LITERARY SHORT STORY FICTION
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DARK MEETS LIGHT MEETS DEATH MEETS LIFE
A Short Story
John needed a life, is what it all boiled down to. The problem, as pointed out by his family and few friends, was that watching with rapt attention things like Senator Cole delivering speeches was hardly the way for John to try to get that life.
“C-Span again?” Tom asked as he entered the living room.
“My new life, that’s what,” John declared, sucking in his middle-aged gut and extending a firm, decision-maker’s finger at the fifty-five-inch TV screen. “I’m gonna be a senator, too, one day.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “We know.” He sat on the recliner. “And soon, right? Hitting the campaign trail this summer?” He grinned at his brother-in-law. “You’ll need a running mate, though, a vice senator. Have you ever thought of that?”
Snatching the remote, John thumbed the volume down. “Running mate? No, I haven’t. Who should I choose?”
Tom’s balding head reflected brilliantly the sun-rays streaming in from the living room window. His grin widened. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe one of your co-workers at the Dollar General. One of the neighbors. Some thick-skinned comedian who is looking to revive his career. Make sure they at least have a high school diploma.”
With a furrowed brow, John thought it over. “One of our cashiers at Dollar General just graduated high school,” he said, then returned his sights to his program.
Tom smiled sympathetically at his brother-in-law. He beheld John’s spellbound gaze and dexterous note-takings as together they watched the talking-suit on the television discuss the Compensation for Nuclear Damage Allocation Act and its foreseeable impact on the 21st century farmer.
In comparatively equal degrees in need of a life as his brother-in-law, Tom grinned, and said, “Speaking of…farmers.” He reached into his jean pocket and pulled out his rubber chicken. “Channel one-hundred-fifty-seven, pleeeeease.”
John blanched. In a hoarse voice, he said, “One-fifty-seven? That’s The Poultry Channel. Suze’ll cake us for sure if she catches us watching that. Especially...” John looked over with wide eyes, “if she see you with your little toy.”
Gripping his chicken, Tom reflected. “Just picture it. Litter floors, all teeming with fresh young hens; every one of those beauties so willin’, so wantin’ to get in a good lay…of an egg or two.” Tom gulped. “Uht-oh, here comes your wife.” He pocketed the rubber chicken.
The sound of footfalls materialized into the form of a woman, one with strawberry-blonde hair and a strawberry-red smear on each cheek that foretold of a darker, angrier shade of red that could flare up on those cheeks without warning. “Okay, boys, it’s time,” she said. “Remember—our guest? The one who’s traveled all the way over from New York City? C’mon, let’s get it in gear before Betty Crocker ends up whackin’ some dudes broadside.”
John raised his finger in the air. “Just a second, hun. Any hour now a secretary of something, of defense, maybe, or the interior, or the exterior—will be taking the platform to discuss, I don’t know, something or other. I can’t—no way I can miss that one.” John buried his fingers into the sofa’s armrest as if to physically anchor himself against having to get up and go get ready. With his eyes fixed on the television, John shrugged. “I’m not afraid. Chocolate ain’t so bad. I like chocolate.”
Tom liked chocolate too, only not splattered all over sofas, walls, floorboards, and the few stubbly hairs on his balding head that refused to grow out no matter how many applications of Rogaine he applied. Besides, infrequent laundering left chocolate residue on his clothes for weeks. Warily, he eyed the walls of Susan and John’s home with their splotches of brown stain that marked the residue of past chocolate “misses”—the windows…mucked over in chocolate smear—the ceiling…in spots looking like chocolate-covered popcorn. Tom braced himself with his eyelids clamped shut, as his sister reared back and hollered,
“GET IT IN GEAR!”
John hopped to his feet. Tom opened his eyes. Together they fluffed up the sofa cushions, dusted off the cat, only to re-seat themselves, calmly, the instant Susan exited the living room.
The doorbell rang.
Tom and John rushed headlong into the kitchen. They splashed water over the counter-top and across the front of Tom’s Broncos jersey, tore the coffee filter, scattered coffee grounds on the floor. Somehow, they were able to get the coffee brewing.
