#127

Centered on the northern wall of the second room, flanked by two of Sarah's lambent watercolors: Telemakhos. Aka. Joseph Lucas. At Mike's party, Christmas, 2001, where he stood host, inchoate, in his house and home. Serving drinks from the kitchen's makeshift bar, as strippers in Santa hats swivelled on the hardwood floors of the salon. For Joe a single shot, from a roll CG had given the artist. The Canadian Atlantic. The feted double-exposure. And the framed print, three years later, for sale.

Stephen glanced at it, down to the wine he was pouring into a paper cup, and up again as he lifted the cup to his mouth. The angled grid of ships. And the schoolhouse, 4th and Bainbridge, later. The inner patio, with Joe's gaint canvas: fatuous abstractions of pink and grey in oil. His own smaller canvas on the ground beside: flat; and for brushes, the leaves, the twigs and the stems of the tasteful garden. A wash of turpentine.

And another image, behind. Adrian and Blake at a barbecue in the apartment over Square's. Joe, Dozent to his work, a large painting in messy plots of color, with a snaking line of blue, and a single corner of dots shining like malformed stars. On the sofa, Stephen overhears: "And then my friend Ebony said, Oh my God, you've just painted your respone to Nine Eleven - and she was right; it was unbelievable. This squiggle is the Hudson river, and these double lines the Twin Towers, and these bursts of light are explosions, and that little mark is an 'M,' which stands for Michael, in Philadelphia, who I'm escaping the city to." Adrian's ironic eyes; Blake's squinting, disdain as depth of attention. "Ever the vaunt-courier, Joe, really-" But Joe, jubilant, continues, a mischievous gleam in his eye. "And that's not all, do you see it? Do you see it?!" He grins as the couple cock and jolt their heads in mock-effort, Blake lifting a hand to his chin. "Just wait," Joe says, and turns to stretch his arms across the canvas, rotating it clockwise, ninety degrees, and then withdrawing. "Ahhh..." Adrian hesistates, blind. "Do you see! An American flag!" The white stars now clumped in the upper-lefthand corner, the squiggles translated into vague horizontal lines. An American flag. Badly rendered, and stamped towards the bottom with an "M." Art in the hands of a jackanape.

"Si jeunesse savait." Square, from across the room, bottled water in his hand. A portrait. $300. Not too dear. But in what edition? "Tik-talk has it, our Adonis's looks have aspired." A sip as Square approaches. One of his fingers tracing the edge of the frame. "S'true. I feel bad for him. Doesn't have the faintest, really." Downcast innocence. How long can one persist in green? "Yes. The syn's supposed to travaille mit Mentor, not redicorate his breadroom." That's right - he is no Telemakhos. Must have been Adrian titled it that. His fingerprint all over the show. But there was Stephen's nature-painting too, hanging on the wall in Arthur's office. And there was food and wine and visitors he had greeted from within the gutted schoolhouse. Was he then, in their eyes too, a failed Peisistratus? He was young then, raw and buoyant in the city's current. "Tell him a kiss: that's the irony of the artist's shadow. Eh, Stevie?"