today lunch, removed a few months from the schedule of lunches, these buoyant affairs, with free-flowing wine and chicken cut into perfect portions, and served always in that dish, that blue and white hand-glazed dish of csopi's, where the onions i painted once sat, and whose presence i have come to count on in these uplifted fridays. if we had a salon, it would surely be this.
gabor, my hungarian artist, with his easy laugh, and easier appreciation for the women in his life, gabor today showed us a picture he had painted, a nude. emily, he said, as he imagined her. gabor, who had scrawled out some tulips a few weeks back - tulips for spring, in vibrant pastels - a picture emily had loved, had wanted to buy - gabor points to the tulips behind the nude, proclaims them THERE but for the grace of emily's love. "i painted these tulips because emily loves them." and emily next to me, reddening quickly, said just as quickly, as g's eyes landed on her expectantly, said "i love the tulips, gabor."
and then, on the steps up back to the office, a man slouched, looking like the smell of booze, clutching a bag in his hand. i veer away despite myself, until i notice the bag. a book, i think, and am reassured. until i realize it's not a book, but porn.
