Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories by Carol Emshwiller

Author:Carol Emshwiller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-09-03T23:46:00+00:00

Everybody is getting ready for the party, except Sam is, vet again, painting his little red hut. It's almost like a signature, the way it appears even when you know it wasn't there in real life. Sometimes it's hardly more than a red speck. But this time the hut is in the foreground, large and much too red.

Who ever heard of the big red side of a but, not even a window in it (he's painting the back), being mostly the whole painting? Just a little tan and green around it and a little blue along the top, almost as if a frame. It'll look even funnier when it does have a frame. Even my pile of helter-skelter shoebox-sized talus is more interesting. But as usual, I can see that I'm going to like it. Maybe most of all. Maybe I should wait until it's done before I go.

I sit behind him as he paints and watch his bald spot. Usually he complains when people watch him paint, but this time he doesn't. It's as if he wants me there, and even that he guesses where I'm going. Or maybe (more likely) it's that I'm the most inept, most recently arrived, and least important person here, and he thinks he can push me around. Besides, he knows how I like his paintings.

"My paintings are piling up." He doesn't even look back at me as lie's speaking. "I need for them to be taken to town. I need them to be sold."

I can't imagine what he needs money for. We don't use money here. Besides, artists don't care about money. I think somebody gave a lot of grants for this place. Maybe the government. What does the government know about art! Or maybe some of these people were on the grant committee, people sympathetic to any kind of art at all, and the artists used the grants to set this place up.

"Why sold? You can't need money."

"No, no, I care nothing for money.

I can hear I've insulted him.

"Nor fame either. Not for myself, at any rate. What I need is for my paintings to be out in the world. I need for them to be studied. For their own sakes. They should be deconstructed." (I can't believe it, he knows about semiotics.Youd not think so from the look of his art. Of course, I know all this stuff, and it doesn't make my art any good.) "Get them the notice they deserve."

He has ten or so packed up on a little two-wheeled cart all ready to go.

"If I can have the one you're working on now, I'll take them."

He doesn't even say thank you. He knew I'd do it. It's as if he knows I was in love with him before I met him. Of course, I'm not anymore.

"Don't let them stay all rolled up. It's not good for them."

I could say I'll take them and then let them go up with nee and my bombs as part of an art-bomb happening.

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