Tres Leches Cupcakes (21 page)

“Yep,” Caro said, accepting another glass of champagne from Darron’s tray when he passed by. Her third, Sadie noted, while deciding she’d be sure to drive home. She shook her head when Darron offered her a glass of her own.

“I wonder how much they cost?” Sadie looked at the picture of the basket she’d glanced at earlier that evening. The black-and-white photograph was so well contrasted that she could see the intricate design details within the weaving. The basket had been propped against a rock, putting it at an angle, and it showed fraying along the side, either from use or erosion. It was a beautiful picture.

“Oh, gosh,” Caro said, laughing uncomfortably as she waved her champagne glass through the air. “Tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds maybe.”

“That much?” Sadie asked, turning toward her friend in surprise. People talking near them looked over, and she lowered her voice. “That’s unreal.”

“These are the
only
prints,” Caro said, gesturing toward the gallery wall in front of them. “He destroys even his digital copies so that these are one-of-a-kinds.”

The brochure had said as much. “But a hundred thousand dollars?” Sadie repeated. “For a photograph?”

“This is all there is,” Caro said, giving Sadie her full attention. “These items are hidden; not available. Ethan spends months out of the year on his expeditions. No one else will be finding these items, which makes the photographs equally valuable. It’s the chance to own something without destroying it. Some would say the photos are priceless.”

“Okay,” Sadie said, understanding what Caro was saying, but still finding the logic flawed. “Why not make five hundred prints and sell them for forty bucks each?”

“Don’t you see?” Caro said, her eyebrows raised. “This
is
history.” She pointed at another photograph. It was of a double neck jar with one handle intact, and the other one broken. Black lines were painted across it, so meticulous that it seemed impossible that the design was done by hand. The jar sat on top of a flat stone, a prickly pear cactus in the left side of the frame. Another striking piece. “This is the
only
pot like this out there, but it’s not available. The photo, however, is. He only makes one print in order to maintain the excitement of ownership for people who understand the mentality of what he does. One pot, one photo. He’s not interested in gracing the walls of tourists’ homes; he’s appealing to collectors and people joined to the heritage he captures.”

“How do people know this is the only print?” Sadie asked, wondering if everyone just blindly believed like Caro did. Did no one question Ethan Standage and his conflicting motivations? “What if he doesn’t really destroy the print and makes and sells other copies too?”

“He’d be caught,” Caro said, shaking her head. Sadie noticed that she was talking louder than usual, likely from the champagne. “He publishes an anthology of the pieces each year. It’s the only other format through which he displays his photos. In the books, he talks about the item and its history and region. Not enough info for anyone to find the items’ locations, but enough to give credibility to his work. Then he sells the original picture in a sealed and signed frame, as well as a few other shots of the piece from every angle—not posed, just for reference and insurance reasons. Anyway, if he sold duplicates, someone would find out. No one wants a numbered print of these pieces, they want the
only
print. It’s Ethan’s hook, so to speak.”

Sadie looked at another print on the wall. “How long has he been doing this?”

“This is the exhibit’s tenth anniversary. The pieces will be on display for a couple of months, then whatever isn’t sold will go into catalogue sales.”

Sadie did quick math in her head. If Ethan took just fifteen photos a year—he’d done twenty-three this year—and sold them for an average of fifty thousand dollars, he’d have brought in three quarters of a million dollars every year for ten years—or seven and a half million dollars over the last decade. Holy cow!

One photograph was of a wolf effigy. Another featured a carved antler showing incredible detail, though part of the carving was worn smooth—perhaps from water dripping into its hiding place? In other frames, there were baskets and pots, and one was of a partially uncovered skull, only the eye sockets above the ground, as though the skeleton were watching the crowds as they looked upon it.

“They are amazing,” Sadie said as the spirit of the pieces settled upon her despite her determination not to fall under the spell. She tried not to visualize having one of these prints in her own home, but the temptation of ownership got stronger by the minute . . . until she reminded herself of the price tag, then the feeling quickly dissipated. Between Sadie’s husband’s life insurance, her brother’s careful investing, and her own self-discipline, Sadie was well cared for financially, but something like this was galaxies away from her reality. It was hard to imagine anyone could afford to hang fifty thousand dollars on a wall.

