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The itch in my missing arm deepenedBy now it
felt almost like a friend
466
I didn't have the sort of light-box doctors stick
X-rays and MRI scans on when they want to study
them, but the Florida room's glass wall made a
very acceptable substituteI didn't even need
Scotch tapeI was able to snap the X-ray into the
crack between the glass and the chrome facing, and
there it was, a thing many claimed did not exist:
the brain of a lawyerIt floated against the Gulf
I stared at it for awhile, I don't know how long -
two minutes? four? - fascinated by the way the
blue water looked when viewed through the gray
crenellations, how those folds changed the water
to fog
The slug was a black chip, slightly replica ladies rolex watches fragmentedIt
looked a little like a small shipLike a rowboat
floating on the caldoI had meant only to draw his
brain intact - no slug - but it ended up being
more than thatI went on and added the water, you
see, because the picture seemed to demand itOr maybe they were the sameIt
was just a suggestion of the Gulf, but it was
there, and it was enough to be successful, because
I really was a talented sonofabitchIt only took
467
twenty minutes, and when I was done I had drawn a
human brain floating on the Gulf of MexicoIt was,
in a way, way cool
It was also horrifyingIt isn't a word I want to
use about my own work, but it's unavoidableAs I
took the X-ray down and compared it to my picture
- slug in cambon chanel handbag the science, no slug in the art - I
realized something I perhaps should have seen much
earlierCertainly after I started the Girl and
Ship seriesWhat I was doing didn't work just
because it played on the nerve-endings; it worked
because people knew - on some level they really
did know - that what they were looking at had come
from a place beyond talentThe feeling those Duma
pictures conveyed was horror, barely held in check
Horror waiting to happenInbound on rotted sails
v
I was hungry againI made myself a sandwich and
ate it in front of my computerI was catching up
with The Hummingbirds - they had become quite the
little obsession with me - when the phone rang
468
"My headache's gone," he louis vuitton messenger bag said
"Do you always say hello like that?" I asked"Can
I maybe expect your next call to begin 'I just
evacuated my bowels'?"
"Don't make light of thisMy head has ached ever
since I woke up on the dining room floor after
shooting myselfSometimes it's just background
noise and sometimes it rings like New Year's Eve
in hell, but it always achesAnd then, half an
hour ago, it just quitI was making myself a cup
of coffee and it quitI couldn't believe itAt
first I thought I was deadI've been walking
around on eggshells, waiting for it to come back
and really wallop me with Maxwell's Silver Hammer,
and it hasn't
"Lennon-McCartney," I saidAnd don't tell
me I'm wrong on that one
He didn't tell me anything
But I louis vuitton demin bags for sale in the uk could hear him breathingThen, at last, he
said: "Did you do something, Edgar? Tell Wireman
I thought about telling him I hadn't done a damn
thingThen I considered him checking his X-ray
folder and finding one was goneI also considered
469
my sandwich, wounded but far from dead"What
about your vision? Any change there?"
"Nope, the left lamp is still outAnd according
to Principe, it ain't coming backBut hadn't part of me known the job wasn't
done? This morning's diddling with Sharpie and
Cardboard had been nothing like the previous
night's full-blown orgasmI didn't
want to do anything more today but sit and stare
at the GulfWatch the sun go down in the caldo
largo without painting the fucking chanel coco handbag thi |
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