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Show 379 the patriarchal grip, thanked him and went out, his head reeling. He called Gloriana's number immediately, from a phone in the drugstore across the street, but there was no answer. He felt as though he needed to be congratulated by someone and thought about ordering a coke at the lunch counter so he could at least tell the waitress. Instead he went home and restretched one of his old canvases, and by the time it was dark outside and he had to flip on the overhead light, he had painted the worst daub he had ever done in his life. It covered three-fifths of the painting of a girl with a guitar that was under it and looked like an omelet splattered against a window. That was all right. He had just been fooling around. He was out of practice, was all. Some of his tubes were hard and cracked too. He ate a cold TV dinner and went to bed numb with fear. It was standing in the bed of hollyhocks, and this time he would surprise it properly. He crept from behind the overgrown summer squash and darted between two rows of corn. His feet were stained from the boysenberries that had fallen to the ground, and bees had been hovering over his toes. Peering out from between the stalks of corn he saw it turn its head to look at the green high-board fence, and then at the grape trellis against the garage, and then up at the telephone wire that ran across the yard and disappeared into the neighbors' spruce, and then he pounced. * * * * * * He was prepared to hate his job, but the first day wasn't as traumatic as he had expected. He reported to Mr. Acton, who did not seem as friendly as he had seemed at the interview and who introduced him immediately to |