The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove (18 page)

Mary paused to scrutinize the arrangement of her husband’s paintings on the far wall of their Clay Street studio. “I think Lia’s right, William.”

One of San Francisco’s most famous and successful landscape artists waved his hands in surrender. “As always, my hanging committee of two overrules me.”

Mary and Lia grinned at each other. “You may not know the best placement for your work, but you have excellent taste in wives, not to mention assistants,” his wife said.

“Truer words were never spoken, my dear.” Smiling, William Keith went back to his easel while Lia put the finishing touches on the exhibit to be held that evening.

Lia had followed through on her pronouncement to her dear friend and roommate Sander de Kalb three years earlier. As soon as they’d settled into their apartment in San Francisco, she’d gone straight to Mr. Keith and offered to work for him in exchange for painting lessons. As an art student in New York City, she had felt no qualms about corresponding with the famous painter about the nature of art. William Keith must have enjoyed their long-distance debate because he’d readily agreed to take her on.

Since then she’d grown close to the aging artist and his dedicated, suffragette wife. Under his direction, Lia had followed the “bold instincts” one of her art teachers in New York had praised her for. Like Keith, she came to favor a more emotive style of landscape painting rather than a strictly naturalistic approach. She absorbed all he could teach her and hungered for more.

After a year’s apprenticeship, Keith encouraged both Lia and Sandy, who was undergoing his own artistic transformation, to spend time studying in Europe. Armed with letters of introduction, the two young artists spent several months in Paris and Munich studying the techniques of European masters, both living and dead. During their sojourn, Sandy began to explore more deeply the theme of human suffering. His work was influenced, no doubt, by an ill-fated affair with a watercolorist named Pablo. Lia, more pragmatic, determined that even though portraiture was not her first love, it could be an excellent way to pay the bills while she gained a reputation for her work.

She was right. Since their return to San Francisco, she’d begun to earn small commissions which over time had led to more lucrative ones. Her current work, a dramatic mural depicting the Firestone family, was her most impressive to date. Her advance had been so substantial, in fact, that she had signed a lease on a small house with attached studio in the Marina district of the city. As much as she loved Sandy, it was time for them to have their privacy.

As if she’d been listening in on Lia’s thoughts, Mary asked, “When do you move into your new space?”

“Just after the first of the year.” Lia chuckled. “Sandy keeps saying he’s devastated, but I noticed him measuring my room the other day. I think he’s considering making it his new home studio.”

“Or maybe he’ll get a new roommate.” Mary busied herself putting out crystal flutes for the requisite champagne that accompanied any and all art shows.

“I hope you’re right,” Lia said. “Sandy was in the doldrums for a long time after Pablo tossed him over for that matador from Seville, but his new friend Roger has possibilities.”

“Good for him. By the way, Charles is stopping by tonight. He asked if you were going to be here.” She didn’t look at Lia as she spoke.

“Now Mary, you wouldn’t be trying to set me up with your stepson, would you? A modern woman like you?” Lia needed to get her point across lightly, but firmly. Charles Keith was attractive but didn’t ring any bells for her. She was beginning to despair that any man ever would.

“Who, me? Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.” Mary was the picture of innocence.

Lia gave her
the look
. “Oh no, of course you wouldn’t.”

Smiling, Mary held up a glass and scrutinized it in the light. Seeing a spot, she proceeded to wipe it by stuffing her cloth into the narrow mouth of the flute. “Ever wonder why beer isn’t the traditional drink of these shows? It’s so much cheaper, and the mugs are so much easier to clean.”

Lia snickered, glad for the change in topic, and picked up a cloth to help her friend. “You’ve got an excellent point, Mary. That’s what I’ll have at my next showing. Oh, make that my first showing.” The women laughed.

“You’ll be there sooner than you know, Lia, dear. Just you wait.”

“From your lips to God’s ear.”

A year after moving to San Francisco, Gus had put feelers out to buy a place on Nob Hill. It was illogical and impractical, but damn if he couldn’t pass up the irony of living on the same street he’d called home in Forty Mile back in ’96. Eventually a dry-goods broker down on his luck took the bait of twenty percent over market value and sold his estate to Gus with all the trimmings thrown in.

The Victorian-style mansion was too frilly for Gus’s taste. It reminded him of the Cliff House, and with all those curlicues and gewgaws on the outside it truly did look like a gingerbread palace. The fact that it was painted purple with green trim didn’t help. Those colors were the first thing to go; now, at least, the place looked more dignified in brown and beige.

He’d had the foundation shored up and the grounds cleaned up, and the following year he’d put in a garden because he never wanted to go without fresh fruits and vegetables again. Mr. Chou, the gardener, took whatever produce Gus’s housekeeper, Mrs. Coats, couldn’t use and sold it at the downtown market; the two employees made a fair amount of extra money that way.

