Like That Endless Cambria Sky

by Linda Seed

  Scenario A was that Walker would open the front door, exclaim over the brilliance of the painting, and make an offer to buy it. As appealing as that idea was, she considered it to be wildly improbable.

  Scenario B was that she wouldn’t get to see him at all—either he wouldn’t be home, or he’d have a security gate and the voice on the other end of the intercom would decline to let her in.

  Scenario C was that he would be home, and he would let her in, but he simply wouldn’t like the painting.

  Of course, there were infinite possible variations on each of the three scenarios; she understood that she’d have to think on her feet once she got there. She rehearsed her pitch in her head. She had long versions and short versions, polite versions and direct versions, but in the end, they all came down to this:

  Mr. Walker, I know it’s presumptuous of me to show up unannounced like this. But I have an artist whose work you need to see.

  If all else failed, she would thrust the painting in front of his face and hope the artwork would speak for itself.

  She arrived in Palo Alto around midday. She’d found Walker’s address online, and she used the Google Maps app on her phone to find the house. The street where Walker lived was tree-lined and shady, a narrow two-lane road with houses that looked like they’d been built in the mid-‘50s. As her car approached the address, her heart started to beat faster as her nerves ratcheted up.

  When the app announced that she’d arrived at her destination, she double-checked the address to be sure. The house looked far more modest than what she’d expected, a stuccoed ranch-style home with archways and lines that had probably looked cutting-edge sixty years ago, but that now appeared hopelessly dated. The lot the house stood on wasn’t large, and to her relief, there was no security gate. She parked on the street near a boxwood hedge, carefully removed the painting from the car, took a deep breath to steady herself, and walked up the driveway to David Walker’s front step.

  While she’d considered the idea that he might not be home—it had, of course, been one of her main scenarios—she still found it to be a big letdown when a middle-aged Hispanic woman who identified herself as the housekeeper informed Gen that Mr. Walker was at a lunch meeting in San Francisco. He wasn’t expected home until midafternoon.

  Standing there on the doorstep, she tried to consider what to do. The housekeeper looked at her patiently as she considered her options.

  “Okay, just … Would you wait just a moment, please?” she asked the housekeeper as she rooted around in her purse for a pen and some paper.

  She found the notebook that she kept in her bag, dug a ballpoint pen from among the detritus at the bottom of the purse, and began to write.

  Mr. Walker,

  I know it was presumptuous of me to show up at your house unannounced—she’d rehearsed this part, and didn’t want to waste all that mental effort by not using it—but I have a painting you need to see. It’s by Gordon Kendrick, a Chicago artist who has experienced a remarkable breakthrough in his work over the past several weeks.

  I’ll be in Palo Alto for the rest of the day, awaiting your call.

  —Genevieve Porter, owner of the Porter Gallery

  She thought about adding more, about herself, about Kendrick, about her interpretation of the painting and the reasons she thought it was significant. But it was likely she’d have only moments of his attention before he moved on to other things, so she added her cell phone number at the bottom of the note and hoped the painting would speak for itself.

  Gen thrust the painting and the note at the housekeeper.

  “Would you please make sure Mr. Walker sees these?”

  The housekeeper hesitated.

  “Please,” Gen said again. “I’ve driven almost four hours to give this to him. He’s going to want to see it.”

  The housekeeper continued to resist, so Gen gave her a pleading look and wondered if she should also try to look a little bit hungry and exhausted. She was hungry, as she hadn’t had lunch yet, and the drive had been tiring.

  Finally, the housekeeper nodded and reached for the painting and the note. She peered at the painting. “At least it’s better than the last one,” the woman quipped in a heavy accent. “That one had used cigarette butts glued to it.”

  Gen did a mental victory dance as the housekeeper took the painting and closed the door.

