Deeley looked at the money and then at Eddie.
“When you get that Heliarc,” Eddie said, “you can make more women. You’ve got plenty of raw material.”
“And plenty of imagination,” Arabella said.
“What about that fifty you put in your jacket?”
“All right,” Eddie said, “it’s yours.”
“We could go into the business,” Arabella said.
“We are in the business. This car is a travelling museum.”
“I mean we could open a gallery.”
Eddie was silent for a minute while passing a truck. They were halfway back to Lexington, the sculptures in the seat behind them wrapped in the blankets and towels he had the foresight to bring along. When he got back into his own lane again, he said, “There wouldn’t be enough customers. We’ll be lucky to sell the four.”
“They’ll sell,” Arabella said. “People have more money than you think.”
“Wouldn’t we saturate the market with a dozen?”
“I’ve thought about that, Eddie. There are other artists out here in the boondocks—or craftsmen or whatever. We could have variety. I’ve worked for that magazine three years, and I know about every Deeley Marcum in the state.”
“Lexington is no art town. You have a few hundred possible customers at most. It’s like pool.”
“It’s better than pool, Eddie. There’s a lot of money in Lexington, and people come down from Louisville and Cincinnati.”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. But a part of him was beginning to believe it.
“There’s a folk-art boom just starting. You should see the ads I get from New York. They sell reproductions, Eddie, and they sell them for plenty.”
“Lexington isn’t New York.”
“There are a lot of people there who wish it was. Folk art is getting to be like croissants and pasta. There’s a whole class of Americans who want to get into the act, want to be au courant.”
“I don’t speak French.”
“But you know what I’m talking about. With what I know about the people who make things like these,” she reached back and put her hand on the head of a metal woman that protruded from a green blanket “and with your ability to drive a bargain, with what you already know about running a business…”
He thought about it a minute. He had only planned to sell the four pieces from his living room. It had been fun bargaining with Deeley, and he liked the excitement of markup—of buying a thing for three hundred dollars and selling it for twelve. It was a lot like gambling on pool when you knew you were going to win. “Could we sell these in New York? To a dealer?”
“That would be like Deeley selling them in Louisville. The thing about Lexington is low rent and low overhead.”
It was beginning to sound good, although it still seemed foolish—dealing in art when he didn’t know a goddamned thing about art. “How much money do you have?”
“Not much.”
“How much would it cost to rent a place?”
“Four hundred a month. Five, maybe.”
“How long a lease in case we fizzle?”
“I don’t know. Six months?”
“A year, at least. We’ll have to paint the walls and put ads in the paper. Then there’s insurance and taxes and all those goddamned forms from the state and city and from Washington. And collecting the sales tax.”
“You’ve been doing that kind of thing for twenty years, Eddie. You know how to handle it. I’m a good typist, and I’m good at filling out forms.”
“If I put twelve thousand into it, can you find me enough art to buy?”
“Oh boy, can I ever! We can get handmade quilts and carvings. There’s an old black druggist near Lancaster who does visionary carvings on wood panels.”
He thought awhile before he spoke. “There’s an empty store a block off Main Street. Mandel Realty has it, and I know Henry Mandel. I’ll call him.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Arabella said, staring at the road in front of them.
“It might work,” Eddie said, “it really might.”
“Holy cow!” Arabella said.
They had been passing Holiday Inn billboards, and now up ahead of them on the right he saw the green sign for the motel itself. They were about an hour out of Lexington. When they got closer he could read the words HEATED INDOOR POOL. He began to slow down. “Let’s get a room.”
“Eddie,” she said, “we’ll be home in an hour.”
“I like the way things are right now.”
He hadn’t felt like this in bed for years. They had a back room with a view of a snowy field and trees. He opened the draperies while she began taking her clothes off. It was a king-size bed. They lay on it and kissed. He found himself laughing for a while and she laughed with him. “A couple of art hustlers,” he said, and began kissing her again. Afterward, they rented disposable bathing suits at the front desk and had the pool to themselves for a half hour. She was a good swimmer—almost as good as he, and she did not worry about getting her hair wet. Then they got drinks at the bar, took them to their room. Eddie called Information in Lexington and got Henry Mandel’s number.
“It’s silly,” she said while he was putting in the call. “You can call him free in an hour.”
“Go dry your hair,” Eddie said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Henry wanted five seventy-five a month for the place, plus the cost of heating it. The lease would be eighteen months.
“Too much,” Eddie said. He had dried off and was sitting naked in a chair. “I’ll give you four fifty on a twelve-month lease renewable for twenty-four at a ten percent increase.”
“No way,” Henry said. “That’s a choice location.”
“It’s one room and it’s been empty half a year.”
“There are other people interested, Mr. Felson.”
“Then rent it to them.”
“They have problems right now. I’d like to do business with you.”
“If you paint it I’ll give you four seventy-five.”
“Paint it! For Christ’s sake, do you know what labor costs for that these days?”
“Henry,” Eddie said, “this is still a recession and you know it. If you don’t rent that place to me, it’s just going to sit there while you pay taxes on it.”
Henry was quiet for a moment. Arabella, who had been running the hair dryer, came back into the room. She was stark naked. She seated herself in the other chair and looked at Eddie.
“Eddie,” Henry said, “I can buy you a few gallons of paint, but you’ll have to do the painting.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll come by Monday and pick up the keys. If the place is all right, we’ll sign papers in the afternoon.”
“For eighteen months?”
“Twelve, Henry. Twelve months.”
When he hung up Arabella said, “You’re amazing.”
“You look great in that outfit. Let’s stay over.”
“What for?”
“Honey,” Eddie said, “up till now we’ve just been engaged. This is our honeymoon.”
The best thing about it was the downtown location. He liked that with the same liking he had felt toward Arabella’s small apartment. It was a sizable room with a couple of closets, a countertop and a two-piece bath. There was a lot of light, with the glass front of the building and windows over a small garden in back. The garden was littered with rusted coat hangers from the dry cleaners that had occupied the place before; and it had an incongruously large brick barbecue over in the center of it, surrounded by trampled-down grass; but it might make a good place to put out some of Marcum’s steel ladies in the spring. When he suggested this to Arabella, she was excited by the idea and began picking up the coat hangers. The walls inside were grimy, and there were big pipes that would have to be painted over. The green linoleum on the floor would have to go. Bending to lift a piece of it away, Eddie could see that the floor beneath was good oak in need of sanding. You could probably have it done for two hundred, and then use polyurethane, which he could put on himself.