Words & Dreams (Book 1 of Smithers Family Saga)

Chapter 39

Dollie was unsure of how to carry on- she'd stopped drinking and dancing: she knew she'd fall over if she tried anything rhythmic, yet she could still speak just fine, despite a stuttering slur hear and there.

"You're drunk? Aren't you?" Danny said.

"Yeah," Dollie said, with a certain dual amount of pride and shame.

"Are you ready to leave?"

"I don't know," Dollie said.

"Listen," Danny said, "I don't want to- I don't mean to- I hope I don't offend you- but I don't want to sleep with you if you're drunk... again," he said.

"You think you've got a chance?" Dollie said, then knowing how stupid she sounded, "Just because you got lucky the first time, when I gave you a free gift?"

Danny smiled,

"Something like that."

And she could see- at the very least- that he was tipsy too, though less than her, though he'd matched  her drink-for-drink.

"I hate to be a vulgar bastard," he said. "But could you pay the taxi fair back to your place, us together, then from your house, I'll pay it back to my car? I'm not that well-off and I don't want to drive you home if I'm this drunk."

As Dollie, as most women and men, had been driven drunk in the nineties, she felt flattered. She knew, too, that most men would risk it. Even if he was manipulating her to pay, as she later worried, he was not dishonorable for it, in her eyes, as it was a practical matter, despite the gender politics.

"As long as my purse is still in your car," she said. "I'll risk it." This choice of words was odd, as if he had said, 'would you like to go to a hotel?' it might have been accurate. He nodded.

They left, with 'Vogue' and Prince's 'Thieves in the Temple' on her mind, as well as the song Prince wrote, 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinead O'Connor.'

The next painting:

A window looking out on a battlefield full of toads and witches. The toads wore helmets and drove tanks. All the witches had were brooms, wands, and  circles carved in the dirt, from which they appeared to be summoning something, as all the circles were covered in smoke.

"Oh," Yvette said, "this is the painting I needed you to get high for. It's part of a series."

"The toads are princes, right?" Eugene said, and Erica nodded.

Ah, I see it now, Violet thought, of course, the fact becoming obvious.

"For some reason," Yvette said, "I've never had good luck with these paintings over the years- then a few days ago, someone is stoned at a gallery, and they understand it entirely- not this one, but a different one."

"What's in that one?"

"A view over the battlefield," Yvette said, "many descending hawks, circling in a gyre, each hawk evolving until they evolve into nuclear bombs and dildos. Another painting has a toad in a top hat, spats and a tailcoat, asking for a kiss, as a witch turns him down with a disgusted look on her face."

"I remember those- I thought you destroyed them," Erica said.

"No," Yvette said, taking a drag on the joint in her hands. "I don't know why I didn't. I had them stored in an attic. I brought the woman who was high- and some others who had gotten high- to the place where I stored them, putting them out. They all understood. Except for one woman, who turns out to not have inhaled. Still, there's a big, big problem."

"Which is?" Violet said.

"You more or less need to have seen them high to understand them. How do I suggest this? Do I paint marijuana leaves everywhere? Joints? It negates the point, somewhat, by making the art programmatic- because once you're no longer high those paintings would look silly if they had weed leaves and joints everywhere.

"Yes," Eugene said, "it would be very silly to have your war between toads and witches defaced by weed symbols."

There was some giggling, which even Yvette took part in.

"I'll smack you when I'm sober," she said. "But I think," Yvette said, "that I'll have a gallery exhibition with this mentioned: that you have to be stoned. Then I'll have the painting republished in the High Times, but will pretend they never got permission: there are too many uptight art critics that would dismiss me otherwise. Sometimes it's the ones who are doing blow in the bathroom- or so your gay friends tell you- that turn obnoxiously Protestant when it's time to write a review. As if to praise, were to admit. It's a sick society, America. If it weren't for the fact that it's already a living canvas of barbaric stupidity, I wouldn't stay. Though New York is nice," she said, after a pause.