Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception

  “Uh, it's called the Vault. I went there with Grams and Hudson.” I motion to Jojo and say, “This is Jojo Lorenzo. He, uh …” I look at him and ask, “Do you own that place or run it or what?”

  “I'm the agent-slash-proprietor-slash-grunt. I do it all!”

  I turn back to Marissa. “Well some guy came in and tried to steal a bunch of paintings and … you know.”

  Marissa rolls her eyes. “Why you?”

  I shrugged. “Well, some one had to stop him. He was holding the place up with a squirt gun!”

  “A squirt gun? Who fell for that?”

  Jojo's eyes get all big. “All of us did! He had it in his pocket and he was so … rugged-looking. None of us suspected!”

  “So what's going on with all of that?” I ask him. “Did they catch the guy?”

  “Oh my, no! He vanished! Poof, into thin air. And since the paintings are all accounted for and Di doesn't seem to have the emotional fortitude to press an investigation …”

  “Wait a minute. She doesn't want to find the guy?”

  “Oh sure she does, sure she does! She's just very … delicate. Moody, if you must know. And she does put on a good front, but underneath there's darkness. Pain. Conflict.” He smiles. “Which is why she is such a brilliant artist.”

  “But … well, do you think that maybe the Splott … I mean that Tess Winters lady … is right? Do you think Diane Reijden set it all up so she would be the one in the L.A. Times?”

  “My pet, it makes no sense! No sense a'tall. Unless you're her accomplice?”

  “No!”

  “Well there you go! If you hadn't stopped that ruffian, he would've gotten clean away. Clean away!”

  “Well, it did feel kind of … desperate. Do you think maybe Tess set it up? You know, to remove the competition?”

  He gives me a really prim look. “Watch me, darling. I'm biting my tongue.” He sticks it out and clamps down on it. But then he leans forward and whispers, “She's haughty and hateful … but she's too mentally boxed to orchestrate a heist.” He straightens a little and says, “But you didn't hear that from me!”

  “So who do you think he was? A friend of Austin Zuni's?”

  “Oh heavens no!” Jojo sucks in air through his nose, holds it, then lets it out all at once, saying, “He was simply someone who knows. Or maybe he works for someone who knows.”

  “Knows? Knows what?”

  “That it's only a matter of time before you won't be able to touch a Reijden for under thirty, thirty-five grand a pop.”

  “Seriously?”

  He nods. “She just got a stunning review in Artist World magazine. It's only a matter of time before she shoots to the stars.”

  “So why did the whole thing feel so … staged?”

  “More like dramatic, if you ask me.” Then he says, “Ahhhhh,” and you can tell he's having a wonderful thought.

  “What?”

  “There's a movie in here somewhere….” He claps his hands and says, “Oh. Oh-oh-oh!”

  So while he's writing, casting, and directing in his mind, I'm looking around at his booth. And finally I ask him, “Is this your art, Jojo? It's not signed or anything.”

  He laughs. “Mine? Darling, I draw like a two-year-old.”

  Before I can bite my tongue, it's wagging away, saying, “Hey, there's big money in that. Frame it, call it something ‘deep,' and charge ten grand!”

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” he goes, but he's smiling. “Do I detect a jab at one of my clients?”

  I shrug. “I just don't get it, that's all. And Tess sure wouldn't explain it to me.”

  “One shouldn't have to explain one's art.” He leans in. “You insulted her.”

  “But … I was just trying to learn. I mean, can you explain it?”

  He shrugs. “To each his own, I say.”

  “Well, do you get it? Do you like it?”

  He shrugs again. “It sells, and that's what matters to me.”

  “At nearly ten grand a pop?”

  “Hmm. That's yet to be seen. I had an installation of hers in when I first opened which sold very well, but since Di was asking so much for her paintings, Tess felt she would be giving the impression that her work was worth less if she didn't price in the same ballpark.”