“He’s herrrre!” Susan bellowed from the hallway, with a frosty glare over her shoulder at her husband and brother to make sure they were getting the coffee grounds swept up, as she readied her hand to open the front door.
About the same time the coffee finished brewing, a gentleman not a wrinkle shy of ancient-looking, with the requisite cane in hand, and a kindly smile to share, ambled his way to the kitchen. Halting at the threshold from hallway to kitchen, the old man eyed the linoleum floor, glass-topped kitchen table, soapstone counter-top, sunlit grass of the backyard streaming in through the bay window, and the pen drawings of the American and Colorado flags suctioned against the refrigerator with magnets.
“I drew those,” John said, smoothing a hand over his helmet of blond hair to make sure it was still finely combed. “Kinda good, huh?”
The old man raised an eyebrow.
Gracing their kitchen with his presence was the most celebrated art historian in all of New York City, and therefore, in all of the world. Dr. Rudolph B. Stiller. The esteemed gentleman was asked to have a seat.
The gentleman positioned his chair underneath him. “Well…” he declared, in an attempt to break the conversational ice that so often laid claim to these appointments, especially early on.
While Tom and Susan sputtered dry-mouthed pleasantries like “Oh, please, make yourself at home,” and lavished overwrought praises like “Oh-em-gee, I can’t believe it’s the one and only Dr. Stiller!” John came to the decision that he was not one to be star-struck by celebrity.
He straightened his invisible necktie. “Dr. Stiller,” he said, his chin up, and voice effuse with confidence, the words flowing, “as one really, really important person to another, I’d just like to say you do yourself proud, sir, by coming all this way to see us. Yes, proud, for your selfless devotion to all things art. You are an inspiration, not only to us here, in these jurisdictions that rise mile-high and are packed to the gills with Democrat voters, and Republican voters, and independent voters, and illegal immigrant voters and—”
Tom flashed eyes of rage at his brother-in-law. “What he means to say is—thanks for coming, it means a lot to us.”
“Means a lot to me too,” their visitor exulted. “When I heard you folks might have in your possession the original Toulier painting, well, how could I do anything but jump on the first plane over?” He smacked his cane against the floor. “I flew coach. Can you believe it? They fed us peanuts.”
“Dr. Stiller, I believe I can speak for the three of us when I say—”
Tom quieted when he saw the wrinkly old palm their visitor had raised.
“Please,” the gentleman said. “It’s Professor. Either that, or you may call me Uncle Rudy. Dr. Stiller makes it sound as if I were here to swab your throats and take your temperatures.”
Tom chuckled. “Sure. Okay. Got it, Professor. The three of us…we know very little about art.”
“Would anyone like a slice of chocolate cake?” Susan said, with a leer. She approached the table holding a platter topped with cake slices in one hand, and a pot of coffee in the other.
“Yes, all of them,” John blurted.
“I’ll take them. Over here….” Tom hopped from his chair and scampered to position himself astride the garbage receptacle that topped the floor next to the sink. He raised it. “Three-point shot, Suze. Give it your best shot. I say you make seven out of ten.”
Lowering the platter and coffee pot onto the table, Susan, with her hands free, proceeded to swat John’s groping hands away. She wagged a finger at her brother. “I was asking the Professorrrrrr.”
“Cake, for me? Ah, no thank you. I’m rather too old for anything besides prunes and, well, maybe a little Sherry on the side.” The professor paused. “And I don’t mean wine, either. Rather I refer to the sixty-one-year-old grad student from the Upper West Side who warms me all over with her easy-going charm and her refreshing perspectives on medieval Catalonian tapestry-weaving.” The professor nodded at the coffee pot. “I will have some of that, though. I take cream and sugar, by the way.”
Susan poured the coffee, then slid over a carton of cream and a ceramic teddy-bear dispenser whose head pulled off to reveal sugar. With her smile broadening, Susan, in a slow, methodical operation, relocated the cake slices to her plate until she had erected a cake-slice pyramid towering all the way to eye level.
“That’s a lot of cake for just one person,” the professor exclaimed.
“That cake,” Tom sighed, “is for us.”
“It’s for their own good, Professor,” Susan added, in-between hums. “My husband, I think, even likes it.”
“The frosting especially,” John said, gulping.
