J R

— I’d rather you didn’t, Gibbs said holding the door opened for him, stopping to find a cigarette, to pat pockets for the rattle of matches in a box, gazing up at the Greek letters over the portal as he lit it and then back after the diminuendo of diCephalis’ retreat until that reared off in the form of a car aiming its impressively gathered speed at its crippled mate in green parked just outside the gate where with a reassuring look around the blind corner, Leroy motioned him, full career ahead, a course halted shudderingly abrupt as from the green wreck at the curb emerged the amorphous figure of its owner holding a small rolled black umbrella by its handle of simulated birch, recoiling, at that instant, from the flamboyant arrival of diCephalis on the one hand and, on the other, a mail truck from the blind corner that passed like a shot.

— Gosh!

— That, that’s mine, that umbrella.

— This? Gosh… And it was handed over on a note of apology given cyclopean definition by the loss of a lens.

— She took it by mistake. Not mine exactly, my little boy’s, diCephalis shouted as the roar of his engine rose. — I took it by mistake… and as he swerved into the open Leroy’s smile hung in the rearview mirror, down the block, through the arboreal slaughterhouse of Burgoyne Street, he kept looking up to the mirror as though it might still be there, even glancing into a wall mirror passing through the studio corridor as if to find it and reflecting no recognition for the face he saw instead, none in fact till he came on three versions of his wife on as many monitoring screens doing what, in another costume and to other music, might have been the concluding swoop of a tango, prompting the director to select a static bit of folk art so that her program ended with an endearing gesture that never left the room.

Telephones right and left lay on desks, hung from cords, berating one another. — I’m looking for this Mister Bast…?

— You are, eh?

He backed out of the man’s way, turned by his wife’s emergency and swept in its wake back the way he had come. — Well? What did they have to say? she asked as he swung the car door open for her.

— Who?

— Who! And now look what you’ve done, torn my sari. Who do you think? she pulled a silk fragment from a tear in the door steel, — the Foundation people, who! About my lesson, my… they saw it didn’t they?

— Well not, not exactly all of it, they… he drowned his own voice with a roar of the engine.

— They what? Did they see any of it?

— Well they, of course, yes that part about the waste, the silk waste…? The engine quieted, absorbed by its engagement with the gears which mounted the shift column in a rhythmical shimmy as the radio warmed.

— Waste! Then they didn’t see, why didn’t they? Why didn’t they see all of it!

— Well you see they, there were some technical difficulties… he began, shifting in the seat as the space around them took life with a Clementi trio from the radio.

— Technical! tell me technical! Technical like you or one of that crew of Whiteback’s switching channels, technical! And turn off that noise. Noise, you’ll hide in noise any chance you get… look out!

— But I called you to tell you they were there from the Foundation, he said as one of Burgoyne Street’s limbs swung past her window. — If I didn’t want them to see you would I even have called?

— Unless you manage to kill me first… she ducked away from her window, — no, you knew I’d find out they’d been there even if you didn’t tell me ahead so this way you played it safe, technical! You think I can’t see what you’d do to keep them from seeing me? Because you’re afraid they might have seen some talent, they might have seen somebody creative and I might get that Foundation grant and then where would you be? I’d be in India and where would you be!

— Well, I…

— Do you think… look out! Yes unless you kill me first, you’re going to tell me you didn’t see that limb? Do you think they didn’t notice it? That you picked the dullest part of my lesson to show them and then switched to something else? What. That Glancy at the blackboard? or your scarface friend with the machines? Which one. Or that Miss Moneybags with the social studies and the fake French name and the bazooms, which one?

— But, moneybags… he started, and then appeared to concentrate on the prospect of a curve distantly ahead.

— I thought so, with that front of hers that’s all you can look at, those French suits with nothing on under you don’t dress like that on a teacher’s salary. But don’t get worried I’m not asking you for anything, if you think I’d ask for your support on anything at least of all in the arts, not after this performance. Not that it’s anything different than the way you’ve always been, when I was having modern dance…

— But those lessons…

— And voice culture, singing…

— But those lessons…

— And painting, when I had it with Schepperman the support I got from you…

— But those lessons, I paid him for those lessons…