“You see it, Bobo?” Sammy asked proudly. “All the knots of pain. You get that in this free-form, thinking style.” He stepped back and looked lovingly at the figure. “I remember the night I did it. Lila had been bitching at me for spending too much money on my work. I told her to kiss my ass. She has no idea what it is to be an artist.”

I thought of Carolyn. Once she had loved my paintings, had watched in awe as I created them in the small studio-room of our first home. Now, she only glanced at them. Or so it appeared. She seldom talked to me about them. To other people, she described them proudly and in detail, often with enthusiasm that even I did not have, and it made me wonder if she stood before them, alone, and studied them, perhaps searching for the celebrations that we had shared, freely and joyfully, in the discovery years of our youth.

“I suppose that wives and husbands of artists put up with a lot,” I suggested to Sammy.

“Works both ways,” Sammy countered. “Sometimes I think all Lila wants to do is fuck.” He paused and looked away and forced a casual laugh that had pain in it. “I think she’s made it with some of the guests. In the ski season.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Sammy touched the grotesque face that he had titled Old Man. He said, too easily, “She’d probably take you on in a minute, if you’d let her, Bobo.”

“Oh, come on, Sammy.”

He smiled sadly. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I know you’re not about to do that, but with you, I’d almost think it was all right.” He patted me firmly on the back. “Hell, I like you. If you don’t come back—I mean, after this time—I’ll miss you.” I felt his hand tremble. “I can’t get nobody else to talk to me about my work, Bobo. Nobody.”

I did not know what to tell him. Again, I thought of Carolyn’s silence. “You’re not alone in that, my friend,” I said. “Not many people talk to me about my work, either. I think that’s the way it is with what we do.”

Sammy laughed and the old flash of optimism blinked in his eyes. He pounded my back. “Well, this is what I think: fuck ‘em. Com’on, let me find those flies that Arch tied.”

I followed him back to the front of his shop, where a row of booths still lined one of the walls. I stopped to look at them.

“Brings back old times, doesn’t it?” Sammy said. He wiped his hand over the back of one of the booths, smearing the thin layer of stone dust that clouded the store from his mad hammering.

“Yeah, it does,” I admitted. “I had some good times in here.”