Johanna had agreed to talk to an artist once who wanted his work to have a temporal quality — to create art that would age as he desired. He’d stood in her studio — she kept no chairs on the first floor except her work stool — and gone through his list of twenty-four questions. She hadn’t thought about the conversation for a year or so and then remembered, wondering if he’d made use of what she’d told him and whether his idea of using paper and paint that would degrade on radically different timelines if exposed to heat had worked. Probably just a gimmick, she’d decided: Who besides Buddhist monks and lunatics would want to make a beautiful thing but not have it last?
She wasn’t sure why, but she set to work on the paintings first. Several of the canvases would need to be dried as much as possible before transporting, and she began as she always did: lightly. First, do no harm. She blotted the backs with the paper towels she had brought. On some of the paintings, she would have next used a handheld hair dryer set on low. She considered finding the breaker box and seeing if the lack of electricity was an easy fix, but that wasn’t her job. She would transport what she could move most safely and most easily and work in her own studio. The artists could hire someone to tend to the house and perhaps another restorer willing to work on location. Johanna had already broken her own rules of work by being in the house at all. This was an unusual time, yes, but that was all the more reason to restore the order of her life, to right the lines that defined its grid.
Two hours later she had made some decisions about what should be moved first, what should be moved later, and what should stay in situ. When she reentered the house from her second trip to the van, she was greeted by the wagging stump tail of a tiny black dog. Unlike many small dogs, this one was proportioned like a large dog. Indeed, it was a miniature replica of a large dog, as though it had been reduced in a copier. It looked up at her, ears flattened back in friendliness, eyes expectant.
Johanna was sure that the couple had said a cat, but perhaps she hadn’t listened carefully enough. Her reaction was relief; a dog is more legible and so more trustworthy than a cat. She looked around downstairs, just in case. In the kitchen was a small twin pet bowl, she presumed one side for water and one for food. Both were empty except for the crusted silt left behind by flooding that had since receded. The dog seemed a healthy weight for its small size, and its coat looked glossy. It must have managed by going in and out — through a dog door or a broken window — perhaps scavenging or being fed by neighbors. She would call the couple, and they would make arrangements for their dog; given its miniature size she could put up with it for a day or two. Maybe the neighbor who’d been feeding it could be persuaded to take it in. Or maybe the couple would realize they should return. The house smelled of rot. People often think it doesn’t matter when you get to repairs, but Johanna knew from her work that it is always best to respond immediately. Most things do get worse if ignored.
She drove the van downtown with several of the wife’s paintings plus the husband’s works on yupo in the back. The little dog sat alert in the passenger’s seat, its ears looking much larger now that they were at attention. Johanna could name each animal at the Audubon Zoo and several dozen kinds of bird, but she did not know the names of any but the most common dog breeds. A terrier mongrel was the closest she could come to fitting the dog into language.
The open parking space directly in front of her workshop indicated that the city was still half empty or more. When she saw a dark-haired man knocking on the door, her first instinct was to pull the van back into the street. But again her newer, more normal self filled in the most obvious logical explanation: another customer. She lived in a city of wet art, so she should probably get used to strangers at her door. New Orleans was a city that operated by word of mouth, a fact that had served her business well.
The man was tallish and thin, with wavy, very dark hair covering a nicely shaped but slightly large head. He wore a dress shirt tucked into old jeans and European-looking men’s sandals. He was empty-handed. She swallowed and put her hand on the little dog’s head, holding it there, hoping the man would walk on. Then she remembered hearing from Peter about a guy combing the neighborhoods along the river seeking to buy up property. Realtors were already calling the areas that hadn’t seen much flooding the sliver by the river. Those who rented their places and only weeks ago talked of reductions were already worried that prices would go up. She relaxed her arm; this was something she could say no to easily.
The dog had a collar but no leash, so Johanna tied a piece of twine to the collar before opening the van door, and he — his small penis was made obvious by long tufts of soft black hair furling it — jumped down to the street after her, using the floorboard to halve the distance.
“Can I help you?” she said to the man, who turned, startled. “You are knocking on my door.”
He stood aside and let her open the door, which she propped open with a wedge so she could carry in the works she’d brought down from the Garden District. He stepped inside after her.
“I’m not selling it,” she said, watching him look over her studio.
“It,” he said. The word implied a question, but his inflection didn’t rise. He kneeled a few feet away from her, holding out his palm for the dog to smell. The dog, cautious at first, sniffed his fingers. The man scratched the dog behind the ears, holding his face close to the dog’s, and the dog wagged his ridiculous stump of a tail.
“Nice animal,” the man said, returning to his full height, which was greater than Johanna’s, though not by much. His skin was smooth, darker than hers and even in tone, and his neck had nice lines to it, broken only by a pointed Adam’s apple that made him seem vulnerable in a way that might well have been a false impression. Gray hairs, though not many of them, poked through the black hair, their coarser, curlier texture making them seem longer than the rest. Some force pulled at the corner of his eyes, perhaps sadness or maybe only the ordinary fatigue of a poor night’s sleep.
“This property,” she said. “It is not for sale.” She wanted to tell him that she’d bought it not as an investment but as a place to live and work, but the truth was that she hadn’t bought it at all, though her name was on the deed and the place was hers to keep or sell.
“I’m not a Realtor.”
She tied the dog to the leg of one of her worktables, where he seemed oddly content to stand and look up at her. “It is not my intention to be rude, but I have things to unload and work to do. A lot of work.”
“I just have a couple of questions about art restoration. At least let me help you unload your van. It needn’t take more time than that. I assume this is a very busy time for someone in your line of work.”
She felt herself bristle at the way he said “your line of work,” as though she were something other than what she presented herself to be or as though her profession were somehow dishonorable. She had chosen it, in some part, because it was not at all dishonorable. Maybe there were restorers whose work veered into forgery, but she had never been one of them. “It is a very busy time,” she said. “Best to act very fast when trying to save water-damaged art.”
She stood in the back of the van and passed the works to him, telling him how to hold and carry each. Though he seemed to have this expertise already, which struck her as peculiar, he didn’t claim the skill and accepted her terse instructions with a neutral expression.
Once all the works were inside — the paintings vertical against the walls on risers under her worktables and the drawings properly stacked — she thanked him. “You said you had some questions.”