The professor cleared his throat. “The Toulier painting. Do you have it with you?”
John bolted for the living room. He returned with a framed piece of cardboard with hundreds of ink lines strewn haphazardly across it. Gingerly, almost reverently, John handed the cardboard over to the professor.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed the professor as he took the item in hand, his sights darting back and forth in examination. “The lines—they look ever so much darker, more defined than they do in the reprints. Dolgren was right.”
“How about the corner?” Tom hastened to put in. “The fabled wrinkled corner, there at the lower-right side. Just as all the old rumors claimed, right?”
The professor screwed up his face until his wrinkles piled on top of one another. Finally, he answered, in a toneless voice out of the side of his mouth, “And now, not to suggest you good folks would’ve had anything to do with it—” his eyes remained transfixed on the cardboard “—but more often than not these turn out to be forgeries. And yes…” He raised a bushy white eyebrow. “There are ways to tell if a work of art is authentic or not, some of those ways being more standard practice, shall we say, than others.” The professor winked. “So, let’s give it a try…” He stretched his arm toward the cardboard then pressed a bony, trembling finger square up to it. His finger in position, the professor mumbled something—at the cardboard, as if speaking to it. The others decided it best not to ask.
The professor’s jaw dropped.
Whole minutes passed.
Susan could at length bear no more. Frowning, she said, “It’s not the real McCoy, is it?”
The professor sighed. “I’m sorry, folks.” He lowered his finger. “But I can’t definitively say…” The old man started, trembling, gasping. In a thin, reedy voice he moaned like a small animal in its death throes. “Auuuuuuuuugh…” Raising a hand as if to shield his eyes, the professor lost his balance then fell backward and landed, all akimbo, on the floor.
“Can’t definitely say what?” John asked.
The professor clutched wildly at his chest.
Susan rushed over.
Tom whipped out his cell phone. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he demanded from across the table as the operator on the other end answered.
“Arm’s over his face. I think he’s fainted. No, wait. Hand’s on his chest. I think he’s…he’s…”
Susan flinched. Hesitating, she backed off
“…having a great big smile on his face,” she finished her sentence.
The old man arose, deftly, without his cane. He had sunglasses on.
“Hello?” a voice sounded from Tom’s phone.
Tom hung up.
Over in the living room the cat, who up until this time had been reposing as a still-life portrait on her cushioned caddy by the fireplace, was all of a sudden up and about, and meowing, loudly.
The professor exclaimed, “The original this is. There can be no doubt.”
The masks of concern on the faces of Tom, John, and Susan were assuaged but little by this positive authentication which under normal circumstances would have roused them to cheers.
“I brought along a pair.” The old man patted the empty breast-pocket of his shirt. “Just in case. The darkest pair that I own.”
“Are you all right?” Susan asked, the concern still showing darkly in her eyes and in her knitted brow. “What happened?”
“Art attack.” The professor chuckled as he reseated himself.
The smile said it all. It was big, and bright; and he had sunglasses on. “Where in the dickens did you get it?” the professor asked, reclaiming his cane from the floor.
Warily, Susan eyed their visitor. “Oh,” she said, the wrinkle of concern in her brow leveling off a bit. “You mean the painting?” Finally, the professor’s smile convinced Susan that he was at the very least not injured. She said, “We found it at a tag sale was. It was just lying there beside an old sofa.” Susan turned to Tom. “We didn’t think much of it at first. But, then, Baldy, my bro here, not long afterwards watched a show on the Discovery Channel...”
Tom furrowed his brow. “I’m not bald. Hair here, and way back here, see?” Tom cleared his throat.“The show was called The Hidden Mysteries of Art.” He wiggled in his chair. “Allow me to set the stage for you. It was a Wednesday night. I was hardly even paying attention to the TV because, well, see, usually on Wednesday nights—”
“You’re online, gaping at chickens?” With the professor okay, and space now given her, Susan’s usual verve had returned.
Tom cracked a smile. “Uh, no, Susan, no. Anyway, Susan—I mean, Professor; wait, where was I?”