Caro nodded while admiring a print of a partially broken pot. The broken shards were laid out on the ground, but if you looked closely, you could see the hairline cracks running through the intact portion of the pot. The background was dark, and Sadie wondered if Standage had photographed the pot just as he found it, hidden somewhere, not daring to move it for fear of it crumbling further. Sadie had encountered many pots like this on the dig, and she thought about the one intact pot she’d brought up; only for it to lay in pieces at her feet. It was painful to think about.

She stopped to look at a photograph of an intricately carved pipe, the remnants of feathers still tied to the end, grains of sand trailing from the bowl.

Caro raised her hand to touch it, it looked that real. “They’re beautiful,” she whispered reverently. “I’ve never seen his prints, just the anthologies.”

“Do you own any of his anthologies?”

Caro shook her head. “Maybe I’ll buy one tonight. They’re lovely books.”

They were nearly to the end of the display, within a dozen feet of Ethan Standage, when a sudden hush fell over the crowd, and everyone turned toward the front of the gallery. A large man with a cowboy hat stood in front of Sadie, causing her to go up on her tiptoes and step from one side to the other until she found a gap between other people’s heads that she could look through. Ethan stepped up onto some kind of platform; Sadie couldn’t see it, she only saw him rise a few feet.

“Welcome, welcome,
bienvenidos,
” he said as a final ripple of whispered conversation faded from the room. “I thank each one of you for coming to the exhibit tonight. I returned to Santa Fe just this morning and, as always, was overwhelmed with feelings of being home again.” The room applauded, and he gave the crowd a nervous smile before clearing his throat and speaking again. “It is always such a humbling experience to put my year’s work on display and to see so many people coming to join me in celebrating it. Today marks ten years of artifacts captured for the sake of timeless reverence.” A smattering of applause broke out, and he hushed it by pressing his palm down in the air, an odd tension to his face.

Again, Sadie had the impression that he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to make a speech at all. She wondered if anyone else noticed.

He cleared his throat and continued, “When I was a boy, my
abuelita
would make the most delicious tres leches cake, and I chose that as the theme of this year’s exhibit.”

Caro elbowed Sadie softly, and they shared a smile at the connection he’d just given to the desserts Lois had provided. That’s why he was willing to suffer all those sticky fingers. Sadie looked around the gallery, noticing for the first time all the different white flowers and white swaths of fabric draped over the windows and tables. Did all his showings have a theme?

“For
Abuelita,
” Ethan continued, “tres leches cake was a connection to her Mexican heritage, but she once told me that it also represented three elements of her life—religion, nourishment, and the need for something sweet now and again.” A polite chuckle rippled through the crowd. Ethan smiled and spoke as though every word he said was memorized. “Over the years, I have found my own three milks—
tres leches
—that have nourished me and given me purpose in my life. My personal representations of the three milks—the three essential elements of balance—are temporal reverence, spiritual acuity, and creative expression. Temporal reverence is about the care with which we reverence the earth and its resources, understanding that without its succor, all else is lost. Spiritual acuity is about remembering from whence we came and the purpose of existing as we do.” He paused and stared at the floor, seemingly out of place for a moment. Someone started to applaud and that snapped him out of his wandering thoughts. Was he drunk? He hurried to speak louder, before the clapping caught on. “The, uh, creative expression is all about how we give a piece of ourselves”—he put a hand on his chest—“to the world around us.
That
is the nourishment and sweetness I hope to share with the world. My own tres leches.”

He took his hand from his chest and waved it, palm up, in a slow arch, encompassing the gallery and causing many patrons to follow the trajectory of his fingers and look at the prints on the walls a second time. A woman behind Sadie sniffled. Another woman standing a few feet ahead of them was wiping at her eyes.

