“No. I lived in Los Angeles. I went to UCLA and never left after that. I loved it there. Even after Mariel followed me to LA to go to Cal State, I stayed. And we got along for a while. But now she’s wrecked California for me. There isn’t enough room there for the three of us.”
“The three of you?”
“She and Carter and me.”
“Oh, yeah. Carter.”
“I got lucky and found a job in Chicago. Moving seemed like a good solution. I would have taken almost any job to get out of LA. So home is definitely not Chicago, but where it is, I don’t know.” We drove alongside the stone wall that bounded Four Winds, a boarding school. “What about you? Do you live in Brooklyn?”
“Brooklyn? No, that’s where Alex’s studio is. I live in Manhattan. Upper East Side.”
Upper East Side. He looked like an Upper East Side kind of guy. Nice clothes. That almost-beard thing. A Range Rover. I could imagine his apartment: on a high floor, all windows, modern furniture, no food in the fridge because he ate out every night, like Carter.
“Where are you from?” I asked. “I mean, originally.”
“I’m from here,” he said.
“Connecticut?”
“No, the East Coast. I grew up in New York. Pound Ridge.”
“I’ve been to Pound Ridge,” I said. “It’s pretty.” It wasn’t that far from Hampstead, about fifty miles, but far enough for our paths never to have crossed.
“My parents are still there. They have a business in the area. They’re accountants. Semiretired, though. Funny, I’m the son of two accountants and I’m terrible at math. Go figure.”
“I’m terrible at math as well.” I heard the hand rattle in the back as we went over a bump. “So why did you have to drive that sculpture here?” I asked. “Doesn’t Ana do that kind of stuff?”
“She had to catch a plane to Aspen to meet with Alex and a couple of his clients. To help her out, I stayed at his studio to make sure the art-transport company got everything off all right. But the hand was in another room, and I didn’t realize until it was too late.”
I didn’t know anything about art or art-transport companies. I’d never thought about how things ended up at art shows or museums, but I was sure there had to be an inventory.
“And there was some confusion with the inventory,” he added, as if reading my mind. “Anyway, I felt like an idiot. And I don’t want this to be Ana’s problem. She’s got a tough enough job as it is. Alex can be a real pain in the ass.”
I tapped Alex Lingon into my phone’s browser. Up popped dozens of pictures of a man with…what was he with? “I’m looking at pictures of him. What are these things? They look like giant fish heads.”
“They are giant fish heads. That’s what he used to do. It’s how he got started, back in the eighties.”
“Are they papier-mâché as well?”
“They’re made from some other kind of paper substance.”
I scrolled on, through oversize body parts, arteries, a kidney—his more recent work. I’d seen enough. I put away the phone and rolled down the window. The breeze smelled like summer, trees, and sunlight, and you could almost touch the sky.
We arrived in Hampstead’s downtown, with its clapboard colonial buildings, mullioned windows, wraparound porches, and window boxes of purple dahlias and pink hydrangeas. There was a sign in front of the Book Nook, probably advertising an author event. People were going into the Rolling Pin bakery and the cheese shop. A banner at the park by the town hall advertised the annual Sunflower Festival at Grant’s Farm, the big antiques weekend, and the upcoming outdoor movie night where North by Northwest was going to be shown.
“How are the restaurants around here?” David asked, glancing at the people eating breakfast on the porch of Abigail’s.
“They’re very good.”
“I would think they would be, with so many people coming out here from the city.”
“New Yorkers like you,” I said in a teasing tone.
“Ha. Except I’m not like most New Yorkers that way. I’d rather cook than eat out.”
That was a surprise. I had friends in Manhattan and they always ate out. “You must be a good cook, then.”
He grinned. “I’m an excellent cook. I’d never want to do it professionally. Too crazy a business. And horrible hours. But I like cooking for myself and Ana, and for friends. It’s relaxing.”
Relaxing? “That’s the last thing I’d ever do to relax. I hate to cook. Except the occasional dessert. I have a sweet tooth.” Cooking took too much time, my kitchen was small, and it got really hot in there. But good for him that he found it relaxing. “What do you like to cook?”
“Pretty much anything. I can make chicken in about thirty different ways. I do some nice meals with swordfish and salmon and tuna. And I can’t resist a good steak every now and then. But I’m happy cooking just about anything, as long as people enjoy it. I always try things out on Ana first, though. Then I tinker until I get it the way I like it.”
I hoped Ana appreciated having a man who cooked for her.
“What do you do to relax?” he asked.
Lately I wasn’t doing much at all, letting my job fill a lot of my time. “I don’t know. Read books, watch movies. I used to ride. Not too much anymore, though. That was when I lived here.”
“You mean ride horses?”
I nodded. “Yes. My mother still has two of them. They’re semiretired, but I hop on every now and then.”
“I’d never do that in a million years.”
“Why not?”
“To start with, you could fall off, get thrown, break a leg. It’s not safe.”
“Everything has some risk,” I said.
He was silent for a moment. “Yeah, it does. Not everyone considers that as much as they should, but I do.” I wondered if he was thinking about his brother.
The business district was behind us and the road quiet again. We drove by the turnoff that went to the river and the covered bridge, the place I’d once hoped would be the location of my first kiss. Instead, it happened behind the school gym, Tom Parker having suffered from a distinct lack of imagination.
Carl’s was up ahead, a converted wooden barn surrounded by a field. David pulled in, parked, and opened the van’s back doors. We slid out the hand and carried it into the store, where Carl stood behind the counter, talking on his cell phone. His slight frame seemed overwhelmed by his full head of curly salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s him,” I said. “He’ll know what to do.” At least I hoped he would.
I started to walk toward the counter, but David grabbed my arm. “Hold on a minute. I was just thinking—what if he recognizes Alex’s work?”
He had a point. Alex had just been in the New York Times and he had a show coming up here in town. I didn’t see any way around it, though. “I think we have to take that chance. Besides, the hand looks a little different from his previous work. And if you don’t want Ana to lose her job…”
“Just let me do the talking.”
“Of course. I’m only trying to help.”