Read Online The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney - Free Book Online
Authors: Patricia Gaffney
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wholly out of character passion for his heart, both of which are married? Then what?
You're fucked.
"So, Mick. Tell me the story of how you went from patent law to fine art. Constitution Avenue to Seventh Street." It's never too early to start thinking in headlines, I always say. "Bourgeois to Bauhaus. Buttoned-down to Polo." "Well-" "And while you're at it, what exactly is postmodernism?" When I'm nervous, I become insufferable. I can see it happening, but I can't stop it, can't shut up, and the more important the occasion is to me, the more obnoxious I get. Today, boy, I was really outdoing myself.
We were standing in the middle of Mick Draco's chilly, cluttered studio, which was smaller than I'd expected, considering he shares it with two other peopie. Richard, the photographer from the paper, had just left after taking about two hundred pictures, from every angle you can imagine and some you'd never dream of, of Mick smearing yellow paint on a canvas with a trowel. I got a good, long look at him then, because I didn't have to talk, I could just stare. I lied, I have three weaknesses. I don't like to admit to the third one. It's physical beauty. I know, I'm shallow, and I hate it. Sometimes I go out with unattractive men on purpose so no one can accuse me of superficiality. But in truth, all other things being equal, I'd rather they were good-looking.
Watching him, I decided Mick's beauty came from the way he moved as much as from his great-looking body, and his facial expressions-humor and self-consciousness, patience, rapt concentration, finally impatience - as much as the handsome face itself. He was wearing black slacks, a tweed jacket, a blue work shirt, and a red tie, and I had on jeans and a T-shirt, and I was thinking it was funny, maybe kind of sweet, that he'd dressed up and I'd dressed down. As if we'd been thinking about each other when we put our clothes on this morning.
To his credit, he didn't even try to answer any of my facetious questions. He said, "Would you like to sit down?" He took an oily rag from his work table and swished it around a coating of plaster dust on the only chair in the room.
I gave the dirty chair a look and said, "Uh, no thanks," sort of deadpan.
He has a beautiful smile, truly self-deprecating. He lowers his eyelashes, which are longer than mine, and curves his lips up at the sharp corners, and you imagine he's thinking, That's a good joke on me. He sort of mumbled, "Yeah, I guess this isn't the best place to talk. Want to go across the street?" Yes! Yes! Let's go there again, Murray's, that dump with the rotten food and congealed air, where everybody looks like a corpse and the coffee tastes like antifreeze! Let's sit across from each other in a cracked booth by the smudged window in the livid light, like we did last week, and talk and talk and talk! "Yeah, okay," I mumbled back. "If you want to."
* * *
On the way, huddled in our coats against the November drizzle, he answered the main question, or I guess he thought he did. I was struck again by the idea that he was shy, or at least deeply reserved, because of the way he turned -away from me, peering down shiny, wet G Street while he explained what had to be one of the most significant events of his life. I could barely hear him. And he'd picked the least focused, most distracted moment to deal with the subject-us in the middle of traffic - as if he wanted to slip his answer in without anyone noticing. "I got into art when it felt like I could get into it," he said-or I thought he said; he was muttering again. "You were joking about postmodernism-" "No, I wasn't." "-but you know it redeemed representation in some ways, made the figure respectable again, I guess you could say. Brought back the concept of meaning in painting. Which wasn't allowed so much during modernism." He took my arm in the intersection, and we scuttled across. I said, brilliantly, "Come again?" He cleared his throat. "Abstraction never appealed to me, I couldn't
You're fucked.
"So, Mick. Tell me the story of how you went from patent law to fine art. Constitution Avenue to Seventh Street." It's never too early to start thinking in headlines, I always say. "Bourgeois to Bauhaus. Buttoned-down to Polo." "Well-" "And while you're at it, what exactly is postmodernism?" When I'm nervous, I become insufferable. I can see it happening, but I can't stop it, can't shut up, and the more important the occasion is to me, the more obnoxious I get. Today, boy, I was really outdoing myself.
We were standing in the middle of Mick Draco's chilly, cluttered studio, which was smaller than I'd expected, considering he shares it with two other peopie. Richard, the photographer from the paper, had just left after taking about two hundred pictures, from every angle you can imagine and some you'd never dream of, of Mick smearing yellow paint on a canvas with a trowel. I got a good, long look at him then, because I didn't have to talk, I could just stare. I lied, I have three weaknesses. I don't like to admit to the third one. It's physical beauty. I know, I'm shallow, and I hate it. Sometimes I go out with unattractive men on purpose so no one can accuse me of superficiality. But in truth, all other things being equal, I'd rather they were good-looking.
Watching him, I decided Mick's beauty came from the way he moved as much as from his great-looking body, and his facial expressions-humor and self-consciousness, patience, rapt concentration, finally impatience - as much as the handsome face itself. He was wearing black slacks, a tweed jacket, a blue work shirt, and a red tie, and I had on jeans and a T-shirt, and I was thinking it was funny, maybe kind of sweet, that he'd dressed up and I'd dressed down. As if we'd been thinking about each other when we put our clothes on this morning.
To his credit, he didn't even try to answer any of my facetious questions. He said, "Would you like to sit down?" He took an oily rag from his work table and swished it around a coating of plaster dust on the only chair in the room.
I gave the dirty chair a look and said, "Uh, no thanks," sort of deadpan.
He has a beautiful smile, truly self-deprecating. He lowers his eyelashes, which are longer than mine, and curves his lips up at the sharp corners, and you imagine he's thinking, That's a good joke on me. He sort of mumbled, "Yeah, I guess this isn't the best place to talk. Want to go across the street?" Yes! Yes! Let's go there again, Murray's, that dump with the rotten food and congealed air, where everybody looks like a corpse and the coffee tastes like antifreeze! Let's sit across from each other in a cracked booth by the smudged window in the livid light, like we did last week, and talk and talk and talk! "Yeah, okay," I mumbled back. "If you want to."
* * *
On the way, huddled in our coats against the November drizzle, he answered the main question, or I guess he thought he did. I was struck again by the idea that he was shy, or at least deeply reserved, because of the way he turned -away from me, peering down shiny, wet G Street while he explained what had to be one of the most significant events of his life. I could barely hear him. And he'd picked the least focused, most distracted moment to deal with the subject-us in the middle of traffic - as if he wanted to slip his answer in without anyone noticing. "I got into art when it felt like I could get into it," he said-or I thought he said; he was muttering again. "You were joking about postmodernism-" "No, I wasn't." "-but you know it redeemed representation in some ways, made the figure respectable again, I guess you could say. Brought back the concept of meaning in painting. Which wasn't allowed so much during modernism." He took my arm in the intersection, and we scuttled across. I said, brilliantly, "Come again?" He cleared his throat. "Abstraction never appealed to me, I couldn't
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