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She picked it up, looked at it. A dimple dented her cheek. “Guess that makes mePretty Woman.” She folded it, reopened her clutch, put it inside, and snapped it shut. That surprised him.
She drank again, propping an elbow on the bar. Her eyes when they met his were brushed silver with tiny gold flecks, in the light of the bar at least. “You’re good, and I should know. I was Todd’s art director before we married.” She passed her hand across her body. “Anne Plevin; but I guess you know that.”
He took the hand. Her grip was cool and assured. He gave it back. “Dennis Cooke.”
“Snooping is a waste of your talent.”
Grotesque now to keep playing dumb. Goodbye, bank account.Sayonara,Toyota. “So’s starving,” he said. “Anyone can draw a straight line with a mouse in his hand. I’m like those painters at the turn of the twentieth century, the ones the camera made obsolete. You could say I’m diversifying.”
“Those painters found a way around the situation. They went where the shutterbugs couldn’t go: Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism. The only way Man Ray could matchNude Descending a Staircaseon film would be to build his model out of Legos.”
“They had abstract minds. I’m strictly representative.”
“You’re honest,” she said, “I can tell. I see now why Todd hired you. He finally found someone he thinks he can trust. What’s he paying you?”
He told her. She nodded, swiveled back toward the bar, rested her forearms on it. She looked down at them. “What if I topped his offer?”
Somehow that surprised him less than what she’d done with his drawing. He took a deep breath, let it out; he hadn’t a toy cigarette to make the gesture seem romantic. “That would pose a conundrum. If I accepted, it would mean I’m betraying my boss and that I’m not honest. You couldn’t trust me. So it’s just a test. You have no intention of making it good.”
“Thatisa conundrum. What you just said proves you’re straight as a ruler, but if I were to go by that and go ahead with the offer and you took it, you’d be double-crossing him, and that puts us back to square one.”
He sipped his beer, pushed it away. It was warm. “Something like that.”
She raised her chin and caught his eye again in the smoked glass behind the bar. “So youcanthink in the abstract.”
The bartender cruised back their way. He pointed at the abandoned schooner. “Another, sir? That one’s lost its head.”
Cooke laughed. He wasn’t sure why.
PART 3
Traffic Shift
CHAPTER 10
HE ORDERED ANOTHER beer, not because he wanted it but because the bar was emptying out and he’d spotted the bartender glancing from time to time at the neon advertising clock on the wall; if they weren’t going to let him close up and go home, they might as well justify taking up space.
When it came, he went through the motions and took a sip. Surprisingly, the effervescence, crisp heady taste—and of course the alcohol content—lifted his mood. He looked at Anne. “Well, I was looking for a job when I found this one.”
“I’ve never understood that line,” she said. She had a fresh vodka tonic in front of her and was inhaling vapor again. He hadn’t noticed when she’d taken the e-cigarette back out; and neither, he suspected, had she. It was that artificial twilight hour that took place only in saloons, with everyone in a dream state that had little to do with inebriation. “It sounds like it’s supposed to be optimistic, but all it means is you’re right back where you started.”
“It’s just something you say, like it’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Not so dark as you think. You haven’t failed, you know. In fact, you’re closer on the trail than ever. On top of it, practically.”
“If you’re suggesting I pretend we never made contact and I just keep following you all the way to San Francisco, that’s out.”
“I’m not going to San Francisco.”
She hadn’t turned back his way. Her profile really was perfect. He was sorry she’d claimed the sketch he’d made of her; but then he could make a better one back in his room, while the memory was fresh. The unfinished painting in his studio was a lifeless thing now. He’d paint over it or, better yet, dump it. The real-life model he’d found to replace the one from his imagination cried out for virgin canvas.
“If you’ve changed your mind on my account,” he said, “don’t. It’s none of my business now.”
He kept his voice low, but that was just a show of discretion. The young man behind the bar stood at the far end, preoccupied with his cell phone.
“What makes you think I’ve changed my mind?”
“You said—”
