Patch leaned on the bricked arches and clutched the paper program and traced a finger over the lettering.
Swan Lake.
He knew that Grace traveled, that she was cultured enough to go see ballets, educated enough to know about almost everything. That kind of girl goes missing and she leaves a void. He knew there’d be a record, parents and friends and a school.
He saw one of his posters on the noticeboard alongside wanted ads, the offers of piano lessons and gardening services, handyman services and a room to rent. The writing already bleached by the sun, the number of the Monta Clare PD so faded he could not read the last two digits.
He didn’t feel the man beside him until he was dragged off.
“Follow,” Sammy said, the word a labor.
Into the iced gallery air.
Inside a white office Sammy took his place behind a desk strewn with the paper Patch had taken from him, smoothed out till he could see each sketch.
Sammy regarded him for a moment, frowned at his shirt, then his bowtie. “You’ve been practicing magic?”
Patch silently cursed Saint.
“These sketches…,” Sammy said, resting a hand on his stomach, the curls in his hair neat over green eyes. “You did these?”
“I thought maybe you might put one in the window,” Patch said.
“Or I could just smear human shit on the glass. You’re a problem, kid.” His teeth were straight and white, his nails shined like he visited a salon. He smelled faintly of cologne, and ginger and mulled cider. Patch looked him in the eye and saw nothing but confidence, of acceptance and a violent self-belief.
“Maybe. But I’m not your problem,” Patch said.
Sammy rolled his eyes quick, a move Patch guessed was forced on him often.
“You know about me?” Sammy said.
He had once asked Norma about Sammy when they rode the bus.
“People either drink like that to remember or to forget. I’d say both are true in Sammy’s case.”
“People say you’re a drunk.”
“I am.”
“And a cad.”
“You even know what a cad is?”
Patch shook his head.
“A cad is a gentleman cunt.”
“I could see that,” Patch said, and Sammy almost smiled.
Laid out were a selection of brushes.
Sammy picked one up. “Kolinsky Sable. The perfect backbone in the rarest of fibers. It will hold oil as well in fifty years as it does today. Wish I could say the same about your hair, kid.”
Patch silently cursed Saint again.
Sammy selected another. “A filbert.” And then another. “Cat’s tongue.” He waved a hand over the line. “A bright, a liner, two riggers, and a round. An assortment of sizes, you’ll use a six for the finest of hair, a fourteen for swathes of skin.”
Sammy flipped the latch on a pocked cedar box and turned it to face Patch.
“Sennelier oils. There is a store beside the Musée d’Orsay, favored by Matisse and Ernst and Monet and Picasso himself. Non-yellowing safflower oil, they will sit on canvas for a hundred years without fade or shine. They will be entirely wasted on you.”
Patch said nothing.
“Old Holland canvas.” Sammy picked up a small stack and dropped it onto the desk with a light thump. “One hundred percent Belgian linen. Two coats of gesso. Some will tell you the three-ply Daveliou is superior. But then some will also tell you to go to church each Sunday.” Sammy filled his glass to the brim.
“For portraits you’ll paint with oil. On canvas. Under natural light. Hog brushes. Ventilation. Turpentine if you want to gas me…”
“I definitely want to—”
“…Walnut oil if you don’t. Linseed if you must.”
Patch rummaged in his bag for paper to make notes. As he did he dropped his brushes to the floor.
Sammy inspected them like they were entirely foreign. “You use these for cleaning drains, yes?”
“Did you say turpentine seeds?”
“Jesus. I have display easels that will be adequate. And a room behind this one. Northern light. The diffusion is everything, you may come to learn that, or you may produce the same dogshit as you would under five thousand k. Time will tell.”
“I don’t understand,” Patch said.
“You’ll paint here.”
Patch shook his head. “I’m not taking—”
“You will not take. These are loaned. At some point you’ll ply a trade, likely in some kind of factory or pit, and you will settle your debt, of which I will keep exhaustive note. A real man settles his debts.”
“I can’t—”
“Did I ask you a question?”
Patch shook his head.
Sammy walked out and Patch followed.
He unlocked a door hidden behind a large sculpture, a jagged piece of rock fifteen feet tall, its face a curve of smooth dark.
Inside, the room was white. The floor and walls and ceiling. Empty but for a single easel. No stool. Nothing beyond a window, lightly screened by some kind of paper.
“I will give you a single key. You’ll work here when the mood takes you. You will not speak to me or anyone who visits. You will leave the studio in this condition. You will place your belongings in a small locker I will provide.”
Patch looked around. “Why are you doing this? Why didn’t you tell the agency I stole?”
Sammy leaned in the doorway, and for a moment looked at Patch like he knew him, like he knew the quiet agony of each passing minute. And then he shook it off, glanced past him and let his eyes settle on the promised girl. “Each day I take a walk up Parade Hill to remind myself why I didn’t leave this nothing town a lifetime before. You saved the Meyer girl. And for that I will always be grateful. You want to find your Grace?”
Patch nodded.
“Bring her to life then.”