Chapter 4: Permutations

Chapter 4- Permutations

   

Colonial Cemetery
Savannah

Photo by Jack

           
     The Hilliard’s hostess led David and Charlotte to a quiet booth.  They were having

lunch after attending Landry’s Yeats seminar together.

            “Have you read the existentialists?” David asked.  They were still on the intellectual

plane of Landry’s lecture.

            “Just Camus and Simone De Beauvoir,” Charlotte replied.  “Why?”

            “I was just thinking how irrational life is, that’s all,” David said.

            “What is?” Charlotte wanted specifics.

            “Everything,” David answered, resisting being pinned down.

            “O.K. Us, for example.  We ought to be a happy couple.  We’re attractive, intelligent, compatible.  But I want Eddie, and you…” David hesitated.  “What do you want?”

            Charlotte smiled.  “Good question.  To act, to sing, find myself, I guess.”

            “It’s like that with all our friends.  Look at Eddie and Susan.  Or Landry.  Or my parents.  Or Skip,” David enumerated.

            “Or Blanche Dubois,” Charlotte expanded.  “Or Langston’s choosing Jim to play Stanley.”

            “Well, at least your performance was stellar.”

            “You mean Blanche,” Charlotte laughed at David’s bad pun.

            “So if we are all so absurd,” Charlotte continued, “What’s to become of us?”

            “We must choose,” David replied.  “Our angst gives us our authentic existence.”

            “Yea, Yea.” Charlotte dismissed David’s words.  “You know, I prefer not knowing the answers.  Who wants to go through life like a little robot doing what you are supposed to do?  Can you imagine us married, bringing up kids, working 9-5?”

            “Working, yes,” David said.  “Speaking of which, I have a half-hour before I need to be at Carnegie.”

            “How do you get the time off for Yeats?” Charlotte asked.

            “Half-days on Saturdays and a couple of evenings--  So I can take mornings off, now and then.”

            “And I’ve got to work with your mother this afternoon.”  Charlotte had been hired for 30 hours a week at Waldenbooks.

            “Have you read the Harrad Experiment?” Charlotte asked.  “Your mother gave me a copy last week.”

            “No.  What is it?”

            “A book about group marriages.  There’s a school of some sort where people learn to walk around naked and love more than one person.  It ends with six people forming a collective marriage.”

            “Like a commune.”

            “Sort of.  Only upscale and middle class,” Charlotte added.

            “I’m sure that’s what Mom thinks we are having,” David laughed.

            “Maybe we are,” Charlotte smiled, as the waitress placed a shrimp salad sandwich in front of her.

            At 5:30, Jules Graham locked the door of Arthur Jones Antiques.  The last customer had stayed past closing time.  Jules was well aware of who the customer was -- the upstart collector whose business was already beating all the competitors.  Jim Williams had not identified himself, but he knew that Jules and everyone else who worked in antiques knew him.  He often checked the prices at other dealers’ shops, and his aristocratic demeanor held them all in awe.

            Jules had allowed Williams to browse through the shop as he liked.  Anyone else he would have ushered out at 5.  But Williams intrigued Jules.  His black mustache and dark eyes struck Jules as sinister.  Yet Williams spoke with a soothing Southern drawl that reeked of gentility and false politeness.  “His speech is as smooth and sweet as Southern Comfort,” Jules thought to himself.  “That is the manner of someone who will make it, no matter what the cost.”

Williams eyed Jules, giving him a smile of complicity.  “This is exactly what I was looking for,” Williams said, bringing up a $90 Fu Dog.  “How long have you worked for Mr. Jones?

“Just a few months,” Jules replied.  He wondered if Williams would offer him a job.

Jules planned to attend in a few hours the monthly meeting of the poetry society.  Charlotte Lane had told him that the meeting took place in the former home of Kahil Gibran’s lover, and Jules adored Gibran.

