The Drowning Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

factories into art spaces …”
    “Like MASSMoCA in North Adams?”
    “Right, and Dia is converting a factory up in Beacon into a museum … anyway, suddenly Gavin’s interested in the space again. What I’m hoping is that instead of turning it into a cheesecake factory with cheap souvenir stores we can get some gallery space and studios for working artists. Actually, I thought you might be able to help me with the proposal to ArtHudson … Gavin’s on the board and you seem to have his ear.”
    Christine turns on her heel so that she’s facing the windows again. “Actually I could do with some cheesecake at the moment,” she says. “Where’s that food you promised?”
    “Right this way.”
    As soon as I open the door to the courtyard both dogs bound in, their nails scrabbling on the polished wood floor. They lap the room, their long dainty necks stretched out sniffing the air, and then come to rest against my hip, eyeing Christine with suspicion.
    “Hey, you didn’t tell me you got dogs.”
    Actually I did, but I don’t remind Christine of that. Clearly all she’s been able to think about the last few months has been the Lady window.
    “Bea’s been hounding me—pun intended—for a dog since she could talk, but we couldn’t have one in the apartment over my dad’s garage. We got these two from Greyhound Rescue three months ago.”
    “They’re beautiful. What are their names?”
    “Paolo and Francesca.”
    “Oh, are they Italian greyhounds?” Christine asks, smiling.
    “No, just regular, overworked racing Greyhounds. Watch them for a minute and you’ll see where they get their names.” I nudge them off my hip and they do another circle around the room, Francesca on the outside, Paolo leaning into her in the tight curves.
    It takes Christine a few minutes to remember the line from our junior year Dante seminar. “… 
these two that move together and seem to be so light upon the wind
. That’s how Dante describes Paolo and Francesca when he first sees them in the second circle of hell.”
    “Brava! Professor Da Silva would be proud—remember how much he loved that line?”
    Christine tilts her head at me. It strikes me that with her pale coloring and long neck she looks a little like the greyhounds. “I remember it was Neil’s favorite line, too …”
    Although Penrose is a woman’s college, Neil, a junior at Columbia, had petitioned the college for special permission to sit in on Umberto Da Silva’s famous Dante seminar as an exchange student.
    I look away from Christine’s inquiring gaze into Francesca’s adoring one. Paolo has his eyes closed, his head resting on Francesca’s neck.
    “The Greyhound Rescue lady told us they stay so close together because they were crated in a cage so small they couldn’t both lie down. She thought they took turns leaning against each other for rest, and she wouldn’t let me take one without the other. After that story I was lucky to get Bea out of there with only two rescued greyhounds.”
    “Talk about the ninth circle of hell,” Christine says, still giving me that quizzical look, which I ignore by leading her through the courtyard, stopping to unlock the metal gate to the north wing of the factory. She wanders through the weeds and stops at the door to the east wing.
    “What’s that noise? It sounds like a wind tunnel,” she asks while I wrestle with the rusted lock.
    “The glass furnaces,” I tell her. “We’ve got two glass blowers renting space. Ernesto Marquez, who also does window removal and installation for me, and a woman named Marina who trained at the Corning Museum and is exhibiting in Venice right now. She does amazing work.”
    “Isn’t it a fire hazard to keep a furnace like that burning?”
    “That’s why all the hot glass work is kept in that wing. Notice that it’s not joined to the other wings. It’s a completely fireproof building made of concrete and steel—it’s where the Penrose studios made the glass