“Because Jacqueline won’t, for starters, and I’m flat fucking broke, and I’m homeless, and this—it’s the biggest opportunity of my life. I can’t waste it.”

“It’ll be okay,” he said, reassuring me again. I wanted to believe him.

“I—can you please, please not tell Jes or Marlin or Jack or anyone about my paintings? Because you could ruin my life. If something goes wrong—I will be in huge debt, I will still be homeless, and I won’t have a gallery.”

“Of course.” He looked insulted. “Of course I won’t.”

We ate dinner, seated cross-legged from each other on opposite ends of the sofa, plates in our laps, beers on the floor. He got up every now and then to change the record, but otherwise the evening was fluid; we talked about art, mostly, because it was easy, it was our lingua franca.

It was nice to be with him—to see him up close. It takes a lot of looking to see someone, to really see the shape of their nose or distinguish the shades of their laughter, even, or perhaps especially, if you’ve seen them from a distance a dozen times before. He began to come into real focus, separating from the mystery that had shrouded him, emerging as a real, independent person.

When he went to the restroom, I peeked at the letter on the counter. It was a demand letter for an artwork by Carey Logan filmed without permission on Eliot&Sprain property. It specified that the artwork contained two reels of film, which Pine City were to return to Eliot&Sprain upon receipt of the letter itself. The threat for noncompliance was a lawsuit to the gut-checking tune of $15 million. A copy of this letter has been sent to Cartwright, Benson and Pendergast, LLC. Sincerely, Charles Eliot and Helen Sprain.

An electric shock buzzed my spine, the vertebrae clacking against each other as my fingers pinched the paper. Two reels of film—that was all it requested. I nearly pocketed it before remembering that I was not supposed to be looking at it.

At the sound of the sink running in the bathroom, I eased the letter back into its envelope and took a beer from the fridge. When Tyler reappeared in the kitchen, I was tossing the bottle cap into the trash, my heart racing. No wonder Charlie and Tyler had been so cold to each other at the party. They were in the middle of a war.

“So you met the rest of Pine City at the Academy?” I asked the only question I could think of.

“Marlin and Jack. Jes and Carey we met after, in New York.”

“How did you meet Carey?”