For Sadie’s part, she couldn’t help but think about the fact that the twenty-three prints on the wall could sell for upwards of a million dollars. Sadie wasn’t opposed to people making money, but for her, the pseudo-spirituality of Ethan Standage’s “tres leches” was lost in the extreme profitability of his work. Did he know that the original tres leches cake was actually developed as part of a marketing gimmick to increase sales of canned milk? She’d no sooner thought that, however, when Caro turned toward her, her eyes glassy from unshed tears.

“I love that,” she whispered. “Tres leches—what nourishes him, nourishes all.”

Sadie nearly pointed out the dichotomy, but held her tongue. She was on Ethan’s turf, and Caro was working on her third glass of champagne. Arguing the contradictions of this man was out of place. Sadie wondered what the Standage family thought of Ethan’s art. Were they supportive? Since he made millions of dollars, they probably were.

“So I thank you,” Ethan said, bowing slightly toward the crowd. “For being a part of this journey I am on, and for validating my life’s ambition, which is to preserve those things that will be lost forever so that we might not forget who we are and who has blazed the trail before us.”

The room erupted with applause. He thanked everyone again and stepped down from his platform, looking relieved. Maybe he just wasn’t comfortable speaking in public. Within a few minutes, the crowd was moving and mingling again. Ethan made his way to the back of the room, and the crowd tightened around him.

Sadie and Caro made their way to the table filled with anthologies. Last year’s book was
Eagle’s Point,
and the year before it was
At Morning’s Light.
She and Caro both picked up a book and began thumbing through the pages, commenting on the artistic appeal of the layout. In addition to the photographs, there were large portions of text. Sadie skimmed a few pages, enough to appreciate the depth of information Ethan included. His knowledge of anthropology was apparent in the detailed descriptions he gave of the time periods and the people who would have used the items.

“So Ethan isn’t a collector himself?” Sadie asked.

“The Standage family has an extensive collection of their own,” Caro said, putting down the book she’d been holding and picking up another one. Her words were sounding a little fuzzy. “It’s all from their own land, or purchased over the years. When he was at NMU, Ethan photographed several of the more unique pieces and compiled them into a book as part of a project for one of his classes. I’ve heard that’s when he fell in love with photography,” she explained, scanning the table. “Here is a copy of the Standage collection,” she said triumphantly, pulling the thinnest of the books from the table. There were only a few copies left. “I’ve heard these are hard to find.” She opened the book and started flipping through the pages, admiring the colored photographs; the rest of the anthologies were all black and white.

“I think I’ll get this one,” Caro said, closing the book. “Though I’d really like the
Tres Leches
one too.” The cover for
Tres Leches
featured the pipe photograph they’d admired earlier. Caro put her empty glass on a tray of empty glasses, and Sadie hoped that meant Caro was done with the night’s beverage refreshment.

Sadie wasn’t sure whether to buy a book of her own, and she scanned the room again, looking at the faces of the attendees—Ethan’s supporters. Were Caro’s opinions of Ethan’s integrity reflected in the general consensus of these people? It was after nine thirty, and the room was still full. They could have brought another hundred cupcakes for a crowd this size.

Sadie looked up at the loft and noted that the crowds had thinned considerably. She and Caro needed to remove the trays that were surely empty by now. Maybe she’d get started on that so they could go home and she could work on learning more about Ethan Standage. She was turning back to Caro when a familiar face in the loft crowd caught her attention. More importantly, it was a familiar set of eyes that startled her—black and blue eyes to be exact.

Shel.

The swelling had gone down some since yesterday morning, but the purple rings under his eyes were darker now that gravity had pulled the pooling blood to the thin-skinned area. He stood on the edge of the loft with a glass of champagne in one hand and stared down at her.

Sadie refused to look away and stared right back while wondering why he was here. She’d already connected him to the Standage ranch through Benny bailing him out, and to the archeology through his work. Was he also connected to the artistic part of Ethan’s life? How?

After a few seconds, Shel pointed to one of the doors at the top of the stairs that led to one of the sitting areas, and jerked his head toward it. Then he turned and headed for the door, disappearing a moment later, and leaving Sadie with a difficult decision to make that turned out not to be that difficult after all.