He walked quickly to the apartment he shared on Habersham Street with an Armstrong coed.  As Jules dressed for the evening, he carefully selected his outfit: a two-toned jacket from England, expensive linen pants, and a beige, collarless shirt.  Jules detested bell bottoms and hippie clothing, though he wore long, curling brown hair and had pierced his ear.  Jules was often taken for a model and carried himself like one.

     The poetry society met at eight at 24 West.  Landry, like Jules, was dressed in fashionable attire: a button-down lavender Polo shirt, wool pants, and an ascot.  Landry sported a thin, gray mustache which he had begun to grow just weeks before.  Even his skin looked healthy.

     The ladies and sons of Savannah’s finest families gathered in the grand interior of the olive living room.  Landry had placed a number of portable metal chairs among the French and English antiques to accommodate the crowd in one room.  He had used Society funds to provide an ample open bar.  The society was consuming gratefully.

     At 8:30, Landry called the meeting to order, making routine announcements about future meeting places and scheduled guest poets.  Then he read the first of the three poems that would be the subject of discussion.  The poems were read anonymously, though the authors, usually present, were free to identify themselves.  Landry usually read the poems, though the authors could do the reading, if they chose.

     “This one is titled, ‘Madonna and Medusa’,” Landry read.  An unreceptive murmur came from the audience.

     Madonna and Medusa
      Stroll arm in arm under pear trees.

      Pears-- dangling, spinning worlds.
      Along their cosmic path,
      Medusa and Madonna

      Pause to pluck a pear.

      Devouring the Earth,

      Madonna and Medusa,

      Toss away dead seeds.

Landry emphasized “seeds,” because he knew what was in the mind of Brad Simpson, the author.  His intent was to show how stereotypes of good and evil produce nothing fertile.

            Willimay Probst had her hand in the air.  “What a dreadful, unimaginative depiction of women,” she protested.  “We are all virgins or whores.”

            The audience chattered approval.

            “But, isn’t that the point of the poem?” Landry suggested, taking the job of advocate.  “Madonnas and Medusas produce dead seeds.  Real women are otherwise.”

            “If that is the meeting,” Gertrude Rains shouted, out-of-turn, “Then it is a failure.  It’s so negative.”

            “Anyone want to defend it?” Landry asked, basically giving up.  Silence for a full minute as he waited.

            Jules couldn’t resist.  “It’s trite, maybe.  But I agree that the poet is attacking stereotypes.  Pure good and pure evil are dead.  We need better images to worship.”

            “I still think it is chauvinistic,” argued Willimay.

            “It is about good and evil destroying everything,” a young woman in the back of the room offered.  “The images are not very original, but I like the way the usually fighting opposites are just walking along, talking, destroying everything.”

            “Like Shiva and Vishnu,” one of Landry’s Armstrong students said.

            “Shall I go on to the second poem?” Landry asked.

            Everyone nodded.

            As Landry read the second poem, Jules took in the faces around the room.  He had a good vantage point, having sat in one of the Louis XV chairs on the side.  “What a boring group,” he thought.  “The ‘dead seeds’ are here,” he smiled.  He hardly listened to the second poem, which he found too tedious to follow.  “They all write formula, symbolic poems because their lives are uneventful and give them no inspiration.”  This thought he tempered with, “But who am I to judge?  My life is as artificial and routine as theirs.”  Jules regretted coming but he was determined to talk with Landry.

            After the readings, a collective sigh of relief lifted the group out of their chairs, which they folded and stacked in the hall.  Some of the women collected around Landry, thanking him, saying, “What a lovely evening.  Very interesting discussion.”  That sort of thing.  They were making their way to the door.

            Others returned to the bar, though the supply of liquor was waning.  Jules waited for his turn to meet Landry.  Patiently, he sat, sipping a gin and tonic.  When the moment came, he rose and offered to fix Landry a drink.  “Yes, thank you.  Scotch and water.”

            Handing Landry the drink, Jules introduced himself, mentioning Charlotte.

            “I was hoping she might attend,” said Landry.

            “I think she was working tonight.”

            “Yes, the bookstore,” Landry remembered.

            “She tells me Kahil Gibran once lived here,” Jules said.

