Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page B

a few blocks away, but then veered off to take a side street another block to the motel access road. Across it he had found a way down to the shoreline, basalt rocks that were almost like deliberate stairs, and he descended it that sunny afternoon. Here was a little beach, no more than ten feet from the cliffs to the water when the tide was out, and gone when it was in. But he didn’t intend to go down all the way, only to a point where he had found basalt ledges, perfect for sitting in sunshine, protected from the wind, which seemed almost as constant as the incessant waves. The ledge was sun warmed, welcoming, and he sank down to contemplate waves breaking against a twenty-foot-high cliff, no more than thirty feet away, the southern barrier to the minuscule beach. Sea and cliff were engaged in a battle the cliff was destined to lose in time.
    Winners and losers, he thought, always winners and losers. He was thinking of the box that was not for sale and would never be for sale. He had made it five years ago, working on it in stolen minutes at a time in a closetlike space that was barely big enough to hold him, his workbench, and his tools, many of them inherited from his father.
    On Evelyn’s birthday he had presented the box to her, a peace offering as well as birthday gift. In a marriage that had started turning sour several years earlier and was deteriorating faster month by month, it had seemed right at the time.
    She had eyed it eagerly, opened it, and said in a disbelieving voice, “It’s empty! You gave me an empty box?” She snapped it shut and put it down hard on a table. “You gave me an empty box! Your idea of a joke? It’s not funny.”
    She left to go to her sister’s condo, where a birthday party was being given, and he stayed home and got drunk. The next day she flashed a bracelet studded with diamonds.
    â€œWhere did that come from?” he demanded.
    â€œI bought it!” she said defiantly. “Leonard gave Judith a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace for her birthday. I deserve a little something.”
    â€œYour sister’s married to a millionaire broker. You married a cop. We can’t afford that.”
    â€œI didn’t! I married a man less than a year away from being a lawyer! By now you’d have the corner office and we’d live the way Judith lives. But you couldn’t stand the idea of having a desk job,” she said scornfully. “You wanted to play cops and robbers.”
    He had gone to the telephone, taken out his wallet, and extracted four credit cards, two of them maxed out, a third one probably also maxed with that bracelet. He jerked open the telephone book, then jabbed in the number he found and reported a lost credit card. After the woman on the other end got the necessary information, she said they would send a replacement. He had said, “No, don’t send a new one yet. We’re moving and I don’t have the new address yet.”
    From across the room Evelyn stared at him, white-faced and shaking. “You can’t do that to me,” she said harshly. “How dare you pull a filthy trick like that!”
    He found a second number and was punching it in when she ran from the room.
    The following day he dismantled his shop and started selling the tools, and Evelyn went to stay with her sister. Two months later they sold the condominium, which they had bought when the price was affordable, and it brought a handsome profit with the skyrocketing prices that had since set in. His attorney and hers had agreed that the mortgage and all debts had to be paid before the proceeds could be divided. It didn’t leave much. He hadn’t cared. For the first time in years he was debt-free, and he had thought mockingly she might even have to go back to work. She had left a good job, buyer for a hotel consortium, because it hadn’t left her enough free time to go places with her sister. He hadn’t seen her since