Going All the Way (20 page)

“Goddam,” Sonny whispered in awe.

Sonny couldn't imagine himself ever doing anything like that, except with a girl like Buddie, who he already was sure of and thus didn't care too much about. But he knew that the mean, tough-guy approach really worked, and not just for Gunner. Sonny had avidly studied an article in a recent
Life
that explained how different movie actors appealed to women. It said there was a surprising number of women who were hot for Richard Widmark, the guy with the madman grin who made this crazy little laugh whenever he hurt someone. Sonny had seen the movie where Widmark knocked off a poor old lady in a wheelchair by pushing her down a long flight of stairs, which sent him into a real peal of his crazyman laughter.
Life
's analysis of why so many women were attracted to the fiendish little actor was that “cast in his first movie in a sadist role, Widmark appeals most to women who want to be treated cruelly. This may be a larger group than is recognized.…”

You bet your ass, Sonny thought. He figured he would never be able to appeal to women that way and consoled himself by
Life
's analysis of why so many women creamed over Frank Sinatra: “According to considered Hollywood judgment, Sinatra's popularity is based on his appeal as a mixed-up character whom women want to take care of …”

Sonny felt that was his own best hope.

“I even brought home my first canvas,” Gunner was saying, having lost interest in the trifle of his sexual conquest. It seemed like now that he'd found some nice new pussy he could afford to be interested in higher things, like art. Sonny felt guilty for thinking that but he couldn't help it, even though he knew he was probably just jealous. He said, of course he'd like to see the canvas, and Gunner drove them out to the Meadowlark, steering with one hand and beating a little jazz rhythm on the outside of the car with his other hand.

It was really hard to find much to say about the canvas, and Gunner helped out by explaining, “It's more like an exercise, a way of getting the feel of paint.”

It was mostly just swatches of blue and green, laid on very thick, and all Sonny could think of was the finger paintings you did in grade school, but he didn't mention that.

“It looks like the real thing,” he commented.

“Well, it's the real material, anyway,” Gunner said and leaned the small canvas against a lamp on an end table. He put on a lively Brubeck LP and got them a couple cans of beer. Just as Gunner settled on the couch, the doorbell rang and he got up to answer.

“Is that your mother?” Sonny asked, hoping it wouldn't be.

“Don't know why she'd ring,” Gunner said. “Maybe she forgot the key.”

After the buzzer from downstairs there was a knock at the door, and Gunner opened it. Instead of his mother there was a middle-aged guy in a rumpled light-blue sport coat and slacks that drooped down in folds around the tops of his canvas rubber-soled shoes.

“Mr. Thomas Casselman?” he asked.

“That's me.”

“I'm Mr. Libby, from Artists Unlimited.” He edged his way into the room and asked, “May I come in?,” after he already had.

Gunner looked confused, but asked the guy to sit down. “Are you a friend of Marty's or something?”

“Beg pardon?” The man smiled.

“Marty Pilcher. She's an art student, down at Herron.”

“Oh, no, we're not connected at all with Herron. Or any other
local
group.” He made
local
sound very small-time. “We're a national organization,” he said.

“Well,” Gunner asked, scratching at the back of his head, “can I get you a beer?”

“Oh my, no, not on the job.”

He pulled a big portfolio onto his lap and cleared his throat. “I'm sure that you are just the sort of person who can benefit from our kind of personal, professional guidance,” he said.

“I don't get it,” Gunner said. “Who are you?”

“Mr. Libby, from Artists Unlimited. Here, I should have given you my card.”

He handed a little printed white card to Gunner, who looked at it blankly.

“Yeh, I see, but I still don't get it. I mean, how did you get
here?
How do you know me or anything?”

“From your talent,” the man beamed. “A small sample, of course. Yet enough for a professional eye to detect the kind of rough talent that can be sharpened and honed into—who knows? A true artist.”

“What sample?” Gunner asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The little challenge in the matchbook cover—the drawing of a woman's head that you were able to reproduce with enough skill to bring me here today.”

