a booth. A big, hearty maggot—Magdalena remembered him from the line—comes up from the side, smiles, and says, “How’s it going, Marilynn?” A.A. looks at him for a split second with a wary look that asks not who but what is this… creature?… attacking, assaulting her attention at a crucial moment like this? She ignores him.
Norman follows them into the booth and stands beside them… them, and a tall man with gray hair, although he doesn’t look all that old, and eerie pale-gray eyes like the slanted eyes of a husky or whatever those dogs that pull sleds through the snow up near the Arctic Circle are called.
A.A. says, “You must know Harry Goshen, don’t you, Maurice?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” says Fleischmann. He turns to the man with the eerie eyes and gives him a chilly little smile, and they shake hands.
So pale, those eyes… they look ghostly and sinister… He wore a pale-gray suit, too, and a light-blue tie… the only man in a coat and tie Magdalena had seen all day… black shoes so highly polished, the crease between the toes and the arch of the foot shimmered. He had to be the owner of the gallery… or a salesman at the very least… Rich collectors, she had just seen, dressed in rags and sneakers.
Fleischmann and A.A. and Arctic-eyed Harry Goshen stood before a row of stout maple boxes, each three or so inches high and anywhere from nine to twenty-four inches long, unpainted, unstained, but lacquered with so many coats of clear lacquer, they screamed at you. This man Harry Goshen opened the lid of a big one… completely lined, lid and all, with chocolate-colored suede… and lifted out a big, round slab of transparent frosted glass, maybe two inches thick… you could tell by the strain on Harry Goshen’s hands and arms and posture, the damned thing was heavy. He turned it at about a forty-five-degree angle… the translucent glass flooded with light and there, somehow carved deep into the glass… exquisitely carved, in the smoothest detail—
“Sort of, you know, Art Deco,” A.A. said to Fleischmann.
—in bas-relief, a young woman with long curving locks—
A.A. was holding up some photograph. “Pretty much like him, don’t you think?”
—and a young man with short curving locks… were fucking… and you could “see everything,” as the saying goes, and “everything” was flooded with translucent light.
Norman was so excited, a foolish grin spread over his face, and he leaned way over to get the closest possible look at “everything.” Fleischmann looked totally baffled. He kept switching his eyes from the pornographic carving to A.A.’s face and back to the glass and once more to A.A.’s face… What am I supposed to think, A.A.?
Pale-gray-eyed Goshen takes a round slab from another lacquered box… turns it until… there!… it becomes a man and woman… fornicating in a different way… another slab… anally… another… three figures, two women and one man, fornicating in an anatomically improbable combination… another… two women and two men… fornicating… fingers, tongues, mouths, whole forearms, disappearing into filthy places… Fleischmann now frantically looking from the light-flooded glass to Marilynn Carr… back and forth… Time is of the essence… others will be here any moment… Flebetnikov, to be specific… Magdalena moves closer… Fleischmann looks at his A.A…. pleading… She turns her head ever so slightly, meaning no… Magdalena can hear her saying… in the lowest of voices, “Not iconic Doggs”… Another… fornicating… Fleischmann looking frantically at Marilynn Carr. Without a word she nods her head up and down ever so slowly… meaning yes!… Fleischmann immediately turns to the ghostly husky, who says in a ghostly low voice, “Three.” Fleischmann turns to Marilynn Carr, looks at her desperately… She nods her head up and down slowly again… Desperately Fleischmann turns to the ghostly Goshen and mutters from deep in his throat, “Yes”… and Goshen pastes a red dot on the lacquered box containing the slab… Now looking back and forth so rapidly… whispering, giving signals desperately… Goshen says, “Two and a half.” Fleischmann, hoarsely, “Yes”… another red dot on another lacquered box… Barely forty-five seconds have elapsed.
A bellow! A roar! Here he comes. Flebetnikov’s T-shirt-upholstered hulk must have gotten loose. He’s heading this way. He’s furious; he’s roaring in Russian, for somebody’s benefit… then roars in English, “Anodder hole in his nose he vants, dad son ma bitch!”… Goshen acts as if he doesn’t hear it or just doesn’t care… No raging Russian is going to interrupt this streak! Flebetnikov growls and