appeared to her. He seemed less like a man who had sacrificed family
love for his art than like a man incapable of giving that love. In
isolation he might have found a greater power to create; but he had also
found more time to admire himself and contemplate the infinite number of
ways in which he was superior to the ruck of his fellow men. She tried
not to let her distaste show, spoke only glowingly of his novels, but he
seemed to sense her disapproval. He quickly terminated the encounter
and returned to the bar.
He never looked her way again during the night. And he no longer held
forth to the assembled drinkers about anything, his attention directed
largely at the contents of his glass.
Now, sitting in the arms in her studio, holding the copy of Arts
American, and staring at Honell’s byline, she felt her stomach curdle.
She had seen the great man in his cups, when he had uncloaked more of
his true self than it was his nature to reveal. Worse, she was a person
of some accomplishment, who moved in circles that might bring her into
contact with people Honell also knew. He saw her as a threat.
One way of neutralizing her was to undertake a well-written, if unfair,
article criticizing her body of work; therafter, he could claim that any
tales she told about him were motivated by spite, of questionable true.
She knew what to expect from him in the Arts American piece, and Honell
did not surprise her. Never before had she read criticisms more vicious
yet so cunningly crafted to spare the critic accusations of personal
animosity.
When she finished, she closed the magazine and put it down gently on the
small table beside her chair. She didn’t want to pitch it across the
room because she knew that reaction would have pleased Honell if he had
been present to see it.
Then she said, “To hell with it,” picked up the magazine, and threw it
across the room with all the force she could muster. It slapped hard
against the wall and clattered to the floor.
Her work was important to her. Intelligence, emotion, talent, and
creativity went into it, and even on those occasions when a painting did
not turn out as well as she had hoped, no creation ever came easily.
Anguish always was a part of it. And more self-revelation than seemed
prudent.
Exhilaration and dispair in equal measure. A critic had every right to
dislike an artist if his judgement was based on thoughtful consideration
and an understanding of what the artist was trying to achieve. But this
was not genuine criticism. This was sick invective.
Bile. Her work was important to her, and he had shit on it.
Filled with the energy of anger, she got up and paced. She knew that by
surrendering to anger she was letting Honell win; this was the response
he had hoped to extract from her with his dental-pliers criticism. But
she couldn’t help it.
She wished Hatch was there, so she could share her fury with him. He
had a calming effect greater than a fifth of bourbon.
Her angry pacing brought her eventually to the window where by now the
fat black spider had constructed an elaborate web in the upper right
hand corner. Realizing that she had forgotten to get a jar from the
pantry, Lindsey picked up the magnifying glass and examined the silken
fillagree of the eight-legged fisherman’s net, which glimmered with a
pastel mother of-pearl iridescence. The trap was so delicate, so
alluring. But the living loom that spun it was the very essence of all
predators, strong for its size and sleek and quick. Its bulbous body
glistened like a drop of thick black blood, and its rending mandibles
worked the air in anticipation of the flesh of prey not yet snared.
The spider and Steven Honell were of a kind, utterly alien to her and
beyond understanding regardless of how long she observed them. Both
spun their webs in silence and isolation. Both had brought their
viciousness into her house uniuvited, one through words in a magazine
and the other through a tiny crack in a window frame or door jamb.