"Because I find you fascinating."

"After all these years?"

"It's probably abnormal," I said, "but I can't help it."

It had been late afternoon by the time I left the Addison Club. I walked home and took a shower, then sat down and went over my notes. She'd called around six to say she wouldn't be getting home for dinner. "I've got an artist coming at seven to show me his slides," she said, "and I've got my class tonight, unless you want me to skip it."

"Don't do that."

"There's some leftover Chinese in the fridge, but you'd probably rather go out. Don't throw out the leftovers, I'll have them when I get home."

"I've got a better idea," I said. "I want to get to a meeting. You go to your class, and meet me afterward at Paris Green."

"Deal."

I went to the 8:30 meeting at St. Paul's, then walked down Ninth Avenue and got to Paris Green around a quarter after ten. Elaine was on a stool at the bar, chatting with Gary and nursing a tall glass of cranberry juice and seltzer. I went to collect her and he laid a hand on my arm.

"Thank God you're here," he said archly. "That's her third one of those, and you know how she gets."

Bryce gave us a window table, and over dinner she told me about the artist who'd come around earlier, a West Indian black who was the superintendent of a small apartment house in Murray Hill and a self-taught painter.

"He does these village scenes in oil on masonite," she said, "and they have a nice folk-art look to them, but they left me underwhelmed. Maybe I've seen too much of that kind of thing. Or maybe he has, because that's the feeling I got, that his source of inspiration wasn't his own childhood memories as much as it was the work of other artists he's been exposed to." She made a face. "But that's New York, isn't it? He's never taken a class or sold a painting, but he knows to bring slides. Who ever heard of a folk artist with slides? I bet you don't get that crap in Appalachia."