The Whore's Child

visit a gallery or two. See if I can locate a bottle of wine for dinner.” The hotel, they’d been informed upon checking in, had no liquor license.
    â€œOne dinner without wine wouldn’t kill us, actually,” Beth said.
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œWell, it’s true I’m only guessing.”
    Martin studied her until she pushed her plate away. As usual, about half her food was untouched. In all of the time they’d been together, nearly a year now, Martin had never known her to finish a serving of anything. In restaurants known for small portions, Beth would order twice as much food and still leave half. Laura, he recalled, had eaten like a man, with appetite and appreciation.
    Then a thought struck him. “When have I ever been unable to answer the bell?” he asked. “Any bell.”
    Beth gave him a small smile, which meant that their argument, if that’s what this was, was over. “I’m not overly fond of boxing metaphors applied to sex,” she said, taking one of his thumbs and pulling on it. “It’s not war.”
    Like hell, Martin thought.
    â€œBut yes,” she conceded, “you
do
answer every bell, old man.”
    â€œThank you,” Martin said, meaning it. The question he’d asked had been risky, he realized, and he was glad the danger had passed.
    â€œI’m going back to the room for some sunscreen,” she said, pushing her chair back. “I’ll be taking the ‘A’ Trail—”
    Martin whistled a few bars of “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
    â€œâ€”in case I need rescuing.”
    Watching her cross the room, he had a pretty good idea what the sunscreen was for. She’d sunbathe on a rock, topless, in some secluded spot, while the young fellow from the ferry scrutinized her through binoculars from an adjacent bluff.
You could go with her,
he said to himself.
There’s nothing preventing you.
    But there was.
    From what he’d read in the brochure, roughly a third of the houses on the island had to be artists’ studios, though to the casual eye they looked no different from the other houses inhabited, presumably, by lobstermen and the owners of the island’s few seasonal businesses. All of the buildings were sided with the same weathered gray shingles, as if subjected, decades ago, to a dress code. He’d half expected to discover that Joyce had lied to him, but Robert Trevor’s studio was right where she said it would be, at the edge of the village where the dirt road ended and one of the island’s dozen or so hiking trails began. Martin had watched Beth disappear up another of these half an hour ago, purposely waiting until he was sure she hadn’t forgotten something and wouldn’t return until early evening.
    Trevor’s studio was unmarked except for a tiny sign with his last name to the left of the door, which was open. Martin was about to knock on the screen door when he heard a loud crash from around back of the house. There, on the elevated deck, Martin found a large man with a flowing mane of silver hair, dressed in paint-splattered jeans and an unbuttoned denim work shirt. He was teetering awkwardly on one knee, his other leg stretched out stiffly in front of him like a prosthesis, trying to prop up a rickety three-legged table with its splintered fourth leg. Jelly jars and paintbrushes were strewn everywhere. One small jar, which according to its label had originally contained artichoke hearts, had described a long, wet arc over the sloping deck and come to a teetering pause at the top of the steps before thumping down all five, coming to rest at Martin’s feet.
    He picked it up and waited for Robert Trevor—clearly this man was the artist himself—to take notice of him. The wooden leg fell off again as soon as the man, with considerable difficulty, got back to his feet and tested the table. “All right, be that way,” he said, tossing the leg aside and collapsing into a chair that didn’t look much sturdier than the table. It groaned under his considerable weight, but ultimately held. Martin saw that Robert Trevor was sweating and his forehead was smudged with several different colors of paint from his palette. There was an easel set up next to the table, and Trevor studied the halffinished canvas resting there, a landscape, as if rickety furniture were the least of his problems.
    It took him a minute to sense