by Lynda Trent
Marla glanced at her sideways. “You aren’t still on that weirdo scheme to paint color-by-the-number pictures, are you?”
“They aren’t that bad, for goodness sake. And they may bring in some extra money.”
“Or they may ruin your reputation as an artist! Clare, what if someone connects you with them?”
“I hardly think all the leading art critics in America make a habit of studying tourist shops to discover what ‘real’ artist is moonlighting.”
“I guess not. But at least you could change your signature.”
“You’re getting paranoid,” Clare observed conversationally. “Seen any art spies following me lately? They’ll be the ones with paintbrushes dribbling from their pockets.”
“Have you gone out with anyone interesting lately?” Marla asked to change the subject. “You’ll be glad to know that nobody has started linking your name with anyone yet.”
“There’s no reason why they should,” Clare answered. “I’m not dating.”
“Not at all? Why not? You’re certainly well-liked.”
Clare shrugged. “A few men asked me, but I just wasn’t interested. I guess the right one hasn’t called.” She thought of a certain tall man with a southern slowness in his drawl and lips that lit unquenchable fires in her. “Maybe I’ll go to the country club dance next month and meet my Prince Charming there. I hear Dyna Carrington’s sponsoring it. Are you and Tom going?”
Marla nodded. “That reminds me. I heard Dyna say that the landman from Huntly Oil is back in town. He’s interested in leasing some of her property to finish out the drilling block.”
“Oh?” Clare carefully put her coffee cup onto the end table and tried to look nonchalant.
“Maybe this means they plan to start drilling soon. Have you heard anything?”
“No. Where did Dyna say he’s staying? Maybe I could call and ask him,” Clare said with as even a tone as she could muster. She had told Marla nothing about the night she had spent with Ryan, nor was she ready to now, but restraining the excitement she felt at the mention of him was almost impossible.
”She saw she called him at the Trails End, but from what else she said, I gather he’s spending most of his time at the Cowboy Lounge.”
Clare frowned. The Trail’s End Motel was a seedy row of buildings linked by a mottled green composition roof at the edge of town, where it was said the weary truck driver could seek solace and avail himself of a little entertainment to relieve his boredom. The Cowboy Lounge was little more than a rundown beer joint. Why would Ryan pick those places?
“I think I’ll give him a call tonight to find out when Huntly Oil plans to drill,” Clare said offhandedly. “Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got to run. Picasso didn’t get where he is by sitting around all day, and neither will I.”
Marla saw her to the door. “If anyone ever asks me if you painted those tourist pictures, I’ll lie.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Clare said with a grin. “See you tomorrow.”
Ryan was in town and he hadn’t called! Clare remembered every moment of the last two days that she had been away from the telephone. Of course! That was it. He’d called and she’d been gone. Often Betty forgot to write down who had called, or absentmindedly put the notes in a place where they showed up days later.
Clare smiled happily as she got into her car. Why bother with a phone call when she already knew where to find him?
The Cowboy Lounge was a long, dark cedar building at the edge of town on the old Longview highway, not far from the Trail’s End Motel. Four red wagon wheels chained to a rustic hitching post adorned the entrance, while a green and red covered wagon perched on the roof. A nasal, melancholy tune blared out at the parking lot from speakers hidden beneath the eaves. A nostalgic wave briefly Washed over her as she recalled her high school days and the twang of the jukebox sounds that had reverberated across the Dairy Queen parking lot.
Clare had always liked country-western musica fact Elliot would have teased her about unmercifully had he knownbut this was pure backwoods and unmistakably amateurish. Her face distorted at the cacophony.
Resolutely, she shouldered open the screen door and the wooden one behind it. Inside, the music was muffled by the whir of the giant fan set in the upper wall on one end of the room. The floor was slippery with sawdust and the tables were cheap, round wooden ones with bentwood legs. Only a few of the chairs matched. Elaborate beer advertisement signs hawking Budweiser, Pearl and Lone Star were the only adornment these walls had ever seen. Clare went uncertainly to the bar and asked the bartender if Ryan Hastings were there.
