whether they were booing the Artist or Rodney. When Rodney finished his work, he threw down his brush.
Karen came to the lip of the stage. “For those of you who come regularly, you know that I don’t interfere with your art. I respect all sincere efforts at self-expression through painting. Tonight is different. Rivka is going to clean the canvas and re-create our work.”
“Just as long as you broadcast my painting first, bitch.” Rodney grabbed the Artist and dragged her across the stage to the webcams.
Rodney couldn’t hold her and operate the cameras at the same time, and the two dancers refused to move when he commanded them to photograph his work. Olympia pushed through her audience to the stage and held Karen while Rodney operated the camera.
Rodney nodded in satisfaction and left the stage. Karen wrenched herself free of Olympia. She grabbed a brush and painted a long red stripe that ran from Olympia’s nose, down her cleavage, and onto the black leather jacket that opened below Olympia’s breastbone. The Artist dropped the brush on the floor and strode to the back of the stage, where she disappeared behind the curtains.
The crowd cheered and yelled, so Olympia pretended to take it in good humor. She signaled to someone behind the bar to turn up the houselights.
“We never know what the Body Artist will produce for us when she appears, but we all know by now it will be entertainment we won’t see anywhere else in Chicago. We here at Club Gouge respect art and artists, and we’re contributing tonight’s profits to a scholarship that Columbia College has set up in Nadia Guaman’s honor.”
The images of death and innocence disappeared from the plasma screens on the stage. They were replaced by blue-and-white shadowy dancers, as a hot beat began pounding through the speakers. As always, the end of the Artist’s performance signaled a frenzy of drinking. For ten minutes or so, the waitstaff were moving like crazed ballerinas from table to bar to table. Several couples hopped on the stage and began to dance. Olympia quickly directed her staff to move the paints and webcams out of the way. Whatever kept the customers happy . . .
I scanned the room, hoping to spot some of Chad’s buddies in the mob. As far as I could tell, none of them had come. Rodney was still at his solitary table, working on what looked like his seventh beer. Although the room was so crowded that thirty or forty people were standing along the perimeter or even on the stage looking for seats, Rodney’s sullenness created a force field that no one wanted to cross.
Beyond him was a table of men who looked incongruous in this club setting—four men in their forties, in well-cut business suits. As I stared, I realized one of them looked vaguely familiar. And he was watching me in turn. Of course: Prince Rainier Cowles, the lawyer who’d been at Nadia’s funeral—had it been this afternoon? It felt like a hundred years had passed. I squirmed through the bodies around me to his side.
“Mr. Cowles! V. I. Warshawski. We met at Nadia Guaman’s funeral this afternoon.”
His brows contracted. “What are you doing here?”
I smiled down at him. “It’s a cold night, on top of a cold and stressful day. I thought an evening at an art club would cheer me up. How about you?”
A man at his table laughed. “Is that what you call this place? I would have said skin joint. I thought about sticking a twenty up that girl’s sunshine, but no one else was doing it.”
“That would have been artistic and creative of you,” I said. “And a bold statement of leadership.”
The speaker frowned at me, but before he could fire back, one of his tablemates said, “That’d be good for the annual report, Mac. We go into danger zones that no one else dares enter.”
“We should buy a piece of her tail.” Mac looked at me as if to emphasize that he was directing his crudeness at me. “Did you write down the Web address, Cowles? I’d like her tits where I could look at them from time to time.”
This caused not just another outburst of laughter but some congratulatory high fives. I dug my hands into my pockets to keep from flinging their drinks in their faces.
I grinned down at Cowles. “This is the kind of evening that the Guamans would enjoy, isn’t it? Witty banter about women’s bodies right after burying their daughter.”