Like That Endless Cambria Sky

by Linda Seed

  “And anyway … you don’t really need me anymore. Now that you have Jackson.” She’d been thinking it for months, and she’d hinted at it the morning after Kate’s party, but it had taken her this long to come out and say the words to Kate. She braced herself for Kate’s reaction.

  “What?” Kate looked at her as though Gen had lost her mind. And maybe she had. “What makes you think that just because I’m in a relationship, I don’t need my best friend anymore?”

  Tears came to Kate’s eyes, and Gen immediately felt guilty for having said it. She knew she was being ridiculous.

  Gen put a hand on Kate’s knee. “I’m sorry. It’s just … I’m happy for you. Really. But you’ve got this … this life now. And I want a life, too.”

  “Okay.” Kate nodded. “Okay. But I do still need you. I’ll always need you.”

  They sat in front of the fire and drank their coffee.

  “There are phones. There are planes,” Gen offered.

  “Right.” Kate nodded again. “There are.”

  “And Skype. There’s definitely Skype.”

  They sat there, and Gen thought some more about how that would be, how she would cope without Kate and Rose and Lacy in the giant, relentless world of New York.

  In the gallery that day, Gen thought some more about her artist-in-residence program. Now that she had the detail of lodging worked out, there were the two simple matters of who would be the artist, and how she was going to pay for it.

  She had the answer to the first question—or, at least she hoped she did. The abstract artist from Chicago whose work she’d tried to sell to the McCabes would be perfect. Gordon Kendrick’s work was raw, emotional, expressive. And he hadn’t been discovered yet, not really. He was getting a little bit of attention—Gen had heard of him, after all—but not enough. Gen had good intuition regarding this sort of thing, and her intuition told her Kendrick was a caterpillar inside his cocoon, and when he came out, shook out his wings and started to fly, his work was going to be amazing—and potentially very expensive. If she could ally herself with him now, get her name and his linked, she could capitalize on his eventual success.

  But she’d have to get him to say yes to her proposal. And to do that, she’d have to make that proposal attractive. Which meant she’d have to pay for all or part of his stay. While many artist-in-residence programs asked for the artist to contribute to or even fully pay the cost of lodging, Gen didn’t want to do that. She wanted to woo him.

  Sitting behind her desk in the main room, she looked over her income and expenses, her expected sources of revenue, and the quote Ryan had given her for rental of the cottage and barn space. He’d said he could come down on the rent if she booked the place for a full five-month term. But he hadn’t said how much he could bring down the price. She decided to reduce the rate he’d given her by ten percent, and work with that figure. That seemed safe.

  The last deal she’d done for the McCabes had been lucrative, and had given her a good cushion in her business accounts. She could use some of that money for Kendrick. But that wouldn’t get her all the way there.

  Inspired, she thought again of the McCabes. They had more money than they knew what to do with. If she could find a way to appeal to their narcissism, maybe she could persuade them to sponsor the program. She had the skills to do it. Appealing to people’s narcissism was ninety percent of what she’d done at McIntyre’s gallery in New York.

  She got on the phone and made an appointment to meet the McCabes for another lunch, and began writing up a plan.

  “You’re gonna do what?” Orin asked, peering at Ryan through eyes squinting with skepticism.

  “I’m gonna rent the guest house. We talked about this, Dad. When I fixed the place up, we talked about how it would make a good rental, bring in some extra income.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you were gonna rent it to a regular tenant or a vacationer or some damn thing. Now you tell me you’re gonna rent it to an artist.” He said the word artist the same way he might have said prostitute or meth dealer. In Orin’s mind, the latter two were probably more useful.

  “Genevieve Porter’s gallery is going to rent it for a visiting artist. I don’t see what the difference is if it’s that or some vacationer.”

  The two of them were in the barn—the new barn—checking out a heifer that had been showing decreased appetite and poor coordination. They’d culled her from the herd until they could figure out what was going on. The barn was still chilly with the crisp morning air, but the sunlight slanting through the windows was quickly warming it up. The place smelled like hay and cow shit—two smells as familiar to Ryan as the scent of his own skin.