“The matchbox,” Gunner said. “You mean the one that said ‘Draw Me?'”

“I remember!” Sonny volunteered. “Yeh. It said ‘Draw Me,' and you drew the woman on a napkin, at the Red Key. Remember?”

“I remember drawing it,” Gunner said, “but I sure as hell never sent it in. I'd have had to send it in, for them to give you my name, wouldn't I?”

“Of course”—Mr. Libby smiled—“of course you sent it in.”

“Goddam it, I didn't send anything in!”

“Well, someone must have,” Libby said. “I'm here, aren't I?”

Gunner turned to Sonny, staring at him suspiciously. “You were there, when I drew the damn thing. Did
you
send it in?”

“Me? I wouldn't send anything in for another guy. Besides, you put it in your pocket. I saw you.”

“Well, it's really academic,” Mr. Libby said. “Perhaps you should simply accept the mystery as a further sign, pointing your way to a career in art. The important thing is, Artists Unlimited can start you up the ladder of that career, with a series of home instructions that
you
work on and send in to our staff of master artists for a personal, professional critique of each and every lesson you complete.”

Gunner looked dazed. “Who the fuck,” he said almost to himself, “could have sent it in?”

“It's as if you were sitting at the feet of one of our contemporary masters,” Libby went on, “benefiting from his own genius, the secrets of his art applied to
your own work
. Within five days after sending in your completed lesson, you receive in the mail—”

The door opened and Nina Casselman walked in, pulling a big white floppy summer hat off her head and shaking her thick bright blond hair out with one hand in a way that Sonny thinks of a woman preparing for bed—but not for sleep.

She put one hand on her hip and asked, with her eyes wide, “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not at all, I'm sure,” Mr. Libby said, rising.

“Nina, this is Mr. Libby,” Gunner said. “You know Sonny Burns.”

Nina dismissed Sonny with a glance that was suitable for brushing off a gnat and swiveled over to extend her hand to Mr. Libby.

“I'm from Artists Unlimited,” he said.

“Oh, really?” Nina asked with interest.

“There's been some kind of mistake,” Gunner said nervously.

“On the contrary”—Libby beamed—“this young man, Mr. Casselman, has great talent in the field of art.”

“Of course he has,” Nina said. “He has ever since he was a little boy.”

“Oh—then you're—his sister?”

“Thank you.” Nina smiled. “He's my son.”

“Really,”
Mr. Libby said, “I'd have never—”

“Few people would,” Nina said and sat down on the couch beside Mr. Libby.

“Nina, I was just explaining to Mr. Libby there's been a misunderstanding. Somehow this coupon got sent in to his company, with something I drew, and he thinks—”

“I think your son has great potential,” Libby confided to Nina.

“Well, of course.”

“Listen,” Gunner said, “I swear to God, I don't even know who sent the damn thing in, it was just a thing on the inside of a matchfolder and—”

“The woman's face?” Nina asked. “The one you were able to draw so beautifully on a rough old napkin?”

Gunner's mouth opened and he pointed at his mother. “You,” he said accusingly, “
you
sent it in.”

“I certainly did.”

“But I didn't mean to send it in! I never intended to send it in!”

Nina sighed and got out a cigarette. “Of course you didn't,” she said, “you're so painfully modest.”

Mr. Libby lit her cigarette, smiling with understanding.

“
Mother!
It was a joke!”

“Talent is no joke,” Mr. Libby said reproachfully.

“Indeed it's not,” Nina agreed. “When I saw that little coupon, and the way he had drawn such an exact reproduction of the woman's face—in fact, it seemed to me his was a little better than the face they showed—I just had to do something about it.”

“Where did you find it?” Gunner demanded. “How did you get the damn thing?”

“I was going through your pockets.”

“What the hell were you doing in my pockets?” Gunner shouted. “You haven't got any business in my pockets.”

“I was only getting some things of yours together for the cleaner!” Nina shouted back. “Doing you a
favor
, seeing you're taken care of, and what thanks do I get?”

Gunner slapped the palm of his hand at his forehead and was quiet for a moment.

