Snake in the Glass (4 page)

Sparse breakfast done, papers read and set aside for recycling, dogs fed and walked, I was ready to go down to the shop and see if there were any fires to put out there. Figuratively, I hoped. I made my way downstairs and greeted Nessa.

“You’re in early. You aren’t supposed to start until after lunch,” I said—then noticed Frank Kavanagh behind her. I broke into a grin. “Hey, you got here fast! When did you arrive?”

“Last night, or more like early this morning. Damned hard to find a place to stay around here.”

“Oh, sorry, I should have warned you. The Gem Show takes over everything for miles. Are you going to be around long? Because I could put you up here, at least until Cam comes back.”

“Cam’s not here?”

“No. When I told him about Allison, he decided to go off and sulk, but he should be back in a few days. He said to let him know when you got here. How is Allison, by the way?”

“Sorry, I should say. She told me to tell you she apologized—again. And again. And for the record, I don’t think she did right by your brother.” Frank glanced at Nessa, who smiled her approval. He smiled back. I smiled at them. One big happy family.

“Unless, of course, you have another place to stay?” I said innocently. Nessa tore her eyes away from Frank and glared at me. I smiled back. “Just asking. So, Frank, you have plans? I assume you want to head over to the Gem Show?”

“Plenty of time for that. I need to check things out a bit, see which of my mates are around. Maybe you can tell me the best bits to see at the show.”

“Me? I’ve never been. I was hoping
you
could tell me what to see.”

Frank laughed. “Blind leading the blind, eh? If you can give me directions to get there, I’ll tell you what you should look at.”

“That’s a tall order—the show isn’t just one site, it’s scattered all over town.”

“All the more reason I need someone who knows the area. When are you free?”

Kind man, to remember that I had a business to run. “During the show, business is pretty dead, so I’m more or less at your disposal.”

“Grand,” Frank replied, his eyes twinkling at me. Twinkling? Frank appeared to be in a very good mood, despite having flown a third of the way around the world recently. Of course, since home was Australia, he was probably used to it. Or he was just one tough old buzzard. Probably both.

“I was wondering if I could borrow this lady for lunch today.” He nodded toward Nessa. No surprise there.

I sketched a sign of blessing over them both. “Of course—we don’t even open until one on Sunday. Go forth and prosper, my children. Take as long as you like.”

“Right. I’ll scope out the territory and come back in a bit. Will that suit, Nessa?”

“That’s fine, Frank.”

Frank left with a flourish, and I turned to Nessa. “I get the feeling you haven’t been telling me everything.”

“Em, I’m over twenty-one, and you’re not my mother. Frank and I are enjoying . . . a flirtation. We’ll see where it goes. And there is the small detail of the geographical distance between us.”

“Piffle. No problem. Love conquers all.”

“Aren’t you in a cheery mood? Oh, did you see Matt last night?”

“I did, and get your mind out of the gutter, please. We had dinner and I promptly fell asleep on his broad and manly chest. Anyway, let me get some work done, and then I’ll come up and cover the shop while you’re at lunch. That okay with you?”

“Just fine.

I went back to the studio and stared at the clutter around me, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing there. Making glass, right. The new furnace sat glowing, its molten glass waiting silently. I turned on a glory hole, filled up my pipe bath and my tool bucket, and was just about ready to make a first gather when there was a rapping at the back door.

Few people came to my back door, and most of them were tradesfolk. I’d recently had some bad experiences with some who weren’t, so the lock was new, and there was a good peephole, which I used. On the other side stood a man, who looked harmless enough. It was broad daylight, Nessa was in the next room, and the streets were busy. I decided I could risk opening the door. “Hi. The shop entrance is at the front.”

“Yes, I know. You’re Em Dowell, right? And this is your studio?”

“Yes, to both. Why? You want to sign up for lessons?”

“No, not exactly. Can I come in?”

I looked him over. A couple of inches taller than me, he was wearing glasses and he needed a haircut. He looked kind of soft and pasty—definitely not threatening. “Okay, come on in. And your name is?”

The man walked in and looked around eagerly. “Oh, Ryerson, Denis Ryerson. I’m a professor in English literature at the university.”

“Okay, Denis, nice to meet you. What can I do for you?”

