Homeport

to . . . converse a little more, I’ll give you a discount.”
    He’d once been mildly in lust with a girl from the Bronx. The sentiment of it had him taking another fifty out of his wallet. “That’s for the help, and the beer.” He turned for the door, giving the dragon a last glance. “You get tight for money, take that to Michael at Boldari here on the waterfront. He’ll give you a good price for it.”
    “Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind. Come back anytime, Slick.” She toasted him with the beer. “I owe you a free ride.”
    Ryan walked directly across the hall, finessed the lock, and was inside Mathers’s apartment before his second fifty had been hidden away.
    The room mirrored the one he’d just been in as to size. Ryan doubted the tanks for welding metal were approved by the landlord. There were several pieces in varying stages of work. None of them showed the insight or talent of the dragon he’d given a whore for sex. His heart was in bronzes, Ryan decided when he studied the small fluid nude standing on the stained tank of the toilet.
    A self-critic, he thought. Artists could be so pathetically insecure.
    He managed to search the entire apartment in under fifteen minutes. There was a mattress on the floor with a tangle of sheets and blankets, a cigarette-scarred dresser with drawers that stuck.
    Over a dozen sketch pads, most of them filled, were stacked on the floor. Miranda had been right, Ryan mused as he flipped through, he had a good hand.
    The only things in the apartment that appeared well cared for were the art supplies, which were arranged on army-gray metal shelves and stacked in plastic milk cartons.
    The kitchen held a box of Rice Krispies, a six-pack of beer, three eggs, moldy bacon, and six packages of frozen dinners. He also found four neatly rolled joints hidden in a jar of Lipton tea bags.
    He found sixty-three cents in change and a long-forgotten Milky Way bar. There were no letters, no notes, no stash of cash. He located the final disconnect notice for the phone crumpled in the trash along with the empties for another six-pack.
    Nowhere was there a clue where Harry had gone or why, or when he intended to return.
    He’d be back, Ryan mused, giving the room one more scan. He wouldn’t abandon his art supplies or his stash of dope.
    And when he came back, he’d call the minute he had his hands on the business card. Starving artists could be temperamental, but they were also predictable. And every mother’s son or daughter of them hungered for one thing more than food.
    A patron.
    “Come home soon, Harry,” Ryan murmured, and let himself out.

twenty-six
    M iranda stared down at the fax that had just hummed out of her machine. This one was all in caps, as if the sender was screaming the words.
I HAVEN’T ALWAYS HATED YOU. BUT I WATCHED YOU. YEAR AFTER YEAR. DO YOU REMEMBER THE SPRING YOU GRADUATED FROM GRAD SCHOOL—WITH HONORS, OF COURSE—AND HAD AN AFFAIR WITH THE LAWYER. CREG ROWE WAS HIS NAME, AND HE BROKE IT OFF, DUMPED YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO COLD AND DIDN’T PAY ENOUGH ATTENTION TO HIS NEEDS. REMEMBER THAT, MIRANDA?
HE TOLD HIS FRIENDS YOU WERE A MEDIOCRE FUCK. I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT. WELL, NOW YOU DO.
I WASN’T VERY FAR AWAY. NOT VERY FAR AWAY AT ALL.
DID YOU EVER FEEL ME WATCHING YOU?
DO YOU FEEL IT NOW?
THERE ISN’T MUCH TIME LEFT. YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WERE TOLD. YOU SHOULD HAVE ACCEPTED THE WAY THINGS WERE. THE WAY I WANTED.
THEM TO BE. MAYBE GIOVANNI WOULD BE ALIVE IF YOU HAD.
DO YOU EVER THINK OF THAT?
I DIDN’T ALWAYS HATE YOU, MIRANDA. BUT I DO NOW.
CAN YOU FEEL MY HATE?
YOU WILL.
    The paper trembled in her hands as she read it. There was something horribly childlike about the big block letters, the schoolyard-bully taunts. It was meant to hurt, humiliate, and frighten, she told herself. She couldn’t allow it to succeed.
    But when the buzzer on her intercom sounded, her breath caught on a gasp and her fingers clenched and crumpled the edges of the fax. Foolishly she laid it on her desk, smoothing out the creases precisely as she answered Lori’s page.
    “Yes?”
    “Mr. Boldari is here, Dr. Jones. He wonders if you have a moment to see him.”
    Ryan. She nearly said his name aloud, pressed her fingertips to her lips to keep the word in her mind only. “Would you ask him to wait, please.”
    “Of course.”
    So he was back. Miranda rubbed her hands over her cheeks to bring color back into them. She had her pride, she thought. She