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Show -161 I'd nearly killed Carlo and now I couldn't stop Alice from moving in. I didn't know how to cope with women at all; those unnatural creatures baffled me, whether young or old, homely or beautiful. Alice had my number; she knew as well as I did that all that commotion in the kitchen was in the end nothing but a noisy surrender. All the breaking and yelling had been a subterfuge to cover up my bitter disappointment with myself. The last of the purple light faded and I stood up to return to the house. Through the kitchen window I had a glimpse of Alice cleaning up the mess I had made. Let her stay, then, I thought. Since I can't stop her. I found Jacob in the workshop. Adam kept an old leather arm chair in the corner, lame in one leg and scarred and dusty; in it sat my brother, uncharacteristically relaxed, his feet out in front of him, toes turned out, heels kissing. "You didn't do a very good job of coping with Alice." "Tell me what Adam saw in her." "You can't tell about love," he said. "No." In the center of the room on a steel workbench was Adam's final piece of work, unfinished. I took a closer look. "Or about art either," I said after a minute. "I can't understand how he did it. How does a man manage to turn out nothing but motel-room art all his life and then come up at |