“I’ll finish ‘er off.” Susan took over. “Okay, so he sees this painting bein’ talked about on the TV. The painting is called Dark Meets Light Meets Death Meets Life. It was painted by, well, you know who--” Susan smiled at the professor “--Toulier. Wouldn’t you know it, the painting looks exactly like the picture that his smart-as-a-boss sis Suze has gots hangin’ in her study—with its fabled wrinkled corner, and all. Of course, word was that the original Dark Meets Light had been stolen from some museum. This happened years ago, back in the ‘30s, I think it was.”
The professor folded his hands. “August 4, 1935. The security person went to relieve himself then returned to discover the museum had been relieved of its prized display.” He raised raised an eyebrow. “Might you all have been the burglars?”
Scratching his head, John looked at Susan. “I don’t think we’re old enough, are we?” John stood. Raising two fingers in the air in V-formation, he announced, “I am not a crook.” His eyeballs swimming with pride, he said, “Just a senator.”
“A wannabee senator,” Susan spat through gritted teeth.
John sat back down.
The professor trained his gaze upon this husband, wife, and what appeared to be the brother-in-law, wondering why it was that fate should have elected these three. “You folks,” he said, easing a smile, “may have upwards of two million dollars to show for your tag-sale purchase.”
Tom and John made loud cheering noises then shared a high-five, a fist-bump, then another high-five, all the while they exclaimed, “Wow!”
Susan just sat there and stared blankly with two lambent blue eyes. “Excuse me, Professor,” she said, screeching to a halt all of the cheering. “That art appraiser, Mr. Dolgren, the guy who owns that shop here in town whom we visited first-off then who had referred you us to—being ‘in the mood to buy’ as he said he had been, and ‘out of the kindness of his heart,’ offered us much less than that: only $20,000.”
The old man whacked his cane against the floor. “Dolgren, that old devil. Ha!”
“Two million big ones?” John combed his hair helmet with his fingers. “Why, that’s enough to buy a van. But, wait, I don’t get it. All that I see here are just a bunch of messy black lines criss-crossing this piece of cardboard. How can this piece of cardboard be worth, like, all that money?”
Glances were exchanged across the table.
This was the big moment.
“Is it really true,” Tom said, with bated breath, “What they say about...”
“About what?” Susan asked.
Tom sided a glance at the professor “You know, about...” he lowered his voice “...the colors?”
The professor framed a resplendent smile that made a verbal response to Tom’s question unnecessary.
“You mean you’ve seen it?” Tom nearly spilled his coffee so energetic was his jump up from his seat. “You yourself have seen the colors, firsthand?”
The professor kept his smile. “You’d really like to know that, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course we would, Professor,” Susan said, reaching over to pacify her brother and pull him back down into his seat.
The professor reddened. “Listen, I am first and foremost a historian. How about for starters some history? My telling you, that is, a bit more about the painting itself, yes?”
Tom shrugged. “The Broncos game isn’t on until seven, and they’re in second-to-last place anyway with no hope whatsoever of reaching the playoffs. So…” Tom rubbed his hands.
The professor adjusted his glasses. “Which then would you prefer, the long version or the short version?”
“Medium,” John said.
“How about short.” Susan would save the word of rebuke that she had for her husband for afterwards.
“Okay then, short.” The professor cleared his throat. “The truth of life…” he said, “can be seen only in the shadow of death. Living and dying are simultaneous, and inseparable.”
Silence loomed. A solitary yowling from the cat was all that interrupted these thought-filled moments of quiet.
“Quoting someone?” Susan said, at length. “Toulier. Those must be Toulier’s words.”
“Not Toulier. Santayana. Who was a contemporary of Toulier’s and a famous philosopher in his own right.”
Tom, John, and Susan had not the slightest idea who Santayana was, nor were they of a mind to further inquire of an elderly gentleman whose forthwith gaze out of their kitchen window was to suggest all that was to be said had been said. The others observed while the professor fix his sights on their bird-feeder with its blue jay accompaniment.
“Long version, how about?” Tom offered.