  Ryan talked gently to the heifer and put a hand on her back to soothe her as he examined her. He noticed a little bloating on her left side. That was worrisome.

  “The difference is,” Orin went on, “a vacationer would just be … I don’t know … going to the beach or up to Hearst Castle, or doing whatever the hell they do. An artist …”

  “He’s likely going to be painting,” Ryan went on impassively as he went to the front of the animal and checked her for nasal discharge. “I don’t see what’s so bad about painting.”

  Orin shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another, scratching at the back of his neck. “Well, he’s going to have his stuff all over the place, using the barn …”

  “The old barn,” Ryan added.

  “Old barn, new barn, what’s the difference?” Orin said.

  “The difference is, we don’t even use the old barn, except for storage. What do you care if the guy’s got some paint and canvases and, hell, I don’t know. Turpentine. He might have some turpentine, I guess. And easels.”

  “Well,” Orin said. That was what he always said when he didn’t want to give up an argument but he didn’t have a good case to make. Just, “Well.”

  “Look.” Ryan put a hand on his father’s shoulder too soothe him, much as he soothed the cattle when necessary. “It’s only five months. I’ll take care of whatever this guy needs, so you won’t have to do it. It’s gonna be fine, Dad.”

  Orin grunted. “Well.”

  Chapter Seven

  Gordon Kendrick was hopelessly self-centered. Nothing about that surprised Gen. She was used to self-centered people in the art world. The artists, the dealers, the collectors—all of them tended to be wrapped up in themselves to a degree that would be alarming in any other line of work, except maybe acting. And this was acting, when you thought about it. Dealers had to act powerful and knowledgeable. Collectors had to act like they were influential enough that their interest in an artist could elevate his career. And artists had to act brilliant and eccentric.

  Gordon Kendrick didn’t have the brilliant part down just yet. But damned if he didn’t seem eccentric.

  Once Gen had convinced Kendrick to consider her offer—which wasn’t hard, considering she would be footing the bill for his lodging in a stunningly beautiful locale for five months—they’d gotten down to the nitty-gritty of their arrangement.

  She wanted exclusive rights to sell the art works that he produced during his stay. He wanted a limo to bring him from the airport in San Luis Obispo. She wanted him to make a personal appearance at the show she would hold for him at the end of the residency. He wanted her to provide a specific list of items at the cottage, ranging from particular art supplies—reasonable—to a foreign brand of yogurt that was not sold in most U.S. stores—less reasonable. She wanted him to meet at least once with the McCabes, who had agreed to sponsor the program in exchange for a painting and a mention of their names whenever the program was publicized. He stubbornly argued that the McCabes were bush-league collectors and unworthy of his time, let alone his art.

  By the time the negotiations had been completed, she was nearly ready to tell him to screw it, she’d find another artist, one who would eat Yoplait like a normal person and who would shut his goddamned trap about what he needed for maximum artistic expression. But t
hen she reminded herself how talented he really was, and how deeply she believed that he would eventually have breakout success. This was a guy whose paintings would one day be reproduced on coffee mugs and museum gallery gift shop Tshirts; she could feel it. And when they were, people, or at least people who knew about such things, would think of Genevieve Porter as the person who had discovered him. And even if they didn’t, she had negotiated to keep one of his art works for herself. If his career went where she thought it would, the eventual resale of the painting she selected would more than compensate her for the trouble he was putting her through.

  He arrived at San Luis Obispo’s tiny commuter airport on a Tuesday in May. She felt ridiculous riding in the back of a big, black stretch limousine to pick him up. Who the hell demanded a limousine? Who would even want one? They were unwieldy in traffic, and you couldn’t even park the damned thing. The back was stocked with Perrier, with an ice bucket and crystal glasses, and she poured herself some fizzy water on the way down the coast.

  “I’ll bet you meet a lot of assholes in this business,” Gen mused to the driver, a guy in his forties with close-cropped greying hair and wire-rimmed glasses, as they zoomed down Highway 1.

