“Way frustrating. He’s trying to teach us three-point perspective. That’s where you’re looking directly down at the objects…”
“Hence the bottles on the floor?”
“Hence the bottles on the floor,” she affirmed. “And it looks easy, but there’s this killer foreshortening and I am so not getting it.”
“On the plus side, I understand you saved Colin Falconer’s life this morning.”
“Man’s a total mess,” she acknowledged. “You would not believe what he’s gotten himself into. But, word, you can’t tell anyone one syllable of this…”
“Not even Lacy?” Mitch usually told his editor everything.
“Okay, no one local. Promise?”
On his sworn oath she told Mitch about Colin’s online romance with another man, his secretary’s sexual- harassment lawsuit and Babette Leanse’s insistence that he resign. “Either he goes quietly or he’ll be outed,” Des said, shaking her head. “It’s amazing to me that somebody smart would mess up his whole life over cyber sex. Damn, it’s not even real.”
“What is real anymore?” Mitch countered. “Folks go to theme parks instead of actual places. They watch people do daring things on television instead of doing them themselves. Hell, The Lord of the Flies is now a prime- time game show. Can real get any weirder than that?” Mitch reached for a washcloth and mopped at his face with it. “While we’re on the subject of a man messing up his life-would you bust a small farmer for growing pot on his land?”
“I have to,” she responded. “It’s against the law.”
“Even if he wasn’t selling it?”
“And I’m supposed to care because…?”
“He was giving it away for free to cancer patients.”
“It’s still against the law.”
“His name is Jim Bolan. He thinks a developer wanted his land and used the law to pry it away from him.”
“Which developer?”
“Bruce Leanse.”
Des fell silent, her body tensing slightly next to his in the water. “That man sure does think a lot of himself.”
“He’s what is known as a pub slut.”
“Promoting himself is part of his business, isn’t it?”
“Nope. It violates one of Hopalong Cassidy’s most important rules in his Ten-Point Creed for American Boys and Girls: Don’t boast or be a show-off.”
Des smiled at him, the mega-wattage smile that did strange, wonderful things to the lower half of his body. “Will you kindly explain something to me…?”
“You’re wondering how you ended up with someone like me.”
“How did you know that?”
“Dunno. I just did.”
“Well, how did I…?”
“You got lucky, that’s all. Don’t question it. Just be thankful. I know I am.” He sat up in the tub and kissed her gently. “Guess who else I met today,” he said, his face very close to hers.
“I can’t imagine,” she said softly, gazing deep into his eyes. “Howdy Doody? The Lone Ranger? Lassie?”
A loud buzzing noise interrupted them. Someone was at the security gate that closed off Big Sister’s causeway to the public. It took a key to raise it. Either a key or someone to buzz you in.
“Now who would that be?” Mitch threw on his robe and padded wetly to the kitchen window for a look. Across the water he could make out a single headlight at the gate, and faintly hear the phlegmy putt-putt-putt of a vintage engine. He immediately hit the buzzer, raising the security gate, and dashed to his closet for some clothes.
“Who is it?” Des called to him from the tub.
“Girlfriend, you are in for a real treat,” Mitch assured her, flinging open the front door to the frosty night air just as Hangtown came roaring up to the cottage on his Indian Chief.
“Took you at your word, Big Mitch,” he called out to him, yanking off his leather helmet and goggles. “Tonight’s family night-it’s Jerry and Ben Stiller versus Bob and Jakob Dylan.” He was referring to Celebrity Deathmatch.
“Well, sure… Come on in.” Mitch flicked on the television while his new friend came thumping heavily into the room. The old master seemed to fill the entire house with his massive size and aura. “Have a seat, Hangtown. Can I get you a whiskey?”
“Naw, I’m cool… Oh, damn!”
Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond, Deathmatch ’s commentators, were delivering their patented sign-off: “Good fight, good night.” The Claymation wrestling show was already over. He’d missed it.
“Next time I’ll tape it,” Mitch vowed, as Des came striding in. She’d toweled off and thrown on one of Mitch’s old flannel shirts, which just did manage to cover the essentials. “Hangtown, say hello to Desiree Mitry. Des, this is Wendell Frye.”
Des was speechless. She could not believe she was face-to-face with such a famous and reclusive man.
“You’re the new resident trooper,” Hangtown exclaimed, feasting on her with his bright-blue eyes. “I was told that you mm-rr-draw beautifully. But I was not told you are an utter goddess. By God, if I were fifty years younger I’d fall right to my knees and kiss your dainty pink toes.”
“Dainty? Man, you must be looking through the wrong end of a telescope.”
“In fact, I just may have to anyway,” he said valiantly. “Although I won’t be able to get back up without assistance.”
“You, sir, are an old goat,” Des observed.
“Third generation. I come by it honestly.”
“Well, if you don’t behave yourself I’ll have to get my handcuffs.”
“Hey, you promised you’d only play that game with me,” Mitch objected.
Now Hangtown was peering at the still-life display on the floor next to her easel. “God, you’re in three-point perspective hell, aren’t you.”
“Totally,” she answered glumly.
“You’re frustrated. Don’t be. I can help you with this. But you have to make me a promise.”
“What is it?”
“I want you to think of yourself as growing one day younger each and every day for the rest of your life,” Hangtown said to her, his voice soaring. “Growing more open to new ideas, more excited, more alive. Will you do that?”
Des considered this, her brow furrowing. “Okay…”
“Now, take this drawing-it’s wrong, all wrong.” He hobbled over to the easel and flipped her sketch pad to a fresh page, gripping the stub of graphite stick she’d left there. “Your problem is your damned adult brain,” he said, squinting down at the arrangement of bottles at his feet. “It’s telling you that the wine bottle is twelve inches high, the same way it tells you the curb you’re about to step off of is twelve inches high, even though your eyes are trying to tell your brain it’s only four inches high-that’s the foreshortening. But if your brain believed your eyes, you’d fall in the street and scrape your beautiful knees, am I right?”
Des shook her head at him, mystified. “I guess, but-”
“A child does accept that the curb is four inches high, and does trip and fall. I say this to you, Desiree, because children in pre-school art classes can do three-point perspective without a hitch. They ace it. It’s only we adults who have trouble with it. You must break free of your adult mind. See as a child sees. Accept as a child accepts. Here, I’ll show you…”
Now Hangtown began to draw, working swiftly and lightly from top to bottom, first finding the proportions of his bottles, then his shapes. Then he began to apply more pressure, deftly using the side of the stick to add shading and weight until the bottles were suddenly there on the page, each in exact proportion to the other. The old man drew with passion and vitality, wielding the graphite stick like a sword. He seemed forty years younger. He
