‘Science, well I was trained—’
‘Sure, sure, but look, just look at these yak-heads, the way they go around blinding everybody with science, blind themselves too. Jesus they take an idea and play with it and play with it — until they go blind!’
‘Ha ha, yes I guess there is a sort of masturbational side to research, even dreams — you know the answers sometimes come up in dreams, Kékulé—’
‘Yeah well I say screw that! Screw that! I want to see that damn gingerbread boy on the market in months not years, months. Hell save the damn improvements, later we put out the new improved model, miracle ingredient, only way anything ever gets done. Tell that to Hare and his dreaming coolies, make him listen! Tell him if I don’t see talking gingerbread boys in the supermarkets by Easter, I’ll hand him his dick in a test-tube, let him have a wet dream about that!’
‘Uh, yes sir.’ Ben folded the inventory and put it in an inside pocket. ‘Now if that’s all I think I’ll just get out here and—’
‘We’re both getting out here, bub, only reason I had this little greaser drive us here was so I could show you my gallery.’
‘Gallery? Shooting—?’ Ben peered out but could see no neon through the dark glass.
‘The Kay Tee Art Gallery, right there, bub. We got an opening tonight, Edd McFee, ever heard of him?’ Kratt opened the door.
‘No I don’t th—’
‘You will. Come on.’
And Ben Franklin, hurried from the car into a mirror-fronted place, caught sight of his own nice face, poised for some suitable expression. He had already shaken hands with two or three persons inside before he could stop thinking about that face: maybe he should grow his moustache again, and to hell with Mr Kratt?
XI
The artist and the beautiful Mrs McBabbitt swept past the two critics who’d been standing in the same spot since their arrival.
‘…but I still don’t see why they all look the same, aren’t they all just…’
‘Well I call it Paradigmatics, it’s…’
‘…just purple squares?’
The two critics stood with their backs to as many of the pictures as possible, twiddled their champagne glasses, and studied the crowd.
‘Plenty of loot here… who’s the big boy in the J. Press suit?’
The taller critic looked where the shorter was looking. ‘Oh, Everett. Everett Moxon, he’s nobody. Now. Probably just here to ask Mr K. for a job. He used to be into reactors, light-cooled reactors or something boring like that. Lost everything in the panic.’
‘Just as well, before he started polluting light or something. Ever know a businessman with a conscience?’
‘Not unless they’ve started buying them as investments, who’s that stunning woman in black talking to McFee?’
The shorter looked where the taller was looking. ‘Mrs McBabbitt. If you think she’s beautiful now, wait till you see the finished product.’
‘You don’t mean—?’
‘Yep. Going through one of those whole-body cosmetic surgery jobs, bones and all.’
‘But they take years! And loot…’
‘Absolutely. Everybody here is loaded practically, except Allbright.’
‘Allbright! God I wish he’d hurry up and o.d. or whatever he’s going to do, I really get sick of seeing him everywhere. All he does is steal books to support his nasty habit.’
‘Poetry? Well I’ve got a dozen signed copies of his book put away, just in case. Posthumous glory might — hey, who’s that old woman?’
The taller critic, looking, said, ‘I didn’t know you read Allbright’s poetry — The one in the shawl?’
‘I don t. Looks more like a lace table-cloth, but who is she? Haven’t [ seen her before? Some kind of writer or—?’
‘No, last year. She entered this giant toilet in the Des Moines Bienniale, name’s Rose Wood, something like that.’
The shorter critic shook his head. ‘No, before that, way back, a writer my parents knew in Chicago — now was she the writer or was it her husband?’
‘Maybe the toilet was rattling off its memoirs — Christ, why don’t you just ask her?’
‘I will. I might.’ But neither critic made a move, except to put down an empty glass when a waiter came by and seize a full one. They remained anchored to the spot even after the crash.
Mr Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. ‘Me, I don’t understand nothing. It’s the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don’t get sore, hey I don’t mean this is garbage, I mean real garbage, it’s my business.’
But already the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt had turned away to listen to Ben Franklin:
‘Well purple, yes, it’s kind of ecclesiastical, isn’t all art? I mean isn’t that why we take it seriously, because it has its own liturgy?’
Allbright moved a book-shaped bulge under his sweater. ‘You’re gonna give me canons of taste for this? The fact is the guy painted the same damn purple square twenty times, the same purple the same square — and you justify that? If it were art you wouldn’t need to bring in all the big guns, the Church and Freud, Marx and Pater or any other dear damned dead philos, where’s that waiter? Hauling in Wittgenstein or maybe Kirke, waiter! Hey, over here!’
‘No, look fella, I’m not trying to justify anything. But so what that they’re all alike, so were icons, most of them look like mass production jobs.’
‘Mass production I like that, keep the old prayer-wheels of industry turning, isn’t that religion?’
‘Well I’m not really—’
‘Counting the revs, counting the revs see, because numbers make it all important, don’t they? This geek here could paint one purple square and who cares, but if he paints twenty, in comes the old number magic. What does the twenty stand for? What does it mean? Because that’s religion too, numbers have to mean something: the eight-fold path, the seven deadly sins, the ten commandm—’
‘What’s wrong with that? Just a way of keeping track, I mean even truth is binary, if you—’
‘Telling the beads,’ said Allbright, lifting two drinks from a passing tray. ‘Listen pal, numbers are everything in religion, telling the beads, when I was a kid I used to think that meant you know, talking to the beads. Only later on I found out it meant telling like a fucking bank teller, counting up the days of indulgence, no good storing up riches in Heaven if you can’t count them — Listen, you want my advice?’
The woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt moved on without waiting to hear his advice; a moment later she was advising Dr Tarr to look for religious significance in these paintings.
‘Lyle Danton? Is it you?’
The young man in patched denim work-clothes turned. ‘I call myself Tate now.’ He studied the old woman in lace, the corsage of radishes at her throat. ‘Ma?’
Ma Wood squeezed his forearm. ‘I’m glad to see my best pupil still interested in art.’
‘Art?’ His unhappy laugh startled her. ‘Let’s talk about something else. You still living in Newer?’ He moved to keep his face in profile, a habit she remembered.
‘Of course. Oh, I see, like Picasso? Taking your mother’s name I mean. But if you’re not painting now, why in the world—?’
‘Oh I’m painting, all right. I mean when I can afford the materials. Well it’s a long story…’