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Show 195 her stool, a few chips of red flowers behind her. More, the thin wash in which he had laid out parts and proportions before proceeding with the heavy work had seeped into the very threads with which the canvas was woven, staining it with the ghost of his intentions. In his fantasy Simon had to incorporate that ghost, those patches and fragments, had to contain in whatever entity would shortly glow from that canvas the cruder nerves and vessels that Lorin had already put there. The toenail would become the heart of a foreground poppy, the comb the staked fence enclosing an overripe garden, the shadowy underwash of her body the contours of a spectral hillside hazed over with nebulous pulsing flora (Simon would turn the original painting on its side), the damp rose of her nipple a dangerous polyp. "I guess she's not coming back," Gloriana said, watching the swing of Yvonne's skirt as she came out of the kitchen with a plate of food and joined Noel and John Drury and Simon by the record rack. "You'll have to tell her later." "Maybe I won't tell her at all. Make her wonder." "How is your stomach?" she asked. "I try not to think about it." He put a hand on it. He very much wanted to get back to the subject of disappointments because it was getting late and he was afraid she would leave soon. "Does milk help?" "Not always." "Why don't you ask Simon i f he has any? Would you like me to?" "He probably doesn't." "Why don't I go look," she said, getting up. " I ' l l try to find a clean glass." She padded off to the kitchen, s t i l l in her stocking feet, leaving him |