Hot Ice

create.”
    “You can pull that artistic temperament crap on someone else, Clare. I happen to know you’re just a lazy slob.”
    “When you’re right, you’re right.” She came out again with a pint of Dutch chocolate ice cream and a tablespoon. “Want some?”
    “No.” It was a constant irritation to Angie that Clare could binge on junk food whenever the whim struck, which was often, and never add flesh to her willowy figure.
    At five-ten, Clare wasn’t the stick figure she had been during her childhood, but still slender enough that she didn’t check the scale each morning as Angie did. Angie watched her now as Clare, wearing her leather apron over bib overalls, shoveled in calories. In all likelihood, Angie mused, she wore nothing under the denim but skin.
    Clare wore no makeup, either. Pale gold freckles were dusted across her skin. Her eyes, a slightly darker shade of amber-gold, were huge in her triangular face with its soft, generous mouth and small, undistinguished nose. Despite Clare’s unruly crop of fiery hair, just long enough to form a stubby ponytail when it was pulled back with a rubberband, and her exceptional height, there was an air of fragility about her that made Angie, at thirty only two years her senior, feel maternal.
    “Girl, when are you going to learn to sit down and eat a meal?”
    Clare grinned and dug for more ice cream. “Now you’re worried about me, so I guess I’m forgiven.” She perched on a stool and tucked one booted foot under the rung. “I really am sorry about lunch.”
    “You always are. What about writing notes to yourself?”
    “I do write them, then I forget where I’ve put them.”
    With her dripping spoon, she gestured around the huge, disordered space. The sofa where Angie sat was one of the few pieces of furniture, though there was a table under a pile of newspapers, magazines, and empty soft drink bottles. Another stool was shoved into a corner and held a bust of black marble. Paintings crowded the walls, and pieces of sculpture—some finished, some abandoned—sat, stood, or reclined as space allowed.
    Up a clunky set of wrought-iron steps was the storeroom she’d converted into a bedroom. But the rest of the enormous space she’d lived in for five years had been taken over by her art.
    For the first eighteen years of her life, Clare had struggled to live up to her mother’s standards of neatness and order. It had taken her less than three weeks on her own to accept that turmoil was her natural milieu.
    She offered Angie a bland grin. “How am I supposed to find anything in this mess?”
    “Sometimes I wonder how you remember to get out of bed in the morning.”
    “You’re just worried about the show.” Clare set the half-eaten carton of ice cream aside where, Angie thought, it would probably melt. Clare picked up a pack of cigarettes and located a match. “Worrying about it is a lesson in futility. They’re either going to like my stuff, or they’re not.”
    “Right. Then why do you look like you’ve gotten about four hours’ sleep?”
    “Five,” Clare corrected, but she didn’t want to bring up the dream. “I’m tense, but I’m not worried. Between you and your sexy husband, there’s enough worrying going on already.”
    “Jean-Paul’s a wreck,” Angie admitted. Married to the gallery owner for two years, she was powerfully attracted by his intelligence, his passion for art, and his magnificent body. “This is the first major show in the new gallery. It’s not just your butt on the line.”
    “I know.” Clare’s eyes clouded briefly as she thought of all the money and time and hope the LeBeaus had invested in their new, much larger gallery. “I’m not going to let you down.”
    Angie saw that despite her claims, Clare was as scared as the rest of them. “We know that,” she said, deliberately lightening the mood. “In fact, we expect to be the gallery on the West Side after your show. In the meantime, I’m here to remind you that you’ve got a ten A.M. interview with New York magazine, and a lunch interview tomorrow with the Times.”
    “Oh, Angie.”
    “No escape from it this time.” Angie uncrossed her shapely legs. “You’ll see the New York writer in our penthouse. I shudder to think of holding an interview here.”
    “You just want to keep an eye on me.”
    “There is that. Lunch at Le Cirque, one sharp.”
    “I wanted to go in and check on the setup at the gallery.”
    “There’s time for that,