            Landry laughed.  “No.  But everyone likes to think so.  Or at least that he visited.  But he never even came to Savannah.”

            “He didn’t?” Jules asked incredulously.

            “No.  Mary Haskell lived here.  They were friends in New York before her move.”

            Jules persisted, “Friends?”

            “Well, lovers perhaps.  She adored his artwork.  It was a Platonic thing for the most part.  She wrote him and they exchanged letters after she moved here.  But she married, and Gibran died not long after of tuberculosis.”

            “Ah,” said Jules, disappointed.  “I knew he died young.  Do you like his poetry?”

            “Not much.”  Landry realized he was being harsh, but he couldn’t stop himself.  He was annoyed by people going on and on about Gibran.  “He’s too sentimental for my taste.  The Rod McKuen of his day.”

            Again, Jules was disappointed.  For that matter, he liked McKuen.  Landry was too much the intellectual snob.

            “I think Gibran’s love poems  and his sense of life are wonderful, myself,” Jules said.  “Certainly better than the poems we heard tonight.”

            Landry half-sneered.  “No comparison,” he said ambiguously.  And with that he walked off to talk to the student who had mentioned Shiva and Vishnu.

            Betty B. Jackson adjusted her red wig, regarding her plump, smooth face in the mirror.  No one would guess that I am over 50, she said to herself.  Hearing her bell, she pushed the button that opened the gate to her garden fronting her carriage house.  Lee Johnson was charging down the walk to the metal steps up to her apartment.  He ducked under the branch of the gnarled dogwood full of red leaves that leaned over Betty’s steps.

            “Betty B, fix me a vodka tonic, right now,” Lee screeched.  “I’ve had a bad day.”

            Betty Bagby held the door open for him and followed his march inside.  As he continued to shout about a no-good trick who had robbed him, Betty poured a generous jigger of vodka into one of her crystal highball glasses, adding ice and tonic.  No lime for Lee Johnson.

            “Did you invite him home?  You know better than to pick up trash.”  Betty could talk as fast as Lee.  “What’d he take?”

            “Money!”  Lee screamed, “Every last fucking dollar out of my wallet.”

            “All five dollars,” Betty joked.

            “Shit.”  Lee plopped his wiry body down in Betty’s one leather chair.  He couldn’t help laughing.  Ten dollars.  Ten hard-earned dollars,” he cackled.

            Betty and Lee had been friends since Betty’s divorce.  Skip had introduced them at Battey House.  Lee had been madly in love with Skip for months and even managed to give him a quick blow job one drunken night when Skip was one the verge of passing out.  Skip was glad when Lee got over the infatuation and became his mother’s friend, instead.

            “I have a great deal for you,” Lee offered.  He glanced at her with a look of mischief that came easily to his elf-like face.  Lee was an elf pushing 40.

            “What’s that?” Betty asked, suspiciously.

            “How would you like to own a gigantic Connor Lawrence painting?”

            Betty gleamed.  “I’d love it.  What does he want?”

            “Invitations.  Five hundred hand-written invitations to a big opening show of his work -- in your finest calligraphy.”

            “Hell yes.” Betty exclaimed.  “When does he want them?  When do I get my painting?  Which one is it?”

            “Slow down, Betty B.  It’s that early painting you told him you like so much.  The show’s next month at the new art gallery.  Dr. Deitch is paying for it.  His lover is arranging it.  They want to open with something exciting and Connor is perfect.”

            Betty owned two small Connor Lawrence paintings already, both given to her as presents by David.  She would love to fill the large, empty wall over her daybed with a new, colorful painting by him.

            “Is Connor still seeing that crazy woman?”  Betty asked.

            “Shit, yes.  They are as thick as Jim and Tammy Faye.  He’s got her going with him to First Baptist.”

            “I thought she was Jewish.”

            “Connor is converting her.”

            “Shit fire,” Betty laughed.  She hated nothing more than self-righteousness and religious fervor.

            “He and Jane go to church on Sunday and then Connor drinks all night and goes out cruising the square for trade.”

