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.Michael glanced at her; her smilebordered on a smirk. Also Thomas Hart Benton.But the artists he reminds meof most are Leo and Diane Dillon. I love the Dillons, Michael said. How the hell do you know all that? Ithought you were a programmer. I read the Dillons picture books to Rachid when he was little.The restcomes from being a ne arts minor. You didn t tell me. He looked again.She was de nitely gloating.Amemory popped into his head of his father, in a rare comic moment, telling ajoke that he credited to Mitch Antree.The punchline, in black dialect, was, Ibelieve I is temporarily in love.There seemed to be no end of racist garbage clogging his brain.And I msupposed to be one of the good guys, Michael thought.Is there any hope atall? Do you paint? Denise asked. Not yet, Michael said. I mean, I have, and I do, but I feel like I m work-ing up to it.I m still trying to get black and white right, still learning todraw lines. I want to see what you re working on now.Michael reached into the back seat.There was a bundle of full-sized pho-tocopies he d made that morning before shipping the new pages o to NewYork.He handed it to Denise. You can bring that in the restaurant with us ifyou want.lewis shiner68They were on a stretch of southbound freeway lit by periodic streetlights.She unfolded the bundle and Michael caught glimpses of the top page in theashes of illumination, enough to see it as an abstract, something he d foundonly partly successful techniques to do on purpose.It looked okay. Michael, this is beautiful.This is art. There have always been classically trained illustrators doing comics, guyslike Alex Raymond, who didFlash Gordon in the thirties, or Hal Foster, who didTarzan andPrince Valiant.And lots of people better than me doing it now.He stopped himself. Um, I guess what I meant to say was,  thank you.  Stay left here, and take the exit all the way around and go north again, bywhere the mall used to be.So you re making a living at it? Yeah, a pretty good one.More than my dad ever made. I don t know that many people who get real money for doing what they love. I m lucky, Michael said. I try not to lose sight of that.What about you?Do you miss programming? It was a mixed blessing.When you build it and it goes out and does somethingPage 54ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmluseful, it s really satisfying.When it crashes and you can t gure out why,it can drive you crazy.And you always end up working too many hours. What about now? I love the work.I m not making enough money, is all, for somebody with a kidto put through college.From one month to the next they don t know if they regoing to be able to keep me on.I m trying to get as much oral his-tory on tape as I can, while there s still a budget for it and these peopleare still around and talking.I hate having to put it on hold for all this atcbusiness, important as it may be. They must all hate my father. Not so much.There s plenty of blame to go around.It was the black communityleaders who sold them on the whole redevelopment idea, and Ithink a lot of people are still angry at them.Then there s the Durham SelectCommittee, which was pushing for the freeway to get people to rtp easily, rtpbeing their big goldmine.I don t think your father s name has ever come up,though I could search the transcripts for it.Not this light, but the nextone, turn right. Transcripts? We don t have that many.It s what I do nights and weekends instead ofwatching tv. Can I look at them? That s why they re there.Do you have a laptop? They re all on cd-rom,Black & White69and you can go through them in my o ce.Left at the next light.It s in thatstrip center, past the Kroger.Sitar India Palace.The restaurant featured an upscale bu et of Southern Indian cuisine.Michael couldn t remember the last time he d had a proper meal, and the smellof the food made him realize how hungry he was.He ended up making three tripsthrough the line.As they ate they made rst-date conversation: tentative circling aroundprevious relationships, lists of favorite movies and albums, rough sketches ofchildhood.Denise s father still ran a plumbing business in Queens and waspart owner of his own apartment building as well as two others.Her mother didsubstitute teaching at the elementary level.Denise had been  wild in highschool and college, until a dwi in a borrowed car trying to get an evendrunker friend home put an end to that.Within two months of her night injail, she met her ex in her Russian literature class at Hunter College. Russian literature? Michael asked. I took a bunch of Russian classes for a while, until I had to admit I had noaptitude.I was looking for something dependable that I could make a living atwhile I gured out what I wanted to do with my life.I thought there wouldalways be a market for Russian translators.Then I discovered programming.Fortunately.She married Joseph Brown the month they graduated, and Rachid was born a yearlater.She thought of herself as a romantic.Joseph was the only long-termrelationship she d ever had.For his part Michael talked about why he was in Durham and about the dead endshe d hit in search of his past.Then somehow he found himself tell-ing Denise about his father s record collection.He d hadn t thought of it in years.His father had a shelf three feet long ofjazz lp s, all in beautiful condition, with special plastic-lined innersleeves he d bought from a library supply company.They started with CharlieParker and Dizzy Gillespie and went all the way up to a complete run ofColtrane sImpulse albums.In between were all the Miles Davis Columbia releases fromPage 55ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlMiles Ahead toIn a Silent Way;Art Blakey with Lee Morgan and WayneShorter; Cannonball Adderley s quintet with brother Nat on trumpet and cornet;and on and on.His father kept them to himself.Michael would nd him sometimes late atnight, listening to his old Harmon Kardon stereo with the tubes that glowed inthe dark and the headphones so massive that as a child Michael couldn t beartheir weight.A handful of times, times that he remembered individually, his father hadcalled him over and played him a solo or a song, and he d listened dutifully,lewis shiner70trying to understand what he was supposed to hear.Even as he was reachingout, in a way, his father seemed impossibly distant, withdrawn into a privateand unassailable place [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]