Page 130 - Just Deserts

Chameleon Dress Tips

“A chameleon!” Anita Fix’s eyes widened, her heavy makeup
giving the orbs thus expanded an aspect of possibly unintended
ferocity.
“Weird, eh? And he made them out of some kind of super-
expensive space-age material that changed color, just like a
chameleon does, depending on its surroundings.”
“Oh. Now I get it. A statement about modern art. Like adaptation,
hiding in plain sight. Primitive qualities, the reptilian brain,
regeneration, mystery. But that seems awfully subtle for Frisko; I
mean, he sort of oscillated between pie-in-the-face slapstick and
austere monochromatic geometry, hadn’t he? Why the new
departure?”
Vozkonsky shrugged. “I don’t know. But he did switch to a
new gallery about that time—the same guy who was representing me,
Evian Beek.”
“I vaguely remember him. He was having his fifteen minutes of
fame around the time I went to Europe.”
“Well, the shit hit the fan at the opening of Frisko’s little zoo at
Beek’s gallery. They had already sold a few of the chameleons, at
twenty thousand per, and the wealthier collectors smelled a good
thing. It was quite a fancy affair; Frisko had threatened me with
mayhem unless I shaved and wore a tie. Even so, I stood out like a
sore thumb among all the uptown investment bankers and Park
Avenue psychiatrists in their evening clothes. Beek had rigged up a
special display stand with three of the lizards lined up on a sort of
warming plate controlled by a timer, so the pieces would change
color constantly.”
The artist pulled on his left earlobe, perhaps in unconscious hope
of sympathetically stimulating the cerebral lobe in which his memory
lay bathed in alcohol. “Well, it was going along all very nicely, with
Frisko turning on the charm and making his usual cryptic comments
about art and life, all guaranteed to impress the paying customers.
Then suddenly there was a great commotion at the door, and a whole
new crowd of people burst into the gallery. They were screaming and
shouting, really hostile. I heard one woman yell, ‘Where is Frisko,
that Antichrist?’ And a lot of them were waving something in their
hands. As soon as they figured out which one was Frisko, they
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