to them. Thank God, Lil remembered Nestor’s new last name, “Carbonell,” because he had already forgotten it. Phyllis’s scowl changed from a scowl to a smile of withering scorn.
“Took you only three months to get here,” she said. “But maybe that’s what you Government people call ‘rapid response.’ ”
John Smith closed his eyes, spread his lips into a flat grimace, and began nodding his head in the yes mode conveying the notion Yes, yes, it hurts, but I have to admit I know exactly what you mean. Then he opened his eyes and gave her a profoundly sincere look and said, “But when we do get here, we… are… here. Know what I’m saying?”
Nestor winced and said to himself, ::::::I don’t believe this.:::::: Now he understood what it took to be a newspaper reporter: double-talk and heartfelt lies.
It must have mildly reassured stone-faced Phyllis, however, for she shot them both looks of merely mild disdain and produced a key and unlocked the apartment door.
It opened into a kitchen, a small filthy kitchen. About a week’s worth of dishes and tinny-looking knives and forks and spoons with the remains not even scraped off had been stacked up helter-skelter in the sink. About a week’s worth of unidentifiable spots, gobs, and spills were all over the counters on either side of the basin and on the floor. About a week’s worth of garbage, fortunately desiccated by now, lay crammed into a tinny trash canister to the point where it kept the lid from closing. The place was so filthy, the pervasive smell of turpentine struck Nestor as a purifier.
Phyllis led them from the kitchen into what was no doubt designed to be a living room. Right in front of the sliding glass doors on the far wall was a big, dark, ancient-looking wooden easel. Next to it was a long industrial worktable with a stack of metal drawers at each end. The top was cluttered with tubes, rags, and God knows what else, plus a row of coffee cans with the long slender handles of paintbrushes sticking out. The easel and the table rested upon a piece of paint-spattered tarpaulin at least seven feet by seven feet. That was the only floor covering in the room. The rest was bare wood… that hadn’t been attended to in a long time. The place looked halfway studio and halfway storeroom, thanks to the boxes and pieces of equipment piled in no discernable order against one of the side walls—rolls of canvas… big boxes, long, wide, but only three or four inches deep… Nestor guessed they were for framed pictures… a slide projector on top of a small metal stand about three and a half feet high… a dehumidifier… and more boxes and cans…
All this Nestor took in with a single glance. But Lil, Edith, Phyllis, and John Smith were absorbed in something else entirely. On the other wall were twelve paintings, six in one row and six in a row beneath it. The women were chuckling.
“You gotta look at this one, Edith,” said Lil. “This one’s got two eyes on the same side of his nose and look at the size a that schnozz! You see that? You see it? I got a grandson-seven-years-old’s better than that. He’s not so little he don’t know where the eyes go!”
The three women began laughing, and Nestor had to laugh, too. The painting consisted of the thick clumsy outline of a man in profile with a childishly huge nose. Both eyes were on this side of it. The hands looked like fish. There was no attempt at shading or perspective. There was nothing but more thick, clumsy black outlines creating shapes filled in with flat colors… and no attempt to make any of them stand out from the others.
“And the one next to it,” Lil continued. “See those four women theh? Talk about afflicted! See that? They got the eyes in the right place—but the nose! The poor things, they got noses that start up over one eyebrow, and then they come down as far as a normal girl’s chin, and the nostrils look like a double-barrel shotgun-wants-to-blow-your-kop-off-for-you!”
More squalls of laughter.
“And take a look at that one up theh,” said Edith. This one was of nothing but vertical stripes of color… must have been a dozen of them… and not all that even, either. And why were they so watery? “Looks like they got soaked up by the canvas some way.”
“I don’t think that’s suppose a be