Most of the plein-air artists gathered late Sunday afternoon in the Santa Catalina Hotel near the harbor in Avalon. It was early for dinner, but at 4 p.m. the fog had rolled back in, sending those painters who were still at work hurrying to their hotel rooms or hosts’ spare rooms to stow their paints and paintings. Now they occupied three tables in one corner of the hotel’s main dining room. The maitre d’ steered other early diners to the far side of the room, for already the noise level among the painters’ group made him cringe.
Maribeth Phillips sat at a table with Viktor Sentik and Eve Jones. A fourth place at the table remained vacant. Eve alternated between trying to draw Viktor out of his gloomy preoccupation with the empty chair and assuming a brittle vivacity as she chatted with M
