No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

The moral right of Robert Freeman Wexler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Other Books by the Author

In Springdale Town
Psychological Methods to Sell Should be Destroyed
The Painting and the City

Part One

Chapter 1: Point Elizabeth

Commuter trains always cut through the ass-end of things, wastelands of urban and suburban sprawl. Lewis stared out the window at a surrealist cast-off, juxtapositions of crumbling warehouses, vacant lots, ornate brick apartments, junkyards piled with crushed automobiles. Farther out (he had been assured), Long Island becomes an oasis of vineyards, organic farms, and quaint fishing villages. And why were fishing villages always described as "quaint"? Fishing had to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet.

A sign proclaiming Tucci's Auto Salvage flashed past. The train jangled to a stop at a town called Wantagh, and several passengers got off. Lewis hoped his destination, Point Elizabeth, was well past this swamp of over-congested desolation.

Picturing fishing boats and clam bars with nautical names, he had rented a house in Point Elizabeth for a few days as a refuge from the city. The only thing he knew about the place was its reputation as a center for scallop harvesting. The house belonged to an artist who called himself Are No; Lewis had found it through an ad in an arts newsletter.

Across the aisle, a woman leaned over to kiss the shoulder of the man beside her.

"You're kissing my fabric again," the man said.

Romantic fishing village weekends weren't meant to be taken alone. Lewis thought about Martha, seeing her face and long blond hair spray-painted across the back fences of the houses that the train shook past. Instead of coming with him, she had taken an extra assignment for her magazine, an interview with a famous underground film director's mistress. November was a stupid time to go to the ocean anyway, she said. They had argued about it and hadn't spoken to each other since, now two days.

A young girl behind him bounced in her seat, squealing, "Wanda wants a wild wombat, Wanda wants a wild wombat." Did the kid's mother think everyone wanted to hear? Haughty Martha would have turned around to glare at them.

He and Martha had met in college. They dated some, shared a house with several others, and split up after graduation. She moved to New York and he wandered, living for six months to a year in successive cities, uninterested in permanence. They had reunited at a party in New York a couple of years ago and decided to try living together. In arguments, she always claimed that her New York apartment was the reason for his being there.

Paths, journeys, destinations...sometimes moved in harmony, sometimes not. His life (peripatetic was the word his mother used in a letter forwarded by one of his sisters), his life wasn't governed by the places he went to or the jobs he found there, but by the act of going. What then, this dismal passage to the place called Point Elizabeth? Beyond the fences and hedges, anything could exist. He had always made these journeys alone—and that formed the root of his present discontent. Journeys intended to be solitary could be enjoyed in solitude or in the company of chance companions, but solitary journeys planned in tandem begin with a loss, a void difficult to fill on one's own.

Wombat girl and the mother got off at Fanshaw's Leap. The fabric-kissers remained for several more stops, then he was alone in the car. The sun set, and the sign for each stop became difficult to make out. The conductor wandered up and down the train, calling out names, but he didn't make it to every car in time to warn the passengers, though most seemed to sense theirs by instinct or ingrained repetition. Worried that the conductor wouldn't warn him when they reached Point Elizabeth, Lewis pulled out his train schedule and checked each time they stopped.

And finally, the conductor called "Point Elizabeth!" It beckoned, mysteries to be explored, charms like soft merino blankets to soothe his city-induced tensions.

Stepping down from the train, Lewis shivered. After the three hour ride, the sodden landscape depressed him. Rain had been falling all day in the city, but he had somehow expected it to be different here. Worse, the temperature was supposed to drop below freezing that night.

Two taxis waited in the parking lot. He got into one and gave the driver the address. Though Are No had said it was a ten minute walk, he didn't feel like trying it in the rain.

They turned down a dark street, and the pavement ended, giving way to gravel. The only light came from the cab's headlamps. The road began a gradual upward grade that soon steepened. When the cab reached the summit, the driver yelled and braked, the unexpected force throwing Lewis against the door. The car slid sideways and stopped. Sudden thoughtless random action interposing molecules of surprise, fear, heart speeding on to unknown destinations, farther farther. Where to, brave heart? Don't leave a poor man alone...not here, amongst the debris, the detritus, the unwashed ass-end of nowhere.

