“And?”
“He could not afford to pay what I charge for such a job.”
“Are you very expensive?”
“That depends.”
“On the animal? A canary can’t cost all that much.”
“On the customer. If it concerns a pet that was very dear to them then I have to lower my price.”
“So you dropped your price. Feelings took priority over common sense?”
“Perhaps, but I still have to make a living. Six months ago I received a large, lucrative commission which has led to me putting everything else aside while I finish it, so hopefully I’m not too naive. Anyway, the result is that Mr. Gomez has had to wait.”
“When was the last time you were in contact with him?”
“I’ll need to check in my calendar.”
“What about the call log on your phone?”
“We’ve never spoken on the phone—I don’t know whether he has one. Just a moment.”
Lunde disappeared, and again Bob Oz was struck by the silence. Why did he like it so much? Was it the feeling of time standing still, of discovering a moment in which it didn’t move forward or backward, in which nothing happens? In which everything feels safe?
Lunde returned. He was now wearing a small pair of glasses perched on the tip of his nose as he peered down into a book bound in brown leather. “Now let’s see…”
“Mind if I tape this, for the record?”
“Of course. The taxidermy of the word.”
“Sorry?”
“I visited Tomás Gomez on October 7.”
“Youvisitedhim?”
“He invited me for some of his homemade chili con carne. It was extremely tasty.”
“Do you usually visit your customers’ homes?”
“Not always, but if possible I like to see where my work will be displayed. To see what sites are available and find out which spots the pet frequented, how my customers were used to seeing the animal. It can be useful in deciding the ultimate pose of the finished piece. And the lighting is important. Enough to highlight the details, not so much that the work fades.”
“You take this extremely seriously?”
Lunde looked at Bob over the top of his glasses. “I try to take it every bit as seriously as my customers do. I feel it’s something I owe them. But of course”—he smiled wryly—“it has happened that sometimes I take things a littlemoreseriously than my customers do. So I need to listen.” He flipped on through his calendar. “By that time we had had three…no, four meetings in the store, I see here.”
“And you did what? The cat still being in the freezer, I mean.”
“What I said.”
“What you said?”
“I listened.”
Bob Oz nodded slowly. “To what he had to say about the cat?”
“To what he had to say.”
