Chapter 4

When Grace and I walked into the house after leaving Dr. Crane's cocktail party, Mom was waiting for us, and she didn't look happy. She said, "Grace, a young man named Troy Crawford called you, and, Brent, Sherry Crane wants you to call her. They both sounded upset when they called, but neither of them would tell me why." She gasped. "Grace! What happened to your face?"

"You explain, Grace," I said. "I'll call Sherry. Did she leave a number, Mom?"

"Yes. It's on the pad next to the phone in the kitchen, but before you call her, I want to know what..."

"Grace will explain, Mom," I said and walked past her into the kitchen.

I'd just kicked a man in the nuts — hard. Hard enough that he'd need medical attention, I figured. That's called assault, a felony. I'd struck without warning, blindsiding the uncouth brute. That the police would soon be knocking at my door wasn't likely, but it was possible.

I dialed the number Mom had scribbled on the notepad, and Sherry answered the phone. "It's Brent Carson, Sherry. I'm returning your call."

She said nothing for a second or two. Then she spoke. "Yes, I called you, and now I have you on the phone, I don't know what to say, or rather, I don't know where to start." She paused. "Yes, I do. Thank you for kicking Carl Ballard in the gonads. If anyone deserves to be neutered, it's that no-account, worthless excuse for a human being. That being said, I called to warn you that Uncle Harry was forced to call an ambulance, and Ballard was taken to the hospital. Because the fight that caused Ballard's injuries happened in my uncle's home during a cocktail party where alcohol was freely dispensed, alcohol provided by my uncle, Uncle Harry fears legal repercussions, and not just from Carl Ballard. Grace has possible redress, as well. I've wandered off topic. Excuse me."

"No problem," I said as I watched my mother walk into the kitchen. She stood so she could listen to my side of the telephone conversation. "For what it's worth, Dr. Crane doesn't need to worry about any legal repercussions from Grace."

"Thank you. Back to my warning, it's possible that Ballard will swear out a complaint against you for assault, and failing that, might sue you in civil court."

"Are you guessing, or do you know something you're not telling me?"

"I'm guessing. I'm waiting for Uncle Harry's call. He's at the hospital."

"I understand. I need a favor, Sherry. Are you still at your uncle's house?"

"Yes, I live here."

"Are your guests still there?"

"Some of them. Most of them."

"Considering the possibility that I might be arrested and prosecuted for assault, would you hand out pads of paper and ask any witnesses if they would write down what they saw and heard."

Mother gasped, putting her hand over her mouth.

I continued my conversation with Sherry. "That drunken Neanderthal was assaulting my sister. I stopped him. Written statements from witnesses to that effect might be necessary."

"All right. I'll do that for you," Sherry said.

"Thank you, and please call me after you hear from Dr. Crane."

"I will."

When I hung up, Mom hugged me fiercely. "Thank you, son. Whatever happens, you did the right thing."

"Where's Dad?" I asked.

"In the living room with Grace."

"After Sherry calls back, and if she says it's likely that the police plan to arrest me, I'd like Dad to call a lawyer to stand ready to help me. Also if that happens, I think Grace should swear out a complaint against Ballard for assaulting her."

"Maybe she should anyway," Mom said.

"Maybe, but if Ballard doesn't pursue a legal course against me, it might be better to let the situation become history."

Sherry called a half-hour later. Ballard had refused to name me when the police spoke with him. I breathed a sigh of relief. I believed that in the end I would've prevailed, but defending criminal charges is never cheap. I was just starting to earn my way in the world. I wanted to rent a studio and buy a car, not shell out my money to lawyers.

"There's still the possibility of a civil suit, and Ballard is a mean drunk, Brent. If he doesn't sue in civil court, he'll want to get even by personally beating you to within an inch of your life, so watch your back," Sherry said.

"I will. Did you ask the witnesses for their statements?"

"Yes, I have some of them in hand, and I'll gather the rest in a few minutes."

"Good. May I pick them up tomorrow?"

"Sure. Join my uncle and me for lunch at the house."

"All right."

She laughed. "I suspect that Uncle Harry has more questions regarding your encyclopedic knowledge of Jane Wilson."

Argh.

Before meeting Chuck Cole to see the studio space he wanted to sublease, I took digital pictures of Grace's bruised face, black eye, bruised arm and back. The photographs would be evidence if Ballard filed a civil suit against me. Photographing the bruise on her back was embarrassing. She had to remove her skirt and raise her blouse for me to see it. It was embarrassing because my sister's panty-clad ass gave me a hard-on. She noticed the prominent bulge in my trousers and gave me a knowing, pleased smile. It wasn't the first hard-on Grace had given me, and I suspected it wouldn't be the last.

