‘Well, except for TV.’
Atwater inclined his head slightly to signify concession. ‘Except for TV.’
Mrs. Moltke’s hand, with its multiple different rings, was now within just inches of the journalist’s large red right ear. She said: ‘Well, I look at Style. I’ve been looking at Style for years. I don’t bet there’s a body in town that hasn’t looked at Style or People or one of you all.’ The hand moved as if it were under water. ‘Sometimes it’s hard keeping you all straight. After your girl there called, I said to Brint it was a man coming over from People when I was telling him to go on and get cleaned up for company.’
Atwater cleared his throat. ‘So you see my point, then, which in no way forms any sort of argument against the piece or Mr. Moltke’s —’
‘Brint.’
‘Against Brint’s consenting to the piece.’ Atwater would also every so often give a small but vigorous all body shiver, involuntary, rather like a wet dog shaking itself, which neither party commented on. Bits of windblown foliage hit the front and rear windshields and remained for a moment or two before they were washed away. The sky could really have been any color at all and there would be no way to know. Atwater now tried to rotate his entire upper body toward Mrs. Moltke: ‘But he will need to know what he’s in for. If my editors give the go ahead, which I should again stress I have every confidence they ultimately will, one condition is likely to be the presence of some sort of medical authority to authenticate the. . circumstances of creation.’
‘You’re saying in there with him?’ The gusts of her breath seemed to strike every little cilium on Atwater’s cheek and temple. Her right hand still covered the recorder and several inches of Atwater’s knee on either side. Her largo pulse was visible in the trembling of her bust, which was understandably prodigious and also now pointed Atwater’s way. Probably no more than four inches separated the bust from his right arm, which was still held out stiffly and attached to the steering wheel. Atwater’s other fist was pumping like mad down beside the driver’s door.
‘No, no, not necessarily, but probably right outside, and ready to perform various tests and procedures on the. . on it the minute Mr. Moltke, Brint, is finished. Comes out with it.’ Another intense little shiver.
Amber gave another small mirthless laugh.
‘I’m sure you know what I mean,’ Atwater said. ‘Temperature and constitution and the lack of any sort of sign of any human hand or tool or anything employed in the. . process of the. .’
‘And then it’ll come out.’
‘The piece, you mean,’ Atwater said. She nodded. In a way that made no physical sense given their respective sizes, Atwater’s eyes seemed now to be exactly level with hers, and without being aware of it he blinked whenever she did, though her hand’s small circles often supervened.
Atwater said: ‘As I’ve said, I have every confidence that yes, it will.’
At the same time, the journalist was also trying not to indulge himself by imagining Laurel Manderley’s reaction to the faxed reproductions of the artist’s pieces as they slowly emerged from the machine. He felt that he knew almost all the different permutations her face would go through.
Nor was it clear whether Mrs. Moltke was looking at his ear or at the underwater movements of her own hand up next to the ear. ‘And what you’re saying is then, why, to get ready, because once it comes out nothing will be the same. Because there’ll be attention.’
‘I would think so, yes.’ He tried to turn a little further. ‘Of various different kinds.’
‘You’re saying other magazines. Or TV, the Internet.’
‘It’s often difficult to predict the forms of public attention or to know in advance what —’
‘But after this kind of amount of attention you’re saying there might be art galleries wanting to handle it. For sale. Do art galleries do auctions, or they just put it out with a price sticker on it and folks come and shop, or what all?’
Atwater was aware that this was a very different type and level of exchange than the morning’s confab in the Moltkes’ home. It was hard for him not to feel that Amber might be patronizing him a bit, playing up to a certain stereotype of provincial naiveté—he did this himself in certain situations at Style. At the same time, he felt that to some extent she was sincere in deferring to him because he lived and worked in New York City, the cultural heart of the nation — Atwater was absurdly gratified by this kind of thing. The whole geographical deference issue could get very complicated and abstract. At the right periphery, he could see that a certain delicate pattern Amber was tracing in the air near his ear was actually the cartography of that ear, its spirals and intending whorls. Sensitive from childhood about his ears’ size and hue, Atwater had worn either baseball caps or knit caps all the way through college.
Ultimately, the journalist’s failure to think the whole thing through and decide just how to respond was itself a form of decision. ‘I think they do both,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes there are auctions. Sometimes a special exhibit, and potential buyers will come for a large party on the first day, to meet the artist. Often called an art opening.’ He was facing the windshield again. The rain came no less hard but the sky looked perhaps to be lightening — although, on the other hand, the steam of their exhalations against the window was itself whitish and might act as some type of optical filter. At any rate, Atwater knew that it was often at the trailing end of a storm front that funnels developed. ‘The initial key,’ he said, ‘will be arranging for the right photographer.’
‘Some professional type shots, you mean.’
‘The magazine has both staff photographers and freelancers the photo people like to use for various situations. The politics of influencing them as to which particular photographer they might send all gets pretty involved, I’m afraid.’ Atwater could taste his own carbon dioxide in the car’s air. ‘The key will be producing some images that are carefully lit and indirect and tasteful and yet at the same time emphatic in being able to show what he’s able to. . just what he’s achieved.’
‘Already. You mean the doodads he’s come out with already.’
‘There will be no way to even pitch it at the executive level without real photos, I don’t think,’ Atwater said.
For a moment there was only the wind and rain and a whisking sound of microfiber, due to Atwater’s fist.
‘You know what’s peculiar? Is sometimes I can hear it and then other times not,’ Amber said quietly. ‘That you said up to home you were from back here, and sometimes I can hear it and then other times you sound more. . all business, and I can’t hear it in you at all.’
‘I’m originally from Anderson.’
‘Up by Muncie you mean. Where all the big mounds are.’
‘Anderson’s got the mounds, technically. Though I went to school in Muncie, at Ball State.’
‘There’s some more right here, up to Mixerville off the lake. They still say they don’t know who all made those mounds. They just know they’re old.’
‘The sense I get is there are still competing theories.’
‘Dave Letterman on the TV talks about Ball State all the time, that he was at. He’s from here someplace.’
‘He graduated long before I got there, though.’
She did touch his ear now, though her finger was too large to fit inside or trace the auricle’s whorls and succeeded only in occluding Atwater’s hearing on that side, so that he could hear his own heartbeat and his voice seemed newly loud to him over the rain: