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Show 131 what. Equal portions of Chinese red and cerulean, a double measure of raw umber, three shades of purple (two worm lengths each), an ax-blow of viridian, a large slab of white lead scooped out of its can with a palette knife and scraped onto its own corner of the tray. Nothing could save him now. A thin wipe of black, and next to it a profusion of greys, blues, bronzes. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of milk, idly examining the hot and cold taps on the sink. They did not match. He went into the bathroom to see if they matched there, and then went into the bedroom and lay down for a few minutes. He remembered there were shower taps too. He went back to look at those, and while he was there unleashed the effects of the first pot of coffee he had somehow consumed without noticing, and reflected that now he had to stop everything and go make another pot. While it was perking he stood at the front window and watched grackles dart among the gravestones across the street until they scattered into the trees ahead of the mower who swept past on his tractor, dark and shirtless under his pith helmet. When the mower was gone, back over the brow of a hill, they regrouped, but by now the percolator had stopped breathing in the other room and the pains in Lorin's stomach had let up a little. He went back to the porch and began scrambling pigments together in the center of his tray and started to lay in a milky grey background on his canvas and tried not to think about Yvonne in bed last night. He worked swiftly at first, and presently the grey background began to blush violet where he thought the shadow of the chair might evolve, and before long a suggestion of the seeds had materialized, in hot ochres, surrounded by a wide halo of pale blue streaked with a deeper blue near the edge where the outer bristles of his brush had escaped the mixing. What had spoiled it in bed last night was the way she had rushed through everything. Even |
