“I suppose I shouldn’t let myself get carried away like that.” Laura looked a little sheepish as she stepped back into the cabin. “But this place is important to me.”
“You did the right thing,” Erika assured her as they rinsed the cups and put them away. She glanced at her watch. “If we’re going to be on time for dinner, we better go.”
It was another of the survival tricks she had learned from Laura — be at the Banquet Hall when it opened at five-thirty while the food was still hot, and hadn’t been ruined by sitting too long on a steam table.
As they scrunched along the path, Laura inhaled the thin, clean air that tasted cool somewhere deep in her lungs. Pointing at a clump of trees, she asked, “Do you see the deer?” Now that she knew where to look, Erika spotted the motionless grey shapes, which blended perfectly with the grey bark of the tree trunks. She had long since become accustomed to Laura’s astonishing powers of observation; she was constantly pointing out things that had escaped everyone else’s notice. She had once told Erika that it was because she was a visual artist, adding that visual artists are trained to see the normal, so that anything that fell outside the norm immediately attracted their attention. Unbidden, the thought of how much Geoff would enjoy going on nature walks with the observant Laura flickered through Erika’s mind before she hastily banished it.
As usual, they would both return to work in their studios immediately after dinner.
Refreshed and relaxed after a late night swim and a session in the whirlpool that eased the strain of painting for hours with a tiny brush, Laura walked across the darkened parking lot and through the third floor side entrance of Lloyd Hall. The crime tape had been taken down from the stairwell, but she decided to use the elevator anyway.
She had just hung up her jacket when there was a knock on her door. “Who is it?” she called out.
“Marek Dabrowski. I know it’s late, but could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
As expected, Dabrowski was distraught over the visit of Isabelle’s husband. “He arrives in the morning. What should I do? I can’t bear to see them together.”
“Go away for the weekend. Rent a car and drive up to Jasper, or take a real break and drive out to Vancouver,” she said, adding, “You should see some of the west while you’re here anyway.”
The composer shook his head. “I can’t drive,” he said in his accented English that added the final touch to his continental good looks.
“Then work. Lock yourself in your studio, take your meals there and sleep there. Create a masterpiece out of your emotion. I’ve found work to be the best panacea for a broken heart.”
Marek looked at her with sudden interest. “You? What does the unattainable Ms. Janeway know of a broken heart? I have always thought of you as the one who breaks hearts. Ah, I remember now. Someone said you had once been married.”
“It wasn’t him.” Laura waved a dismissive hand. “Have you and Isabelle given any thought to making your relationship permanent?”
“We’ve talked about it. But it won’t work. It’s her daughter. Isabelle is determined that Jessica will not be the victim of a broken home. Isabelle grew up in a loving home and she wants the same for her daughter. I try to tell her that children are tougher than she thinks, but she remains ...,” Marek took a moment, as he sometimes did, to search for the precisely correct English word, then said with a faint air of triumph, “adamant.”
He turned to go. “I will take your advice and remain in my studio, working on my concerto.”
chapter three
A message flashed on the computer screen when the cashier took Richard Madrin’s Centre Pass and punched in some numbers. The cashier, the chatty one with an earring and taped glasses, told him there was a package for him in the mailroom.
“It’s probably my manuscript,” Richard said. The drama student who worked part-time as a cashier was gratifyingly impressed. “I’ll pick it up after lunch.”
Kevin Lavoie with a potential donor to the artist colony in tow had joined some of the colonists for lunch. With a rueful shake of his head, he began to recount one of John Smith’s recent exploits. The performance artist had dressed himself up as a magician and stationed himself in the foyer of the Eric Harvie Theatre to greet the guests arriving for the play. Pretending he was going to do a trick, he persuaded a number of them to hand over their credit cards.
“Then,” continued Lavoie, “before anyone could stop him, he whipped out a pair of scissors and cut them in half. Two of his victims are big supporters of the Centre and they were not amused.”
“That would only make it all the better as far as he’s concerned,” murmured Laura. “The victim’s reaction is part of a performance artist’s art.”
“Just what is a performance artist?” asked Lavoie’s guest. “I’ve heard the term, but I’ve never known just what it is they do.”
The others looked to Laura to provide the answer. She thought for a moment before saying, “Performance art is hard to define and often harder to take should you be an unwilling participant. Performance artists do not create objects like a painting or a piece of sculpture. They act out a scene or a fantasy and often document it, they call it a ‘happening’, with a video camera. It’s the only art form where the art is created before an audience rather than being presented as a finished product. The performances are frequently violent and dangerous, both to the artist and anyone in the vicinity. You may remember reading about the man in Paris who videotaped himself slicing off pieces of his penis with a razor?”
“Good Lord, yes.”
“That was performance art.”
“That’s odd,” interjected Richard, completely deadpan. “I always figured that was a do-it-yourself sex change operation.”
Lavoie’s guest laughed heartily. Meeting Richard was obviously the highlight of his visit to the Centre. Sensing this, Richard did his bit for the cause, discussing the characters in some of his novels and talking about the challenges and rewards of writing. It was the kind of talk he had given to countless book clubs and it was highly entertaining. He capped it by saying that the edited opening manuscript chapters of his new book had just arrived from his New York publisher and was waiting for him in the mailroom. Lavoie and Laura exchanged knowing smiles as he left. The donor would be putty in Lavoie’s hands after that performance.
“Another bestseller, Mr. Madrin?” The mail clerk smiled as she handed over the parcel. Original manuscript had been typed on the customs form.
“I hope so,” replied Richard as he tucked the package under his arm. “I still have a long way to go, though. This is just the edited version of the first five chapters.”
Inside his studio, Richard sat down in front of his word processor, but didn’t switch it on. Instead he carefully arranged a writing pad, erasers, pencils, scissors, and a roll of scotch tape on the long counter, like a surgeon preparing to operate. Only then did he unwrap the parcel. There was no title page, but that didn’t worry him. The title would fall out of the book as the story unfolded. As usual, there was a lengthy letter from Thea Solberg explaining some of the changes she had pencilled in on the draft. She seemed genuinely excited by what he had written so far. Not only did it have the famous “Madrin action,” she wrote, but this time he had succeeded in creating a truly sympathetic protagonist. The fictional James Hunt made mistakes, and had his share of human frailties, including