  The gambit had been risky, as now that she’d delivered the painting to the Walker household, there was no guarantee she’d get it back. But she’d deal with that problem if and when it came. She wasted time in Palo Alto waiting for him to call. She ate lunch at a café on University Avenue, then strolled through the Stanford University campus, admiring the stately Memorial Church, the Main Quad, and the no-doubt brilliant students walking and bicycling from one place to another.

  After that, she went to the mall adjacent to the campus, where she wandered through Nordstrom looking at the clothes and accessories.

  Toting a shopping bag containing a new pair of shoes and a selection of very expensive makeup, she settled in at a Starbucks to check her e-mail and sip a latte while she waited for Walker’s call.

  Around late afternoon, she started to worry that he wouldn’t call at all. What would she do then? She supposed she’d have to go back to his house and ask the housekeeper to give back the painting. But maybe not right away. What if she left it there for a few days? If Walker didn’t call today, it might be because he simply hadn’t been home, or hadn’t had time to consider Kendrick’s work. An extra day or two would increase the chances of Walker really thinking about the painting. But it would also increase the chances of Gen never getting it back. It would suck to go back to Cambria and tell Kendrick that she’d lost his best painting.

  It was almost five o’clock, and Gen was pondering her next move—Stay the night in Palo Alto? Go back to the Walker house?—when her cell phone buzzed.

  Without introduction, David Walker said, “Can you come back to the house? I want you to tell me about Gordon Kendrick.”

  Gen spent more than three hours at Walker’s house. The housekeeper—whose name was Martina—served dinner, and Gen and Walker discussed Gordon Kendrick over lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

  She explained the progression of Kendrick’s work, and how she’d discovered his paintings online. She’d looked at his overall career, including his early paintings as well as his most recent ones. Gen had thought that Kendrick’s paintings were good but not great. More importantly, she’d thought he was moving toward something, some kind of metamorphosis that would ultimately take his work to a higher level. So she’d created the residency and brought him to Cambria to see if a change of scenery could coax greatness out of him.

  In her view, it had worked.

  She told Walker about Kendrick’s initial crisis of confidence, and then his breakthrough.

  Walker, an unusually tall man in his early seventies, with a slightly stooped posture and a shock of white hair, listened carefully over dinner without indicating whether he might actually buy the painting. Afterward, he took her on a tour of the house. The inside was as unremarkable as the outside, with outdated furniture and décor that appeared to be from the ‘70s. But every available surface was covered with modern and contemporary art, ranging from Jackson Pollock to Jeff Koons. Touring Walker’s house was like visiting MoMA, but without the uniformed guards around every corner.

  Gen was so stunned by Walker’s art collection that she almost forgot about why she’d come. Finally, when she was gathering her purse at the end of the evening, Walker shook her hand, then held it tightly in both of his.

  “So, how much were you thinking?” he said.

  She blinked a few times and realized he was talking about Kendrick’s painting.

  She named a figure.

  He released her hand and went to a side table in the foyer to get his checkbook.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gen returned to Cambria the next day in triumph. S
he was so excited about the sale that she’d considered driving home that night so she could share the good news with Kendrick in person. But then, realizing that she was exhausted, she’d settled for calling him instead. After that she’d called Ryan, because she realized her happiness would not be real unless she shared it with him.

  “It was an amazing day, and I needed to tell you about it,” she’d told him, clutching her cell phone to her ear in the Sheraton Palo Alto.

  “You’re amazing,” he’d answered in a voice so sexy it made her mentally relive their last intimate encounter.

  He said something else, but she was so busy fantasizing she didn’t know what it was.

  “So now what?” Kendrick asked Gen when she met with him at the guest house the day of her return.

  “Now, we wait.” She explained to Kendrick that any acquisition to David Walker’s collection was big news in the art world, and that Walker’s latest purchase would hit social media soon—if it hadn’t already. Once that happened, people would start contacting them. If all went well, they could take their pick of New York galleries for Kendrick’s show.

  Kendrick was so pleased that when Gen wrote him a check for the sale of the painting, he thanked her profusely and didn’t even complain about her forty percent.

