"That will be perfectly fine."
"I'd like to meet Mr. Avila sometime. Does he live here in town?"
"Yes, sir. He's in the phone book, actually, but let me write it down for you."
Chapter Nine
"Hello." A deep, impatient voice.
"Can I speak to Mr. Avila, please?"
"This is Avila."
"Mr. Avila, my name is John Davis. I bought your Hierophant at the Otis Gallery yesterday."
"Oh, yeah. I heard about that."
"I was wondering, could I come and see your studio? Maybe look at some of your other work?"
"Sure, why not. You know where it is? Come down about five o'clock. Listen, the bell doesn't work. Walk up the stairs, fourth floor. What's your name again?"
"John Davis."
"Okay. See you then."
The address was in a row of dingy, seemingly abandoned commercial buildings on the Lower East Side. The plate-glass window beside the entrance was lettered, "BELLER RESTAURANT SUPPLY," but the interior was dark and empty, and there were cobwebs on the windows.
Gene climbed three flights of uncarpeted echoing stairs and found himself on a landing with a single door painted dark green. A card on the door was neatly lettered, "AVILA." He rang the bell.
"Come in!" called a distant voice.
Gene opened the door and found himself looking down the length of an enormous room, in the middle of which three people sat near an oil heater with a stovepipe that rose, supported by guy wires, through the ceiling high above. Dust motes swam in the gray light from the window wall. "Mr. Davis?" called the voice. The men's faces were in shadow; he could not see which one had spoken.
"Yes."
One of the men stood up and beckoned. "Come in, sit down." Gene walked toward them, trying not to trip over the electrical wires that lay haphazardly on the bare floor. The man who had spoken was stocky, powerfully built, with a seamed brown face. "I'm Avila," he said, putting out his hand. "Sit here. Put your coat on the floor, wherever you want. This is Darío Hernandez" -- a young man who put down his guitar to rise and shake Gene's hand; he was as brown as Avila, handsome and bright-eyed. "And this is Gus Vilsmas -- Vilis -- how the hell you say it?"
"Vlismas," said the third man. He was paler than the others, middle-aged and plump, with a gold tooth that flashed when he smiled. "Glad to know you."
Gene sat in a wooden rocker that creaked under his weight. The others were staring at him. "You're tall, but you're only a kid," said Avila abruptly. "You want some wine? Maybe you're not old enough to drink it."
"No, that's all right," Gene said, flushing. "I just wanted -- Could I look around your studio?"
"Sure." Avila stood up. "Come on, I give you the grand tour."
Under the windows there were big bins for clay, sacks of plaster spilling their white dust on the floor, and a cluttered bench that ran half the length of the room.
"I never saw any place as big as this before," Gene said.
"It's a loft," Avila told him. His voice was deep and resonant. "Before, they use them for manufacturing -- some places you can still see where the machines were."
Farther down the room there was a large wooden platform on wheels; between it and the windows stood three modeling stands, one of them draped in moist cloth. "Is this something you're working on?" Gene asked.
"Sure. You like to see it?" Avila lifted the bottom of the cloth and carefully pulled it free of the damp clay. Gene saw a blocky figure, contorted, half kneeling. Parts of the surface were lumps of clay carelessly mashed together; other parts showed the marks of tools. "Not finished yet," said Avila, and draped the cloth over it again.
The end of the room was a warren of head-high racks on which stood plaster casts, plaster of paris molds, some of them three or four feet tall, and armatures made of wood, pipe, and wire.
The two men in the middle of the room looked up as they passed going the other way, then resumed their low-voiced conversation. This end of the room evidently was Avila's living quarters. There was a kitchen area with a hot plate and a coffee pot, some cabinets, a sink and a clawfooted bathtub. Under the windows, a small area had been partitioned off with plywood painted bright yellow; through the doorway Gene could see a bed with a red-and-white coverlet. "I had a guest room," Avila said, "but I tore it down. Some bum was always sleeping in there, or some guy making out with his girl. You want coffee?"
Avila poured from the coffee pot into a blue ceramic mug. They joined the others and sat down.
"So, Mr. Davis," said Vlismas, "you are an art collector? Your parents must be rich."
"They died in a plane crash. I have a trust fund."
"Oh, too bad. So you spend your money on art?"
"Sometimes."
Avila was sitting in an upholstered chair with a glass of wine in his hand, one leg draped over the arm of the chair. He looked at Gene steadily. "Is that all you do?" he asked.
"No -- I want to be an artist. A sculptor like you, Mr. Avila. I was wondering, do you think -- would it be possible for you to take me as a student? I could pay you whatever -- "
"So, you could pay," Avila said. "Mr. Davis, I am not a teacher. There are plenty of good schools where you could study."
"I can't go there," said Gene with embarrassment. "I have a kind of problem, with places where there are a lot of people."
Avila looked at him in silence for a moment. "Where have you studied already?"
"At the Porgorny Institute, in San Francisco."
"Porgorny? I know her!" said Avila. "Ten years ago I met her there. How is she?"
"All right, I guess. I haven't talked to her since I left. Mr. Avila, I brought some sketches -- " He picked up his coat from the floor, drew out a sketchbook.
"Let me see." Avila took the book and began to turn the pages. Presently he showed one page to Hernandez, who leaned over to look at it but said nothing. Avila leafed through the rest of the book and handed it back. "żQue piensas?" he said to Hernandez.
The young man shrugged. "No sé."
"One thing I like," said Avila after a moment. "Some of these drawings, I think you are seeing solid forms when you make them. That is not so common. What have you done in sculpture?"
"Some clay. Piece molds. A few wood carvings."
"I tell you what. We try it for a month. You come here every day, whatever time you want, but not before nine o'clock and not after five, and you work here at least four hours every day. You pay me one hundred dollars for the month. If I ask you to do something, you do it. After the first month, if I like it, if you like it, we continue. If not -- goodbye. All right?"
"Yes, that's wonderful. When can I start -- tomorrow?"
"Sure, tomorrow."
When he came the next day, precisely at nine o'clock, Avila gave him a modeling stand at the far end of the room near the windows, showed him the clay bins, the shelves of armatures, the racks of tools. Gene chose a wooden armature and began to build up a simple bust, the head of a bald old man. The piece went slowly, because it was hard to keep from watching Avila at work. He moved like a dancer, weight on the balls of his feet, forward and backward in a hypnotic rhythm -- adding clay with one hand, cutting it away again with a metal tool in the other; and as he worked, the clay figure evolved through a sequence of organic changes, all different and all beautiful.
When the phone rang Avila would answer it briefly; if it rang too often he would take the receiver off the hook. At noon he brought out bread and cheese, sliced yellow onions, hot peppers, milk for Gene and wine for himself. While he ate, he looked at what Gene had been doing, but made no comment.
In late afternoon people began dropping in, and when Gene got up to go at five, Avila said, "Stick around. After while we all go out to dinner."