Now You See Her by Linda Howard Page A

time. If it wasn’t for the anxiety that kept gnawing at her, she would have felt great. She decided to enjoy being warm and forget about how she had gotten that way.
    The hot dog vendor wasn’t in his usual spot. Sweeney stopped, disappointed and unaccountably uneasy. As if she could will it into appearing, she stared at the location where the cart was usually parked. He must be sick, because she had never before walked down this street without seeing him.
    Worried, she walked on to the gallery. Kai rose from his desk and came forward to take the wrapped canvases from her. “Great! Candra and I have been talking about you. I can’t wait to see what you’re doing now.”
    â€œNeither can I,” Candra said, coming out of her office and smiling warmly at Sweeney. “Don’t look so worried. I don’t think you’re capable of doing a bad painting.”
    â€œYou’d be surprised what I can do,” Sweeney muttered.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” drawled a thin, black-clad man with stringy blond hair, sauntering out of Candra’s office. “I don’t think you’ve surprised any of us in a long time, darling.”
    Sweeney stifled a disgusted groan. VanDern. Just the person she least wanted to see.
    â€œLeo, behave yourself,” Candra admonished, giving him a stern look.
    At least, Sweeney thought, seeing VanDern chased away her anxiety. Hostility overrode anxiety any day of the week. Her eyes narrowed warningly as she looked at him.
    Like her mother, he epitomized what she despised most, dramatizing himself by wearing black leather pants, black turtleneck, black Cossack boots. Insteadof a belt, a hammered silver chain was draped around his skinny waist. He wore three studs in one ear and a hoop in the other. He was never clean-shaven, but cultivated the three-day-stubble look, expending more energy on appearing not to shave than he would have on shaving. She suspected he went months, certainly weeks, without washing his hair. He could go on for hours about symbolism and the hopelessness of modern society, about how man had raped the universe and how his single glob of paint on a canvas captured the pain and despair of all mankind. In his own opinion, he was as profound as the Dalai Lama. In hers, he was as profound as a turd.
    Candra unwrapped the canvases and in silence set them on some empty easels. Sweeney deliberately didn’t look at them, though her stomach knotted.
    â€œWow,” Kai said softly. He had said the same thing about her red sweater the day before, but this time the tone was different.
    Candra was silent, tilting her head a little as she studied the paintings.
    VanDern stepped forward, glancing at the paintings and dismissing them with a sneer. “Trite,” he pronounced. “Landscapes. How original. I’ve never seen trees and water before.” He examined his nails. “I may faint from the excitement.”
    â€œLeo,” Candra said in warning. She was still looking at the canvases.
    â€œDon’t tell me you like this stuff,” he scoffed. “You can buy ‘pitchers’ like this in any discount store in the country. Oh, I know there’s a market forit, people who don’t know anything about art and just want something that’s ‘purty’ but let’s be honest, shall we?”
    â€œBy all means,” Sweeney said in a low, dangerous voice, stepping closer to him. Hearing that tone, Candra snapped her head around, but she was too late to preserve the peace. Sweeney poked VanDern in the middle of his sunken chest. “If we’re being honest, any monkey can throw a glob of paint on a canvas, and any idiot can call it art, but the fact is, it doesn’t take any talent to do either one. It takes talent and
skill
to reproduce an object so the observer actually recognizes it.”
    He rolled his eyes. “What it
takes,
darling, is a total lack of imagination and