The Riverhouse by G. Norman Lippert Read Free Book Online Page B

distinctly female. Strange that he should be able to recognize that, even in the midst of his shock, but he had. Smithy was a guy’s name, and if there was such an entity as Smithy, he was a male. Shane couldn’t know this anymore than he could know that that awful sigh had come from the throat of something female, but he went ahead and knew it anyway. Some things you just didn’t question.
    And the second thing that occurred to him as he stood there in the dimness of his bedroom, staring down at his bed, was that he wanted to paint. For the first time in decades, he wanted to paint at night; not to put in his shift and get the work done, but just for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it. He’d had a refresher taste of creating at the whim of the muse earlier in the day, in the dirt in front of the destroyed manor house, and he’d liked it. Maybe he could duplicate that experience now, tonight, just until he got sleepy again.
    He was turning away from his bed, leaving the bedroom even as he thought these things. He trotted up the stairs to the little studio, taking them two at a time. He didn’t know what he was going to paint, only that he wasn’t going to work on the matte painting that was still sitting unfinished on his easel. That was shift work. Tonight, he was just going to paint for himself, just for the thrill of creating.
    And who was he kidding? He knew
exactly
what he was going to paint. He’d already made the sketch. It was in the dirt a quarter mile away, but he could remember it very well.
    He could remember it perfectly.

    The next morning, Shane awoke at his normal time, just as the sun was coming up.
    He was a little surprised by this, considering how late he’d been up the night before, and how tired he’d felt when he’d finally fallen into bed. Apparently, the body’s long habits overruled temporary breaks in the routine.
    He threw off the covers and padded to the shower, not even feeling particularly groggy, like he had the morning before. That had been the morning after he’d moved into the cottage, the morning after he had “celebrated” the move with almost an entire six pack of St. Pauli Girl beer, in the dark all by himself on the back patio. Shane had never been a heavy drinker, and when he did drink, he always felt it the next morning. Apparently, however, staying up to paint had the opposite effect. Not only did he feel alert and chipper, he felt positively energetic.
    Maybe today he’d finally finish the matte painting. The moment he did, he’d take it off the big easel, prop it in the corner to dry—his symbolic gesture of
fini
—and head downstairs to call his new agent, a guy named Morrie Greenfeld who worked in a high rise office in downtown St. Louis. That would feel good. It would prove to both himself and Greenfeld that he was, indeed, a can-do artist, one who met the deadline, and with quality work.
    Shane had been a little worried about that as of late, and he hated to think that Greenfeld might have shared his worries. The matte painting was the first gig Greenfeld had arranged for Shane, even if it had been Shane’s portfolio and pencil sketch that had sealed the deal. Shane knew how these things worked. If he couldn’t produce the art and impress the client his first time out, Greenfeld wouldn’t take the time to tell him to get his butt in gear. Shane would simply not hear from him again. Sure there were other agents looking for artists—this was St. Louis, after all, not Manhattan—but when word got out that an artist was hard to work with, it was a hard reputation to live down. If Shane didn’t get this matte painting done quickly, and if the result didn’t amaze the client, his shift would probably become eerily, depressingly easy.
    Thus, Shane looked very forward to finishing this contract during today’s shift. The way he felt as he poured his coffee from the percolator and tramped up the stairs, he thought he just might do it, too. The foreman in his