Where Love Has Gone by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online Page A

feel like an idiot. I turned and looked up.
    A girl was standing in the window just above the building entrance. At first my gaze swept on past her, then by reflex, or precognition, or kismet, or what have you, my eyes came back to her. In that fractional moment our eyes met.
    Nora turned angrily from the window. It was too much. She didn’t belong here, she should never have come to work here in the first place. She hesitated a moment, then went downstairs to the personnel office.
    She was bound to quit someday, why not today, the day of her first show?
    So now it was all different. She was alive once more and the world was happening all around her. She picked up the thread of a conversation. San Corwin, the art critic of the Examiner , was talking to a man she didn’t know.
    “Assemblage is the art of the future,” he was saying. “We’re finding out every day that this war goes on that the only true art is the result of accident. War is destroying man’s avowed purpose and the only thing that will be left when all this is over will be the result of accident. So assemblage will be the only art form that reflects the attempt of Nature to arrange itself into something of meaning.”
    She plunged headlong into the conversation. Anytime she could find herself on the opposite side of an argument with Sam, she was ready for it. She remembered when she too had been impressed with his erudition. She had been not quite seventeen and an enthusiastic art major the night she had gone to his apartment for a few words of wisdom.
    They had ended up taking their differences of opinion to bed in order to resolve them. She still remembered the frightened expression on his face when she’d told him afterward that she was below the legal age of consent.
    Now she turned and looked into Sam’s face. “I disagree, Sam. Art without purpose is nothing. It merely expresses the emptiness of the artist. Especially in sculpture. A finished work must have something to say, even if its creator is the only one who can hear it.”
    She smiled at the man she didn’t know and apologized, holding out her hand. “I’m Nora Hayden and sometimes Sam gets me going.”
    The small middle-aged man with the pleasant smile took her hand. “I suspect Sam does that sometimes to get a rise out of people. I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Hayden. I’m Warren Bell.”
    She raised her eyes in surprise. Warren Bell was one of the leading art teachers in the country. “Professor Bell, this is an honor.” She turned to Sam accusingly. “You should have let us know that Dr. Bell was coming, Sam.”
    “Don’t scold him, Miss Hayden. I hadn’t expected to be here, actually. I had a luncheon date with Sam and he suggested I tag along. Since I’d heard so much about your work, I couldn’t resist.”
    “Professor Bell is planning a contemporary American sculpture show down at U.S.C.,” Sam said. “I told him that no show would be complete without something of yours in it. So you see I’m not as much against you as you think.”
    She held up her hand in mock surrender. “Sam, you’re absolutely right. Assemblage is the art of
    the future!”
    They all laughed.
    “I’ll get Arlene Gately to show you around,” she said to Dr. Bell. Arlene Gately, who ran a small gallery downtown, was acting as her sponsor and agent.
    “That won’t be necessary. I’d really much prefer to poke around on my own.” “Please do.” She smiled. “If there’s anything you want to know, please ask me.”
    The professor bowed slightly and wandered off. Nora turned back to Sam. “You stinker!” she whispered. “You might have tipped me off.”
    “I wanted to. But every time I looked for you, you were surrounded.” He fished a pipe out of his jacket and stuck it in his mouth. “By the way, is it true that you may have a show at the Clay Club in New York next month?”
    She looked at him curiously. “How did you know that?” “Arlene. Where else?”
    “Sometimes