  “You have no idea,” he said. “Half of them get so drunk I have to carry them out of the car or clean puke off the carpet, and the other half put up the divider and have sex back there, think I don’t know it. Then another half won’t even talk to me, act like I’m not even there.”

  “That’s more than two halves,” Gen pointed out.

  Considering the limo, the special yogurt, the Egyptian cotton bed linens Kendrick had demanded, Gen should not have been surprised when he made her carry his luggage. Somehow, though, she was. He’d brought a full-size suitcase, two carry-ons, and what Gen could only describe as a man purse, and Gen had it all piled onto her little five-foot-two body as they made their way back to the car. Kendrick was yammering on about a solo show he’d done back in Chicago, and how oppressed he felt because no one appreciated his style, when Gen caught the eye of the limo driver with her own desperate gaze.

  Startled by the sight of her laboring under the weight of all that luggage, the driver jerked up from where he’d been leaning against the car in the passenger pick-up zone and hurried over to Gen.

  “Thanks,” she murmured as the driver took the bags from her shoulders and hauled them to the car. Kendrick was going on about the unreasonable demands at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

  “Do you have any physical disabilities I can help you with?” the driver asked Kendrick in a solicitous tone.

  “What? No. Why?” Kendrick said.

  “Oh.” The driver’s eyebrows rose in apparent puzzlement. “I just thought you must have a disability, since you had the lady carrying all of your luggage.”

  “Oh, ha, ha,” Kendrick said, laughing as though the driver had shown a sparkling wit. “It’s all part of the service. Right, Genevieve?”

  “Sure,” Gen said. When Kendrick was climbing into the back of the car, the driver holding the door for him, Gen arched an eyebrow at the driver and gestured toward Kendrick. “Which half is he?”

  “The back half,” the guy said before Gen climbed in, and he shut the door.

  Kendrick was in his midthirties, medium height, with a receding hairline and a sharp, angular face that put Gen in mind of a fox, or maybe a weasel. In what Gen considered to be a self-conscious display of hipness, he was wearing Birkenstock sandals and a man bun. The open top button of his loose white linen shirt showed a dark blue bead on a cord around his neck.

  “Pleasant flight?” Gen inquired inside the limo as she poured him a glass of Perrier and handed it over.

  “Ugh. We were all shoved in there like sheep in a pen. And they don’t even provide a meal anymore—as though anything they might feed people would be edible in the first place. I should have insisted on first class, or at least business class. Why I let you talk me into flying economy, I will never know.”

  “Ah. Well. I’m sorry it wasn’t more comfortable.”

  Kendrick was an ass, but he was the ass who was going to get her back to New York. She looked out the window at the strip of blue ocean to the left side of the car, and reflected that this was going to be a long five months.

  Thank God Rose hadn’t stayed mad at her, because Gen really needed a drink after she got Kendrick situated in the cottage. She sat at the bar in De-Vine, the wine tasting shop where Rose worked, and sipped a glass of pinot grigio as Rose leaned on the counter, listening to her moan about her day.

  “And it wasn’t even the right damned yogurt!” Gen exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I had to search for days to find a specialty grocery store that would order it, then I had to drive to goddamned Paso Robles to pick it up, and apparently, he wanted Icelandic style, with added goddamned probiotics. Did you even know Icelandic style yogurt was a thing?”

  “No, I did not,” Rose said.

  “Well, it is! And I didn’t get it! And now all he can do is bitch about the yogurt and how his goddamned digestive tract is going to be all atwitter without it. Good. I hope he’s backed up for days!”

  Rose looked at Gen, her pierced eyebrow raised in question. “Did that rant make you feel better?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Would another glass of wine help?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to try.”

  Rose refilled her glass and went back to doing whatever it was she did behind the counter. She arranged bottles, washed a couple of glasses, opened a new case of merlot.

  “How did Ryan react to your digestively challenged artist?” she asked while she worked.