The professor smirked. “I was waiting for you to say that.” Propping his cane against his seat cushion, he poured himself some cream then dropped two spoon-fuls of sugar. The others watched as the professor sipped his coffee. “Henri Toulier,” the professor said. “Artist. Philosopher. Frenchman. Soldier in the Franco-Prussian War…which took place back around 1870. Long story short—France lost the war, and Toulier lost both his arms. The cannon he had been standing in front of during his participation in the German Siege of Paris was not only loaded, but his compat manning the thing had the ill-advised sense to set it off. Toulier survived; his arms did not.” The professor gripped then studied his mug with the words “Rock the Vote” printed on the side of it. “Years later,” the professor smiled, as he set the mug down, “Toulier would be quoted as saying that ‘calamity can cannonball both ways,’ and though lamenting his losses, referred to his wartime experiences as ‘the most rewarding set of humiliations that could have ever been introduced into the life of a hoodwinked son-of-a-knave the likes of which was I.”
John scratched his head. “What does hood-winked mean?”
“Behave!” Susan stretched a hand for the cake slices in front of her. She pulled her hand back. “Let the professor continue, please.”
Cutting glances at the cake slices, the professor thanked Susan for looking out. “For see, Toulier had in his pre-war years been a member of the social class known as the bourgeoisie: he even carried an umbrella with him everywhere he went. Now, it wouldn’t be until after the war...” the professor sipped his coffee “...that Toulier would come to realize that it was the bourgeoisie whom the French ruler, Napoleon III, had sought to appease by declaring war on Germany. Toulier right then and there came to identify the perfect scapegoat upon which to avenge his lost arms, even in spite of himself. He was said to laugh maniacally in those early years. It has always been my consideration that Toulier would have done himself well to have paid a visit to an alienist.”
John’s eyes bulged. “He visited an alien? Cool.” He paused to consider. “The one bad thing about aliens, though, is that they can’t vote. Or can they?”
The professor clarified, “The term ‘alienist’ is nineteenth-century vernacular for ‘psychiatrist’.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Susan said in an even voice, “for that. What happened next?”
“What happened next…” the professor said, sipping his coffee, “was that over the years following, Toulier would take up the reins of a philosopher. In 1873, Toulier came to deduct the following: that the bourgeoisie—the pharmacist, the banker, the shop owner, the jewel no less the engine of nineteenth-century progress—lived colorlessly. Colorlessly, which in Toulierian verbiage is to say ‘without rarefied aspect’. Further concluding, that so long as the bourgeois lived colorlessly, without rarefied aspect, he could never find true happiness. The whole of life became, then, for such an individual, according to Toulier, a struggle. Not just a struggle—a battle, a war. The everyday war of human will against human will, each of us battling over some representation of the promised prize of happiness only to discover that the happiness gained in attaining the prize is outweighed by the happiness lost in the battle. Toulier hated war, in all of its variations. He saw war as the antithesis not only to peace, but to happiness. It was war, of course, that had inflicted upon him the deepest unhappiness.”
Susan pursed her lips. “That sounds something like self transcendence.”
The professor nodded. “Something like.”
Tom mused. “Happiness. What an interesting subject. What is it, right?”
Susan blinked. “Professor...” she said, tugging at his shirtsleeve.
Chuckling softly, the professor mumbled something about a blue jay that kept diverting his attention. “Yes, colorlessly...” the professor said, reclaiming both his preoccupation with his narrative and his vigor of tone. “See, Toulier’s story really begins when after quitting feeling sorry for himself, he set out in search of an alternative means of happiness, one independent of the colorlessness, and the coldness, that he had come to identify as the stamp not only upon the lives of so many around him, but on his own heart, as well.” The professor divided glances between his three hosts. “Finally, in 1876, Toulier discovered it: what he would refer to as the Full Colored Life. Perfect happiness. If you can believe it.”
“Perfect happiness?” Jon said, wreathed in smiles. “Why, I’m as happy as a pig in a blanket. Though, I must admit—I’ll be that much happier once I’m elected senator.”
Susan glared sourly at her husband.
Tom straightened in his chair. “Are you telling us Toulier wasn’t an artist at all, but a philosopher?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. A philosopher who wrote books—over thirty of them. Speaking of which...” the professor angled himself to face the painting; he pointed “...you see these lines here…?”
“What about those lines?” Susan asked in her earnest tenor. “I couldn’t help but notice, Professor, how earlier you referred to them as dark.”
