“Joan, I never can believe that’s your age; it isn’t real, like that million dollars. I said ‘oyster’ not ‘homo.’ The artist was married, or shacked, with his number-one model. Possible she got Joe’s cherry. Either way, she taught him plenty and mothered him and was good to him, and it was a happy Troy.
“But the artist—Mr. Tony, as Joe speaks of him—while he gave Joe the use of his studio and table and bed and wife—was nevertheless a strict master. He wouldn’t let Joe paint with a palette knife or a wide broom or do distortions or abstracts or psychedelics—he made him learn to draw. Anatomy. Composition. Brush techniques. Color values. The whole endless drill of academic art, and wash brushes and sweep out the studio. Joe says that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Tony, he would still be sketching sausage skins. Joe found out what he could do, what he wanted to do, and learned to do it. But, so he told me, not what his master did—but in both cases founded on old-fashioned academic training. The hard way. Oh, Joe’s learned short cuts. But he can paint directly on canvas—he’s been doing it since our last break—and make it as close to a photograph as he cares to. Or as different.”
“—never said that poor is better than rich, Gigi; it is not. But both ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ have shortcomings—somewhere between is probably best, if you could get off the treadmill at that point. But—Look, does Joe guard you when you go grocery-shopping?”
“Huh? Of course not. Oh, sometimes he comes along and helps carry—but not to guard. Well, he does ride down the lift with me if it’s a time of day when it might be empty—I mean, he’s no fool and neither am I and I don’t go looking for a mugging. Same coming back up and if I’m later than I said I would be, he’s always there waiting. But I move around by myself, always have; I’m just not foolish about where and when.”
“Gigi, I’m sure you’re not foolish, I doubt if you ever go into a park—”
“Not even at high noon! I’ve been raped once and didn’t like it. I’m not looking for a gang bang where they take turns holding you down. They ought to bulldoze every park in the city.”
“Bulldozing the whole city might be better. But, Gigi, you move around rather freely. I can’t. I don’t dare appear even with guards around me without being veiled, I can’t risk being recognized. I have to be wary all the time. Sure, you bolt your door—but my house has to be strong enough to take a bomb tossed against it—that’s happened several times since I built it. I have to watch for everything from kidnappers and assassins to mere nuisances who want to touch me.
“I’m talking both about the way I am now and the man ‘Johann’ I used to be—too much money attracts crackpots and criminals and there is nothing I can do about it but keep guards around me day and night, and live in a house that’s a fort, and try to avoid being recognized at any time, and never, never try to live what is called a ‘normal life.’ Besides that—Gigi, can you imagine what a treat it is to me to be allowed to wash dishes?”
Gigi looked startled. “Huh? Joan, you’ve lost me. Oh, I know how complicated it is to be rich; I’ve watched video. But washing dishes isn’t a treat; it’s a horrid bore. Too often I’ve left them in the sink, then had to face them before breakfast. By the time breakfast is ready, I don’t want any.”
“Let me give you a tip, Gigi. I did know something about Joe’s mother; Eunice was my secretary for years.” (I never mentioned her, Boss!) (Will you let me tell this lie my own way?) “She was—and is—a pig and lives like one. This place isn’t big; if you’ll keep it spotless, Joe won’t care when you get wrinkles—and we all do, someday. But a dirty toilet bowl or dishes in the sink reminds him of his mother.”
Gigi said, “Joan, I try. But I can’t clean house and pose at the same time.”
“Do your best, hon. If necessary, lose sleep. Joe is a man worth making extra effort to keep. But I was talking about doing dishes—it’s a nuisance to you but a luxury to me. Washing dishes means ‘freedom’ to me. Look, here we are, three of us, no servants—and presently I’ll be gone and you’ll be alone with your husband and the world shut out. I can’t shut it out. Uh…let me think—Four mobile guards, a security chief, twelve in-house watchmen under him, three always on duty and the others on call, which means the married ones—which is most of them—have their families under my roof—a personal maid, a valet who used to tend me and now takes care of guests—couldn’t fire him; I never fire anyone without cause—a butler, a head chef, three—oh, I don’t remember; there were about sixty adults in my house the last time I asked.”
