Page 66 - The Myth and the Moment

Evening

“Nate? How are you feeling? You had us worried—I mean, you
had me worried. Lin used to work in a hospital—not in this
country—and she said you just fainted and needed to rest a little bit.
Anyway, because of that flap over the leftovers, we didn’t have
enough food in the house for dinner. Did you see the note I left
you?”
“Yeah. I ate it.”
Maybe I can get him off-balance.
“Ha-ha. That sounds like the old Nate Evangelino. Well, will you
stay? I’d really like to settle this business.”
He looks serious. Okay, I’ll look serious, with perhaps a soupçon
of insanity around the irises and knuckles.
“Actually, Phil, I had no intention of leaving before we settled it.”
“Good! Come inside; I’ll tell Lin to put another TV dinner in the
microwave.”
Evangelino the Avenger rises slowly from his terrible throne, girds
again his horrible loins, follows with unbearable deliberation his
nemesis, Kolpak, Prince of Plagiarism, into the dark, forbidding
House of Shredded Secrets, not forgetting, for a single instant, the
deadly danger that lurks within. I am not about to trade The Myth and
the Moment for an aluminum tray of rehydrated potato flakes,
vulcanized carrots, and a laser-cut lump of mammalian muscle fiber
marinated in embalming fluid. But I am famished! Does he know
that? What else did she learn in that hospital?
“Just slide the screen door closed behind you, Nate. In these hot
months we leave the plate glass doors open around the clock;
otherwise, the place heats up like an oven. What do you think of the
sculpture? It’s a rice-paper Van Ordiner, from his Constructivist
period; cost me a bundle, but you can’t beat art as an investment.
Tell you what: let’s go in my office. Lin! He’ll stay.”
Slam!
“Okay, Phil honey. I get out of freezer.”
God! Don’t come out of the kitchen and see my face! Phil goes on,
trailing an effluvium of chatter like diesel exhaust. Let him talk, let
him talk; right into a hole. Then see if his shovel can double as a
ladder. What I need is an approach, a way to get to him other than
the primordial, instinctive, and profound fear of litigation. A chink in

65