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Show 191 "Oh god!" said Amelia, looking s t a r t l e d . "What'11 I do?" Kate shrugged. "Go to the play." "But I promised you." "So?" Amelia's face cleared and she smiled at Ben. Somehow they ended up in :ne living room and Kate and I stayed on in the kitchen. "Aren't they a handsome couple?" said Kate. "Yeah," I said, without enthusiasm. "You want to see that show?" "Sure. Yeah, I'd like to see it." "OK. Let's go down about two tomorrow. Buddy." It was a traveling show of Old Dutch Masters. I asked Kate if any of them has named van Brocken and she saw no joke at all. I didn't care, I felt great. We rode the IC downtown, walked to the Art Institute and stood in line to see t^e show, carrying our coats and moving slowly from one painting to the next, '.ate absorbed in them and hardly talking about them so that I was left alone to look for myself, to see what I wanted to see and enjoy myself. We were slower than most people, letting others flow past us, and I was enjoying the crowd as ..el 1 as the paintings so I saw the blonde right away, in back of us but gaining, a handsome and expensive-looking woman, the richly curved •ind and all of it sheathed in a black dress with the deepest neckline I had ever seen outside the movies. Such creamy flesh. "Great texture," I murmured, and Kate, absorbed in a painting, nodded affirmation. Braceleted and necklaced and ringed, carrying a fur, the blonde stopped at each tainting and without much looking at it read the card, then stepped :ack to comment on the painting in a clear, confident, carrying voice: "Now let's see, is that the Elder or the Younger? The Elder, you see, is the . . ." |