Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Apology accepted, I guess,” she said finally.

“Great.” He paused, looking a little self-conscious, before he added, “Are you doing anything special after tonight’s festivities wind down?”

Izzy gave him another considering look, but this time for a different reason. “You’re beginning to get a reputation,” Kathy had told her a few weeks ago. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kathy had shrugged. ‘just that you like to have a good time and you’re not big on there being any strings attached. You’re a very attractive woman, ma belle

Izzy, and there are a lot of men out there who are more than happy to take advantage of what you seem to be offering.”

Izzy had been mortified, though in retrospect, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Her life, when she wasn’t in the studio, really had become one long party. But at the time all she’d wanted to know was

“Where did you hear that?”

“No one place,” Kathy had said. “That kind of thing just gets around.”

“I had no idea ....”

Kathy had given her a sad look. “It’s been over a year now since you broke up with John,” she said.

“The only person you’re hurting is yourself”

She’d wanted to get angry with Kathy, but she couldn’t. Kathy was right. Izzy knew that the reason she was running so wild was to get back at John; the reason she didn’t want to make a commitment to any relationship was that she didn’t want to get hurt again.

“Oh, god,” she said. “This is so embarrassing.”

“No one’s saying it meanly,” Kathy had added. “At least not in our circle of friends. We’re all just worried about you—that you might get into a situation that you can’t handle.”

“I won’t let that happen,” she’d assured Kathy, and she’d kept that promise in the only way she knew how: she just stopped going out to the clubs and parties and poured all her pent-up emotions into her work instead. The visits from Annie Nin and the others had helped a lot.

All of that ran through Izzy’s head as she thought about what Tom had just asked her. He was a very attractive man. She could see them going somewhere dark and pleasantly noisy for a drink, or two, or six. Then back to his place ....

She glanced over to where Kathy and the rest of her friends stood in a gossiping clutch, laughing and talking. Sophie and Alan. Jilly and Tama Jostyn, whose novella “Wintering” was going to launch Alan’s new expansion of the East Street Press from publishing a literary journal to actual books.

“I’ve already made plans,” she said.

Tom nodded. “I sort of thought you might have, but it was worth a shot.”

“But I’d be free for lunch tomorrow,” she added.

Lunch would be safe. She’d just stay away from alcoholic beverages and keep her wits about her for a change.

“Should I pick you up?”

Izzy shook her head. “Why don’t we meet at The Dear Mouse Diner at twelve instead?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you there. I’m going to take another turn around the show.”

“Thanks,” Izzy said as he turned to go. When he raised his eyebrows questioningly, she added,

“You know, for being supportive.”

Tom smiled. “Working with who we have, we’ve got big boots to fill,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together because other people don’t understand that.”

And then he stepped away into the crowd. Jilly came up to her once he was gone.

“What were you doing talking to him?” Jilly wanted to know.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Izzy said.

“The way he’s always on about the professor ...”

Izzy had to smile, thinking of how nothing ever seemed to faze Professor Dapple—especially not adverse criticism. He seemed to have been born with thicker skin than anyone else she knew. And the truth was, she thought he rather liked to be the center of an argument, even if he wasn’t there. “I don’t want you to stop thinking as soon as you leave this classroom,” he’d said on more than one occasion.

“Apply what we’ve talked about to the world at large. Discuss it amongst yourselves. Argue, if you must.

Just don’t commit the crime of complacency.”

“I don’t think it ever bothered the professor one way or the other,” she said. “But still.”

“Oh, July. Lighten up. It’s not like I’m going to many him or anything.”

“This is true,” Jilly allowed. “And he is a handsome devil.”

“I don’t even want to hear about that,” Izzy said. “I’d rather hear about this album jacket that Sophie says you got commissioned to do.”

“I can’t believe she told you. That was supposed to be my big announcement for tonight.”

“You’re supposed to tell people when you want something to be a secret,” Izzy said, leading Jilly back to where the rest of their friends were waiting for them. “Then we’d know to keep it to ourselves.”

“Fat chance with this lot ....”

VII

May 1976

The day after she received the fat envelope containing Rushkin’s critique of her Your Streets Are Not Mine show, Izzy made her way down to The Green Man Gallery. She spent a few minutes browsing through a mixed-media show by Claudia Feder before agreeing to Albina’s invitation to have a cup of tea in the back room.

“Taking a bit of a break?” Albina asked her.

Izzy nodded. She tended to work such long hours during the day that she rarely took time off to go visiting. Most of the artists she knew relaxed after a major show—for a few days, at least—but hanging a show always inspired Izzy in new work. She did some of her best paintings in the weeks immediately following a show.

“I’ve got to stretch some new canvases today,” she explained, “and you know how much I love doing that.”

“Well, you deserve a bit of a holiday. You’ve been working very hard lately.”

“It’s not like work for me,” Izzy said with a shrug. “Which isn’t to say I don’t find it hard. It’s just not work—not the painting, not any of it.”

“Except for stretching canvases.”

Izzy smiled. “And measuring frames.”

“I often wondered why so many of your pieces were of a set size.”

The tea was ready to be poured then. They spoke a little of the Feder show that was in the gallery at the moment as they added their milk and sugar to their cups. Izzy didn’t bring up the real reason she’d come to see Albina until just before she left.

“Did you ever meet Rushkin?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” Albina admitted. “He was the original mystery man of the Newford art scene. I can remember hearing that he didn’t even attend his own openings—at least not as himself “

“Who did he come as?”

“I’ve no idea. I was told that he’d come in disguise so that he could see the reaction to his work without having to actually speak to anyone.” Albina laughed suddenly. “Although why he’d have to disguise himself when no one knew what he looked like anyway is beyond me.”

So much for trying to find out when he’d seen her show, Izzy thought when she was back at the coach-house studio. But at least he had gone to see it and his critiques were as helpful this time out as they’d been the first time he’d written to her. There was more praise in his most recent letter; he seemed to be able to find fault with less in these new paintings. When he did have a criticism, it dealt mostly with arcane bits of technique that no one else would probably notice, or compositional elements where he suggested alternate viewpoints, not because they were better, he wrote, but so that she could see the other possibilities and perhaps utilize them in future work.