Scumbler. William Wharton

MAN’S FEAST, BANQUET.

      ANOTHER’S GROSS INIQUITY.

      NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING.

      Later, a thin girl slinks up behind me. She squeezes into a doorway. This door is closed; only a very thin person could fit in that doorway. I keep working away. I can’t tell if she’s thirteen or thirty; blond stringy hair. She smiles; I smile back.

      ‘J’aime beaucoup votre tableau, Monsieur.’

      ‘Merci.’

      That’s enough. I’ve the world’s strongest American accent in French. I can’t even say a simple ‘merci’ without giving myself away. She switches into English.

      ‘I also am an artist. I study at the school of decoration.’

      ‘That’s nice.’

      I’m not too interested in womankind or any kind right at that moment. It’s no insult or anything; I’m not interested in anything else much when I’m deep in painting.

      ‘Would you like to drink some coffee with me?’

      Oh, sure, here we go: coffee, cigarettes, eye wrestling. I stop, take a good look at her. She seems like a fine, sensitive young woman, maybe twenty-five. I would like to know her, talk about painting. What I can’t figure is why she wants to take time talking to a worn-out old bozo like me.

      ‘OK. Come back in half an hour; I’ll be finished then.’

      She slides away, I figure I’m rid of her. I dig myself back into the work. What do young girls like that want? I know there’s no natural father love in humans, it’s something we have to learn, but it can’t be all that bad. God, if it’s only sex, pick on one of these young bucks stomping around, unbound dongs dangling loose against their knees.

      There’s something about a picture painter turns a certain kind of woman roundheeled. But why should I knock it? Maybe I need a shot of vitamin E, need to eat more parsley, oysters, hot peppers. Then again, this young woman might really need or want to talk with another artist. I’m definitely getting too cynical in my old age. I’ll have to watch that. I think I’m mostly afraid, been hurt too often, love-punch drunk, can’t take it anymore.

      I work another half hour and there she is. I’m still not quite finished. I squeeze off a little smile and work on. She lights a cigarette and offers me one already lit. I shake my head, tell her I don’t smoke. She takes both those cigarettes between the fingers of one hand and smokes them at once. I never saw that before. She smokes Greta Garbo-style, hollow-cheeked deep drag. There’s much of Garbo there: blond straight hair, thin; Garbo except for the part about wanting to be alone.

      I stop painting. I’m finished enough so it needs drying for a while. I pack up, we walk down the street to a café. I’m shooting quick looks around to avoid the scary daughter-of-the-painter, woman. I order a beer. I’m still too excited from the work to take coffee. When I’m up, high with painting, coffee turns me into shatters.

      I listen to her, feel myself unwinding. She tells how she’s living with an older married man. He has her put up in a room near here. He comes every afternoon to extract his pound of vaginal, not so virginal flesh. He gives her money so she can go to school; probably proud of her work like a father. Not much original there.

      Halfway through the beer, she tells me she won’t take me to her room, very ethical. I didn’t ask! I sip the rest of my beer; I’m flattening out. Then, straight from the blue, no prelims, she volunteers to go to a hotel with me. Now she’s looking into my eyes, feeling for the tongue of my soul. This can usually give me a lift but I’ve nowhere to go. I’m going down fast, irreversible.

      I try to stay with her, but it’s impossible. She must see me shrinking before her eyes. I feel any minute I might slip under the table and disappear into a small spot of emulsified linseed oil.

      I tell her I’ll be painting around the quarter and I’ll see her another day. I’m fading. She sees it, smart, sensitive woman. There’s some little hurt, disappointment; but nothing world-shaking. She’s an artist, she must understand.

      TRIAL, TRIBULATIONS AND LOST EXPECTATION,

      NO TENDERNESS CAN SOFTEN SOME BLOWS.

      THE TOUCH OF A FEATHER WITH THE STING

      OF A WHIP; SOMETIMES TOUCH AND GO.

      We need women like her for the bad times. They can crawl out from under atom bombs and start having new babies: two-headed, eight-armed babies with maybe no hair and yellow eyes – all kinds of exciting possibilities. Maybe we can even mutate ourselves out of males, put human beings back together again. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, even if it’s radioactive.

      I say goodbye and leave her sitting in the café. I strap the box on my back, check to see the painting’s on tight and mount my bike. The traffic’s a horror and I don’t roll into the house until after five. There are visitors from the States, some spring-tide travelers. I’d like to flop dead but I need to play host, might sell a painting or two, souvenirs of Paris.

      Sometimes I think there’s too much of the accidental in my life. Or maybe life is only an accident itself – sometimes just a fender bender, other times a ‘total’.

      CHAOS, AN ABYSS OF INDELIBLE

      NOTHING. WHY TELL OF IT? WHY LISTEN?

      BUT WITHOUT, THERE IS NO MASS, NO

      MOMENTUM, NO GRAVITY – NO LEVITY.

      8

      Mouth-to-Mouth

      At our place, I’m the homekeeper. Every morning, Kate and the kids go off to school. Kate likes teaching kindergarten, hates housework; probably did it too long; anything gets boring sooner or later. I like everything to do with nesting; but I don’t much care for the words ‘homemaking’ or ‘housekeeping’. To me, you make