“Oh, and dark they are. Toulier used India ink! Now, I have mentioned Toulier the writer. Well, these lines you see here were not the work of a paintbrush. Rather, they were the incidental drippings off of Toulier’s pen at which time he’d written the first of his books, titled Color Me Content. You see, Toulier couldn’t afford a desk early on, and so this slab of cardboard he just used as his makeshift one.”
Susan inched forward in her chair. “You mean to say that when he wrote his book monsieur had a quill pen he’d drip into an inkwell—”
The professor nodded
“—and from the inkwell to the paper a trail of ink would drip, and which, drip after successive drip, would come to crisscross the underlying cardboard into this messola here?”
“Precisely, my dear. Because you must remember, Toulier was by rights a messy writer. Without arms, he could only write with his teeth. It wasn’t until many years later that he would be able to afford a secretary unto whom he could dictate.”
John slurped his coffee. “So why, then, Professor, has this messy-looking cardboard become like one of the most famous paintings in the history of this land of the free and home of the brave?”
There was a moment’s silence as the professor folded his hands together.
“I know why,” Tom said, weakly.
All eyes turned to him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it to you guys earlier.” Tom looked appealingly at John and Susan “It’s just that I had wanted to get some feedback and confirmation first from the professor.” He bolted his finger at the face of the cardboard. “This painting’s supernatural. It’s like a Ouija board.”
“Ah, no, no,” the professor snickered, leaning back in his chair. “Don’t say such things. Toulier would roll over in his grave if he heard you call him as an occultist.”
“A Oiuja board?” Susan frowned.
The professor in his polite manner requested a refill. John replied that he would be only too happy as the professor might one day repay the favor by voting for a particular someone. “This man Toulier—” the professor held out his mug as John poured “—passed away finally in 1929. Never mind the date, but hear me when I tell you that in the weeks following two of his pupils—names of Clara, and Lucie, took upon themselves the necessary task of cleaning out his Paris flat. Old clothes were tossed, notes and letters were placed in storage. However, when the time come to address the piece of cardboard:
“‘I’ll stash it in the attic for now,’ Clara proposed.
“Lucie nodded. ‘Wait a minute,’ Lucie halted. ‘Why not lay it over there in the corner by that ceramic bust of Napoleon.’
“Clara nodded. “Over by Napoleon—I was just about to say that.’
“Long story short, Clara and Lucie came to discover that in every decision they made with regards to that piece of cardboard—they agreed with one another, right down to the final decision that it be donated to an obscure art agency called the Collector’s Authority of Clermont-Ferrand. They arrived at this unique decision separately, you must understand.”
“Walk the line,” Tom whispered in the shadowy, furtive manner of secret-sharing at the ear of Susan. “Walk the line,” he whispered at John.
Even the professor appeared touched by Tom’s reverential treatment of the matter. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “Thank you. Words to live by. No, to die by.” The professor adjusted his sunglasses. Removing them, even this far out in time, could have untoward consequences including permanent vision impairment. But the glasses were on—there was no need to take them off; he could see, and so might this Tom person, in time. The professor said, “Your friend here seems to know a thing or two. Guess what? He might die on you soon.” John blinked. Tom gulped. Susan gasped. Everyone grew excited. “Now, where was I?”
Tom exclaimed, “They walked the line. That’s why they could agree! The Full Colored Life. Perfect happiness!”
The professor framed a smile specially for John and Susan. “Within the next few months—dead.”
Susan clutched her husband’s arm. “Wait,” she said, furrowing her brow. She said, slowly, with a far off look, “Dark Meets Light Meets Death Meets Life.”
The professor folded his hands. “Walk the line, our exuberant friend advises. That line, no doubt, he means, that Toulier himself walked and wrote about in his many books. This simple expression has since become the catchphrase for the whole of Toulerian philosophy. Walk. The. Line.”
The professor scooted in his chair until his scoliosis didn’t hurt as much. “Now, back to Clara and Lucie. So, one day, the two are back up in the attic, bored to tears sorting through all of Toulier’s old papers and notes, when, perhaps to break things up, Clara decides to play a little guessing game with Lucie. ‘Hey, Lucie,’ she says, ‘pick a line, any line.’ Lucie asks if Clara has maybe had too much wine and why is it that she won’t speak in plain French. Clara says, ‘With my mind’s eye, Luce, I’ve got the tip of my finger touched to a certain spot on this cardboard here. Guess the spot, and I’ll give you my signed photo of Valentino.’ Lucie, who was a big fan also of Valentino, thinks about it then stretches her finger in an attempt to guess the spot.”
