A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis Page B

time.
    The subway car was bearable at this time of night on a Saturday. It irked him to see young kids, plugged in, legs extended, lounging in the train while an elderly, obviously tired woman held fast to a pole after possibly a day of cleaning hotel rooms or offices. Looking around at the young people in his immediate vicinity tonight, he realized that they would consider him old. How had that happened?
    Oliver arrived at the gallery just after six and tried to make his way over to Marie Stone, an artist close to his own age. They had had a joint show together a few years before. She was a large woman, easy to spot in the crowd on the far side of the room. After many years of working as a painter, she had recently switched to sculpture. The humorous clay statues that she had been producing lately made him think of mythic figures on Valium. It was hard to look at her work without smiling. Marie was easy to talk to. It was as if they shared the same artistic vocabulary, yet her work had taken off in an entirely new direction. She saw him and waved.
    Oliver nodded and eased past a group of young people dressed in black, presumably other artists. One girl’s blond hair stood up in short spiky tufts. A wraithlike redhead beside her was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. A green and purple snake tattoo slithered down her pale arm. Two men, both in black leather jackets, looked like they needed shaves, and one had the kind of thick black glasses that Oliver’s father had worn back in the sixties.
    The room was packed and the hot air was filled with the scent of cheap wine and overripe cheese. Margot called it gallery breath, and refused to drink at openings. He paused and looked at one of Witt’s paintings. Abstract, intense color, and yet the swirl of paint on the canvas grabbed Oliver, sucking him in and making him wonder where this energy came from. Forget spare minimalism. This guy was a cross between a controlled Renaissance master and the splattering of a Jackson Pollock. The canvas was not large and yet, the painting worked. This young guy had talent.
    Oliver took a glass of white wine from a waiter passing with a tray and headed toward Marie. Just then he felt a tug at his arm.
    â€œOliver, how are you, dear?” Hannah Greene looked up at him.
    Oliver dutifully bent and kissed both of Hannah’s leathery cheeks. Her silver hair smelled of cigarette smoke. “Good to see you,” he said. “How’s June?” He looked across the room in search of Hannah’s partner, June Wallace, a stringy woman who wrote bad poetry. But she was a rich poet, thanks to her father, who had once owned motel chains in the Midwest. Hannah and June had been a couple for more than twenty years and lived in a brownstone on West Eleventh Street. They owned two of Oliver’s paintings.
    â€œShe’s at a reading, a woman from her poetry group.” Hannah was in her sixties, a short, heavy woman who had probably never had a waist. “June is loyal to her friends.”
    Oliver nodded, trying to think of a reply. Someone behind him jarred his elbow, nearly causing him to spill his wine down the front of Hannah’s dress. “Sorry,” he said, glancing at her.
    She patted the brown velvet that rippled across her bosom. “Not a drop.”
    Oliver shifted his glass to the other hand and tried to wipe his wet hand on his corduroy trousers.
    â€œThat’s quite some painting you have at Van Engen’s,” she said.
    â€œDoes that mean you like it?” He forced a smile.
    â€œHa!” Hannah barked a laugh in reply. “Well, of course it’s good. June says she doesn’t know where you get those odd figures, the ones who just seem to turn up.”
    Oliver was momentarily taken aback by June’s blunt comment. He didn’t know where some of the lone people came from either. He had explained once in an interview for Art News that his paintings were stories that came to his