“You’ve got a glass furnace, right?”

“Yes, right over there.” I pointed. It seemed kind of a silly question.

“What kind of temperatures does it reach?”

Now that was a question I didn’t hear every day. “About 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Why?”

Denis appeared to come to some sort of internal decision. “Can I rent it, by the hour?”

This was getting odder and odder. “I do rent studio time by the hour. Are you a glassblower?”

“No, nothing like that. What do you know about treated gems?”

My expression must have told the story: I knew exactly nothing. “What do you mean ‘treated’?”

“Oh, sorry. I mean heat-treated. The practice of heating gems has been used for millennia—even as early as the Egyptians.”

“Why?” I still didn’t see where he was going with this, or where I fit.

“Usually to enhance the color, make it deeper, richer. Sometimes you can actually repair stones, fuse cracks.”

“Okay,” I replied cautiously. “So why exactly are you in need of my furnace?”

He shook his head, more for himself than for me. “I’m sorry, I’m doing this all backwards. Okay, here’s the deal. I’d like to rent the use of your furnace to attempt to treat some gems that I’ve acquired, to see if I can improve their quality. Is that possible?”

Well, this was certainly new to me. “Uh, I think I need to know more. For a start, is this legal?”

Denis nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. As I said, people have been doing it for thousands of years. In fact, many of the gems you’ve seen in stores today have been treated. Sapphires in particular, but also aquamarines, amethysts, tanzanite.”

“If you say so. So you’re doing this because you think you can make your own stones more valuable?”

“Exactly. People haven’t played around with peridot much, so it’s kind of an unknown quantity.”

Peridot. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard of it. “What kind of temperatures are you looking for?”

“Well, most gems are heated within a range from 450 to 1,850 Celsius. Based on what I’ve read, a lot of gems can go up to 2,000 Celsius.”

He’d read about it in a book? Great. I did a quick mental calculation and was shaking my head before the words were out of his mouth. “No can do. That’s over 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. I can push this to 2,400 Fahrenheit, max. Higher than that could destroy it.” No way was I going to risk my new baby on a stranger’s chancy scheme.

“Understood. But that’s the temperature most often used for stones like diamonds, rubies. There hasn’t been anywhere near as much work done with peridot. And for that matter, there have been recent discoveries in Madagascar of sapphires that could be altered at as little as 300 Celsius. That’s about the temperature your home oven reaches, if you have a self-cleaning one. So I’ll be happy to work within your lower ranges. And I can vary time of exposure, which also makes a difference. What do you say?”

“I say slow down. I can’t let the furnace get too cool because then I can’t work the glass, so that limits the lower end of the range. But I have an alternate suggestion. See that small boxy thing?” I pointed. “That’s a color kiln. I use it to heat up small batches of colored glass, rather than doing a whole crucible’s worth in the furnace. It’s electric, and the heat is easy to control. It’ll go up to about 2,000 Fahrenheit, and in fact the heat is more even and more consistent than the furnace’s would be, and it’s a lot easier to access. Sounds ideal for what you’re suggesting.”

Denis nodded vigorously. “Right, right. For a start. I’m kind of learning as I go. If that doesn’t work, at least I’ve eliminated some of the possibilities.”

Jet lag was still gumming up my mind. Another question percolated to the front. “You said you’re a professor at the university, so why aren’t you using the facilities there? Somebody must have some fancier equipment than this.”

“Yes, they do, but they frown on people using university facilities and equipment for personal purposes.”

Or else he wanted to keep his efforts off the radar. “So this is personal, not professional. I mean, you’re not going to write some scholarly paper about it?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m in the English department, after all. But I have these stones, which aren’t worth much in their current state, and I wanted to see if I could improve them. If it doesn’t work, I haven’t lost much. So, can I rent your kiln thing?”

I thought, or tried to. “How much time do you need?”

He shrugged. “I really don’t know, yet. Several hours at a time, I’d guess, although I don’t have to stay around for the whole time.”

It seemed harmless enough. “Okay, I set the ground rules. I’ve got a couple of advanced students who rent studio time, but I can tell you what their schedules are. I’d prefer you work when I’m on the premises, but I live over the shop, so I’m usually available.”

“Okay,” he replied eagerly. “How much do you charge?”

