Page 129 - Just Deserts

Chameleon Dress Tips

quite fascinating to a Midwestern dairy farmer’s wife, starved for even
vicarious scandal and outrage.”
“Oh, you men! It’s like pulling teeth to get any good information
out of you. Whatever happened to Dinah Fourchette, for instance:
she looked to be about five months pregnant last time I saw her.”
“Hmm. Haven’t seen her at all, lately. Maybe she left town.” An
impish grin exposed the remnants of his dentition. “You should ask
Gordon Leffer—he might know. Ha-ha!”
“You’re such a pig, Vozkonsky! No wonder I like you. And
where’s your old buddy Frisko? Hard to imagine him missing an
opportunity to chat up one of your brainless art-school chicks.”
He shook his head, inefficiently attempting to dissipate an inner
fog. “Now there’s a curious story. I guess it didn’t make the London
papers. Thought everyone knew about it.”
“What? What? Knew about what?” She leaned forward.
The artist shook his head again, but this time in sheer
wonderment. “Frisko went over the top. He really did. It was
fantastic what he did. But the squares tore him down. He’s a martyr
to our cause, really. I’ll always remember the man.” He took a
prodigious swig, nearly draining the bottle.
“Stop it!” she shrieked. “Stop teasing me! Where is he?”
“It was his masterpiece, a pure stroke of genius. I can’t repeat all
the intellectual theorizing that went on about it afterward in the
journals, but he managed to cross all boundaries in one great
statement, blowing away all the petty distinctions between high art
and low art, aesthetics and commerce. I was there at the opening, and
it will be something to tell my grandchildren—well, someone else’s
grandchildren, anyway.”
“Wasn’t he going to launch some kind of gigantic satellite that
would be in everybody’s face around the whole world? Is that what
got him in trouble?”
“No, not directly.” Vozkonsky fingered the bottle gingerly as if it
were a live artillery shell. “The balloon project is on ice. Probably
never happen, now. He was trying to raise money for it by selling a
limited casting of a small sculpture he did of a chameleon.”

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