Qwilleran’s party scattered: Arch to investigate the refreshment table, Mildred to confer with the manager, Polly to meet Paul Skumble. As soon as artist and librarian met, an immediate rapport was evident, and Qwilleran left them alone, wandering off to visit Jasper.
The Butterfly Girl’s studio was crammed with visitors, chanting silly phrases at the parrot and then screaming when he replied, “C’mon, baby, gimme a tickle! … Anybody wanna go to bed? … I’m a go-o-od boy!” He bounced up and down on his perch and ruffled his feathers.
The artist herself stood in a far comer near the window, oblivious to the commotion. She was talking to a good-looking young man with unruly red hair, gazing at him amorously with the lustrous brown eyes that were her best feature. Then, catching sight of Qwilleran, she dragged her companion over to meet “Mr. Q.”
“This is my boyfriend, Jake Westrup,” she said. “He’s the one who gave me Jasper.”
“Yeah. I always wanted a parrot,” the fellow said, “but when I got Jasper home I found out my roommate’s allergic to feathers, and my boss wouldn’t let me have a bird because we handle food, and it’s against the law… Well, I gotta go to work now. Nice to meetcha. Mr. Q … S’long, Monkey. See ya t’night.” He tweaked her chin.
Qwilleran, never having tweaked a woman’s chin in his life, was offended by the man’s impudence, but the Butterfly Girl seemed not to mind. He said to her, “I don’t believe I know your name.”
“Phoebe. Phoebe Sloan. My father has the drugstore downtown.”
“Yes, of course. I know Sloan’s very well. Phoebe is a beautiful name. It comes from the Greek word for bright.”
“My boyfriend doesn’t like it,” she said apologetically. “He calls me - “
Before she could finish, Beverly Forfar stormed into the studio. “You’ll have to throw the blanket over his cage, Phoebe! He’s causing too much annoyance.”
“Big Mama, come to baby!” Jasper squawked.
Qwilleran made a discreet exit and went to see the collage demonstration. The woman who would be teaching a class in the art was doing a self-portrait with bits of torn newspaper. Also exhibited on ledges around the studio were landscapes created with fragments of cloth, snippets of wallpaper, theater tickets, shirt labels, and computer printouts. “You don’t have to be able to draw or paint,” she said. “The bits and pieces are your paint. The process makes you think a little.”
Qwilleran moved on to the next demonstration. A calligrapher, who would teach a class in “beautiful writing,” was using special pens to form the thick-and—
thin letters of modified Old English script. He said, “The practice of scribing began in ancient Rome and became an art in the Middle Ages. Sign up for the class, folks, and thumb your nose at computers!” For a donation to the Art Center, he would scribe any saying to order, at a dollar a word, suitable for framing. Qwilleran ordered three dollars’ worth of Shakespeare, which looked quite profound in modified Old English: Words, words, words!
He caught up with Mildred in a studio that displayed charcoal drawings of animals. With a few fluid strokes the artist had captured the tranquillity of a well-fed cat, the alertness of a hunting dog, the sheer power of a galloping horse.
“Come and see these wonderful figure studies, Qwill,” said Mildred. “Daphne is going to teach our class in life drawing. The human body is one of the greatest challenges in art.” Unframed drawings, large and small and covered in shrink-wrap, were filed on end in an open bin. Male and female figures were depicted with honesty and elegance - twisting, stooping, relaxing, reaching, running, leaping.
Qwilleran complimented the artist. “You say so much with so few lines! What’s the secret?”
“Anatomy,” said Daphne. “You have to know how the human body is constructed, how the basic masses are connected, how the bones and muscles function. You have to use your brain more than your eye. That’s what I teach.”
Arch was getting impatient. Art was not his area of interest. After signaling the women, he and Qwilleran waited for them on the porch.
“See anything you like?” Arch asked.
“A totem pole about two feet high. I like wood carvings. It would look good on the table in my foyer.”
“And it would be handy to have around in case you have to protect yourself.”
“I told them to put a ‘Sold’ sticker on it. They won’t let it go until the exhibition ends.”
“What do you think of Beverly Forfar?” Arch asked. “I don’t believe that name.”
“Or that hair! It looks like a patent-leather helmet.”
“She’s a big woman. Top-heavy.”
“But with good legs. Neat ankles,” Qwilleran observed.
“High heels do a lot for a woman’s ankles. Fran Brodie’s another.”
“On a scale from one to ten, I’d give Fran a ten and Ms. Forfar a seven.”
“What happened to Fran?” Arch asked. “She hasn’t been to chamber of commerce meetings lately.”
“She’s on vacation. Before that, she was in Chicago, ordering furniture for the hotel do-over.”
“I hope it won’t be anything fussy.”
“She told me it would be Gustav Stickley, whatever that is,” Qwilleran said, “but you can rest assured that everything Fran does is first class.”
“Here come the girls.”
As the four of them walked back to the bam, Qwilleran asked Mildred about the Jasper incident.
“It got a little rowdy because the crowd was taunting him,” she explained. “Under normal circumstances there’s no reason why he can’t stay until Phoebe finds an apartment. Beverly doesn’t like him, that’s the trouble. She’s uptight about many things.”
“Where did you find her? How did she get the job?”
“She’s a native. I had her in art classes when she was a teen. She went Down Below, married, worked in art galleries, and returned to Pickax after her divorce.”
“Well, here’s the reason I’m inquiring, Mildred. If it wouldn’t upset Beverly, I’d like to take Koko to meet Jasper - on a leash, of course.”
“Why not? We ought to give you a key and let you check the building when you pick up your mail. That is, if you don’t mind.”
He agreed, and she gave him the key from her keyring.
Polly said, “Jasper has obviously associated with the wrong companions. We had an Amazon at the bird club at one meeting, and he was a perfect gentleman, with a vocabulary of almost a hundred words. When he heard a bell ring, he’d tell his owner to answer the phone. She was a breeder. He called her ‘honeybunch’ and kissed her ear. He could even sing God Bless America.”
Qwilleran said, “I think I’ll stick with cats… How were the refreshments, Arch? I never got near the table.”
“With my wife chairing the committee, you know they were good! There were some scruffy individuals stuffing cookies into their mouths and pockets, though. I wondered if they were artists or art patrons.”
Then Qwilleran wanted to know about the Butterfly Girl’s paintings. Were they art or commercial illustration?
Mildred said, “You might call them decorative art - not original concepts, but hand-painted - and certainly popular.”
“How about the guy who paints shafthouses?” Arch asked. “He asks a good price, but it can’t take long to knock one out; there’s no detail.”
“They’re impressionist,” his wife said. “You can’t count the boards and the knotholes, but you can feel the light and the weather and the mood. Watercolor is a fluid medium, and you have to work fast, but it takes skill and assurance and artistry.”