Lots of work remained inside the place. Gus had stripped the walls of the girly wallpaper (why any self-respecting man would want to look at giant cabbage roses and pineapples all day was beyond him). He still had a few more rooms to repaint. But Will was right: now there were a hell of a lot of bare walls to fill up. Making the place presentable was something to work toward, even though he had to admit, it didn’t really matter how big and impressive your house was if you were the only one rattlin’ around in it.

Thoughts of his Mattie and his daughter Annabelle intruded as they so often did. Little Annabelly would be seven and a half by now. He fought the anger that surged through him at the fact that he hadn’t seen his little girl grow up. Hadn’t seen her take her first steps, or say her first word, or lose her first tooth, or anything. Where had Mattie taken her? For years he’d had a standing order with the Pinkerton Detective Agency to let him know if reports of anyone resembling his family ever crossed their desks, whether they were still living or not. Nobody had ever fit the bill.

Partly out of loneliness, Gus put off going home the following Friday evening. Once he’d left the Montgomery Street office, he’d worked out at the gymnasium, still able to bench press nearly three hundred pounds, and punched the bag until sweat poured down his shoulders. Fellow gym rats called him loco, but something inside him warned him never to get soft, in case he lost everything and had to go back to earning his keep through hard physical work. That inside voice had never steered him wrong.

Afterward he showered and changed and moseyed over to a bar on Clay Street for a steak and salad. A full meal and two drinks later he checked his watch. It was nine thirty-five. William Keith’s studio happened to be on the same street, only two blocks up.

“What the hell,” he muttered, and headed over to learn the language of old money that Will spoke so well.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
handsome middle-aged woman greeted Gus at the door. He removed his hat and extended his hand. “Good evening, ma’am. I’m August Wolff, a friend of Will Firestone’s.”

“Yes of course, I know you, Mr. Wolff. You show up in the papers from time to time. I’m Mary Keith.” She smiled and shook his hand. “Will told us you might stop by this evening. He mentioned something about you wanting to practice your language skills, although you seem perfectly fluent to me.”

Gus gave her a grim smile. He really was going to punch Will the next time he saw him. “Why thank you, ma’am. I’m sure Will was joking about the language barrier. Always a prankster, that one.” He couldn’t tell if she picked up on the sarcasm in his voice. “Is he here?”

“No, unfortunately he and his lady friend had to take their leave. Apparently she’s an ‘early to bed early to rise’ miss.”

Right. The question was, whose bed? “Ah, that’s too bad.”
Maybe I can hightail it out of here.
He looked around the foyer.

“At any rate, you’re here now, and welcome. Feel free to explore the studio. We have many of my husband’s paintings on display, and some of our students’ work as well.”

“Thank you kindly.” Gus wandered deeper into the home which had been converted into both a working studio and informal art school. The largest room was filled with people chewin’ the fat while drinking champagne and nibbling on what looked like shrimp on some crackers. Good thing he’d eaten.

The older bearded man sitting in one corner with a cane by his side was no doubt the artist. Keith was surrounded by several young people and a few men who looked like they had money to spend. More power to them.

Keith’s paintings were hung in a pleasing way on one wall of the room. The man obviously loved the outdoors and had been all over California. When the crowd thinned he’d take a closer look, maybe even buy a couple. Will was no rube when it came to knowing investment-grade art; he wouldn’t steer Gus wrong.

To kill time, Gus wandered through the house, eventually finding himself in a hallway on the way to the kitchen. He noticed a painting that stopped him cold.

It was a picture of a wooded area, but at night. Moonlight filtered through the trees, barely lighting up a stretch of bank near a river. The image was haunting, a memory.

“What do you think?” he heard a pretty voice say from behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw a young woman carrying a tray with two champagne flutes on it. For the second time in as many minutes he was stopped cold. She was one of the loveliest females he had ever seen.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“What do you think of the painting?” she repeated.

“The painting?” He’d forgotten all about it.

The girl let out a huff. “That impressive, was it?”

Gus shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry, you…you distracted me. Nice of you to bring me this, though.” He took one of the flutes and drank half of it before pointing to the painting. “I’ve been there,” he said.

The girl frowned. “You have?”

“Well, not there, precisely. At least I don’t reckon so. But I
feel
as though I’ve been there. I’ve slept on a riverbank just like that many times with not a penny to my name, and hoped the night didn’t swallow me up.” He grinned and spread his arms. “As you can see, it didn’t. What do you think about it?”

The young woman stepped up to the painting and looked at it closely. She cocked her head one way, then the other. Finally she stood back. “Looks like a bunch of black and brown globs of paint all mushed together with a little bit of yellow thrown in here and there.”

Gus laughed out loud. Who was this delicious creature? Her rich, dark brown hair fell halfway down her back, the curls held back from her face with combs. What a pretty face too. Heart-shaped and lightly tanned, not pasty like so many society women. And those eyes. He’d never seen anything like them. Not just blue, they were almost purple. Like jewels, they were. A man could get lost in them and never find his way out.

She was just a little thing, but her modest blouse dipped into a tiny waist and outlined what must surely be the world’s most perfect breasts. A girl in some ways, but most definitely a woman in the ways that mattered. He swallowed.