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Show 58 When she'd been ready to leave, Hunt had tried to give her the painting. "No," she'd said. "It's yours," he'd said. "It's you." "It's yours," she'd said. "I only painted it," Hunt had said. He'd carried the painting down the steep staircase, trying to give it. "I'm going home," she'd said at the door. "Take this," Hunt had said. She'd said, "No." "Why won't you take it?" "Why do you need to give it?" "It's a portrait of you." "But maybe it's a self-portrait. Maybe you're as much in that portrait as _I. Maybe it's a self-portrait if you look closely. Have you looked closely? Maybe you should." The sun, the light just outside Hunt's front screen door had been bounding on that May afternoon. It had been like a joyful animal: alive. Maybe Hunt was stupid about Women because, in part, he was one. And Martha McAllister had kissed Hunt once lightly on the mouth. Then on his eyelids. Then on his hands. "We penetrate each other's lives," she'd said to him. "We model, suddenly, for one another." And then she was pushing the screendoor open, and the harlequin sun was leaping in, exposing Hunt in a pool of light, suddenly, in the doorframe. "Remember me!" she had called through the open window of her Volkswagen. And Hunt had. And Hunt was. And now he was in the middle of his lake, |