            “Doesn’t give you the least attention,” Betty mocked.

            “We weren’t compatible,” Lee explained.  “We’re both bottoms, honey.  He was always saying, ‘Lee, I need to be fucked.  Fuck me like a woman.’  That’s not what turns me on, Betty B.”

            “What turns you on is that big dick of his,” Betty replied.

            They both laughed.  There was nothing quite as enjoyable to them as a blend of vodka and venom.

            Eddie and David had walked to Pinkie’s hours ago.  They had rendezvoused with Susan and had had several drinks.  Now they were walking back to David’s apartment along Abercorn Street.  The October night was turbulent.  Puffs of clouds blew by overhead, and the cool breezes signaled change.  The clouds had a salmon-colored tint against the black sky.  “Why do the clouds look radioactive?” David asked.

            Taking a detour, the three crossed Abercorn and entered Colonial Cemetery.  The back gate stood open all night and provided a meandering path to the gate on Oglethorpe Ave. across from David’s home.  The few gas lamps along the tabby walks provided almost no light.  The three stopped at a brick tomb close to the grave of Button Gwinnett.

            “It’s too bad Charlotte couldn’t join us,” Eddie remarked.  He had his arm around Susan.

            “She would just want to go home,” Susan complained.  She pulled herself free of Eddie and climbed up onto the old brick edifice.  She walked atop the grave for a moment; then, she lay down, staring up at the swirling clouds.  David climbed up and sat beside her, toying with her hair.  Susan sat up, then lay back down with her head in David’s lap.  She reached out and motioned to Eddie.

            “I really love you two.  You are both so sweet,” Susan purred.  “I wish we could all be happy, together.”  The drinks at Pinkies gave her a warm glow.

            “We can,” David affirmed.

            Eddie drew closer.  He stood beside the tomb, bending over Susan’s body.  The three caressed one another.  Their touches became more intimate and urgent.  Eddie kissed Susan, letting his lips brush across her mouth and face.  Susan shifted her body, looking from Eddie to David.

            “I’ve never done anything like this,” Susan whispered.  “I don’t know what to do.”

            “Neither do we,” David said.  He kissed her, as well.

            “Now you two,” Susan said.  “I want to see you two kissing.”

            She watched as they reached across her and kissed each other quickly above her face.

            “No that’s not it.  Really kiss each other.”

            Eddie wanted to draw back but did as she told him.  He opened his mouth to David who drank in the kiss.  David frenched him.

            Eager for more, David urged, “We should go to my place, where we can be together.”

            “No,” Susan insisted.  “I want to make love here.  Nowhere else.”  She began unbuttoning Eddie’s shirt.

            “Someone will see us,” Eddie protested.  “David’s right, we should go inside.”

            “It’s here or not at all,” Susan declared.  “The only one looking is Button and all the other stuffy old ghouls.”

            “I’m sure they’re envious,” David laughed.

            In the dim light they stripped.  David watched as Eddie crawled atop Susan.  He placed his hand on Eddie’s naked back.  “Help him,” Susan suggested.  David reached down and took Eddie’s penis in his hand.  He felt his own surge as he held it, full and beating in his hand.  Indulging himself, he let his thumb rub over the velvet of the tip.  He felt precum wetting his hand,

            Eddie pushed against Susan.  He felt David holding and guiding him into her.  It was not easy.  Susan simultaneously yielded and resisted.  Then he broke through.  The warm, wet interior engulfed him.  He felt sheer joy.

            Susan felt broken open.  She felt a burning tear in her vagina.  “I’m a virgin all over again,” she mumbled, just audibly.  Eddie had drawn blood.

            David stood back.  He watched them heaving in the dark.  He felt suddenly isolated.  Seeing Eddie’s desire for Susan made him want to run off and be alone.  He stood riveted, staring at them, unable to move.

            Then Susan yelled, “No. Enough.  Stop.”  She shoved Eddie’s chest away from her.  “Not pregnant,” she said, confused.  “Take it out.  Out.”

