Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

Ellison squinted about the huge patio, all winey sunlight and bluish shadow, with more furniture than a small house. He was looking for his tube of titanium dioxide white. “Do you realize,” he asked, “that’s it’s now been almost four years since you have posed for me?”

      “Really? That long?”

      “Since shortly after we were married.”

      “Surely it hasn’t been that long.”

      “Oh, yes. I remember that Helen was hardly more than a little girl. She kept sneaking around to see what we were up to in those days I generally had you posing in the nude.”

      The mention of Helen seemed to have had no effect. Something else was certainly on her mind.

      “I wish you would have posed nude again today. Out here, against the mountains. I gave all the help the day off, you know.”

      “I know. But it’s too cold today. Maybe next time.”

      “There. That’s just the smile I want. Hold it for me, if you can. Just like that.”

      Ellison found that he was a little nervous about the painting. God, it was a long time, it must be a couple of years now, since he had really tried to paint anything at all. Would he really be able to do it now?

      He suddenly spotted the tube of paint he had been looking for. It was on a small stone ledge not an arm’s length from where he had set up his easel; now he recalled setting it down there. He picked up the tube and fidgeted with it and dropped it back into the paintbox. Then holding a stick of charcoal he looked at his model, and then beyond her to the mountains, where the changing sunlight made blue folds slowly appear and disappear. The light changing like that, and it was so long now since he had really tried. It was going to be hopeless.

      “Are we going to talk about Del, sometime?” Stephanie asked him suddenly.

      “What’s there to talk about?”

      “We both know that he’s still alive. You don’t have to be so cagey with me.”

      “Yes,” said Ellison. He was not going to try to get the background in at all today. Only Stephanie. “Yes, well, don’t you think it’s wiser not to talk too much about the fact?”

      “No one can overhear us. I just wondered how much you knew about the—details. I know you’re handling business deals for him. Do you think anyone else knows he isn’t dead?”

      “I say it’s wiser not to talk, even out here. There could be someone up there, behind any of those rocks, listening. Directional microphones have amazing capabilities these days.”

      Stephanie glanced behind her at the hillside, then resumed her pose without appearing to be convinced. “Someone? Who?”

      “My dear, you must have some idea of how much that painting is worth. Whenever such amounts of money are concerned, a lot of people take an interest.”

      “Ellison, our phone might be tapped, but no one’s hiding up on that mountain twenty-four hours a day watching our house.”

      “How do you know that?”

      The sound of the doorchime came drifting cooly out through the open patio doors, from inside the cool caverns of the house. Ellison sighed, put down the charcoal stick, wiped his hands, and went to answer. Having all the help gone was not necessarily a boon. He supposed this would turn out to be some neighbor brat with Girl Scout cookies to sell.

      The boy standing at the front door was undersized and shabby. He was a total stranger to Ellison, yet at first glance Ellison knew he was not selling cookies. Nor was his presence here merely some routine mistake. The young face waiting had something extraordinary about it; and not only extraordinary but wrong. This unusual wrongness Ellison accepted as a sign that the visitor knew what door he stood at.

      “What is it?” Ellison demanded. In annoyance he used the lordliest tone he could produce, even though he was already sure that there would be no getting rid of this lad that easily.

      The young eyes, cloudy blue, looked back at Ellison. Most people would have seen in them a probability of innocence. But Ellison saw more, and worse.

      “I want to see Annie,” the apparition announced, in a voice whose boyish appeal seemed to have been practiced.

      The name meant nothing to Ellison. He only looked at the intruder, willing without much hope that he should go away.

      “Annie knows me. My name is Pat O’Grandison, I’m a good friend of hers. I know she lives here.”

      “No one named Annie lives in this house. Or ever has.”

      “You her father?” the youth asked doubtfully. “Maybe she’s not here right now, but if not she’ll be back soon. Has she run away from home, or something like that? If that’s it, she’ll soon be back.”

      Ellison heard a soft sound behind him, and turned to see Stephanie approaching. She came looking like a great Spanish lady, with the old shawl still round her shoulders. Her face was troubled as she stared at the visitor.

      Ellison spoke to his wife while nodding toward the boy. “One of Del’s old crowd perhaps?” he mused. “But he never brought any of them here, to my knowledge. I thought all that went on out in Arizona, not here under my roof.”

      Stephanie only shook her head slightly in reply. Eyeing the visitor up and down, she asked him: “Who are you? Why are you here?”

      The boy put out a frail arm to lean his weight tiredly against real adobe bricks. He scratched at one with a black-rimmed fingernail, as if he wondered what it was. “Can I come in and get a drink of water, please? It’s all right, I really know Annie.” Then he focused on Ellison suddenly; as if, Ellison thought uncomfortably, he might be trying to recall where he had seen the big graying man before.

      “I think we’d better let him in,” advised Stephanie. “He looks a little sick to me.”

      “On something, more likely.”

      “What’s the difference?”

      “Oh all right, let him in.”

      The boy came in and like someone near exhaustion dropped himself into the first handy chair.