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Show 54 "It's news to me," Hunt had said. And instead of reading that morning, Martha McAllister had unwound her life: "Do you want to know everything there is to know about New Mexico?" she had asked him and then just gone on - hills, houses, adobe, girlfriends, boyfriends - "Oh: and there was this beautiful, beautiful boy named Luj_s. Luis . . . Ramon . . . Martinez! Exquisite face! Like a woman's! I tried to find him once in New York!" And she had asked Hunt about j m youth. "Right here!" he'd said. "You're a witness. It's happening. I'm living it. Take good notes!" "I mean youth." "Standard stuff. Standard stuff," Hunt had said, lepaing, clowning, feeling his self-consciousness grow. ^''Football, class clown, double octet: Life of every boy growing up in the Boston Suburbs!" "Girls?" "No; girls were different. Girls were different: no football!" Hunt had tried to laugh, make the joke stick. "You really have a problem!" she had said, laughing but meaning it. "I'm an artist," Hunt had said, edge now in his clowning. "I mean it! You find beauty in the most buried places. Closed-off places. But then you're scared to death to have what you discover approach you." And Hunt had not answered. He'd just gone on painting. And there'd been a silence. ". . . You're sweet," Martha McAllister had finally said. But, again, Hunt had been unable to find an answer. |