“Fifty dollars an hour for use of the studio. Why don’t we start with a fixed amount of time and see how it goes? Say, twenty hours? That would be an even thousand—with payment up front.”

Denis Ryerson was doing a good imitation of a bobble-head doll, and I wondered if I should have charged more. “That’s great. I’ll give you a check. Can I start now?”

This man is obsessed
, I thought. And I really needed time to think this through, without Denis in my face. “Listen, I just got back from a trip and I’m still a little jet-lagged. Can you wait a day or two?”

I’d always wondered what crestfallen looked like, and now I knew: Denis was the perfect image. “Okay, I guess I could wait a day. And we can compare calendars, decide what other times are good.”

Why was Denis so eager? Did this have something to do with the Gem Show, which was in Tucson for only two weeks? Or did he just have a bee in his bonnet, and he wanted to see if his crazy idea worked? Did he have dreams of getting rich quick? I’d have to ask Frank how this treated gem thing worked, both in the execution and in the marketing of the stones. “Fine. Call me tomorrow and we can set up a schedule. And bring a check.”

“Thanks. I’ll be talking to you soon.” Denis departed the way he had come, leaving me puzzled. What had just happened? Still, if Denis was good for the thousand, that would help pay off the new furnace. Even though I had a little money tucked in the bank now, it wouldn’t hurt to replenish it.

I turned back to my glass. The day before I had devoted to letting the glass come up to temperature and watching the furnace to be sure everything was working correctly. Today I would be making the first piece to emerge from this new furnace, and I wondered if it should be something special. I drifted around the studio, looking for inspiration. This Denis guy would be using the color kiln, at least part of the time—did I want to do something with color while I had the chance? Or combine clear and color?

My bread-and-butter pieces, the ones I sold most often to visitors, tended to be small and easily carried or shipped—sets of matching glassware, vases, molded sun catchers. The pieces I made for myself, the ones where I got to flex my artistic muscles, were generally larger—although working alone limited the size I could handle, simply due to the mechanics of handling a hot piece, adding the foot, and so on. But over the decade or so I’d been working in my studio, I had managed to perfect a strategy that worked for all but the most ambitious purposes.

So, a clear body—a vase. With some color—maybe green, in honor of my Irish trip? An idea bubbled up that made me smile: a green snake, coiled around the body of the vase. There were no snakes in Ireland, right? Arizona had its share of snakes, but I’d never gotten personal with them. I detoured to my office computer and did an online search for snakes, so I’d have a visual image to work from. Under snakes of Arizona, the green rat snake popped out. Perfect—green, smooth, and it combined “rat” and “snake.” Apparently I was going to work out my anger toward Allison in this piece, wasn’t I?

Mentally I ran through the steps I would have to take: a gather first, using the clear glass. More than one, if this was going to be a largish piece. Melt some green glass in the small kiln—not a true kelly green, but something more golden, as befit the Arizona scrub where this snake lived. I filled a small crucible with a mix of yellow and green and set that to melting while I visualized the form. Sinuous, yes, with the snake looping around, its head near the top of the vase. There would be some tricky spots, where I would have to rotate the body of the vase and wrap the molten snake around it, but I had a small turntable that I’d used before for this kind of work. Once again I thought briefly about taking on an apprentice—there were occasions like this when a second set of hands would be useful. But that wouldn’t happen today, and besides, I needed to challenge myself, to get back into the rhythm of glassmaking.

There are times when all things come together, and this was one of them. The clear glass flowed like thick honey; the furnace was clearly up to its task. The shaping of the vase was easy, a voluptuous balance of curves, bellying out then sweeping in again at the top. I attached and flattened a disk to the foot, so the piece would stand level, then handled the transfer from the blowpipe to a punty without mishap, smoothing the top lip with a brief dip into the glory hole. Then I tapped off the punty and set the vase on the turntable, grasping it with my insulated glove. The shape looked perfect. I took a deep breath before dipping a punty into the viscous green glass from the kiln—I had only one shot to get this right, to drape the thick rope of glass around the exterior. At this point I wished I had three hands of my own—one to rotate the turntable and two to manage the snake glass. But it worked. Quickly I shaped the snake’s head with pincers, tapering its snout just a little, and then stepped back before I could overwork it. Yes!