  Gen had been right about word spreading quickly on social media. Within twenty-four hours of the sale, Walker had posted the Kendrick painting on the “New Acquisitions” page of his website. Shortly after that, people began tweeting about Kendrick and his work. And shortly after that, Joan Whitley’s assistant called Gen, saying Ms. Whitley had reconsidered her earlier refusal, and now wanted to talk about having a show of Kendrick’s work.

  By then, it was too late. Gen had already made a deal with someone else.

  The show was scheduled for the end of September at the Archibald Bellini Gallery in SoHo. Archibald Bellini usually was booked a year in advance, but they’d bumped a show titled “Global Warming in Recent Abstractions” to get Kendrick in.

  “God, I’m nervous,” Gen told Ryan in bed about a week after her return from Palo Alto, when the date for the gallery show had been confirmed. “Jeez. Kendrick’s not even nervous, but I can barely function.”

  “Let’s see what we can do to relax you,” he said.

  “Gen wants me to go to New York with her.”

  Ryan was lining up a pool shot at Ted’s on a Thursday night after Jackson got off work at the restaurant. He and Jackson were playing, and Daniel and Will were standing around heckling them. The bar was mostly empty, as it often was on weeknights, but it still had the aroma of sweat, stale beer, and old carpet.

  “For this gallery deal, or is she still talking about moving there?” Will asked.

  “As far as I know, her moving there is still on the table. But for now, we’re just talking about the gallery deal.” He took his shot, and missed getting the six into the corner pocket by a fraction of an inch.

  “You going?” Jackson asked.

  His shot done, Ryan straightened and backed out of the way so Jackson could take his turn.

  “Sure. This is a big thing for her. I want to be supportive.”

  “Supportive’s good,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah,” Ryan agreed.

  “But?” Daniel prompted him. Daniel was sitting on a barstool near the wall, a mug of beer in his hand.

  “But,” Ryan said, “this is it, isn’t it? The idea was, she’d hit it big with Kendrick, then she’d have the juice to get back into the New York art scene, and then she could move back there. Well, she’s hit it big with Kendrick.”

  “And you don’t want her to move,” Will said from the barstool next to Daniel’s.

  “Well, no.”

  Jackson lined up his shot and hit the ten into a side pocket.

  “Nice shot,” Daniel observed.

  “So? If she goes, what then?” Jackson asked. “Do you move with her? Or do you do a long-distance thing? Call it off? Or what?”

  “Calling it off isn’t an option,” Ryan said. Just saying the words, just considering the idea of ending things, made him feel a little sick to his stomach.

  “So it’s serious, then?” Will asked.

  “It is for me. I hope it is for her,” Ryan said.

  Jackson sank the twelve, and Ryan grumbled. They had ten dollars on the game.

  “What if she does move? Would you consider going with her?” Daniel said.

  “She hasn’t asked me to.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Daniel said impatiently. “If she does.”

  “It’s complicated,” Ryan answered. He took a long drink from his beer. “My parents and my uncle are getting old. One brother’s in Montana, and the other one has no interest in ranching. Everybody’s counting on me to run things out here. If I go … Well. We can hire someone, but it’s not the same. The ranch is a family business. We hire someone, that’s not family.”

  Jackson took his next shot and missed. Ryan looked over the table, spotted his next move, and leaned down to line up his shot.

  “And the long-distance thing,” he continued as he took his turn, “that’s complicated, too. Flying back and forth, being apart a lot of the time. I’m in a relationship, I want to be with the person. Plus, I’m not a big fan of airplanes.”

  He hit the cue into the four and sank it into a corner pocket.

  “Well, if calling it off isn’t an option, what’ll you do?” Daniel asked the question that had been keeping Ryan awake nights.

  “Shit.” Ryan shook his head. “Shit. I guess I’m moving to New York. If she goes. And if she asks me to go with her.”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows and whistled in admiration. “That’s a big fuckin’ deal, man.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan agreed.