  “But—”

  “Ah-ah-ah! Don't be catty. Tess is simply projecting a value onto her work.” He laughs. “And if they do move, you won't hear me complaining! Fifty percent of a few of those babies would keep me from enduring gigs like this.” He rolls his eyes around the booth, then whispers, “I've had it up to here with all these rennies and their phony Faire accents, bragging and brawling and spitting … it's repugnant!”

  Now I'm listening to him, all right, but my brain is pretty much stuck on his cut of the sale. “You get fifty percent? Why?”

  He puts his nose in the air a little and says, “Darling, rent's not free. And frankly, they'd be lost without me. How else would the buying public get to know their work? They certainly don't want people traipsing through their homes. And artists do not make good business-people. Most of them, anyway.” He scowls. “Austin's the exception.”

  “His paintings were cheap compared to the other two.”

  Jojo nods. “It's a numbers game to that boy. He moves as much as he can, as fast as he can. And,” he grumbles, “he's not going to let anyone slow him down.”

  Now, the way he said it was sort of … bitter. So I ask, “Why do you say that?”

  He waves me off. “Never mind, darlin'. It's much, much too deep to get into.” Then he spread his hands over the pictures on the table and says, “In the market? Please-please-please?”

  I laugh and shake my head, because it's just a little weird hearing a swashbuckler go, Please-please-please. Then I ask him, “But if you hate being here, why are you here?”

  “Because,” he says, “I can make more on lithographs of dragons and knights in a weekend than I make some months at the gallery.” He gives me a little scowl and whispers, “I'm trying to run an art gallery in Santa Martina, Sweet Pea. I have to make a living somehow!”

  I think about this a minute, then ask, “What's a lithograph, anyhow?”

  “Mostly production-line art. They take a scan or make a photograph of the artwork and then just crank 'em out. Stamp-stamp-stamp! Thousands upon thousands.” He reaches under the skirt of the table and pulls up a fat stack of copies of the knight on the horse I'd been looking at. “When I sell one, I've got one waiting down here to replace it.”

  “So … do you think it's art?”

  He shrugs. “Actually, I think these were done on a computer.”

  “You're kidding! They look like pencil sketchings.”

  He smiles a sly little smile. “Exactly.”

  I take a closer look, but I sure can't tell. What I can tell is that Marissa's getting antsy. So I say, “Well, we'd better get going. It was nice talking to you.”

  “You too, princess!”

  I cringe at him. “Princess?” Then I show him a shoe, to set the record straight.

  He laughs, then adds, “But a clever disguise, nonetheless.”

  As we left his booth and walked around the Faire, I kept hearing Jojo's voice saying, “But a clever disguise, nonetheless.” And I started getting this strange feeling. Like I was in one of those cartoons where one character is spying on another, popping in and out, up and down, hiding behind fences and in trash cans and trees.

  I checked around for Heather and her wanna-bes.

  No “travelers” in sight.

  And it didn't feel like I was being followed, exactly. More like I was being set up.

  Tricked.

  Everywhere I turned, people were in costumes, pretending. Pretending they were someone they weren't. Someplace they weren't. Some time they weren't.

  And I started thinking about the Squirt Gun Bandit and what was hidden behind his whole getup.

  And the more I thought about him and what had happened at the Vault, the more it
seemed like that whole scene had been living theater, too.

  An act.

  Where some people were actors and some were just there.

  Me, I'd been like the washerwoman.

  Only I hadn't exactly used a fish.

  And the truth is, I didn't like being a part of the act. My mother's into acting, I'm not. What did I care who the Squirt Gun Bandit was or why he'd crashed in on the reception? I felt like I'd been dropped into the middle of a soap opera.

  I just wanted to get off the stage.

  SEVEN

  I didn't run into Casey again at the Faire. Or Heather. And Marissa looked for Danny all afternoon, but she never saw him, either.

  What we did see a lot of was art. No sloppy splotters or modern stuff like that, but there were a few booths selling Southwest art, sort of like Austin Zuni's. Indians and buffaloes at a Renaissance Faire seemed pretty out of place though. Even more so than the Star Trek booth we saw.

