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Show 192 The man with her looked at least ten years her senior, thirty-five or forty, well-shaved, well-manicured, well-clipped, and there was money in his soft dark suit, in his obvious boredom with the paintings and the woman's comments. He followed along and endured them but with a slight and as if perpetual sulk on his face. As we left a Vermeer, he and the blonde approached it. "Oy, those Dutchmen," she said, in her too-loud voice. "How dull, all this realism. He does good brushwork though. Notice down in the left-hand corner ..." Kate glanced back, did a double-take, stepped back and watched the blonde "You want to join the guided tour?" I asked. "Shhhh." When the blonde started on, Kate spoke: "Hello, Clara." "Why, Kate! Hel]_o, darling!" Her eyes flicked to re, dismissed me, went back to Kate. She hesitated, then seemed to make a decision and came up to Kate, grasped her hands and did the complete, deluxe greeting. "But it's Clare, darling. No one calls me Clara; you always did get it wrong. Clare. Oh, and now I have a new last name." She brought the man up to introduce him. Again she glanced at me. "This is Chess Brocken," said Kate. She nodded, the man barely. I started forward to shake hands with him and got caught trying to get my hand unobtrusively back to my side. Clare glanced down over my flight jacket, my khaki shirt and pants, pieces of my Navy uniforms which I had been wearing for the past two years, and turned to Kate. Her husband turned to a painting, sulking at it, and no one paid any attention to me. I inspected the blonde's profile, good brushwork on the eyes, and judged again the creamy skin of her neck and chest, it really did have great texture. She wore a diamond-encrusted cross which fell part way down into her cleavage, but I tried to be unobtrusive about looking |