“Would you like another drink, dear?”—Vann is smiling, a genial host. L.K. notes that he has never uttered the name she’d provided him, as if sensing that it is not her true name.

Without knowing it, L.K. has finished the single-malt whiskey in her glass. But—“No more, thank you!”

Vann pours another inch or two of the amber liquid into her glass.

It is maddening, the man pays so little heed to her wishes. All but winking at her, up close—You know, dear. And I know.

Leading her now into the interior of his studio. Beyond the black-lacquered Japanese screens.

Immediately the smells of clay, paint, turpentine are stronger. The odor of something sweetly rotten, rancid. Here, beyond the stately black screens, is far less order, coherence. Canvases lean against the wall, smudged watercolors. Sketches in pencil, charcoal pencil. The floor is frankly dirty. Wadded rags, tissues cast down. Behind the screens. The artist’s truest life.

So this is where the artist works. That’s to say, where the soul of the artist lives.

Some of this work is very good, L.K. thinks. She tries but cannot fasten upon Vnn’s influences. Lucien Freud? Francis Bacon? Goya? Somewhat crudely mixed with primitive art, Warhol parody. An air of vehemence, recklessness—Pollock. The larger canvases of sprawling, quasi-abstract naked bodies, collages, sculptures—intimidating in their size.

A six-foot tree of birds—bird skeletons. Tiny eye sockets, empty.

“Tree of Life—it isn’t complete.” Vann frowns at his creation, as if seeing it through another’s eyes.

The tree is, or was once, a “real” tree, a young birch. The birds?

L.K. shudders, contemplating the perfect little bird skeletons that by their size appear to have been sparrows, songbirds.

Seeing her reaction, Vann says again, “It isn’t complete. All my work back here is ‘in progress.’ ”

He is standing close beside her. His voice in her ear, intimate and mesmerizing.

Then she discovers, at the rear of the studio, a supply of mannequins. Some are leaning against a wall as if weary, some lie in a heap on the floor as if discarded. Several are hanging from hooks, pulleys—an unnerving sight.

Vann doesn’t want his visitor to wander back here, it seems.

“Maybe you’ve seen enough, dear. We can return to …”

Even as she is appalled by what she sees, L.K. feels drawn to see more.

“ … these are works in progress. I’ve set aside for the time being …”

L.K. comes closer. She notes that the mannequins are all female. They have no genitalia of course, but they do have small, conical, perfect breasts, slender waists and hips. Their faces are smooth, seamless. Some are wearing glamorous wigs, others are bald. They are all “white”—“Caucasian”—a pale, pasty hue. Several have been despoiled: their skulls cracked open and sponges placed inside to suggest the human brain; through eye sockets, plastic flowers emerge. Through nostrils, mouths. Tentacles.

One of the mannequins sports a bleeding-red wound between her legs, framed by “pubic” hair.