John giggled, loudly.
Susan’s expression flattened, as she looked over. “What is it now?”
John’s face reddened from the giggles. “The professor. His voices. It’s funny.”
Susan rolled her eyes. Sighing, she said, “Allow me to translate, Professor. My husband here thinks your character reenactments of the two French women is amusing.”
The professor wiggled in his seat. “You know, a large part of an art historian’s job is the dramatic arts. Every painting has a story. We do what we can.” He sipped then set his coffee aside. “So, anyway, guess what, folks? Lucie picked the very spot of line that Clara had chosen. Excitedly, Clara answered her...” raising his chin, the professor declared in his high-pitched, French-accented Clara voice, ‘Let’s follow the line itself!’”
The professor nodded. “And so they did. They walked the line, as it were, matching decisions at each step of the way—decisions, say, about whether to keep moving forward along the line, or to veer off to the left, the right, or onto other intersecting ink lines. Well, these two ladies, initiated and well adept in the tenets of Toulierian philosophy, mind you, soon decided their way along in this manner until lo and behold every single line on the cardboard had been traced, as if magically, by their in-sync fingertips. At which time—voila! The spaces in-between the lines, the empty spaces of cardboard untouched by line, filled in, if you can believe it, with color before their wondering eyes. The cardboard suddenly looks to them no longer like a cardboard but like a magnificent stained-glass window. Which only they could see.”
Susan batted her eyes. “All I see here is a white slab of cardboard laced with thousands of black lines. I don’t see any color.”
“Perfect happiness is to be found at the end of a line,” the professor said. “You must walk the line, all the way. Then you die. Then you get colored in.”
Tom jumped to his feet. “This is so cool. I’m like a kid at school. I wanna play dodge-ball. I wanna ride on the swings! I wanna—”
Susan sneered. Breathing in, and out, she gripped one of the cake slices. “GROW UP!” A split-second later, chocolate frosting splattered across Tom’s shoulder. The professor blinked in astonishment. Susan turned to him. “You said we could get two million dollars for the painting? That much, really?”
“It would be put up for auction, naturally. Two million is just an estimate.”
“What happens now, then?” John asked, thumbing a lump of frosting off of Tom’s lapel.
Slowly, his joints protesting in spasms of pain, the professor rose from his seat. “Nothing happens, for now. Would you not like to get top dollar for your auction item and ensure that it goes to the home of a reputable and responsible collector?”
The three nodded.
“In which case—you just let Uncle Rudy take care of things. I have your phone number, yes?”
“We gave it to your secretary or whomever it was that I talked to on the phone,” Susan said.
“Good. I wouldn’t want to go through the trouble of getting you into an auction—say, in Prague, and not have your contact info. Give me a month to tap my network of connections. In the meantime, don’t let that painting out of your sight!”
“We’ll keep it locked up in the closet, right alongside—” Susan rolled her eyes “—Senator John here.”
Hearing his name and the word “senator” said back-to-back in the same sentence made John’s heart swell with pride. Gathering himself, he snapped into public-servant mode. Reaching to pump the professor’s hand, John thanked him for coming. He asked the professor if he might be a registered voter.
Darting a wary look at Susan, the professor answered, “Um, yes?”
John said that that was good because the “in-crumb-bent,” one “Senator Reubens,” was one tough customer, and so he, John, the “non-in-crumb-bent,” was going to need to strum up as many votes as possible if ever he was going to—
“Enough.” Susan crossed her arms. She stomped her foot. “Enough!”
John released his grip on the professor’s wrinkled hand.
Tom asked, in a faltering voice, “Can you walk the lines?” He cleared his throat. “Can you see the colors on the painting?” Louder, Tom clarified, “Like Clara and Lucie did? Is that maybe why Mr. Dolgren referred you to us, because you’re the only person in the world who can authenticate it because you’re the only one left in the world who can see it?”