  “With bemusement. Yes. That’s the word. He was bemused.” Gen took another drink of her wine. “As anyone would be who was a normal, sensible person and not a self-centered pain in the ass.”

  Rose pointed one finger at Gen. “You’re the one who invited the self-centered pain in the ass to Cambria. You didn’t just invite him. You ‘wooed’ him. I think that’s what you said at the time.”

  “True.” Gen nodded. “I wooed.”

  “And now he’s here.”

  “Yes. And now he’s here.”

  A couple had come in and sat down at the bar, and Rose explained the wine tasting menu to them.

  When Rose returned, Gen had calmed somewhat, the wine relaxing her, making her feel loose and slightly tingly. “You know, that’s a nice place he’s got over there. Ryan. The guest house is gorgeous. And the barn. The old barn, he specifies, not the new one. It’s an artist’s paradise. God. I hope Kendrick appreciates it.”

  “He won’t,” Rose said.

  “Probably not,” Gen said with a sigh.

  Chapter Eight

  Ryan found himself wanting to call Gen, but he wasn’t even sure why. He just knew that he’d enjoyed talking to her—simply having her around—when she’d been to the ranch to get that Kendrick guy settled into the guest cottage. And he knew that he wanted to have her around again. His thoughts didn’t go any further than that. He didn’t try to make sense of the urge to see her—didn’t wonder what it meant. Why did it have to mean anything?

  He was still pondering whether to call her when his mother pointed her fork at him that evening at dinner, scowling her usual scowl. “You should take that gallery owner around, show her the ranch. She’s only seen the guest house. You oughta give her the tour, show her some of the places where that artist might want to go set up his easel.”

  Orin looked uncomfortable—as he nearly always did—and shifted in his seat as he stabbed at his steak with his fork. “Aw, now, Sandra, I don’t know that I want that artist poking around everywhere. Bad enough that he’s in the guest house in the first place.”

  Sandra let out a burst of air that communicated her disagreement as clearly as any words would have. “He’s here, isn’t he? Why else did he come, if it’s not to have a beautiful place to paint? Might as well make it worth his while.”

  “There’s that pl
ace by the creek where we had that picnic that one time,” Redmond said helpfully.

  “Gen Porter’s a pretty girl,” Breanna said. “Don’t you think, Ryan?” She was seated on one side of the table with her boys on either side of her. She had to sit between them so they wouldn’t fight at the dinner table.

  “I guess,” Ryan said.

  Sandra let out the scoffing sound again.

  “Show her around,” she said, as though the matter were settled. “Be a good host, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, now, I’m pretty busy around here most days,” he said. He knew even as he said it that he sounded exactly like his father.

  “You’ll find time,” Sandra said.

  “Well.”

  He felt the need, for some reason, to scowl as though he were being pushed into something unpleasant. In fact, he was satisfied with the way his family had neatly solved his problem of whether to call Gen, and why. Family could be useful sometimes.

  She showed up at the main house early on a Wednesday. Now that the weather was warming up and the tourists were starting to show up in town again, the gallery was open every day. But it didn’t open until ten a.m. on weekdays, and that gave her time to take a tour of the Delaney Ranch with Ryan.

  She’d been surprised when he’d called her to suggest it. She’d first talked to him about renting the guest cottage, what, three months ago? He hadn’t said a thing about showing her around then. She’d wondered if maybe the larger expanse of the ranch was off-limits to her and her artist, and she hadn’t really questioned it. Now, the thought of seeing the place—and seeing it with Ryan—pleased her and maybe even excited her. Until she learned she’d be doing it on a horse.

  “Wait. A horse? I don’t know how to ride,” Gen told Ryan as the morning activities of the house went on around her.

  “You’ll do fine,” Breanna called to her from the kitchen, where she was getting her kids ready for school—giving them breakfast, getting their backpacks ready. Gen had met Breanna and the boys numerous times around town. The boys were cute, with their noisy, happy temperaments and their thick shocks of dark hair, and Breanna had always struck Gen as being a solid sort of person—friendly and decent.