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him what it’s worth.”
    Her tongue played with her teeth again and her fingertips continued to caress the painting. “Okay, then, for Patrick’s edification, let’s explore a theory of value. In New York City, ground zero in the world of art, paintings originating in the American South largely went ignored until recent years, when collectors started to pay serious money for them. The big auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s had little respect for Asmore, but New York tends to take a negative view of most things southern—unless, of course, the artist has moved up North and established himself there. The most money a southern painting ever fetched at auction in New Orleans was just over three hundred thousand dollars. It was for a mural that once hung in Delmonico Restaurant on Saint Charles Avenue.”
    “Sure,” Patrick said. “I used to go there when I was a kid. That’s the place Emeril Lagasse turned into a steakhouse. Emeril’s Delmonico, he calls it.”
    Rhys nodded. “The artist, John McCrady, was one of the most celebrated this region ever produced. And the painting had many of the rather hackneyed features that collectors of the genre like—the Mississippi River, a steamboat, a plantation house ringed with columns, oak trees. And all this contributed to its result. But a McCrady, though widely sought after, isn’t as uncommon as an Asmore, nor is it as sexy.” Rhys exhaled and leaned back on the couch. “A conservative estimate?” she said. “On a bad day when it’s raining buckets outside and the stock market is taking a dive and the air is thick with talk of economic recession…? Even on the worst of days I’d say at auction in New Orleans this painting would bring no less than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
    “Jesus Christ,” said Patrick, jumping to his feet. He moved to the middle of the room. “Jesus Christ, Rhys. Did you…? You have got to be kidding me.”
    She was shaking her head.
    “Did you just say three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
    “And that’s on a bad day. On a good day I could see it going foras much as half a million. I say this because it’s that rare and that important and that desirable, and because it’s a portrait of a woman, perhaps even one of Asmore’s
Beloved
paintings.”
    Patrick staggered back to the couch and threw his arms around Rhys. I could hear him crying and so, obviously, could Elsa. She woke up, brought her legs together, and asked if anything was wrong. “Darling,” Patrick said, “your boyfriend of seventeen wonderful years is going to be rich.”
    Elsa had been hitting the Scotch, too. “Oh, wonderful,” she sighed, then promptly went back to sleep.

    Six weeks later I received a call from Patrick inviting me to attend the unveiling of the newly restored Asmore at the Guild’s studio in Central City. Rhys Goudeau had phoned him only minutes before, with news that the painting was fully restored and ready for his inspection, and he thought it good karma to invite me along, since I’d been there when the painting’s identity and potential value were revealed.
    The Guild leased an old brick firehouse on Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, in a depressed area known as Central City. A hundred and twenty years ago Rhys’s neighborhood had been one of the better addresses in the city, but now it ranked among the least desirable, despite the many examples of Victorian, Greek Revival and French Colonial architecture still lining the streets. Though long ago targeted for renewal, Central City had managed to repel the run-of-the-mill urban pioneer who idealistically sacrifices security for a posture of hipness in a large, inexpensive space. It took someone with a death wish to stake a claim in this spot, mainly because to live in the district too often meant to perish there as well.
    “Sorry, old sport, but I forgot to tell you to wear a bulletproof vest and my spare happens to be at the cleaner’s,” Patrick