“My God, Joan!”
“Yes, ‘My God!’ To take care of one person. Yet not one could I let go without replacing him. I planned that house and kept tabs on the design, intending to keep staff down to a minimum. So it’s loaded with gadgets. Things like robofootmen, and a trick bed that was designed to let me get along without a nurse a few more years as I got older. Do you know what that means? I lost. I have to have a building superintendent and maintenance mechanics—or the gadgets don’t work. All this complication—and never any real privacy—just to take care of one person who doesn’t want it that way.”
“Joan, why don’t you get rid of it? Move—and start over.”
“Move where, dear? Oh, I’ve thought about it, believe me. But it’s not actually to take care of one person—it’s to take care of too much money, money that is fastened to me…so that I can’t risk kidnappers or anything else. I can’t even cash it and flush it down the pot; that’s not the way big money works. And even if I could and did—nobody would believe I had. I would just have taken off my armor and probably would not stay alive two days. Besides—Do you like cats?”
“Love ’em! Got a kitten promised now.”
“Good. Now tell me—how do you get rid of a cat you’ve raised?”
“Huh? Why, you don’t. Not if you’re decent.”
“I agree, Gigi. I’ve lived with many cats. You keep them. If you are forced to it, you have a cat humanely destroyed—or if you have the guts, you kill it yourself so that it won’t be bungled. But you don’t give away a grown cat; it is almost impossible. But, Gigi, you can’t kill people.”
“I don’t understand, Joan.”
“What would I do with Hugo? He’s been with me many years; he’s doing the only thing he knows how to do—except preach, which doesn’t really pay. Gigi, loyal servants are ‘Chinese obligations’ just like a cat. Sure, they can get other jobs. But what would you do if Joe told you, ‘Get lost. We’re finished.’”
“I’d cry.”
“I don’t think my servants would cry—but I would.”
“But I’d get along!”
Joan sighed. “And that platoon I have around me would get along, I think; they’re able or I wouldn’t have them—and I’ve got money enough to make sure that ones like Hugo are taken care of; that’s one of the good things about being rich—if money is all it takes to remedy something, you can. Gigi, there is some solution to this silly fix I’m in and I’m going to find it—I was just trying to show you that it isn’t as simple as it looks on video. The solution may be something as easy as changing my name again and changing my face with plastic surgery and going somewhere else.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t change your face.”
“No, you’re right; I must not change this face. It’s Eunice’s; I’m only its custodian. If I changed it, Joe would not like it—nor several other people. (Starting with me, Boss.) (I won’t change your lovely face, sweetheart. I’ll cherish it.) “I’ll keep it as it is—but I have to keep it veiled. It’s been on video too much, photographed and printed too many million times. But there’s some way to tackle it.”
Joan Eunice looked at the nearly finished painting almost with awe. She knew what a beautiful body she had inherited; she knew that Gigi was a beauty of another sort; she could see that these “Grecian damsels” were herself and Gigi and she could not see any detail in which the painting was not a perfect likeness of each.
Yet Joe Branca’s “realism?
?? was fantasy. These two nymphs in a glade were voluptuous, sensuous, enticing in a way that she knew that she and Gigi had not been—sprawled on a platform of boards and gossiping about everything from an alcoholic to dirty dishes.
“What do you think?” Gigi asked. “Say what you like; Joe doesn’t give a hoot about any opinion but his own.”
Joan took a deep breath, sighed. “How does he do it? Here I am with my nipples tight just from looking at it—and yet it’s you and me, and we lay there talking for hours and never got in a sweat about it. Discussed everything but Topic ‘A’—wasn’t even a cuddle because we had to hold still. Yet this paint-and-canvas reaches out and grabs you by the gonads and squeezes. I’m certain it would have just as much effect on a man.”
