Free Skyscape by Michael Cadnum Page A

neat.” Bruno was one of those people who seemed to live everywhere, and who get tired only when faced with the ordinary. His one admission of age was the fact that he put on a pair of half-lens reading glasses.
    Against a far wall were canvases Curtis had bought long before she had known him, framed, stretched empty canvases, as big in size and promise as his now lost masterpiece but untouched by a brush.
    Bruno’s eyes told her that he recognized this assembly of blank canvas. “All that empty canvas,” he said. “It makes a room look endless.”
    She slid open a drawer, and withdrew a small kid-leather portfolio. She unzipped it, and withdrew a tidy pile of drawing paper.
    Bruno held forth his hand. She let him take the drawings and step away, into the afternoon light.
    What Bruno said was law. If he said the drawings were Newns at his best, then Curtis was reborn, his career alive once more.
    The studio was chilly. Curtis liked it that way, and said that he worked well when he was a little cold and a little hungry. The paper made a dry, brittle whisper as Bruno looked though the small collection. Bruno paused, held one up for a moment, and then let the drawing slip back.
    Bruno was in no hurry.
    They were pencil on white paper, not the explosive canvases of the past. She loved Curtis for his courage, and when Curtis knew big work was beyond him, he took up the simple, the new. For an instant she could not suppress a sensation of pride. Me. He was drawing me.
    She clasped her hands. As a girl she had bitten her nails, and her mother had painted them with a solution that tasted of soap to rid her of the habit. Why was Bruno taking so long? If they were good, and if they weren’t—surely it didn’t have to take all this time. But she had always been impatient. She had always wanted more out of life than most people. She made herself be still.
    Bruno had large hands, the hands of someone who worked at something that took care, a violin maker. His nails were carefully and almost certainly professionally done.
    She had a glimpse over her shoulder. A breast, a pubic triangle, an arm stretching out until the fingers became the space into which they extended.
    She felt cold. He held up the drawings, turning each one aside to let the afternoon light play upon it. Margaret looked away. It was another sketch of her in the nude, sitting with her hands folded, looking out from the surface of paper with what you would have to call an expression of concern, the way she so often looked at Curtis.
    Bruno thought that Margaret Darcy Newns was a perfect little woman, delightful, and he wished that she would go away for just a moment and leave him alone. It wasn’t too much to ask, after all, but he didn’t want to be discourteous. The poor child had been through so much.
    Bruno did not want to show her what he was thinking. He thought: don’t let her see how excited you are.
    He gazed at her. “This can’t be all,” he said.
    Don’t say anything rash, Margaret cautioned herself. Help Curtis. He needs you. And his career needs you. “I think they’re remarkable, don’t you?”
    â€œCurtis doesn’t like them,” said Bruno, sifting through them once again, and then tenderly putting them back into a neat pile. “He wouldn’t keep them like this, in secret, if he was proud of them.”
    But she could tell. There was that trace of excitement in the famous critic’s voice. She said, “He’s not ashamed of them.”
    â€œDon’t be afraid of me, Margaret.”
    â€œI know you like them.”
    â€œI like roasted garlic. I like Frascati, for that matter. I don’t use like for something as important as art.”
    She was waiting.
    â€œThey aren’t bad,” he said, the the tone of someone being very kind, someone saying see how nice I’m being?
    â€œBut not what you hoped for.”
    â€œNot what I