“I don’t know. I just get moody sometimes. There’s nothing.”

“Uh, I know what you mean. If I’m not moody, I’m into rages. And sometimes, sometimes I don’t know where I am.”

“You paint better than most artists who know where they are.”

“Well, thanks. I like that, coming from you.”

“Why do you call that piece Eating Beauty? Is that a literary allusion too?”

She laughs. “No. My folks think I’m crazy to try to be an artist. I tell them I want to make beauty. They tell me you can’t eat beauty. That’s why I call this piece Eating Beauty. See?”

I nod. She paints it with a plumber’s helper. You know what that is. It looks like one big pussy. The painting, not the plumber’s helper. Well, maybe the plumber’s helper too.

“They think I’m wicked and selfish because I don’t want to marry and have children, like the other girls in our town, but that would just kill my work, you know. When you have a kid, it means you’re ready to give up.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it, Cathy. And I’m not ready to give up, not by a long shot. And I’ll never be ready to give up!” She twisted her hair in her fingers, brushed a handful behind her ear. “I’d never kill my work on account of some guy or some kid. No indeed. I’d kill them first . . . You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“No,” I mumble.

“But you’ll get married, Cathy,” she exclaims. “Oh, you will, and you’ll have lots of kids and you’ll . . .”

“I won’t give up.”

“Oh, yes you will, Cathy. You will. Do you know why you will?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not bitchy enough.”

I stare at her.

“Because you should have told me to go to hell back there telling you how you should do your work and you didn’t!”

Aren’t You Going to
Introduce Me to the Artist?

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to the artist?”

“Oh, Catherine, this is one of our noted art historians.”

“Marvelous, marvelous. Reminds me of the things the Cree—are they the Cree?—do with their canoes, the carvings, so eloquent, and so primitive. Do I detect some Gillette Viking influence here? You should watch out for that girl; she’s a monster.” He rubs his hands together. “Ah, now this, this is the kind of art that I like. I really love it. I could eat it.” He smacks his lips. “Well, this is certainly a marvelous show. Don’t you keep her all to yourself. Let her mingle.”

“I’m trying to get her to join some of us for a reception out at the ranch, but she won’t come.”

“She won’t come?”

“No, she won’t come.”

“Well, it’s certainly a marvelous show; it’s certainly shed some new light on her work for me. I still think that Birdcatcher piece deals with a woman’s sexual fate. But what do I know? I’m just an art historian.” He winks at me.