  Marissa found a picture of a princess at a wishing well that she really liked, but I didn't see anything that did anything for me. Not like Whispers had, anyway.

  I tried to talk to some of the artists about their work, but mostly they told me about how they painted or sculpted or cut things out of wood. When I asked what masters they'd studied or admired or what they were thinking about when they made a certain piece, they didn't seem to have much to say. It was weird—like they were bored. Miss Kuzkowski had told us to go out and feel art, but how was I supposed to do that when the artists were acting like they didn't really feel it themselves?

  Anyway, we spent so much time at the Faire that it was pretty late by the time Marissa and I got back to where she'd locked her bike near the Senior Highrise. And since I didn't think it was too hot of an idea for us both to go back up the fire escape, I asked how she wanted to work getting her stuff back.

  “Can you bring the costume and my other clothes to school on Monday?”

  “Yeah, but how are you going to ride your bike in that dress?”

  “Watch me,” she said, swinging her leg over.

  Now, she was trying to sound cheerful, but I could tell that she was feeling pretty bummed. So I said, “I'm sorry you didn't meet up with Danny.”

  She shrugged. “No big deal.”

  “Liar.”

  She shook her head and said, “I was being an idiot, huh?”

  Now, what I was thinking was, No kidding! but what I said was, “You were just excited.”

  She scowled at me. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  I knew where she was going with this, so I said, “Don't even start with that again, okay?”

  “Guys like Casey don't come around every day, you know.”

  “I said—”

  “I know, I know.” She crammed big folds of the skirt under her legs. “And no, I won't tell anyone about …,” she leans over and whispers, “the kiss!”

  Before I can punch her, she laughs, “Hee-hee!” and pedals off with a wave.

  I watched her until she was out of sight, then headed for home. And when I slipped through the apartment door, the first thing I noticed was a great big bouquet of flowers on the coffee table, and a great big frown on my grams' face.

  “Wow!” I whispered, because I don't think our apartment had ever seen fresh flowers before.

  Grams was on the couch with her arms crossed, just staring at them. “They refuse to take them back.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said, sitting beside her. “I take it they're from Hudson?”

  “What a ridiculous waste of money!”

  “Is that why you're mad? Because he spent a lot of money?”

  “Yes!” She crossed her arms tighter. “No! I'm mad because he thinks he can bribe me into not feeling mad.”

  I put my arm around her. “Grams, you're being kinda stubborn, don't you think?”

  “No! No, I am not!” She looked at me, her eyes all big and flashing. “I didn't want to meet him for lunch, but I did. I didn't want to hear him out, but again, I did. Do you call that being stubborn?”

  “Noooo.”

  “But just when I was starting to think he was truly remorseful, he calls here and informs me that he's managed to get you an interview at two o'clock tomorrow with the queen herself.”

  “Who?”

  “Diane Reijden!”

  “He … he did?”

  “He says you need it for some art paper.” Her eyes come zooming in on me. “Is that true?”

  “Well, yeah …”

  “But does it have to be an interview with a famous artist? No teacher could possibly assign that, right?”

  “She's not famous, is she?”

  “According to Hudson she is! Or will be, soon enough.” “Well, whatever. It just has to be an artist. Miss Kuzkowski didn't say what, you know, caliber.”

  She throws her head back. “Ha! Just as I suspected.”

  “But Grams, interviewing a good artist is way better than interviewing a rotten one. I actually tried that at the Renaissance Faire today and got a whole lot of nowhere. Hudson's just doing me a favor.”

  Her nostrils flare and she says, “You, child, don't understand men.” She crosses her arms again and mutters, “He almost had me convinced that he was impressed with her art, not her, and then he goes and stirs the stew with a rat tail!”

  “A rat tail? Grams, that's gross!”

  “Don't you see? He contacted her after he sweet-talked me, and then had the nerve to send me flowers.” She kind of burrows into herself, scrunching into a little ball of arms and shoulders. “My original impression of Hudson Graham was right—the man's an insufferable flirt.”

