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Show 171 flip it on." "Sure," Hunt said. "Sure." And suddenly Mel Till is was upon him. The Karpus Gallery was mobbed. People carrying wine glasses milled and made a collective sound that Hunt had almost forgotten. Words like marvelous and fantastic and incredible furled and unfurled like bunting flags in the trapped, vaguely-scented air. Hunt had dressed in olive courduroy - checked shirt, solid tie. Suskind had requested that he not compete with Cletus Marion: "One Reuben Garrison!" he'd said; and Hunt could see the model, now, in a group, with his blue fisherman's sweater, his curly teased black hair. Was he telling them his tory? Was he telling them in precious, langorous prose about an Artist's Vision? About snow-filled and choking darkness? And about the burning bush that had been in his brain? Hunt moved to look, really for the first time, at the canvasses, at what he'd done. What he saw stunned him. The work was good; he knew it would be - intelligent, technically careful, composed. But the figures! The figures' faces! They were all . . .! How?! How had that happened?! How had the faces of all the people that Hunt was closest to arrived unmistakably in these elevators?! There was his mother, alone, alone and so mortal in her pink raincoat, riding down of course from some kindness she'd performed. And his sister: no one with her: "Stuck Between Floors." He and Leah: kissing! And in this elevator: his father - with his father's brother, his uncle; he was not allowing his father to be alone. Hunt began to sweat. It was eerie. And then . . . Hunt! Himself! Every one of the apartment doormen bore his_ image, self-portraits: Hunt in eight different too-large caps and uniformed coats, standing before |