            Eddie tried to bring her closer but made Susan panic.  “You’re crushing me,” she cried, wrenching herself away.  “Please, stop it.”  As Eddie ceased to struggle with her, Susan withdrew from him, slid off the sloping side of the brick tomb, and began dressing.  David had already dressed and Eddie sat up, still naked, atop the tomb.  “I guess we should call it a night,” he said, giving up in disgust.  Susan began to cry.

            Fully dressed again, they passed through the front gate to Oglethorpe Avenue.  At David’s corridor, they said goodnight.  “I’ll take Susan home,” Eddie said.  “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.  He kissed David on the cheek.  Susan gave David a long hug.  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she whispered to him.  She caressed his ears with both hands.  “You know I love you, don’t you?”  “Yes,” said David.  He was not consoled.  “I love you, too.”

            David passed through the thin green gate to enter his courtyard as Eddie and Susan drove off.  When he reached the courtyard he sat in one of the lawn chairs and wept.  The courtyard was spinning from the bourbon and emotions he had consumed.  David thought of a passage in Nietzsche he had read.  “With thoughts of suicide, I have gotten through many a bad night,” he paraphrased out loud.  He regretted that he didn’t own a gun.

            The next morning David woke to a bright October Sunday.  Birds tweeted in the courtyard and sunlight created shafts of light that moved across the hardwood floors of the carriage house.  David splashed his face with cold water, trying to lessen the hangover headache.  He found pain pills and antihistamines.  Lifted by the cool air wafting through the open windows above the courtyard, David percolated coffee and placed a pecan cinnamon pastry in the toaster.  He sat at the table next to one of the windows, stared at the courtyard, and recalled the tangle of last night.

            “What an idiot I am,” he said out loud.  “Why do I keep making the same mistake?”  David tried to imagine Susan’s feelings, imagined being repulsed by Eddie’s advances and clumsiness rather than pursuing and desiring him.

            David loved coffee.  His sense of life and its rewards returned as he sipped it and as his headache receded.  “I should call Don,” he said.

            Landry picked up the phone on the third ring.  “Don?”

            “Hello, David.”  Landry recognized the voice immediately.  “We missed you in the Yeats seminar.”  Landry was surprised to hear from David after the night at the fountain and David’s absence from the seminar.

            “It’s been busy at Carnegie.  I slept ‘til noon the mornings I had off.”

            Landry said nothing, waiting to see why David was calling.  The pause was awkward.

            “Do you have plans this afternoon?” David asked, finally.

            “I’ve been reading Hume for my philosophy class,” Landry replied.  “But I should be free after three or so.  Did you want to come by?”

            “Sure,” David answered, grateful for the invitation.

            “Good.  See you at three, then.”

            As three o’clock approached, David made his way along Bull Street to 24 West Gaston.  A trace of sulfur from the paper mill fouled the air.  He crossed the four squares from Oglethorpe to Gaston.  The last, before Forsyth Park, was Monterrey Square.  There David passed Jules Graham, on his way to visit Arthur Jones, whose home was near his antiques shop on Liberty Street.  The two nodded to one another as they passed, but it would be another week before they met.

            “Did you enjoy reading Hume?” David asked Landry as Don ushered him into the study.

            “Very much so.”

            Landry decided to try out his grasp of the readings.  “Here, see if I have it straight about causality.”  Landry made a summary of Hume’s reduction of causality to habit and custom.

            The two explored the possible implications and refutations.  “I take it you know how Kant restores causality?” David asked.

            “I think so.  But I need to reread the argument.  Categories of the mind, right?”

            “A priori categories.  Excellent.” David said.

            Landry was intelligent enough not to be offended by what others might find condescending.

            “What I really admire,” David pursued, “is Berkeley’s elimination of matter.”

            “We talked about his idealism last week,” Landry replied.

            “Isn’t is fascinating?” David went on.  “The only reality is mind.  ‘To be is to be perceived.’  It’s exactly what I experienced when Eddie and I took psilocybin.  The world conformed to my ideas and my mind.”