"Did you call Troy Crawford?" I asked as she zipped up her skirt.

"No!" Grace said. "He's older, good looking and smart, just what I was looking for, but he's also a complete boob."

"Do you remember the bartender?"

"Yes. His name was Dean, I think."

I said nothing.

"What?" she said.

"I liked him. He's an art student at the university. Although he was attentive to me, he couldn't take his eyes off you. I'm surprised you remember Dean at all. At the time you were all atwitter over Troy, who really doesn't fit your criteria, missy. He's a graduate student, too old for you. Dean fits, but if you're not interested, I'll drop it."

"I didn't say I wasn't interested, but... ah, heck, I'll probably never see him again."

I chuckled. "You will if you visit my new studio."

She frowned. "What new studio?"

"In about an hour, I have an appointment to see a studio that's available under a sublease, and during a break from bartending at the cocktail party, Dean and I talked. He's also looking for studio space, and we talked about sharing one." Dean's family had money, but I didn't want that detail confusing Grace's decision to date him.

She shook her head with amazement. "Have you talked with Mom and Dad about this?"

"With Dad yes. I'm sure he told Mom. They tell each other everything, and I'll make sure Mom reviews the sublease documents before Dad signs them. I also spoke with Dad about buying a vehicle. A four-door pickup truck would be best considering the art paraphernalia I have to haul around. Dad and I are going shopping for used pickups tomorrow afternoon. You can tag along if you want."

"That is so unfair. I've wanted my own car forever."

"I'll be paying for the pickup, Grace, not Dad."

"Oh."

I grinned. "Besides, you'll be using it as much or more than I, so get off your high horse."

She smiled. "There's that." Her smile broadened. "I'm warming to the idea of another vehicle in this family." Then she blushed. "I'm also warming to the idea of Dean Gibson. He is good looking, and if you like him, I'll probably like him, too."

The air-conditioned warehouse space fit my painting needs perfectly, with room to spare if Dean wanted to share the space with me. Sunlight bathed the space from the north through clerestory glass. The loft was a studio apartment with a small kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. Chuck Cole had spent some money improving the place, and he'd furnished the loft with a sofa bed, loveseat, coffee and end tables, and lamps. The refrigerator was new, and it had an icemaker. I didn't see a microwave oven, but they weren't expensive, and I'd need a small table and chairs. Chuck said he'd throw in the furniture if I rented the place. The rent was reasonable, so I gave Chuck a deposit. That's when I discovered he didn't know how to prepare sublease documents. When I told him my mother was a leasing agent and would prepare the documents for us, he looked relieved and gave me the keys.

"Change the utilities into your name tomorrow," he said.

I agreed and drove to Dr. Crane's house for lunch.

Sherry opened the door to me. I'd never seen her except dressed to the nines, but the casually dressed woman that greeted me still turned me on. She wore designer sweats and had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. If she wore any makeup, I couldn't see it. I followed her swaying, sexy patooty to a kitchen nook where we'd be eating lunch, a lunch that she'd prepared. She told me to sit at the table and then set a frosted glass mug and a bottle of IBC Root Beer in front of me. I poured the root beer into the mug and ended up with a root-beer mustache, which made her laugh.

"I rented a studio this morning," I said proudly and told her all about it as she bustled around the kitchen. That the facility also contained a studio apartment seemed to interest her more than the workspace.

"Will you be moving into the studio?" she asked.

"No, but sometimes when I start painting, I fall into a creative mode and paint all day and all night. My mother calls them all-nighters. I don't require a lot of sleep. I only need five hours to feel completely rested and refreshed, and the hours don't need to be strung together." I chuckled. "After a couple of all-nighters, I've been known to crash for a full eight hours, though. Enough about me. Let's talk about Sherry Crane. I've tried but I can't figure out how old you are."

She giggled. "Are you asking me — a woman — my age, young man?"

"Yep." I sipped some more root beer.

"I'm twenty-five."

"Whew! I dodged that bullet. I was worried you'd be too old for me."

That cracked her up. "I am too old for you."

I drank some more root beer and said, "Not if we keep our love affair a secret."

Her head spun toward me to see if I were serious, I assumed. I was, and that's what she decided.

"That, Brent Carson, will never happen," she said forcefully.