  I sat beside her for a few minutes, just thinking. And finally I said real quiet-like, “Are you upset because you like Hudson more than you want to admit? Or is it because Diane Reijden's a … you know … younger woman?”

  Grams looks at me for a minute. Then she takes off her glasses, holds them up to the light, and huffs and buffs them until I swear she's going to polish right through the lenses. Finally she pops them back on her nose and says, “Are you implying I might be sensitive about this because …”

  Her voice just trails off, so I look her square in the eye and nod. “Because of Gramps.” She looks down, so I touch her arm and say, “Grams, I know about the Biker Babe.”

  Her mouth scrunches up, down, then all around. Then she straightens her skirt and says, “This has nothing to do with that.”

  “But Grams—”

  “Your grandfather was going through a midlife crisis. It's very typical for a man that age to … to … to develop a wandering eye. But Hudson Graham is well beyond midlife! Besides, Diane Reijden is not really a ‘younger woman.' She's fifty if she's a day!”

  “But still, you're sixty—”

  “Don't remind me! It's not something I want to hear right now, okay?” And with that she got up and said, “You can fix your own supper, can't you? I need to go lie down,” and shut herself in her room.

  So after sitting by myself for a few minutes, I got up and yeah, I fixed myself supper—about ten bowls of cereal with buckets of sugar and milk.

  But the more I shoveled, the more I couldn't stop thinking about Grams and the story I'd overheard about my grandfather leaving her for a bimbo at the Harley Davidson shop. All Mom or Grams had ever actually told me was that he'd died in a motorcycle accident shortly before I was born, but after I caught whiff of the Biker Babe—or the “Harley Hussy,” as Grams once called her—well, things like why Grams didn't have any pictures of my grandfather around and why she never really had much to say about him started making sense.

  So I sat there, stuffing myself full of oats and corn and other nutritious grains, thinking. And when I was finally full, I cleaned everything up and headed for the couch. And even though I did read a little and watch some TV with my cat Dorito, after a while I just shut out the light.

  And as I lay there on the couch, wrapped in my afghan and the sweet smell of fresh cut flowers,
I couldn't help wondering. About my grandfather. About my father. About my mother and my grandmother and what they had been like at my age. What had junior high been like for them? When and where had they fallen in love? At school? At work?

  At a Renaissance Faire?

  And it's funny—I had always thought of them as being old. Or, at least, adults. But they'd been kids once, too. And I could tell from the hurt in Grams' eyes that she'd felt all this before.

  Maybe many times.

  And that seemed so strange.

  So … impossible.

  But as I drifted off to sleep, the one thought that kept cycling through my head wasn't actually about my grandparents or parents. It was about Hudson. And the more I thought about it, the more I could just see him—his boots kicked up, the wind in his hair.

  Hudson Graham, right at home on a Harley.

  I had dreams about ants. Little red ones with yellow antennae, tiptoeing up my finger. Up my hand. Up my arm. Tickling, tickling, tickling. Then they'd rear back and duke it out with those wild antennae, jump off my arm, and start all over again.

  Up my finger.

  Up my hand.

  Up my arm.

  Tickle, tickle, tickle.

  “Who are you shouting at?” It was Grams, shaking me awake.

  “What? What?” I sat up and whipped around, looking for ants.

  Grams was holding her heart. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

  “I'm sorry,” I told her, still looking for ants.

  “It didn't even sound like you! You had an English accent!”

  “I did?”

  “Distinctly English.”

  “Well … what was I saying?”

  “Something like, Unhand me! and, Thou shalst pay!” She holds her temples with her hands and says, “And there was something about ‘Sir Hiss-a-lot'?”

  I rubbed my arm, hoping she wouldn't notice how red my cheeks must have been turning.

  “What were you dreaming about? Was it something about the Faire?”

  I shook my head, happy to be able to tell her the truth. “I was dreaming about ants.”

  “Ants?”

  “Angry little red ones with yellow antennae.”

  “Oh.” She studied me a minute. “Were they talking ants?”