images,” Max said. “We notice they are primarily domestic. That is your interest, is it?”
“Well no, not really. Partly, but not entirely. Mainly they’re what’s in front of me to work with.” But what would elegant, portly Max, or Lily in her tailored royal-purple silk blouse, know of tiny dark kitchens and pieces of cantaloupe like slices of sun?
“I see,” Max said austerely. Then, “We do think you have promise.” Deadly word,
promise.
So that was that.
Till Lily smiled, and turned her hands over, flat down on the desk, a silent gesture with the effect of a gavel. “And so we would like an invitation to your studio to make selectionsand discuss dates for your first show with us. Perhaps not one all on your own at this point but, as Max says, your work has good promise”—not exactly what he’d said, but perhaps what he’d meant, surely his own wife could interpret him accurately—“and we would like to see you well launched and properly nurtured.” Nora felt herself flush, then nearly launched herself across their desks to embrace them; Lily, at least. Max was still scary. A show, even if not one all her own, and talk of nurture implying a long term, and safety—no wonder she practically danced off down the street.
And no wonder she wished she’d told someone about being summoned by Lily and Max. She hadn’t, for fear of creating an occasion for mournful, intolerable pity, but now she had an occasion for celebration and no one at hand. She spun happily into a coffee shop a few doors from the gallery, clutching her news to herself—and whose familiar face was that at a window table, glancing up?
“Lynn?”
“Nora?”
Lynn, yes. Long-lost and, to be honest, mainly forgotten high-school acquaintance. Still, how cheerful, running into anyone known. “Want to join me?” asked Lynn. “I’m just taking a break between classes.”
She was still in university, nearly finished a graduate degree in French literature. From high school Nora remembered a skinny girl with the slumpy sort of shoulders that went with being embarrassed by height. She played basketball. What else? Didn’t matter. Now she was slender rather than skinny, willowy rather than slumped. She’d been married for almost two years, and she and her husband had recently acquired a downtown rowhouse. “Oh my God, the mortgage, we’re petrified. But I’ll be teaching soon, and I’ll dothat at least till we have kids, so we figure we’ll be okay.” She asked what Nora was doing. “That’s great,” she said, sadly failing, in Nora’s view, to grasp the splendour of Nora’s news.
Still, a sense of occasion and a benign sort of nostalgia caused them to make an appointment for lunch. Nora would meet Lynn at her recently acquired home. “You can meet Philip,” Lynn said, “before we go out.”
Happenstance, accident, random cause and effect.
Three days later Nora pressed the doorbell of a tiny white-stuccoed house attached in each direction up and down the block to other tiny white-stuccoed houses, and found herself facing a lean, grinning, nude man.
It is not necessarily the case that a man will be at his best undraped; some camouflage of chubby portion or dangly bit may be wise, at least for first impressions, but not with Philip. He stood in the doorway fully formed, golden and lithe. Nora stepped back briefly; then, irritated at being so transparently startled, stepped forward again. She did not fall into the trap, either, of looking only into his grey-tinged blue eyes, but allowed her gaze to roam, coolly taking in the square-planted feet, the calves and thighs curling with a moderate crop of dark hair—nothing actually furry or unfortunately bear-like, she noted—long arms, a hand still braced on the door, chest and stomach muscularly but not aggressively outlined, and of course his penis, pinky-purple and wavering, evidently undecided about whether to remain at rest or to rise to an occasion it could, it
“Well no, not really. Partly, but not entirely. Mainly they’re what’s in front of me to work with.” But what would elegant, portly Max, or Lily in her tailored royal-purple silk blouse, know of tiny dark kitchens and pieces of cantaloupe like slices of sun?
“I see,” Max said austerely. Then, “We do think you have promise.” Deadly word,
promise.
So that was that.
Till Lily smiled, and turned her hands over, flat down on the desk, a silent gesture with the effect of a gavel. “And so we would like an invitation to your studio to make selectionsand discuss dates for your first show with us. Perhaps not one all on your own at this point but, as Max says, your work has good promise”—not exactly what he’d said, but perhaps what he’d meant, surely his own wife could interpret him accurately—“and we would like to see you well launched and properly nurtured.” Nora felt herself flush, then nearly launched herself across their desks to embrace them; Lily, at least. Max was still scary. A show, even if not one all her own, and talk of nurture implying a long term, and safety—no wonder she practically danced off down the street.
And no wonder she wished she’d told someone about being summoned by Lily and Max. She hadn’t, for fear of creating an occasion for mournful, intolerable pity, but now she had an occasion for celebration and no one at hand. She spun happily into a coffee shop a few doors from the gallery, clutching her news to herself—and whose familiar face was that at a window table, glancing up?
“Lynn?”
“Nora?”
Lynn, yes. Long-lost and, to be honest, mainly forgotten high-school acquaintance. Still, how cheerful, running into anyone known. “Want to join me?” asked Lynn. “I’m just taking a break between classes.”
She was still in university, nearly finished a graduate degree in French literature. From high school Nora remembered a skinny girl with the slumpy sort of shoulders that went with being embarrassed by height. She played basketball. What else? Didn’t matter. Now she was slender rather than skinny, willowy rather than slumped. She’d been married for almost two years, and she and her husband had recently acquired a downtown rowhouse. “Oh my God, the mortgage, we’re petrified. But I’ll be teaching soon, and I’ll dothat at least till we have kids, so we figure we’ll be okay.” She asked what Nora was doing. “That’s great,” she said, sadly failing, in Nora’s view, to grasp the splendour of Nora’s news.
Still, a sense of occasion and a benign sort of nostalgia caused them to make an appointment for lunch. Nora would meet Lynn at her recently acquired home. “You can meet Philip,” Lynn said, “before we go out.”
Happenstance, accident, random cause and effect.
Three days later Nora pressed the doorbell of a tiny white-stuccoed house attached in each direction up and down the block to other tiny white-stuccoed houses, and found herself facing a lean, grinning, nude man.
It is not necessarily the case that a man will be at his best undraped; some camouflage of chubby portion or dangly bit may be wise, at least for first impressions, but not with Philip. He stood in the doorway fully formed, golden and lithe. Nora stepped back briefly; then, irritated at being so transparently startled, stepped forward again. She did not fall into the trap, either, of looking only into his grey-tinged blue eyes, but allowed her gaze to roam, coolly taking in the square-planted feet, the calves and thighs curling with a moderate crop of dark hair—nothing actually furry or unfortunately bear-like, she noted—long arms, a hand still braced on the door, chest and stomach muscularly but not aggressively outlined, and of course his penis, pinky-purple and wavering, evidently undecided about whether to remain at rest or to rise to an occasion it could, it
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