By the time I stumbled into Cady’s studio I was too worked up to sleep. The feeling was one part the night before Christmas—because I was nineteen again, Pine City was the most exclusive party on earth, and I was about to be invited—and three parts nervous terror. As I lay on the futon, staring at the wires threading across the ceiling, I had the sudden and very particular feeling that everything was about to change. My stomach sank down to my hips, my knuckles buzzed, and time paused. Everything was going to change.

That’s when I recalled what needed to be done. I had to make seven paintings in three months in total secrecy. All it would take was one phone call—or one photograph.

Time came right back, rushing past me so quickly I couldn’t catch it. No—I said aloud—no. Yet—I had to do it. It’s simple, I told myself: Don’t piss anyone off. You’ll make your work, and maybe they’ll notice you’re making a lot of it, but nobody is going to bother you. It’s an abandoned hotel, for Pete’s sake. There’s room enough for everyone. If I could pull this off anywhere, Pine City was the place. It’d be fine.

The next morning, when the phone rang, my heart skipped a beat.

“You’re in,” Susan said simply. “Be there Monday. Someone will show you around. My boy will send directions.”

She hung up.

I walked to a tire place in Chinatown known for their side business in used and abused automobiles, pulled out a credit card, bought a dented red Nissan pickup truck for seven hundred bucks, and went shopping.

Prudence

Prudence

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Thirty-four, single, homeless, the pilot light of my talent flickering under pressure, I left Manhattan for good exactly three days later.

The truck bed was piled high with materials, lovingly tarped and bungeed. I was extra-careful with it, checking my mirrors over and over, taking turns slowly, missing lights. As I was about to coast onto the West Side Highway, a man in a windbreaker flagged me down. I eased to a stop behind his white van, collapsed inside the right-hand turn lane.

“I have a flat,” he said, holding up a badge. I rolled down the window and stared at him, unsure of how I was supposed to help. I didn’t have the courage to do anything other than scowl.

“My jack split. Everybody else is a gypsy cab.” He gestured toward the glossy Lincolns cruising by. “They don’t want to help.”

It was then that I read the text on his windbreaker: CORONER. His van: NEW YORK STATE.

“You got a tire iron in there or what?”