David Wallace - Oblivion

Atwater and Mrs. Moltke were now unquestionably breathing each other’s air; the Cavalier’s glass surfaces were almost entirely steamed over. At the same time, an imperfection in its gasket’s seal was allowing rain droplets to enter and move in a complex system of paths down his window. These branching paths and tributaries were in the left periphery of the journalist’s vision; Amber Moltke’s face loomed vividly in the right. Unlike Mrs. Atwater, the artist’s wife had a good firm chin with no wattles, though her throat’s girth was extraordinary — Atwater could not have gotten around it with both hands.

‘The shyness and woundedness must be complex, though,’ the journalist said. ‘Given that the pieces are public. Publicly displayed.’ He had already amassed a certain amount of technical detail about the preparation of the displays, back at the Moltkes’ duplex. The pieces were not varnished or in any way chemically treated. They were, however, sprayed lightly with a fixative when fresh or new, to help preserve their shape and intricate detail — evidently some of the man’s early work had become cracked or distorted when allowed to dry completely. Atwater knew that freshly produced pieces of art were placed on a special silver finish tray, an heirloom of some sort from Mrs. Moltke’s own family, then covered in common kitchen plastic wrap and allowed to cool to room temperature before the fixative was applied. Skip could imagine the steam from a fresh new piece fogging the Saran’s interior and making it difficult to see the thing itself until the wrap was removed and discarded. Only later, in the midst of all the editorial wrangling over his piece’s typeset version, would Atwater learn that the fixative in question was a common brand of aerosol styling spray whose manufacturer advertised in Style.

Amber gave a brief laugh. ‘We’re not exactly talking the big time. Two bean festivals and the DAR craft show.’

‘Well, and of course the fair.’ Atwater was referring to the Franklin County Fair, which like most county fairs in eastern Indiana was held in June, quite a bit earlier than the national average. The reasons for this were complicated, agricultural, and historically bound up with Indiana’s refusal to participate in Daylight Savings Time, which caused no end of hassles for certain commodities markets at the Chicago Board of Trade. Atwater’s own childhood experiences had been of the Madison County Fair, held during the third week of each June on the outskirts of Mounds State Park, but he assumed that all county fairs were roughly similar. He had unconsciously begun to do the thing with his fist again.

‘Well, although the fair ain’t exactly your big time either.’

Also from childhood experience, Skip Atwater knew that the slight squeaks and pops one could hear when Amber laughed were from different parts of her complex foundation garment as they strained and moved against one another. Her kneesized left elbow now rested on the seat back between them, leaving her left hand free to play and make tiny languid motions in the space between her head and his. A head nearly twice the size of Atwater’s own. Her hair was wiglike in overall configuration, but it had a high protein luster no real wig could ever duplicate.

His right arm still rigidly out against the Cavalier’s wheel, Atwater turned his head a few more degrees toward her. ‘This, though, will be very public. Style is about as public as you can get.’

‘Well, except for TV.’

Atwater inclined his head slightly to signify concession. ‘Except for TV.’

Mrs. Moltke’s hand, with its multiple different rings, was now within just inches of the journalist’s large red right ear. She said: ‘Well, I look at Style. I’ve been looking at Style for years. I don’t bet there’s a body in town that hasn’t looked at Style or People or one of you all.’ The hand moved as if it were under water. ‘Sometimes it’s hard keeping you all straight. After your girl there called, I said to Brint it was a man coming over from People when I was telling him to go on and get cleaned up for company.’

Atwater cleared his throat. ‘So you see my point, then, which in no way forms any sort of argument against the piece or Mr. Moltke’s —’

‘Brint.’

‘Against Brint’s consenting to the piece.’ Atwater would also every so often give a small but vigorous all body shiver, involuntary, rather like a wet dog shaking itself, which neither party commented on. Bits of windblown foliage hit the front and rear windshields and remained for a moment or two before they were washed away. The sky could really have been any color at all and there would be no way to know. Atwater now tried to rotate his entire upper body toward Mrs. Moltke: ‘But he will need to know what he’s in for. If my editors give the go ahead, which I should again stress I have every confidence they ultimately will, one condition is likely to be the presence of some sort of medical authority to authenticate the. . circumstances of creation.’

‘You’re saying in there with him?’ The gusts of her breath seemed to strike every little cilium on Atwater’s cheek and temple. Her right hand still covered the recorder and several inches of Atwater’s knee on either side. Her largo pulse was visible in the trembling of her bust, which was understandably prodigious and also now pointed Atwater’s way. Probably no more than four inches separated the bust from his right arm, which was still held out stiffly and attached to the steering wheel. Atwater’s other fist was pumping like mad down beside the driver’s door.

‘No, no, not necessarily, but probably right outside, and ready to perform various tests and procedures on the. . on it the minute Mr. Moltke, Brint, is finished. Comes out with it.’ Another intense little shiver.

Amber gave another small mirthless laugh.

‘I’m sure you know what I mean,’ Atwater said. ‘Temperature and constitution and the lack of any sort of sign of any human hand or tool or anything employed in the. . process of the. .’

‘And then it’ll come out.’

‘The piece, you mean,’ Atwater said. She nodded. In a way that made no physical sense given their respective sizes, Atwater’s eyes seemed now to be exactly level with hers, and without being aware of it he blinked whenever she did, though her hand’s small circles often supervened.

Atwater said: ‘As I’ve said, I have every confidence that yes, it will.’

At the same time, the journalist was also trying not to indulge himself by imagining Laurel Manderley’s reaction to the faxed reproductions of the artist’s pieces as they slowly emerged from the machine. He felt that he knew almost all the different permutations her face would go through.

Nor was it clear whether Mrs. Moltke was looking at his ear or at the underwater movements of her own hand up next to the ear. ‘And what you’re saying is then, why, to get ready, because once it comes out nothing will be the same. Because there’ll be attention.’

‘I would think so, yes.’ He tried to turn a little further. ‘Of various different kinds.’

‘You’re saying other magazines. Or TV, the Internet.’

‘It’s often difficult to predict the forms of public attention or to know in advance what —’

‘But after this kind of amount of attention you’re saying there might be art galleries wanting to handle it. For sale. Do art galleries do auctions, or they just put it out with a price sticker on it and folks come and shop, or what all?’

Atwater was aware that this was a very different type and level of exchange than the morning’s confab in the Moltkes’ home. It was hard for him not to feel that Amber might be patronizing him a bit, playing up to a certain stereotype of provincial naiveté—he did this himself in certain situations at Style. At the same time, he felt that to some extent she was sincere in deferring to him because he lived and worked in New York City, the cultural heart of the nation — Atwater was absurdly gratified by this kind of thing. The whole geographical deference issue could get very complicated and abstract. At the right periphery, he could see that a certain delicate pattern Amber was tracing in the air near his ear was actually the cartography of that ear, its spirals and intending whorls. Sensitive from childhood about his ears’ size and hue, Atwater had worn either baseball caps or knit caps all the way through college.