“What?” he bellowed above the noise of the fan and the whine of the music.
“Hastings!” she yelled back. “Ryan Hastings! The man from Huntly Oil!”
“Huntly! Yeah!” the bartender blasted. “That’s him over yonder!” He nodded his head toward the rear comer.
Clare threaded her way back. The room was so dim she hadn’t noticed the man when she entered. But as she drew nearer, she realized this man wasn’t Ryan.
He was in his sixties, gray-haired and sickly looking, with dark liver spots on his hands and cheeks. “Yeah?” he said, looking at her out of his rheumy blue eyes. “You looking for me?”
“No,” Clare said in confusion. “I’m looking for Ryan Hastings, the landman from Huntly Oil.”
“Yep. Huntly Oil. That’s me.” He shoved the other chair out with his foot. “Have a seat.”
Mercifully, the music was not as loud on this end of the room, but Clare wondered if she had heard correctly. “You’re the landman? Where’s Mr. Hastings?”
“He ain’t no landman, he’s our head geologist. He come out here and leased a bit of land, but he didn’t get enough for a block. I’m trying to tie up the rest of it.” He noisily sucked some beer from the can into his mouth and wiped his chin on the back of his hand. “I ain’t interested in your land, though, unless it borders on the Marshall acres.”
“My land is the Marshall land,” Clare said haughtily, trying to ignore the grime and unidentifiable stains on the table.
“Decided to lease some more of it? I ain’t going to give you the price Mr. Hastings did. I can tell you that right off.”
“No. I haven’t decided to lease more land. I want to know when you plan to start the well.”
He looked away and grinned as if she had mid something funny. “How should I know?”
“Well, you’re the landman! You work for Huntly Oil!”
“Yeah, but I ain’t Mr. Huntly. The Old Man don’t go around telling me things like that.”
“I understand. But it’s important to me to get a well started as soon as possible.”
He glanced derisively at her expensive clothes and snorted. “Look, lady, Huntly Oil is a small company. We can’t afford to throw away a million dollars on one well like Exxon or Gulf can.”
“Then why did you lease it?”
“There’s two deep wells going in south of here. If they strike oil, maybe we’ll drill then.”
“But that could take months! Even years!”
He shrugged. “That’s the breaks of the game. These ain’t the old wildcat days, when anybody with a rig could get rich on oil. Today it takes money. A lot of it. And somebody who knows what’s what.”
The door slammed open and three young men came in. Clad in faded, tight jeans and cotton shirts, they tossed their feather-trimmed stetsons onto the bar and slouched on the stools as if they were run by a common mind. The noise level rose sharply. Clare glanced at them nervously.
“Thank you for the information,” she said as she edged away from the table and toward the door.
He nodded and raised the beer can to his lips.
Clare walked to the door amid catcalls and lewd suggestions from the three young psuedo-cowboys, but no one tried to stop her. When she got outside, she walked as quickly as possible to her car. Never had she noticed that air smelled so fresh. As she drove home she marveled at t
he disappointment of not having seen Ryan. But the conversation had planted the seed of an idea in her mind. The gamble was great much more daring than she had ever considered before but if it paid off, she’d never have to worry about money again.
Chapter Eight
Clare loaded all her paintings into her Mercedes, taking care to cushion each with a layer of quilting. There were half a dozen oils of large dimensions and free-flowing designs of the sort galleries would consider. The other fifteen were smaller canvases in ready-made frames supplied by a local craft supply house. These were well done, but the subject matter was more marketable than artful, the themes obvious rather than illusory. The more dignified paintings were signed “C. Marshall,” the others simply “Clare.”
Since Clare had never gone on a trip alone, the drive to New Orleans was a bit of an adventure for her. She left long before sunup, and by the time it was light enough to see, the tall East Texas pines had given way to oak and sweet gum forests. The further southeast Clare went across Louisiana, the more magnolias she noticed. Somewhere beyond Alexandria but before Baton Rouge, she first saw the cypress trees with their bony knees jutting out of the water. Then appeared the telltale sign of the Deep SouthSpanish moss, dripping in great gray beards from the hardwood trees.