Susan wheezed. “Now, Tom,” she said. “You know the answer to that question. On that show you had watched, didn’t you say they had said something about how Dr. Stiller was the only one something or other? Why patronize the professor by asking him a question he’s probably been asked a thousand times that you know the answer to already?” Fighting back a smirk, Susan said, “Why not instead ask him that question you ask all of our visitors once Big Sis is out of hearing range?”
The professor said, kicking himself even as the words escaped his lips, “What question might that be?”
Susan smirked. “It’s what breed of FOWL—you foul boy—they in their secret moments aim their binoculars at?”
Tom’s lip quivered. “Um, Susan, this really isn’t a good time—”
“Chickens,” Susan bellowed. “Fresh young hens!”
Tom bit his fist then reached his hand into his pocket. “Oh, oh, what I wouldn’t do for a little clucker. Oh…!”
“Look, Suze,” John exclaimed. “His hand’s down there again. That’s where his rubber chicken’s at. He’s rubbing at it again, just like you keep telling not to do at the dinner table!”
Tom shook his head. “Thanks, pal, for the announcement.” Sighing, Tom withdrew his hand from his pocket.
Susan narrowed her eyes at Tom. She turned to their visitor. “Professor, can you believe it? My own brother—got a restraining order issued against him last week after Farmer Lawson went to the courts to complain. Keeps snoopin’ around poultry farms. You know, to be with the chickens. Not to eat, to pet. Sick, I tell you. Sick!”
“…oh…oh, for a tender young hen…”
“Professor, might I show you to the door and save my brother, us all, for that matter—”
“…oh…”
“—any further embarrassment?”
“Prof, now don’t forget to tell all your friends it’s not what Super John can do for you, but what you can do for Super John—by votin’ for him next November!”
“Then, we have this one.”
“Who, me?”
“Who, me, he asks. Listen to this—ah ha ha—listen to this, Professor, this one’s classic. So, Mr. John here works over at the Dollar General, and last month he got promoted to assistant store manager. Sure, assistant manager, but of one stinkin’ store. He starts thinkin’ he’s Gawwwd all of a sudden, and that he can do anything. So, clear outta the blue Mr. John says he wants to become a senator. Of all things, a senator. Amazing thing is, he’s serious. He wants to start campaigning next month!”
“Of course I’m serious. That motivational speaker in that infomercial I watched said if only you put your mind to it—”
Susan laughed, loudly. “Gotta have a mind before you can put it to something.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, all you do is throw cake at me all day long. I have to scrub the walls, halls, bookshelf, and ceiling. One time you even got frosting on my planned acceptance speech. I’m always baking cakes so you can turn around and throw them at me!”
Susan groaned. “You got a job. Now go get a life.”
“You’re half-baked, is what you are. Half baked!”
“I’m purpose-driven, and my number one purpose is to keep myself sane living with the likes of you-know-who. Oh, and by the way, your half-baked attempt at an insult makes about as much sense as your plans to become a senator.”
“Walk the line, you two.”
John and Susan froze.
Unfurrowing the lines in his forehead, the professor snorted then apologized for his out-of-character outburst. Also, he was sorry he had made the cat jump.
“That’s Fritter Ditter,” Susan said, waving at the orange tabby who, no longer yowling, ogled them with his twinkling cat-eyes from his perch by the living-room window. “She’s the fourth member of our crew. I forgot to introduce her. Oh, and if you’ll excuse me, it seems like she’s really been wanting to go out. Sorry for the meowing…” Susan strode to the sliding-glass door that gave way to the backyard then skated it open. The cat, motionless, kept his paws parked and his sights fixed in the direction of the kitchen table.
“C’mon, cat,” Susan beckoned. “Out!”
The professor stepped forward. “Look—” he said, pointing, “at this masterpiece, this wonderful opportunity you folks have got all to yourselves, at least for a little while longer. Idea: why not try and see if all the old stories are true? You have nothing to lose.” The professor winked at them, then at the cat. “Only remember—it’s not what you do, but what you don’t do. Well, this old-timer’s got a plane to catch. Must be going now…”
Susan and Tom escorted the professor to his rental car parked in the driveway.