From behind them Joe said, “Fool-the-eye.”
Joan answered, “Fool-the-eye, hell, Joe. My eyes are not fooled, I’m enchanted. I want to buy it!”
“No.”
“Huh? Oh, kark. You planned to sell it to some old butch. God knows ninety-five is old—and I feel butch enough to qualify when I look at the painting.”
“Yours.”
“Huh? Joe, you can’t do this to me. You intended to sell it, you said so. Gigi, back me up.”
Gigi chose not to answer. Joe said stubbornly, “Yours, Joan. You want it, you take it.”
“Joe, you are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met and I don’t see how Gigi puts up with you. If you give me that painting, I’m going to destroy it at once—”
Gigi gasped. “Oh, no!”
Joe shrugged. “Your ache. Not mine.”
“—but if you’ll sell it to me at your going rates, I’ll take it with me and give it to Jake Salomon to hang at the end of his bed so he’ll wake up happy each morning.” (You bombed him, twin! Now swing back and strafe the survivors.) “That’s the choice, Joe. Give it to me and I’ll chop it into shreds. But sell it to me—and Jake Salomon gets it. Oh, you could welch, then hang it for sale—and put me to the trouble of hiring detectives to follow it to where you hang it so that I can buy it through an agent. What I do with it then, I won’t tell. Or you could even keep it for your own jollies; it’s quite a job.”
Gigi said, “Quit being stubborn, Joe; you know you’d like Jake to have it.”
“Gigi, what does Joe charge for a painting like that?”
“Oh, I set the prices. Mostly I sell them by the yard. By size.”
“So? How much is this size?”
“Well, I try to get two hundred and fifty for that size.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Really, Joan, considering that it took both my time and Joe’s all yesterday evening and today—not to mention your time, but you’re buying it, so I didn’t add on for the second figure in it—considering all that and the commission we pay, it’s not very much—”
“Darling, I meant ‘ridiculously’ low. I haven’t bought much art the last twenty years but I do know that is not less than a thousand-dollar picture—then up like a kite to whatever the traffic will bear. I can tell you this: When Jake dies and that painting is auctioned off, it won’t go for as little as a thousand…and it might be much higher because I’m certain to be at that auction and in no mood to let it get out of the family. But I’m not raising the price now; I never do that. You named a price of two-fifty; I accept. It’s a sale.”
“Joan, you never did let me finish.”
“Oh. Sorry, hon.”
“I try to get two hundred and fifty for that size when I hang it in a shop. But half of that goes to the owner of the shop; that’s the only way I can get space. So the price to you is a hundred and twenty-five.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Just ‘No’ the way Joe said it to me. As good business practice you should never undercut your retailer. I think he’s robbing you; the commission should be twenty-five percent, no more. But don’t undercut the price you want him to ask—that’s no way to stay in business. I don’t know much about art…but I know one hell of a lot about business. Cash, or check?”
“Cash is fine. If you have that much with you. Or pay when you feel like it.”
“I want to pay now and get a receipt so that it will be legally mine—before your stubborn husband can thwart me again. Shall I write the receipt for you, Gigi girl?”
“Oh, I’ve got Woolworth’s printed forms for that, and I can write numbers and sign my chop. No huhu.”
“Good. But I want something else.”
“What, Joan?”
“I want to be kissed. I’ve been a good girl and posed all day and haven’t even been kissed for it. So I want Joe to kiss me for being so stinky difficult—and I want to kiss you for helping me with him. Joe, will you kiss me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s better. Joe, will you escort two nice girls—me and Gigi, I mean, and no smart cracks—down to the supermarket? If Gigi will buy us a steak to celebrate, I want to prove I can broil it. Will you buy us a steak, Gigi?”
“Sure! Beef, or horse?”
“Uh…hon, I’m forced to admit that I haven’t shopped for groceries in years. What do you think?”
“Well…it had better be horse.”