Clare found a motel on the outskirts of the city, still in sight of Lake Pontchartrain. The Seven Fountains was not the
Fontainebleau, to be sure, but it appeared clean, safe and, above all, inexpensive. Feeling awkward, she went into the lobby and asked for a room. The rates were even better than she had hoped, and soon she had paid for the night in advance, and had her key.
The room was on the ground floor in the corner behind the swimming pool. The pool had been drained for repairs, but that didn’t matter since the view of it from Clare’s room was totally obstructed by a prickly shrub that had gone berserk in its growth pattern. Inside Clare found the room spacious and clean. The bedspread was neatly but obviously mended, the bathroom sink was chipped, the glasses were disposable plastic and the television looked as if it might or might not work.
It was all Clare needed.
Carefully, she bathed, put on new makeup and dressed. She topped her red slacks with a gaily printed silk blouse and a red vest that matched the slacks. Her heels were white with tiny straps, and her handbag had been bought especially to carry with them. A sliver of gold chain gleamed at her neck and another at her right wrist. She placed tiny gold earrings in her ears before twisting her heavy, chestnut-colored hair into a chignon across the nape of her neck. Clare looked in the mirror and smiled. She looked elegant enough to impress any gallery owner, yet flamboyant enough to be unmistakable as an artist.
The bath had refreshed her somewhat, and little of the stiff achiness from the long drive remained. Knowing that it was getting late, she tore the from the phone book that listed the New Orleans art galleries.
The first two Clare tried promptly turned her away. With the third, she adopted a different attitude.
“Hello,” she said frostily to the woman who identified herself as the owner. “I’m Clare Marshall. As you may have read, I have decided to increase my area of shows to include New Orleans. Naturally, I have heard,” she glanced at the name on the shop’s window, “that the Newman Gallery is the best in the city. I also understand you charge a twenty percent commission, is that correct?” Clare looked directly and confidently into the woman’s eyes.
“Well, yes, but…”
“Very well. You do have someone here who will help me
unload my paintings, don’t you?” Clare gazed around the room as if she were choosing her wall space.
“Certainly, but I don’t believe… that is, your name isn’t entirely familiar to me.”
Clare looked at her incredulously. “No? How can that be? Have you been to the Dallas Fine Arts Museum recently? Or to the Rice Museum in Houston during the first week of March this past spring?”
“No,” the woman admitted.
Clare smiled brilliantly. “That’s it, of course. I imagine you’re kept quite busy here. I’ve heard nothing but the most glowing reports of your establishment. And from what I see, it’s all true,” she said magnanimously.
The woman beamed at the compliment. “Thank you, Miss Marshall.” She turned to a silver bell on her desk and tapped it. “My assistant will be right out. Would you care for coffee?” She gestured to an alcove where a coffee urn sat.
“No, thank you, I find it inhibits my creative flow.”
A young man emerged from the back room and Clare went with him to her car.
“Careful now,” she said, keeping the tourist pictures covered beneath the quilt. “Only these top three go in. Everything else is on its way to a show in Birmingham.” She smiled conspiratorily at the gallery owner, who had joined them. “I suppose it’s an eccentricity on my part, but I always insist on carrying out my canvases myself. One never knows how they will arrive otherwise.”
“True,” the woman murmured. “So true.”
Clare helped the woman hang the canvases to their best possible advantage, then smiled in a businesslike way. “It’s so good to deal with a connoisseur like yourself. I expect these canvases will bring, oh, say, five hundred? I really can’t let them go for under four-fifty, you know. Here is my address and the unlisted phone number of my studio. I can be reached there most of the time. Do let me know when you need some more paintings.”
“Of course. I’ll stay in close touch.”
As Clare got back into the Mercedes, she grinned triumphantly. “So that’s how Regina does it!” she chortled.