“Your son may not appreciate it now,” Mr. Libby said quietly to Nina, “but I assure you that in a matter of weeks, after he has completed Lesson Number One—”

“Look,” Gunner said very quietly, “I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but the fact is, by coincidence, I
already
am taking art lessons.”

“What kind of ‘art lessons?'” Mr. Libby asked.

“Private ones,” Gunner said, looking away.

“Well,
this
is news,” Nina said.

“I just started,” Gunner explained, “recently.”

“From whom, may I ask, are you taking these lessons?” Libby inquired.

“From an art student. She's an art student at the Herron, studying art.”

“You mean that little Jewish girl you've been running around with?” Nina asked indignantly.

“What's ‘Jewish' got to do with it, for God sake?”

“Well, she is, isn't she?”

“The point is,” Mr. Libby said soothingly, “no student, of any kind, is able to give instructions as competently as a professional, accomplished professional artist. That goes without saying. You see, Mrs. Casselman, our course is designed by the leading artists of the land, and the lessons your son completes will be personally criticized by professionals in their field.”

Mr. Libby no longer addressed himself to Gunner at all, but poured his soupy pitch entirely toward Nina.

“That sounds marvelous,” she said.

“Imagine, being able to study under the masters of contemporary art.”

“What ‘masters?'” Gunner asked.

Mr. Libby smiled benignly. “Men like Orville Lockwood. Himself. He is on our board of directors.”

“Really?” Nina said.

Lockwood was the guy who drew all the famous covers of
American Life
magazine that were so beloved by all. Or at least by most everyone. Secretly, Sonny got depressed by them, all those pictures of happy families with good old white-haired Grandma and overworked Pop and long-suffering Mom, and the mischievous kids, all around the Christmas tree or the Thanksgiving dinner table, the way everything was supposed to be. The worst things that ever happened in those pictures were little Spot the dog having to get a bandage on his paw or little Junior getting caught stealing from the cookie jar. The pictures always made Sonny feel that's how things were supposed to be and the fact that his own family wasn't like that at all made him feel worse about everything. He wished that fucking Lockwood would come and spend a Christmas at
his
house, with everyone sullen and on edge and disappointed, his father with a holiday migraine headache and his grandmother having hysterics because Uncle Buck had disappeared after the Christmas Eve office party, and his mother wringing her hands because she forgot to put the stuffing in the turkey. He wished the bastard would draw a picture of
that
.

“Orville Lockwood!” Nina said. “
The
Orville Lockwood?”

“The only one,” Mr. Libby said proudly.

“Did you hear that, darling?”

“Yes, Mother,” Gunner said. He had sunk into an armchair, staring at something far away.

“The entire course can be begun with only a thirty-dollar deposit,” Mr. Libby said quietly to Nina, “the rest paid in installments after each of the twelve lessons.”

“Only thirty dollars!”

“Mother, I haven't got it,” Gunner said.

“Well I have!” she said and fished into her purse, bringing out a checkbook.

Gunner jumped up and shouted, “No, please! I don't want to. I don't want to take the lessons. I'm already taking lessons.”

“I know what kind of lessons you're taking,” Nina huffed.

“Don't you pay. Don't take her money!” he shouted at Libby.

Gunner had a big principle about not taking his mother's money or letting her pay for things for him after he got out of college. He had explained the theory about it to Sonny, about how a guy had to really be independent and if you took from people you owed them something, even relatives, maybe even especially relatives, because a lot of times what they wanted in return was more than money and more than you could pay. Sonny agreed wholeheartedly and knew that was right, but didn't mention to Gunner how he still got almost all his spending money from his mother. It was too embarrassing. He promised himself that when his real life got underway he would refuse any money that his mother offered him. He would stand on his own two feet.

Gunner ended up paying the down payment for the Artists Unlimited course and enrolling himself in the twelve-lesson plan, which came to a total of $120. Mr. Libby assured Nina that Gunner would never regret it. He didn't even try to assure Gunner, who was fit to be tied by then.