"Sure it will. The idea of a secret lover intrigues you, and with the apartment in my studio, we have a place to meet. My last two lovers were twenty and twenty-one, but they were too young for me. I figure twenty-five is the perfect age for a secret lover for me, and for time immemorial older women have trained young men in the fine art of love."

She laughed again. "You're something else again, Brent Carson."

"What's so funny?" Dr. Crane asked as he stepped into the kitchen.

"Your niece is laughing at me, Dr. Crane. I just told her I thought we should become secret lovers, and she laughed at me. Does that seem right to you? I mean, at my tender age, a beautiful woman laughing at me could permanently damage my psyche."

He hooted with laughter and sat at the table across from me. "Stop laughing at the boy, Sherry."

She set a plate in front of him and said, "It was either laugh at him or slap him. He made a serious pass at me, Uncle Harry."

"Is this true?" he asked me, fixing his eyes on mine as if giving me the evil eye.

I stifled a laugh and said, "Of course. Making an unserious pass would insure failure. This looks good, Sherry." She'd set a plate of food in front of me — a fried chicken salad. The fried chicken breast was cut in strips and layered over greens and strips of cheese. Tomatoes and cucumbers rimmed the plate.

"He has a point, Sherry," Crane said as he drizzled dressing over his salad and passed the dressing to me. "And he's right about lunch, too. This does look good."

"Thank you," Sherry said and put her salad on the table. She poured white wine for her uncle and her. With a grin, she said, "Would you like another root beet, young man?"

"I'd prefer iced tea, if you have it. No sugar. A wedge of lemon."

Crane chuckled and winked at me as Sherry grumbled while slicing a lemon. When she set the iced tea on the table, I rose and helped her into her seat.

We dug in. The food was excellent.

"How was Grace this morning," Crane asked.

"Bruised," I said. "She has a black eye. I took digital pictures of her bruises in case Ballard sues in civil court, and Sherry was kind enough to ask the guests who witnessed the altercation to write down what they saw and heard. I think I'd prevail in a civil suit."

"Probably," Crane said after swallowing some wine. "He won't sue, though. He'd be too embarrassed to admit in open court that a sixteen-year-old boy bested him in a fight, but that being said, don't think for a second that you're home free. The next time he sees you, he'll extract revenge personally, and he won't let you blindside him again. He's a vindictive bully, Brent, and he's down-deep mean, so don't let him catch you alone. With no witnesses, I wouldn't put it past him to kill you."

Sherry gasped. "Would he go that far?"

Crane nodded. "I've heard stories. I don't know if they're true."

Perhaps a preemptive strike is warranted, I thought.

Crane said, "All good things must come to an end. The party last night will be my last for local artists." He shook his head. "Too much liability. To change the subject, I called Frazier this morning, and he was kind enough to open his new gallery so I could see your paintings again. You were right. Your brush strokes, the way you use a palette knife, your choice of colors, all match Jane's. Yet, you say the painting over my mantel is the first painting of Jane's that you've ever seen. I find that extraordinary."

I shrugged. "That's what I said when I studied her painting last night, but I disagree with your assertion regarding color selection. The quality of light in her landscapes is different than mine, not better or worse, just different. I live in and experience high-desert light. She lived near swamps in a semi-tropical rain forest. I think of the difference in the quality of light as old light versus new light, but that analogy isn't accurate. Light is ageless. You said you knew her. Tell me about her."

His eyes drifted shut and he sighed. "She was a free spirit and believed in free love." He opened his eyes and looked at me. "That was the era of free love, you know. I was much younger than she, but my age didn't matter to her. We were lovers for a few short weeks, and I look back on that time with fondness. Over the years, we crossed paths a few more times, but those weeks when she helped me come of age couldn't be repeated, and we both knew that and didn't try. Truth be told, I loved her. Still do. And in her fashion, she loved me." He chuckled. "But remember, that was the era of free love. Jane loved a lot of young men."

"What about her art?" I asked. Jane Wilson, I remembered, had not loved Winn Crane. He was nothing more than some sexy fun and games.

"She was a good artist. She had perfect command of any media she used, but she wasn't a great artist. You have it in you to be great, young Brent. She did, too, but she chose to stay with the tried-and-true — her landscapes — rather than experiment with any of the new styles of painting that came into vogue during her life. She was a phenomenal colorist, and I believe she could've moved from competent to great with some form of non-objective painting, even micro-landscapes like yours." He gave me a hard look. "So don't squander your talent by becoming complacent. Experiment. Change directions. Grow!"

