He was an unprepossessing man in a gray tweed overcoat with a button missing. He appeared to be about sixty. When he came in he went immediately to the quilts and looked at them at great length, especially studying Betty Jo’s Fiery Furnace, which had a small not-for-sale sign on the wall below it. Leah Daphne Merser’s bird-and-flower design was next to it, and he studied that for a long time too, tilting his head this way and that. Eddie sat on the stool at the counter drinking coffee. There was no one else in the store.
Suddenly the man broke the silence. “Remarkable trapunto,” he said. “The stitching is flawless and the stuffing is tight.”
“Leah Daphne Merser,” Eddie said. “She was one of the best.”
“I believe you,” the man said. “Nineteen thirties?”
“She died during the war.”
“I see you are asking eighteen hundred dollars.”
“I know it seems like a lot,” Eddie said.
“It’s a museum piece,” the man said. “I have no problem there.”
Eddie finished his coffee and said nothing. The man began looking at the metal sculptures. After a few minutes he came over to the counter. He was carrying a checkbook. “I’ll take the trapunto quilt,” he said, “and the Statue of Unliberty. I think you were exactly right in putting them together.”
The statue was eleven hundred. Eddie had the sales tax figured in a moment and made out a receipt. He was wondering about the reliability of the check when the man spoke. “Can you deliver?”
“In Lexington?”
“We’re a few miles out. Manitoba Farm.”
Eddie kept his surprise from showing. Horses from Manitoba Farm ran in the Kentucky Derby; at least one of them had won it.
“I’m Arthur Boynton,” the man said.
“I can bring them out tomorrow morning.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be there at ten.” He handed Eddie the check.
“You should have seen it,” Eddie said, pleased. He set the car keys by the register. There was no one in the store but the two of them. “They have marble statues in the foyer and abstract paintings in the living room. There’s nothing horsey about it.”
“Just rich,” Arabella said.
Eddie looked at her. She was frowning as if in concentration. “Yes,” he said, “rich.” He felt suddenly uncomfortable. “What are you pissed about?”
“I don’t know.” She had just finished showing one of the less expensive quilts and it was laid out on the counter to display the pattern; she began folding it now. “I’m sorry if I was mean-spirited, Eddie,” she said, “but I’m beginning to feel as if I’m working for you. You make the decisions and take the responsibilities.”
He seated himself on the stand where the Statue of Unliberty had been. “You took us to Marcum and the others,” he said. “You’ve put up money.”
“It’s not the same. I was the one who was supposed to know folk art, but you chose the pieces to buy. You’ve taken over.”
He understood her problem, but he was getting annoyed. “You don’t have to be a second-class citizen.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Maybe you’re right. You caught me off balance at first. I hadn’t expected you to move so fast.”
“I was making up for lost time.” He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. “Still am.”
She finished folding the quilt, carried it to where the others were kept and set it on top. Then she came back and stood by Eddie, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I could gather the articles I’ve done over the past few years, add five or six more, and I’d have a book. I’ve talked to some people at the Press, and they like the idea.”
He looked up at her and then held up a cigarette. “Sounds fine to me,” he said. “Now that we’re beginning to roll, we don’t both have to be here.”
She took the cigarette and lit it. “The trouble is, there’s no money in a university press book, and a lot of work. I have to get photographs, and do interviews. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”
“I thought that’s what you like doing.”
She took a deep puff from her cigarette, and let it out slowly. “I’m good at it. But it’s like shooting pool is for you. I’m not sure about it anymore.”
He pictured his Balabushka, still locked in its rack at the Rec Room. “Wait a minute,” he said, suddenly angry. “It’s not that I don’t want to play those kids. I just can’t beat them.”
“You don’t really know that, Eddie.”
“I know it well enough. Babes Cooley made me look like a geriatric fool.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Geriatric? Don’t be silly. Your problem is that you aren’t committed to pool any more than you are to me.” She took a quick, angry puff from the cigarette and then stubbed it out unfinished. “You were never committed to beating Fats either, Eddie. Never.”
He stood up angrily and walked over to Betty Jo Merser’s Fiery Furnace, with its Not for Sale sign, and studied it for a moment. He liked the quilt more every time he looked at it; it helped calm him down. Then he turned to Arabella and said, “Maybe you’re right. But it’s a stand-off between you and me.”
“A stand-off?”
“If what’s between us means so much to you, why do you keep a drawerful of obituaries for Greg Welles?”
She stared at him silently for a moment. Then she said, levelly, “That’s goddamned competitive of you, Eddie.”
“I suppose it is,” he said. “I hate those newspapers.”
Arabella shrugged. “All right. It’s a stand-off. There are worse things.”
They were civil but distant at breakfast. When he said it was time to leave for the shop, she suggested he go ahead while she cleaned up the breakfast things. She would be over in an hour or so. There was nothing wrong with it, but they hadn’t done it that way before. He took the car and drove over alone.
When he got out of the car he knew immediately that something was wrong. The pieces in the window were gone, although the glass wasn’t broken. He unlocked the door and opened it. There was a heavy smell of cold, wet smoke. He flipped the light switch, coughing. Through a haze he saw, where Newby’s work had hung, the words KENTUCKY FUCK ART—this time in huge, skewed, blue letters—sprayed carefully, the letters gone over and over again until the paint dripped in tears down the empty wall. There was not a single piece of art in the room.
He knew where to look. A hole the size of a saucer had been smashed through the sliding glass door right beside the lock. All the son of a bitch had to do was reach his arm—with its goddamned black hair—through the hole and flip the lock down before sliding the door open. The room was freezing cold. The door was still wide open.
It was all out in the little garden, in the brick barbecue oven, still weakly radiating heat. A black sodden mass of burned quilts. It would be impossible to tell which was the Hebrew Children in the Fiery Furnace, which were the delicate, intricately wrought trapuntos of Leah Daphne Merser or the appliques of Betty Jo Merser. He had burned them and then, just to make sure, doused them with water from the garden hose. Amid the quilts, Deeley Marcum’s women lay in a crumpled heap, dismantled, smashed and charred. The son of a bitch must have worked all night at it.
An arm of Little Bo Peep had fallen to the ground. Eddie picked it up and poked at the mess. Underneath everything else were pieces of charred wood. The goddamned son of a bitch had used Newby’s magical carvings for kindling. For kindling.