We rode in silence, bypassing Woodstock. I knew that Carter believed I was thinking of the painting, but I was not. I was thinking of Carter and how well he understood me. It had been that way from our first meeting. He had a gift of certainty, of reading the wavering of moods. We saw each other only when I was in the Catskills, yet I was more comfortable with him than I was with my own brothers.

“How do you feel?” Carter asked after several minutes.

“All right,” I answered. “Curious, I guess. I’d like to know why she posed for it.”

“If I get up the nerve, I’ll ask Archer the next time I see her—if I ever do,” he said.

“Couldn’t you call her?” I asked.

Carter laughed easily. A deer sprinted to the side of the road from an apple orchard and Carter braked and slowed the car. The deer tensed, then turned and bolted back into the orchard.

“Bobo, that is one strange woman,” Carter said carefully. “You don’t talk to her, not that one. You ask permission to speak. In fact, I don’t even know where she is. I go through her agent, some shitty little whiner in New York. What do you know about her, by the way?”

“Not a lot,” I admitted. “Not her private life, at least. She’s in her late sixties, I suppose. I think she was in one of the Jewish ghettos in Poland, or somewhere, during the war. I read a retrospect on some of her drawings from those days, when she was just a child. All I know is, she’s brilliant.”

“And rich,” Carter added. “She gets a shitpot full of cash for those things.”

“In this case, it’s deserved,” I said.

“Is she really that good?” Carter asked. “I mean, I like her stuff, but I like your stuff better, Bobo. That’s why I keep it at home, instead of at the office.”

Over the years, I had given Carter four or five of my favorite paintings to celebrate moments of friendship. I always had the feeling he kept them stored away in closets until I visited.

“And I thought you didn’t want to be embarrassed by displaying them in public,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Carter mumbled. “I had a guy try to buy one of them from me five or six years ago. He was at the house for dinner. Went bananas over the one with the pasture scene. He was from Alabama. Said it reminded him of the place he’d lived.”

“And you didn’t sell?”

“Of course not. What kind of question is that? I’m telling you, I like your stuff better than hers.”

“Carter,” I said, “you’re a friend and I appreciate what you just said, but compared to Jean Archer, I draw stick figures in the mud.”