Memory and Dream

“But I’d be free for lunch tomorrow,” she added.

Lunch would be safe. She’d just stay away from alcoholic beverages and keep her wits about her for a change.

“Should I pick you up?”

Izzy shook her head. “Why don’t we meet at The Dear Mouse Diner at twelve instead?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you there. I’m going to take another turn around the show.”

“Thanks,” Izzy said as he turned to go. When he raised his eyebrows questioningly, she added,

“You know, for being supportive.”

Tom smiled. “Working with who we have, we’ve got big boots to fill,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together because other people don’t understand that.”

And then he stepped away into the crowd. Jilly came up to her once he was gone.

“What were you doing talking to him?” Jilly wanted to know.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Izzy said.

“The way he’s always on about the professor ...”

Izzy had to smile, thinking of how nothing ever seemed to faze Professor Dapple—especially not adverse criticism. He seemed to have been born with thicker skin than anyone else she knew. And the truth was, she thought he rather liked to be the center of an argument, even if he wasn’t there. “I don’t want you to stop thinking as soon as you leave this classroom,” he’d said on more than one occasion.

“Apply what we’ve talked about to the world at large. Discuss it amongst yourselves. Argue, if you must.

Just don’t commit the crime of complacency.”

“I don’t think it ever bothered the professor one way or the other,” she said. “But still.”

“Oh, July. Lighten up. It’s not like I’m going to many him or anything.”

“This is true,” Jilly allowed. “And he is a handsome devil.”

“I don’t even want to hear about that,” Izzy said. “I’d rather hear about this album jacket that Sophie says you got commissioned to do.”

“I can’t believe she told you. That was supposed to be my big announcement for tonight.”

“You’re supposed to tell people when you want something to be a secret,” Izzy said, leading Jilly back to where the rest of their friends were waiting for them. “Then we’d know to keep it to ourselves.”

“Fat chance with this lot ....”

VII

May 1976

The day after she received the fat envelope containing Rushkin’s critique of her Your Streets Are Not Mine show, Izzy made her way down to The Green Man Gallery. She spent a few minutes browsing through a mixed- media show by Claudia Feder before agreeing to Albina’s invitation to have a cup of tea in the back room.

“Taking a bit of a break?” Albina asked her.

Izzy nodded. She tended to work such long hours during the day that she rarely took time off to go visiting. Most of the artists she knew relaxed after a major show—for a few days, at least—but hanging a show always inspired Izzy in new work. She did some of her best paintings in the weeks immediately following a show.

“I’ve got to stretch some new canvases today,” she explained, “and you know how much I love doing that.”

“Well, you deserve a bit of a holiday. You’ve been working very hard lately.”

“It’s not like work for me,” Izzy said with a shrug. “Which isn’t to say I don’t find it hard. It’s just not work— not the painting, not any of it.”

“Except for stretching canvases.”

Izzy smiled. “And measuring frames.”

“I often wondered why so many of your pieces were of a set size.”

The tea was ready to be poured then. They spoke a little of the Feder show that was in the gallery at the moment as they added their milk and sugar to their cups. Izzy didn’t bring up the real reason she’d come to see Albina until just before she left.

“Did you ever meet Rushkin?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” Albina admitted. “He was the original mystery man of the Newford art scene. I can remember hearing that he didn’t even attend his own openings—at least not as himself “

“Who did he come as?”

“I’ve no idea. I was told that he’d come in disguise so that he could see the reaction to his work without having to actually speak to anyone.” Albina laughed suddenly. “Although why he’d have to disguise himself when no one knew what he looked like anyway is beyond me.”

So much for trying to find out when he’d seen her show, Izzy thought when she was back at the coach-house studio. But at least he had gone to see it and his critiques were as helpful this time out as they’d been the first time he’d written to her. There was more praise in his most recent letter; he seemed to be able to find fault with less in these new paintings. When he did have a criticism, it dealt mostly with arcane bits of technique that no one else would probably notice, or compositional elements where he suggested alternate viewpoints, not because they were better, he wrote, but so that she could see the other possibilities and perhaps utilize them in future work.

Needless to say, Izzy was pleased with his praise and the fact that, wherever he was, however he did it, he still managed to fit in the time to see her work and comment upon it.

She wondered if John ever went to her shows. Maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe meeting his fellow numena in the streets of Newford was enough for him.

VIII

July 1976

On a hot muggy day, with both the temperature and humidity climbing into the nineties, Izzy ran into Jilly at Amos & Cook’s when she took a break from her current painting to pick up a few art supplies.

Jilly was as preoccupied as she was, and they only noticed each other when they both reached for the same tube of viridian.

“Well, howdy, stranger,” Jilly said.

Izzy smiled. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Weeks and weeks. You’re turning into a hermit.”

“Not really. I’ve just been working on changing my priorities. Less partying, more painting.”

“Good for you. Just don’t overdo it.”

Jilly glanced at the palette-shaped clock that hung behind the airbrush counter. It took her a moment to work out that the paintbrushes that served as the clock’s hands were pointing to the equivalent of eleven-thirty.

“Do you have time for an early lunch?” she asked.

“Depends. Is the place you have in mind air-conditioned?”

Jilly laughed. “I take it your studio isn’t either.”

“I’m wilting.”

Because it was only a few blocks over on Williamson Street, they settled on The Monkey Woman’s Nest. They took a table by the window so that they could look out from their comfortable vantage point at all the people going by, who were less fortunate than they were because they still had to fight the heat.

Two iced teas and grilled cheese sandwiches later, the conversation got around to Tom Downs.

“You’re seeing a lot of him these days,” Jilly remarked.

Izzy shrugged. Her relationship with Tom had never developed further than friendship, but meeting him at the opening had marked a turning point for her in terms of how she related to men. There were no more one-night stands. There was no more casual sex, period. She focused all of her energy instead on her work and her friends and her numena.

“You make it sound like a crime,” she said.

“He just bugs me, that’s all.”

“He used to bug me as well, but he’s turned out to be a pretty decent sort. Have you seen much of his