I saw the policemen swarming the studio, touching my paintings, photographing them, making a list, sending it to Charles Eliot’s attorney. I knew exactly what Charles would want in exchange. If he didn’t get it—he would call Jacqueline, she’d feign surprise, Susan Bricklings-Young would confirm that the police photo of Obedience was not the same as the one she had committed to buy—and so would all of Jacqueline’s other buyers. The show would be canceled, my name destroyed, the only one I’d ever had. I wouldn’t be a painter anymore. I’d be the warning sign: the girl from Florida who conned the blue-chip gallery.

I’d be homeless. I’d be $39,000 in debt. I’d have thirty-five hundred pounds of paintings that nobody wanted except me.

*  *  *

Someone will film Carey’s story. At the end they will put the actress in a waifish white dress, which will pool and billow in highest contrast to the muddy red water of the black lake. The actress’s eyes will be purple and the teeth in her mouth will be so white and big. The texture of her skin will be velvety and the line of her breasts will be pert. Her muscles will be taut from Pilates, but the implication of the camera will be that stress and suicidal thoughts and the artistic temperament have made her so enchantingly thin. She will be Ophelia, clothes spread wide, floating in the brook atop garlands of sweet flowers, and she will look absolutely nothing like Carey Logan.

The camera will hold steady. Ankles taped with bubble wrap, she plunges her toes into the wet cement pools of her rubber boots. A single air pocket might release under the pressure and belch against her calf. She will stand there for five minutes, maybe ten, in the water, and wait for them to dry. Then she will start walking.

Maybe they’ll cut to Tyler in his studio: a razor blade pressing down as a glass slide catches a very neat, carpaccio slice of brain. Maybe they’ll show Jack playing with his kids. Maybe they’ll show Jes playing cello and Marlin pulling a print. Maybe they’ll go back to that night on Grand Street and show the five of them sharing a cigarette and laughing, or some other scene, one I haven’t witnessed, the first time they all met. Or maybe they won’t do any of that and it’ll be a long shot: She walks, she shudders at the cold, she hesitates, she walks again. Cut to underwater: flailing and eventual stillness. Above again: water slapping against the beach like nothing was ever there to disturb it.