“Whatever you say. As long as they don’t sell us the harness.”
25
In the United Nations the Burmese delegation charged that the so-called Lunar Colonies were a cover-up for a conspiracy by China and the United States to build military bases on the Moon. The Secretary of Conservation and Pollution Control denied a report that deer in Yosemite National Park were “dying in hordes from polluted water and emphysema.” He stated that a healthy ecological rebalancing was taking place—no need for alarm—and the new herd would be stronger than ever.
The Reverend Dr. Montgomery Chang, D.D., Most Humble Supreme Leader of The Way, Inc., testified before the Subcommittee on Unwritten Law of the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the pending bill to require Federal licensing of teachers of Zen Buddhism and related disciplines as “therapists de facto et de jure:” “These bootleg gurus are giving rational mysticism a bad name. A man should no more be allowed to teach meditation, asanas, or transcendental philosophy without strict control by a licensing board than he should be allowed to ski, or to surf, or to frame a picture without passing an examination. The idea that this bill would abridge the sacred guarantees of the First Amendment is the sheerest nonsense; it protects and frees them.” Under questioning he stated that he would be humbly willing to serve as chairman of such a board if such sacrifice were asked of him. Survivors of Hurricane Hilda were still being rescued and the known death toll now stood at 1908.
The Department of Internal Defense placed a temporary exception on interstate transmittal of intelligence concerning public disorders involving more than three persons, then placed a second exception with strict penalties on the publicizing of the first censorship order. The Secretary reported to the President that news services and video nets were cooperating voluntarily in the interests of the general welfare. In re the matter of identity of Conglom Tycoon Johann S. B. Smith the Supreme Court, in a declaratory relief opinion made notable only by Mr. Justice Handy waking up in the middle of its reading, slapping the desk and roaring, “Divorce granted!” then going back to sleep, ruled seven to two to sustain a lower court in expanding and clarifying the principle originally set forth in Estate of Henry M. Parsons v. Rhode Island. Four of the majority and one dissenting justice ruled also that a legal sex change was involved in the matter; two justices thought otherwise; one justice (Mr. Handy) used twenty pages to prove that such a composite of sexes was contrary to public interest and to the laws of God and that both Johann Smith and Eunice Branca were legally dead and that the resultant monster had no legal existence of any sort; the ninth justice, in a one-sentence separate assent, opined that sex was irrelevant in the entire matter; one of the majority, in another separate assenting opinion, stated that the donor body should have been sterilized surgically in the public in
terest and that the Congress would do well to make such sterilization mandatory in any future similar situation. No mention was made by any justice of thirteen amici-curiae briefs and one petition filed with the Court. In an opinion issued the same day (Illinois v. Sam J. Roberts) conviction was set aside on the grounds that the householder (deceased) had not advised Roberts of his rights before attempting to place him under citizen’s arrest.
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On the basis of evidence submitted by the Chinese delegation the U.N.A.E.C. eased the tolerance levels for strontium-90 for whole milk. The Reverend Thomas Barker of Long Beach, California, in an Equal-Time-for-God videosermonette declared that the World had ended at midnight December 31st 1999 PCT, and that all since that time was “illusion of the Devil, without form, substance, or reality.”
Miss Smith greeted O’Neil and asked him to have Dabrowski and Fred fetch upstairs with her two big flat packages, one so large that it had to be tilted to get it through the door of the lift. When packages, mobile guards, and she herself were fitted inside, she locked the door and pressed the “Hold” touchplate without signaling a floor, then dropped her cape. “Let me kiss you thank-you-good-bye, boys, but for Heaven’s sake don’t get paint on you or muss it. Better just hold my face in your hands—but no need to hurry.”
Shortly thereafter she looked at herself in the lift’s mirror, decided that makeup and hairdo had suffered only minor wear and tear, let Dabrowski lay her cape around her, then punched for her floor and fastened, all the cape’s frogs so that she was again fully covered. When the lift stopped she hooked up her veil.