Well crap.
He picked a bad day to go with the tighty-whities.
Well crappity crap.
The patent office was going to have to wait a little longer for a fully collapsible tree stand. He still had a few days to work on it.
His phone rang.
“Hey baby…No, I’m just fartin’ around at my uncle’s place. I’ll be done in a few minutes… Half-n’-half…got it. See you in a bit. Love you!”
The sun was on its way to setting anyway. Soon it would be too dark to continue the experiments. He anticipated a horrible night’s sleep.
11. The Condo at Night
“Doubles again you bastard!”
Lynch (James) and Julie had been nicotine-free for six months. Without smoking as an option, backgammon in bed was as good a post-coital activity as any. Julie was a better strategist, but James was luckier with the dice. One game usually took long enough for him to get recharged for round two.
“Doubles it is. Thank you very much.”
Julie rolled over on her back, purposely averting her eyes from the board while James moved his pieces with little rhyme or reason. Ineptitude at any level put her out of the mood.
“So, what the hell was going on at the Galleria?”
“Don’t want to talk about it. I can move this piece home, right?
She glanced at the board.
“Oh, dear God, yes! Didn’t you teach me how to play this game?”
“I think so. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5…okay, done.”
“Hand ‘em over.”
“Right. Here’s the long and short of it. I met with my prime suspect’s ex-girlfriend this afternoon, hoping to get some information on him, and as the result, tomorrow I’ve got to have a conversation I don’t want to have with probably the worst person I could have it with.”
“Let me guess. Reilly?”
“Yup.”
Julie suddenly snapped her fingers and sprang to her feet.
“Shit! I almost forgot.”
She threw on a robe without bothering to close it, kissed her lover on the forehead, and darted out of the bedroom. He heard her open and close the refrigerator and scamper up to the loft. She returned with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and a back issue of Philly Neighbor. She chucked the latter towards his groin. He caught it as a reflex.
“Here, check this out.”
“What is it, and why did you throw it at my balls?”
“You got my text today, didn’t you?”
“Ah! Your text. I guess it got lost among the others. This is what you found?”
She took a swig and pointed at the magazine.
“I knew I recognized the Unjudged from somewhere.”
James turned to the page marked with a Post-it.
“How did a street gang end up in Philly Neighbor?”
“It didn’t. That’s why I had a hard time remembering the right issue. In the magazine, ‘The Unjudged’ wasn’t a street gang. It was a painting.”
James took a look at the article. He didn’t read it right away. He just glanced at the title and scanned the pictures.
LOCAL ARTISTS PUSH THE ENVELOPE
Julie ditched her robe and resumed her supine position next to the backgammon board.
“That stupid article and that stupid painting almost shut us down.”
The painting was shown right below the title of the article. There was a caption.
THE UNJUDGED BY WALLACE AVERY.
He couldn’t tell whether it depicted a rite, or a rave, or some twisted combination of the two. At the center, being highlighted by some sort of mystical moonbeam, were three women in various stages of undress surrounded by an audience of twice as many men. In the background was a throng of young, good-looking people engaged in just about every known modern vice. There were pyramids of beer cans, tables piled with artery-clogging food, a multitude of drug paraphernalia, fist fights, acts of random destruction, and, if you looked closely enough, a smattering of public masturbators. Subscribers must have shit when they saw it.
“How old is this article?”
“Three years and a couple months. Do you see the robes?”
“I do, and the target.”
Behind a pile of splintered furniture, hung a knife-riddled target, identical to the one at the barn. More obvious were the robes. Everyone in the painting wore a black robe, each bearing its own mystic symbol between the shoulder blades.
Now James started to read.
The article was about some sort of urban shock value modern surrealist doo-dah movement that was buzzing around the local art scene three years ago. Four paintings were featured. Avery’s was first. The writer penned the article as though taking dictation.
“The idea for the painting coincided with the moment I felt I’d finally succeeded as an artist. I got a second to breathe and found myself reflecting upon everything I’d missed.”
Avery self-indulgently continued with a story about coming home to the Philadelphia suburbs after struggling in a saturated New York market for six years. He eventually meandered back to the topic of his piece.
“I don’t generally paint with insight. I report facts. I talk to people, a lot of people, and what I hear I put on canvas.
“Last year I went to Burning Man (a haven for gays), the Philadelphia Comic-con (a haven for nerds), and three raves (a haven for the young and privileged). I asked a dozen people at each event why they were there. There was one answer in common among them: ‘No one judges me here.’
“I’m no psychoanalyst. I’ll leave the whys and what-fors to them. I offer the stifling effects of judgment as a matter of testimony, not insight. The painting depicts a group, clan, tribe, that exists without it.”
Then, contradicting himself, Avery went on to offer his thoughts on the oppressive power that conformity has over youth. He held that a person’s potential for greatness peaks in his/her early twenties. The ignorance of our teens wanes, while mental and physical energies hold fast. The mind