"I understand. I started a new direction with my large painting. I made a small move from a micro-landscape toward a microscopic landscape, and I see that direction evolving further as scientists understand the intricacies of our universe and how it functions and pass on their new knowledge to the rest of us. I'm starting to play with how the microcosm apes the swirling controlled chaos of the cosmos we can only glimpse with our naked eyes. Change is difficult, though. If I paint a micro-landscape, I can see the finished painting in my mind's eye before I apply the first brush stroke to the canvas. With microscopic landscapes, I start at the micro level and take my mind's eye even closer to the subject, but I haven't yet learned how to focus the entire composition in my mind before I begin." I laughed self-consciously. "I suspect I'll be scraping a lot of paint and starting over, especially when I switch to oils in January."

"You're switching to oils?"

"Yes."

He nodded. "That's good."

"I rented a studio this morning so I can work on a dozen canvases at the same time. As you know, oils require drying time between various stages of the painting. Thus, the multiple, simultaneous canvases, and with a conscious effort another positive byproduct will evolve from this method. The dozen paintings should end up representing a theme."

"Are you as proficient with oils as you are with acrylics?" he asked.

"I believe I am."

"What about water colors?"

"I did some watercolor paintings to give as gifts this Christmas. With your permission — yours, too, Sherry — I'll paint a watercolor landscape for each of you as a gift. They'll be pure high-desert landscapes, not micro-landscapes. Old-hat landscapes, like Jane Wilson's paintings."

"You have my permission, Brent," Sherry said, her eyes glowing.

"I'm no dummy. I never refuse a painting from an up-and-coming artist," Dr. Crane said with a laugh.

After lunch, Dr. Crane left me alone with Sherry.

"What do you do, Sherry? Your work, I mean," I said as I helped her clean up the lunch mess.

"I dabble in real estate."

"Dabble?"

"I buy and sell land. The work demands little of my time but provides a full-time income. That's why I say 'dabble.'"

I asked more questions. Her parents had been killed in an accident when she was ten, and her Uncle Harry had taken her under his wing.

"He was married then," Sherry said, "and Ellen — that was his wife's name — wasn't happy about me suddenly disrupting her life. I don't know if she was cheating on Uncle Harry before my arrival, but I hadn't been in their house three months when I came upon Aunt Ellen with another man, a graduate student. I said nothing about what I'd seen to anyone, and my aunt incorrectly assumed that my silence meant I feared her, or that I was afraid if I said anything to my uncle that I'd be put into a foster home, because she stopped even making a token effort to hide her infidelities from me." Sherry giggled. "I ratted her out, told Uncle Harry everything I'd seen, which surprisingly didn't surprise him very much. I discovered later that Uncle Harry had already hired a private investigator to gather evidence against the cheating bitch. My corroboration of the investigator's findings was the icing on the cake, and he sent Auntie Ellen packing."

"Did he marry again?"

"No. A middle-aged, handsome college professor attracts women like flies to a watermelon. After Aunt Ellen, I had a series of sham aunts, some I liked, some I detested." She giggled. "Once for a couple of months, two pretty coeds shared the sham-aunt label at the same time. In a candid conversation not many years ago, Uncle Harry told me that if Ellen had wanted an open marriage, he would have happily complied. It was the cheating, he told me, that created the rift. Deep down, I think my uncle is a product of the free-love era he talked about earlier."

"What about you? What is your attitude regarding love and sex and marriage?" I asked.

She cocked an eyebrow, indicating I'd gone too far, become too personal with my questions, and then she shrugged, as if to say, why not?

"Love, sex and marriage are three topics, not one," she said.

"I agree. Tell me about your attitude regarding sex."

She didn't speak for a second. "I don't think so."

I'd read her body language wrong. "All right. Will you talk about love then? Or marriage?"

She grinned. "Nope. I don't know you, Brent Carson, and when I look at you, I see a boy, not a man."

As we cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, she bumped against me, tossed her luxurious hair, and with coquettish looks, she teased me, all silent signals announcing interest. Was I reading those signals wrong, too? Did she throw my adolescence in my face to test my reaction? I knew of only one way to determine her true intent, but it would be risky.

I turned her and pulled her tightly against me. Her eyes screamed, as if to say, finally! But when I tried to kiss her, she turned her head. My lips brushed her ear, not her lips, but she didn't push at my shoulders, and she rubbed her mound against my erection. Mixed signals. Her eyes, her expression, her body said yes; her mind said no. I wanted it all. I wanted her mind as much as I want her body, so I released her.