            “Except for Berkeley, it is God’s mind that everything conforms to,” Landry corrected.

            “Yes, I know,” David admitted.  “And I felt that too.  My perception was just part of some collective consciousness, some universal spirit, or whatever.”

            David stretched out on the settee.  He had never before, out of college, discussed philosophy in this way.  He and Landry were actually pursuing metaphysics and epistemology.  The realization startled him.

            “What is so devastating about Hume,” Landry was saying, " is that he undermines everything.  There is no certainty.   There is no necessary connection between what has been and what will be.  Anything is possible.”  Landry was visibly excited.

            “Yet out of Hume’s skepticism comes Kant and Hegel, pure reason and absolute mind.  How’s that for logic?” David said.

            “And from Hegel comes Nietzsche, nihilism, existentialism, and every imaginable rejection of absolutes and rationalizations,” Landry continued.  “So what are we left with?”

            “That’s the question,” David replied,” along with the great classic ones.  What can we know, how can we know it, what are we to do with the knowledge?”

            “Another class,” Landry said.  “For now, I’ll stick with humanism.”

            “Is that a pun?”  David asked.

            Landry laughed.  “I don’t think Hume was a humanist.”

            Landry selected music by Faure.  The two sat and listened to the piano.  “Are you going to Connor Lawrence’s opening?” Landry asked.

            “Yes, someone -- my Mom maybe -- mentioned it.  When?”

            “Next Friday night, at the new gallery on Bay Street.”

            “Shall we go together?” David asked.

            “It’s a date,” Landry replied.

______

            “Ideal time for an art show,” Susan said to Charlotte.

            “Everyone is full of energy again after the long, hot summer,” Charlotte agreed.

            They were walking from their apartment on Liberty Street to the new gallery on Bay.

            “What do you think of this guy?” Susan asked, waving her invitation written by Betty Bagby and featuring a color photo of one of Connor Lawrence’s recent paintings.

            “I like him.  Or rather, his paintings.  I hear he is a raving drunk.”

            “He got a D.U.I., David told me.  His father got him out of jail.”

            “And he pissed on the lawn of his neighbor while she was having a bridge party,” Charlotte exclaimed.  “And the rumor is he’s got a huge dick.”      

            Both women laughed.  “The game is to find the penises in his paintings,” Susan added.

            When they arrived, they were glad they had walked.  There were no parking spaces for blocks and a line of cars along Bay Street was letting people out on the curb.  There was even a line of people waiting to enter the gallery.

            Once in, Charlotte spied David talking to his mother and to Landry.  There were several others she recognized as well -- the head of Armstrong’s art department, several English professors, including Dr. Kilpatrick, various students she knew, Bill Gordon, whose first issue of Albion was now out, and Jules Graham, towards whom she shuffled through the crowd.  Susan found Professor Langston.

            “Charlotte.  I’m so glad you are here,” Jules exclaimed, on seeing her.  He always seemed to Charlotte to be exaggerating.  “You must introduce me to some of these art lovers.”

            “If we can find them among the social climbers and society hounds,” Charlotte replied, acidly.  Crowds often brought out her sarcasm.

            “This is what I want to do for your artwork,” Will Jackson said to Patty.  “Your paintings are so much better than Connor’s”

“Will, my work is completely different.  These people would never turn out for landscapes and still-life paintings.”

            “When we open your new gallery next year, they’ll turn out in bigger crowds.”

            Patty loved Will for his enthusiasm and optimism.  She sometimes lost her patience with him for the same reason.

            “He does have great color,” Will admitted as they walked from painting to painting.  “And I just love his dots.”

            Patty wondered if he also loved the clearly erotic flesh that was being displayed in the painting they were looking at.  Or whether he saw it at all.

            “They remind me of pre-Columbian Mexico,” Landry said to Betty Bagby.  “The yellow and green spaces are like the open fields near Oaxaca.  The vegetation reminds me of the cactus and corn.  And the figures look pre-Columbian as well.”

