CHAPTER NINETEEN
THERE WERE NO QUEUES OUTSIDE Alicia’s gallery this time, as there had been that day, six years ago, when I had gone to see the Alcestis. A different artist was hanging in the window now, and despite his possible talent, he lacked Alicia’s notoriety and subsequent ability to draw in the crowds.
As I entered the gallery, I shivered; it was even colder in here than on the street. There was something chilly about the atmosphere as well as the temperature; it smelled of exposed steel beams and bare concrete floors. It was soulless, I thought. Empty.
The gallerist was sitting behind his desk. He stood up as I approached.
Jean-Felix Martin was in his early forties, a handsome man with black eyes and hair, and a tight T-shirt with a red skull on it. I told him who I was and wh
