Page 103

"Nope."

"Not even to a movie or a restaurant?"

He paused.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I don't mean to break your concentration."

"It's all right. No, my mother is quite introverted, as. I suppose, am I. It doesn't mean we're mentally ill," he added pointedly. "I do what shopping we need to have done. We're fine."

"She doesn't have any old friends who call or come around?"

He laughed. "Old friends? Hardly. She was persona non grata even before she had her problems. You can imagine how it was when she returned." He thought a moment, "There was someone who came around once."

"Who?"

"Someone from the place she had been at when she needed treatment," he said, and started working again.

"You mean, like her doctor?" I held my breath. Had my father paid her a visit after all?

"No, not her doctor. Doctors don't take that much interest in you once you're no longer their responsibility and they can no longer earn money from your troubles," he said bitterly.

"Then who? Was it another patient from the clinic?"

"Might have been. yes. My mother didn't want to tell me much about her. but I remember it wasn't a very pleasant visit. When she left, my mother went into a rather deep depression. It lasted days, matter of fact. So maybe she was better off not renewing old friendships. huh?"

"Could it have been a nurse from the clinic?" He shrugged.

"Maybe. I don't know. I thought it might have been some kind of follow-up visit, but my mother insisted it wasn't, and I never saw the woman come around again. I knew she wasn't from Palm Beach, that was for sure. I remember she had an unusual name... Nadine. I don't hear that name often. Do you?"

"No."

Nadine Gordon, I thought. The nurse who suspected, the one Dr. Price thought had a crush on my father. She had come here, but why?

"Look at that," he said, pointing to the sky. A plane was spewing some advertisement by writing it in dry ice or something across the magnificent blue, "Pollution, even up there. Fm surprised the kings and queens of Palm Beach don't complain. It's crass commercialization of their air space. I guess everything's for sale: everything has a price."

He returned to his painting as if it were a true avenue of escape from the reality around him lie despised so much. I watched him lose himself in his work again, his face tightening with the intensity of his efforts. I said nothing more, afraid to break his concentration. Nearly twenty minutes later, he seemed to realize he had been in his own world and came up out of it like something rising from the sea before us, exploding out of the water. He looked surprised at his own accomplishments.

"Wow. You've been a great model." He studied his work in progress and nodded. "Yes, you have." he said, and turned back to me. "You know how you realize you have a great model?"

"How?"

"It's when you get so lost in the moment, in the artistic inspiration, that you don't even realize the model is there. I know that sounds silly or

contradictory, but it's as if I see beyond you, within you, into your very heart and soul, and for that period of time, everything else ceases to exist for me. It just flows from you to me or through me to the canvas. Understand?"

"I think so. yes," I said It sounds very exciting, at least for you."

It has been. Thank you." He put his brush down and came beside me, folding his legs and sitting. Then he took a deep breath, enjoying the air. I laughed at his exuberance, and he smiled at me.

"This is the sort of day that happens so rarely in a lifetime, a day filled with so much special feeling, you can't ever forget it or duplicate it Every moment doesn't have to be similar to the one before it, but it often seems like that, doesn't it? At least, it does for me. It's only when I work or get the opportunity to meet someone like you and get you into my work that I rise above the mediocrity.

"Gosh, listen to me mouthing off like this," he said, catching his breath and realizing how much he had said. "I'm sorry"

"No, it's nice. It's like being invited into a special place, an artist's world, seeing and feeling everything the way he does, at least for a moment or two Thank you for sharing it," I said.

He stared at me. "You're remarkable," he said. "It's as if you came out of one of my dreams, my fantasies-- just appeared, sort of like a kindred spirit. You feel that, too, don't you?"

I was at a loss for words, for a way to slip out of this far too emotional moment, but he mistook my silence for agreement and brought his lips toward mine.