s passe?”
“Or at least passed on,” Kathy said. “Unlike our own belle Izzy, whose star is definitely on the rise.”
While Izzy knew that they were only teasing her, she still couldn’t stop feeling somewhat awkward at how well the show had done. The paintings all selling. The reviews all so wonderful. Other painters she only knew from their work or their reputations coming up to congratulate her. The success was more than a little frightening, especially when she knew that what had ended up in the show hadn’t been her best work. She hadn’t put one of the pieces that called up the numena in the show, and they were all far better than the cityscapes and real-life portraits that had sold. It wasn’t that she had invested more of herself in the paintings that called up numena; they just seemed to draw the best up from her, to push her artistic limits in a way that the other paintings didn’t. Or couldn’t. The ones she’d sold had been technically challenging. The paintings of her numena challenged something deep inside her to which she couldn’t attach a definition.
“Unlike your so-called friends,” Albina said, “I’m being serious. We’re really going to have to reconsider our pricing for any future work of yours that the gallery hangs.”
Izzy hated to talk business. She gave a shrug that didn’t commit her to anything. “Whatever.”
“We can talk about it later,” Albina said.
“That’s right,” Kathy announced, raising her wineglass in a toast. “Tonight we’re here to celebrate.
Here’s to Izzy—long may she prosper!”
Izzy blushed as Albina and Alan echoed Kathy’s toast. She could feel the people at the other tables looking at her.
“Let’s put this in its proper perspective,” she said, clinking her glass against theirs. “Here’s to us.
May we all prosper.”
Kathy smiled at her. “Amen to that, ma belle Izzy.”
It was after dinner, while they were having their coffee, that Albina brought up Izzy’s paintings of her numena.
“I don’t suppose,” she said, “that you have any other finished work at your studio, what with having to prepare for the show and all?”
“Nothing that I want to sell,” Izzy told her.
“Jilly tells me you’ve been working on a series of fairy-tale portraits—something along the themes she’s beginning to undertake in her own work, only not quite so fanciful.”
Izzy nodded. “But they’re just something I’m experimenting with.”
“I’d have a look through them, if I were you. The sooner we can hang some more of your work, the better it would be. We have a certain momentum going for us at the moment. It would be a shame to not build on it.”
“I suppose.”
Izzy looked out the window at Lee Street. The crowds had thinned by now. Christy’s brother Geordie was busking with his fiddle on the corner in front of Jacob’s Fruitland. He started to pack up as she watched, with a couple of guitarists waiting in the wings, as it were, for their turn on the pavement stage. Across the street a mime and a hammered-dulcimer player were vying with the few straggling passersby on their side of the street. Grace’s numena was long gone, and Izzy could see none of the others at the moment.
It was odd how often she would spot her numena now, blended into crowds, caught from the corner of her eye, but so far none of them had approached her the way that John had. She had the sense that they were as curious about her as she was of them, but something held them back. Sometimes she wondered if John had warned them away from her. Or maybe they thought that she wanted to ask after him. The first time she got to talk to one of them, she would set the record straight. She was completely over John Sweetgrass, thank you very much. She didn’t even think of him anymore.
She resisted the urge to put a finger to her nose to see if it started to grow at the lie.
Albina touched her arm. “Izzy?”
Izzy focused on her friend and gave her a vague smile. “I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.”
“About those paintings you have finished—these experiments. I’d be interested in having a look at them.”
Izzy shook her head. “Sometimes you have to do things just for yourself,” she said, trying to explain.
“It’s like, if everything you do goes up for sale, you’ve nothing left for yourself. There’s no way to judge where you’re going, how you’re doing. I need the freedom of knowing that there are paintings I can do that aren’t for sale, that don’t have any consideration in how or why they came about, or in what they have to say. Paintings that just are, that I can look up from my easel and see them hanging on the wall and ... oh, I don’t know. Grow familiar with them, I guess.”
“I think I understand,” Albina said.
Perhaps she did, Izzy thought. Perhaps what she was telling Albina did make sense to someone who didn’t know about the numena and how they came to be, but she still felt that the only person at the table who could read between the lines of her explanation was Kathy. When she glanced over at her roommate, Kathy smiled and gave her a wink.
III
Two weeks after that night at The Rusty Lion, Izzy came back to the apartment from working at the studio to find a fat manila envelope waiting for her on her bed. Her pulse quickened when she recognized the handwriting as Rushkin’s.
Why now? she wondered. Why was he contacting her now after all these months of silence?
She picked the envelope up and looked for a return address. There was none. The postmark was too smudged to read, but the stamps were domestic, which narrowed down its place of origin to someplace between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It could have been mailed from Newford, for all she knew.
After hesitating for a long moment, she finally opened it. Inside was a thick sheaf of paper covered in Rushkin’s handwriting and profusely illustrated with ink sketches. It was, Izzy realized, once she started to read it, a review of her show at The Green Man. Rushkin had gone to it. Gone and loved her work.