The driver's face appeared, wrapped in fog, framed by blue and orange lights that clung to his eyebrows and oozed from his nostrils. "Sorry. Sorry," the driver said. He reached toward Lewis as if to comfort him.

Lewis yelled—"What the fuck are you doing?"

Looking out the window beside his cheek, he saw that the street ended in the sea. Droplets of mist floating above the water glowed in the beam of the taxi's headlights. Across the inlet a red light blinked star-like on the end of a dock.

The driver backed the car away from the water. "Never taken this road to the end before," the driver said. "They oughtta have a barrier here." He pulled into the driveway of a white stucco house with the number twenty-three, which he had somehow failed to see as he sped past. Lewis paid and got out.

Are No's house appeared to have no front door. Lewis walked up the driveway, passing a two-seater sports car, to a back porch overlooking a wild yard of high grass and twisted trees. He knocked on the glass door and Are No opened it.

Are No stared at Lewis, blinking, as though he had been sleeping. "Yes?"

"I'm here to rent the house?" Two weeks ago he had met Are No at a bar in the East Village, giving him a deposit to reserve the place. Are No should have been expecting him. And after nearly getting dumped in the ocean he wasn't in the mood to get screwed around by some fake-named artist.

"Oh. Come in then." Are No continued his blinking stare, but backed up to give Lewis enough space to enter.

The interior of the house felt colder than the damp night outside. Lewis asked about the heat.

Are No looked offended. "Didn't I tell you? Heater's broken. Plenty of firewood though." He pointed across the one-room first floor to the fireplace, where a charred log sat on a grate over a pile of ash. A moose head with purple antlers hung over the mantle.

"I'll show you the bedroom then," Are No said; they walked to the far side of the room, past a floor-mounted photo collage, larger than a king sized bed and covered by a sheet of Plexiglas. The photos showed alternating views of sky and the surface of the water. A green armchair stood beside the collage, and beyond the chair, a narrow staircase led to the second floor.

Lewis followed Are No up the stairs.

"That's the bedroom," Are No said, pointing to the right. "The other is my studio. It gets the best light, but I don't want you in there."

The studio smelled of oil paint and turpentine. Untouched by the fireplace's inefficient heat, the upstairs rooms were colder than below. Are No picked up a suitcase from inside the studio, and they descended the stairs.

"Now, do you know how to start a fire?" he asked.

Lewis answered yes of course, but Are No kept talking.

"There are certain tricks learned through years of experience." Are No removed the screen and squatted in front of the fireplace. "You've got to punch up through a shaft of cold air. The heat on the bottom has a lot of wood to go through, so you put paper on the bottom and more paper on top to raise the heat."

Enough already, Lewis thought. Leave...he would handle things. He knew how to make a fucking fire. No way he would sleep upstairs though, too cold. He looked around the room at the paintings crowding the walls. Are No probably wouldn't approve of him sleeping in front of the fire, but he would be gone soon.

"Are you watching?" Are No said. "I think its ready." He struck a match on the fireplace bricks and lit the newspaper. When he stood up, he looked around the room, nodding, as though inspecting each piece of art, then turned to Lewis. "One of the burners on the stove works. You can use the table, but I'd appreciate it if you sit on the near end, where I've put the place mat. I told you no meat in the house, right? I don't have an answering machine, so if anyone calls, take a detailed message. There's a guidebook on the desk you can look at, but don't remove it from the house."

This must be the closing speech about leaving everything in the condition he found it. Fine, he wasn't destructive. He handed Are No several twenty dollar bills.

Are No laid them on the desk and stared at them, then looked at Lewis. "This isn't enough."

"We met...I paid half in advance—"

"No-no-no. You paid the deposit. You still owe for the rental."

Are No gathered the bills into a neat stack and stared at them, as though he could make the money increase. "I don't like this. I can't have you staying here unsecured. You're going to have to give me the full amount, or leave."

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