            “And you like all the sexual symbolism…” Betty offered.

            “Don’t you,” Landry asked.

            “As a matter of fact, yes.”

            Landry and Betty had achieved a playful tolerance of one another.  When David was of listening range, they engaged in a friendly skirmish of words that acknowledged their mutual respect if not approval.  “You mother is the Wife of Bath,” Landry had said to David.  “At any rate, she’s clearly out of Chaucer.”

            Connor Lawrence arrived late.  Jane Silverman followed him meekly but carried herself as if she were the proof that “behind every great man, there’s a woman.”  Connor drank nothing, knowing it would court havoc.  He was nonetheless loud and boisterous.  “I detest Seurat and that whole pointalist bull,” he declared when someone asked him about his dots.  “If anything, I’m a follower of Matisse,” he answered grandly.

            Connor basked in the inquiries of students and the admiration of several prominent socialites who immediately saw in Connor’s work the opportunity to show artistic acumen, as well as to make a good investment.

            Lee Johnson, on his third glass of red wine, made his way over to Connor.

            “What a fine success! Lee exclaimed.  “I swear, I think you are going to be famous.”

            Connor knew he was being worked.  “Coming from such an authority, I know it must be true,” he replied with largess.  “Here, come tell me which paintings are the best.”

            The “best” were already selling.  Landry had purchased two, one large landscape and one small study of what Landry called the “Aztec God.”  The latter was a colorful figure appearing to be in a field full of flowers and tropical vegetation.  Connor’s figures were biomorphic -- half animal, half human.  They represented the world of myth Landry adored.  Of the fifty works on display, ten had already sold.

            “Your gallery is wonderful,” David said to Danny Pace and Dr. Deitch.  “I’m glad you chose to start with Lawrence.  His work is so cosmopolitan.”  David was so taken with Danny, who was his own age but so business-like and self-confident.  He wondered how he and Deitch, who was 50, had met; how they had come to this blend of romantic and business partnership.  Of course, Danny himself was a work of art, tall, dark, and handsome in his silk tux.

            “How’s your brother Skip,” Deitch asked.

            “Doing well.  Not much interest in art; so, I doubt he’ll be here.”

            “He’s still too young,” Danny remarked.  “Tell him his old pediatrician says hello.”  Dr. Deitch had been Skip’s baby doctor for a few years and was also a close friend of David’s Aunt Ruth and her family.  The last time Deitch and David had talked had been at cousin Sarah’s wedding in the synagogue across Gordon Street from Betty Bagby’s carriage house.  That had been almost a year ago.  In the intervening year David learned of Deitch’s sexual preference, which had come conveniently with his retirement as a physician and his new role as art dealer.

            “Where did you study art?” David asked Danny.

            “Not in college,” Danny laughed dismissively.  “I’ve traveled and visited hundreds of galleries.  I’ve always loved art and studied it directly.”

            David was not impressed.  “And if a customer wants to know if Lawrence intentionally builds on the theories of  Seurat, what would you say?”

            “He would say,” Deitch came to the rescue, “what Connor himself says; namely, that he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, that he draws greatly from his love of Matisse, and that it’s really a matter of getting in touch with the soul.”

            “Sounds like what you would say,” David replied.

            Will and Patty spotted David talking with Dr. Deitch, whom Will knew, and tried to make their way across the room.  By the time they reached him, Landry had joined the conversation.  As one of the purchasers, Landry was given all the attention.

            “Dr. Landry, how are you?” Will asked.  “This is my wife Patty.”

            “Don Landry.  Pleased to meet you.”  Landry emphasized the “Don,” tired of Will Jackson’s formality.

            Patty missed her cue and said, “David has sung your praises, Dr. Landry.”

            Since their fight over the summer, David had seen his father only a few times.  They were polite to one another.

            “Very colorful,” Will said.

            “He has a wonderful technique -- the points of paint,” Patty offered.

            “ I hear that you do wonderful water colors,” Landry said to Patty.

            “Watercolors, oils, and etchings,” Will corrected.  “We hope you’ll honor us with a visit to see them.”

