More Than Words Can Say by Robert Barclay Page B

answered.
    Greg poured two steaming cupfuls. After putting some cream and sugar into his, he joined Brooke at the small kitchen table. As if it were the last cup she might ever enjoy, Brooke sipped her coffee.
    “I haven’t had any this good in a long time,” she said, “regardless of how you got it.” She then took another sip of the very good coffee. “And if it means drinking some of this wonderful stuff once in a while,” she added, “then even J. Edgar Hoover won’t be able to drag the truth out of me. And besides, I love to cook. Might I borrow some sugar from time to time?”
    “Sure,” he answered.
    Brooke looked around again to see that several large, black-and-white framed photos already hung on the kitchen walls. They were all landscapes and had been expertly shot. Each of them was signed “ Gregory Butler .”
    “Your photographs are lovely,” she said. “Are you a professional photographer?”
    “Yes,” Greg answered. “But my photography alone doesn’t pay the bills. I’m also a portraitist in oils. Between the two, I just make ends meet. I’m here for my first summer to work mostly on the photography. But I also brought my painting things, in case a job pops up. And I’ll be converting one of my bedrooms into a darkroom, so that I can develop my photos here. Come this fall I’ll take all the developed shots home and then deliver them to the New York City gallery that consigns my work.”
    “So is that where you live?” Brooke asked.
    Greg nodded. “Greenwich Village, to be exact,” he answered, “among all the other starving artists.”
    Brooke sipped her coffee again. “Misery loves company?” she asked.
    As Greg thought for a moment, Brooke suddenly worried that she might have misspoken. After all, she reminded herself, she had only known this man for about ten minutes.
    Greg selected a Chesterfield from a gunmetal cigarette case lying on the table. Before lighting it, he raised his eyebrows.
    “Do you mind?” he asked.
    “Not at all,” Brooke answered.
    “Thanks,” Greg replied.
    He lit the cigarette with a matching lighter and took a welcome drag.
    “Well,” Greg said while exhaling the smoke out his nostrils, “it’s really not so much about the money. It’s more that like minds always seem to congregate. Kind of like those American expatriates who gathered in Paris during the twenties. Novelists . . . painters . . . poets. You know—itinerant artists like me!”
    Brooke laughed a little. “You don’t look very Bohemian,” she said.
    “Well, I’m not, really,” he replied. “In fact, I was raised in Watertown. That’s how I know my way around up here. I learned photography from my dad, and then I attended art school in New York City. After that, I settled there.”
    “And this cottage?” Brooke asked.
    “My mother died when I was young, and I lost my dad two years ago,” he answered. “I used my small inheritance to build this cottage, because I wanted to own a summer place where I could work in peace. I’m sort of a loner by nature, I guess. This first summer is my trial run, so to speak. If it works out financially like I hope, I’ll spend all my summers here, taking photographs, and my winters in New York, painting portraits. Down there, there are no great wilderness scenes to photograph like up here. Conversely, up here there’s little call for portraits. So I’m hoping to alternate between the two, depending on the season. I didn’t get drafted because of my clubfoot.”
    “I’m sorry,” Brooke said. “Does it bother you?”
    Greg shook his head. “Not really,” he answered. “I was born with it, so . . .”
    After letting his words trail off, Greg set his half-consumed cigarette in an ashtray and took another sip of coffee.
    “Are you married?” Brooke asked. “Do you have a family of your own?”
    “No,” he answered.
    “At the risk of sounding forward,” Brooke said, “I’m surprised that an attractive man like you is