  “You could ask her to stay,” Will observed.

  “Nah,” Ryan said. “Then I’m the asshole who held her back, ruined her career. This matters to her. And if it’s important to her, it’s important to me.”

  Jackson chuckled and smacked Ryan on the back. “You’re going to make someone a really great wife someday.”

  “Ah, shut up,” Ryan said.

  Taking a week off to go to New York wasn’t a simple matter. Sure, they had hired hands on the ranch, but nobody who was used to running the place in Ryan’s absence. Their best guy, the one who’d been there the longest, was off work with a back injury. That left Joe Barnes, a big hulk of a man who’d come to them about a year and a half ago from a ranch in Nebraska. Barnes was good—he had good instincts and a great work ethic—but he was young, and he’d never been trained to manage the operation. Of course, Ryan’s dad would be there, and so would Redmond, in case Barnes got into trouble. Still, Ryan felt shaky about leaving.

  Of course, it was entirely possible that part of the shaky feeling had to do with the bigger issue of Gen and New York, rather than this one trip.

  Surprisingly, every time he bitched about how he didn’t want to abandon the ranch even for a week, Sandra was the one who urged him to go.

  “This ranch has been here for a hundred and seventy years, I imagine it’ll still be here when you get back in a week,” she pronounced, hands on her hips, fuzzy slippers on her feet. “I know you think you’re so important we’ll all just lay down and die if you take a vacation, but I guess we probably won’t.”

  He scratched at his head and poured his morning coffee. “I don’t think I’m that important.”

  “No? Well, you sure act like it. ‘I can’t leave! What’ll you all do? Oh, what will become of the ranch?’ My God. You act like the goddamn sun will stop shining if you get on a plane.” She rolled her eyes at him.

  “I don’t act like that.” He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Do I?”

  “You’ve been known to. Good lord, it’s like you think we can’t function without you here watching over us.”

  “Well,” Ryan said.

  She came over to where he sat at the table with his mug. Her voice softened, and she put a hand
on his shoulder. “You need to do this, Ryan. Go and support your girl.”

  He looked up at her, feeling grateful but still a little miserable. “But what if she decides to move?”

  Sandra crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “There you go, trying to cross bridges you haven’t come to yet.” She put the hand back on his shoulder. “We’ll figure that out when it happens.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, if this one moves across the country, we’ll be royally screwed, I guess,” Orin said, scratching his belly as he walked into the kitchen to get his coffee.

  “Nobody asked you to chime in,” Sandra reminded him.

  “Well, I guess I get an opinion,” Orin said.

  “Not on Ryan’s love life, you don’t,” Sandra said. She turned back to Ryan. “Don’t you listen to him.”

  He tried not to. But it was hard.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The night before Gen and Ryan were set to leave for New York, the girls got together at Rose’s house to wish her luck. The cottage, set in a woodsy area east of Highway 1, was tiny, but Gen had always loved it. With its wood paneling, the freestanding cast iron fireplace, and the fact that it was set on a sizeable lot with trees that obscured any view of the neighbors, the place made Gen feel like she was tucked into a secluded mountain hideaway.

  Of course, Rose had brought some good wine from her shop, and Jackson had sent a big pan of macaroni and cheese. Because Jackson was Jackson, it couldn’t be ordinary mac and cheese, so he’d made it with brie and truffle oil.

  The four of them were gathered around Rose’s table eating the pasta and drinking a very good Spanish Grenache, talking about Gen’s goals for the trip, when Rose brought up the subject of Ryan.

  “It’s good that he’s going with you. It shows he’s supportive of your career.” She pointed her pasta-laden fork toward Gen. “You don’t want some asshole who’s going to put himself first, insist that you’ve got to be the little woman ironing his shirts and … and … I don’t know. Baking him cookies. Do not bake him cookies.”