            “I’d love to,” Landry replied, then made excuses to walk off.

            Will and Patty chatted with Deitch, complimenting him on the show, then took their leave.

            Finding himself all alone in the crowd, David surveyed the horde.  Connor Lawrence was still holding forth.  At six-two he rose above most.  He was clearly making someone uncomfortable, a man with a Nietzsche-like moustache David had met briefly before -- “the ironsmith, Sam Ivers,” David mumbled, remembering.  Sam also was opening a shop near Bay Street where he planned to make iron gates and other ornamental works.  He looked like a wiry villain from the Old West.

            David also saw his mother Betty.  She held a glass of white wine and was wearing her sterling bracelet, handmade in Mexico in the 20s.  It had once been Sybil’s, but Will had given it to Betty when his mother died.  The broad mesh of the bracelet was as wide as a wrist band and gave Betty’s extended arm and hand a look of power.  A half-smoked cigarette complimented the effect.  She was chatting with Myrtle Jones, Savannah’s well-known Impressionist.

            “David, you look lost.”  Charlotte startled him out of his trance.  “I want you to meet someone.

            “Jules, David Jackson.  David, Jules Graham.”

            “You look familiar,” David said, shaking Jules’ hand.

            “Yes, you also,” Jules acknowledged.  Neither, of course, remembered passing each other in the square.

            Charlotte added other introductory remarks, mentioning Jules’ job with Arthur Jones and his freelance work designing windows for Levy’s Department Store and other shops.  Charlotte told Jules of David’s job at the Carnegie Library and his love of philosophy.

            “You must share with me what you know about metaphysics,” Jules said.  “And where is the Carnegie Library?”

            “On Henry Street, east of Habersham a few blocks,” David replied.

            “How did you come to be a librarian?”

            “Easy.  They advertised for one in the paper.  When I applied, I found out I was to be the first white person to work at Carnegie.  No white women would take the job; they were afraid of it.”

            “What is it like?”

            “Well, at first I was resented.  The librarians were suspicious of me, why I was there.  Then, when they realized I was anything but the establishment, everyone warmed up to me.  When the main library tried to seize their collection of black authors, I fought on Carnegie’s side and helped stop the move.  Then I helped set up a circulating collection for people in jail with books the main library wanted to weed and throw away.  The director of the main library isn’t real happy with me.”

            “I’d think they’d appreciate your innovations.”

            “Actually, I think they are planning to transfer me to another branch.”

            Jules and David continued to share their stories.  Jules found David sexy -- his short, hunky body and new goatee attracted him.  David, unaware of Jules’ attraction, never imagined that such a glamorous, handsome man would be drawn to him.  He thought Jules was genuinely interested in his story and his metaphysics.

            Charlotte had wandered off to find Susan.  She had had enough of the socializing and seen as much of Connor’s paintings as she cared to.  She found the works amusing but hardly great art.  Her tastes ran more towards Pissarro and Monet.  “Ready to go?” she asked Susan, who was listening to Jane Silverman’s explanation of Connor’s technique.  Charlotte had no intention of being a captive audience.

            “Yes, it is getting late, isn’t it?” Susan replied.  She tried not to be impolite to Jane.  Jane smiled a crooked smile of disapproval.

            Landry joined David and Jules, recalling his vague dislike of the latter.  “I think I’ll go on to Pinkie’s.  Care to join me?”

            “Sure,” David agreed.  “Would you like to join us?” he asked Jules.

            “Thanks.  But I have plans, unfortunately.”  He paused, wanting to make more contact.  “I am planning to put on a Halloween party, though.  Perhaps you’d like to help me organize it?”

            David was surprised at the invitation.  “O.K,” he said, not knowing what to add.  “Do you want to write your number down for me?”

            Landry supplied a pen and the three said goodbye.

            As David and Landry left the gallery, Connor Lawrence and Deitch were gloating over the success of the show.  Danny was bidding everyone goodbye except for a blond-haired, blue-eyed lad patiently standing at his side.