“Not just one time, either,” I said. “How many?” “I counted twenty-three.” “For Sebastian Curry?” Ellen McNeil shook her head in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous.” We were in the back office at Unique Expressions, Ellen’s art gallery in the University City Loop. Ellen was tall and thin with intense dark eyes and long curly black hair. She was wearing a black turtleneck, a Navajo silver-and-turquoise necklace with matching dangly earrings, wheat-colored drawstring cotton woven pants, and clogs. Hard to believe that just four years ago, Ellen McNeil had been dressed in conservative business suits and earning tens of thousands of frequent flyer miles as a financial consultant for one of the big accounting firms. Ellen had graduated from Vassar with a degree in art history twenty-three years ago and moved to Greenwich Village to live the artist’s life, which turned out to be three lonely years of waiting tables and scrounging tips to pay the outrageous rent on a roach-infested studio with a panoramic view of a gray airshaft.