At the next gallery, she introduced herself, then admitted that, even though she was being exhibited in the Newman Gallery, she felt the need to expand in the area. The gallery owner, who could not mask his eagerness to share an artist with his rival, jumped at the chance to hang her pictures. Clare’s expensive clothes and car, as well as her imperial manner, did much to convince him that he could hardly afford to let her get away.
After driving randomly through several nice neighborhoods, Clare found a park and pulled up under the shade of one of the massive oaks. She moved the small styrofoam ice chest and the sack of groceries from the trunk to the seat beside her and began to eat the cheese and crackers she had brought from home. As she leaned her head back on the seat and sipped her Coke, she watched some squirrels frolicking in the tree above her head. Her victories had renewed her energy, and she felt surprisingly rested. It felt good to be on a winning streak.
She peered into the sack. There was a can of tuna fish, some bread and a can opener. “Not a fancy supper,” she told herself, “but filling and cheap.” There was also a jar of instant coffee for her breakfast and a container of honey to put on the remaining bread. She would be home the next day in time for a late dinner.
“I’ve heard all artists start off starving in a garret,” she comforted herself. “I’m lucky my garret is attached to a twenty-room mansion.” But she found the tuna was tasteless in her mouth. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life want and scraping just to get by. The memories of the want need of her childhood swept over her, leaving the pain of those days weighing heavily on her sensibilities. There was no guarantee she’d make it as an artist most who tried didn’t and she certainly couldn’t survive very well on the yearly lease money. It was only a short lease, anyway.
Her new idea surfaced again, and again she found herself struggling with mixed emotions. The risk would be very high; she could lose everything. But she could secure her future and rid herself of the gripping fear that she might be forced to return to the poverty she’d known most of her life. But, first things first, she reminded herself as she rose to leave.
She found the Vieux Carr? almost by accident, and instantly felt as if she had been hurtled back a hundred years in time. The streets were little more than narrow alleys sand wiched between two and three-story buildings of elaborately ornate designs. Black wrought iron, which seemed too heavy f
or the ancient buildings to support, formed fantastic columns, balcony railings and window grillwork. White painted iron that must have been equally heavy interlocked like massive lace, one story to the next. Loud blues music blared out of one of the corner saloons. The photographs of the establishment’s nude dancers were prominently displayed on both sides of the entrance.
And everywhere there were people.
Clare had trouble driving down the narrow street because of all the people who crossed and recrossed the street in front of her and eddied behind the car in her wake. At last, she finally found a parking space at the side of a small park. In the center of the beautifully landscaped green, and above the yellow flowering candelabras, a dark equestrian statue of General Jackson reared proudly. Across the street at the far side, the enormous edifice of a Catholic church loomed in gothic splendor.
Clare removed the pins and shook her hair loose onto her shoulders. Ignoring the curious stares of passersby, she slipped off her vest, pulled out her shirt tail and kicked off her heels. As she pushed her feet into low-heeled sandals, Clare tissued off her lip gloss. She unfastened her gold jewelry and put it into the zipper pocket of her purse. Then she took out a pair of exotic earrings, three bangle bracelets and a neck chain on which hung a Pisces zodiac pendant. She dropped her white leather purse into a woven shoulder bag. With as many of her paintings as she could carry, Clare went into the art shop that seemed to be the most crowded.
“Hi,” she said cheerfully, and in a voice calculated to catch the attention of the nearest tourist. “I’m Clare. I’d like to show you some of my work, if you’re the owner of this place.”
The young man grinned at her from behind the counter. “Hi. I’m Doug. I’m not the owner, but I’m the manager.” He noticed the tourists beginning to peer surreptitiously at her pictures. “What have you got there?”
He agreed to hang all eight when he saw a blousy woman dickering with her husband to possess one. Clare bargained with the manager until he agreed on a fifteen percent commission on the pictures, which ranged in price from twenty to thirty dollars, and a monthly statement, and then shook hands with him.
