• • •
“Just because she’s gotten decent reviews for that show in Seattle and sold a few pieces of glass, she thinks she’s some kind of star,” Eubie Kane said. “She’s not; she’s a thief. And she’s avoiding me because she’s afraid I know.”
A tall, slender man in his mid-twenties, Kane paced in front of the checkout counter at the Bullseye Resource Center, the retail store for the glass manufacturer. As he walked back and forth, his voice grew louder with each sentence, powered by wind milling arms and a rising tide of indignation. Clad in worn overalls and a dingy T-shirt, he looked more like a panhandler at a freeway exit than the artist he was. “But now that I know what she’s been doing, she’s going to have to … ”
“Eubie,” manager Felicia Hamilton interrupted, “keep your voice down. I called her. She was unpacking her studio and forgot she promised to meet you. Why didn’t you just go over there in the first place?”
“I wanted to meet her here.” Kane shifted his backpack as if it contained a great weight and continued pacing, much to the amusement of the other artists there to purchase glass for their projects and the students who’d been drawn in from the classroom space adjacent to the retail area by his loud voice.
“If I let her, she’d always have some damned excuse about being busy.” Kane swung the backpack off his shoulder, sideswiping a pyramid of jars full of granulated glass, causing it to teeter, like a near miss in some carnival game. Ricocheting from that almost-disaster, he banged into the cart of a woman waiting to pay for her supplies, sending ten large sheets of glass tipping forward. A half-dozen people rushed to save the glass from crashing.
The manager motioned to Robin Jordan, the instructor whose class had become part of the audience, to get other customer carts piled with glass out of Kane’s orbit. “She has been busy. She just moved back to town; she’s got a show coming up in Tacoma, commissions from her Seattle show.”
“Right. The great Amanda St. Claire, busy doing work based on my ideas. And you’re covering for her, treating her with kid gloves because she’s a good customer.”
“Oh, come on, Eubie, we treat all our artists with kid gloves,” Felicia said in a cajoling tone. “We treat you with kid gloves, don’t we?”
“Yeah, sure.” His scornful expression showed what he thought of that statement. “She gets special treatment, even uses your big kiln when no one else can.”
“I don’t think Amanda’s ever asked but the answer for her would be the same as for anyone else. We only rent out the small kilns.”
“That’s bullshit. A guy who knows one of your staff told me she does.”
“Give me your source and I’ll get this straightened out. Amanda has never … ”
“I’ve never what, Felicia?” Amanda asked, coming in the door.
“Used our big kilns,” Felicia said. “Eubie says we let you use them.”
“Nope, never. Except for class projects the time I was a guest teacher. When I need a kiln bigger than the ones in my studio, I rent Kent Simon’s Skutt. Is that what you wanted? You should have told me. I can ask Kent to contact you.”
“That’s not it and you know it.” Kane pulled a magazine out of his backpack, opened it to a dog-eared page and thrust it in her face. “Did you think I wouldn’t see this?”