The Delusionist by Grant Buday Page A

achieving a pile of crumpled paper and two words:
    Dear Connie,
    Too formal. He crossed out Dear and in a burst he wrote:
    Hey Connie, great to hear from you.
    He pondered then replaced the period with an exclamation mark.
    I Spy! That’s great. I love I Spy.
    This was true. He especially enjoyed the theme music and the opening credits that showed a silhouette of Robert Culp—undercover CIA agent Kelly Robinson—playing tennis, backhand, forehand, then pivoting with a pistol and blasting some Russian or Albanian as the names of exotic cities slid past: Moscow, Rome, Beirut.
    Where does your episode take place? It’s great you’re doing so well.
    Rereading what he had so far, he discovered that he’d repeated the word great three times. Clunky. He tapped his pencil on the lined letter paper.
    I finished art school and just had my first solo show and sold everything.
    He contemplated, then added,
    I’m moving to New York. Get there much?

    He reversed the pencil about to erase it all then changed his mind and laid the pencil down, discovering that the very act of letting the lie stand for a minute was an exhilarating act of bravado. Two days the letter remained on the table. During those two days Cyril’s moods churned. He felt guilty, he felt silly, and then he became critical of Connie—not harshly, but gently, as if he was older and wiser—and thought she could benefit from his example by proceeding more slowly with her career. Was she taking acting classes or blindly hurling herself into auditions and blowing opportunities?
    On the third day he came home from work with the staccato echo of hammers in his head to find Gilbert at the table, a Lucky in one hand, the letter in the other. He’d shifted the tube-metal chair so that he sat parallel to the table, his legs crossed at the knees, looking the picture of comfort.
    â€œIf you’re still carrying a torch for her you should go to la.”
    â€œShe’s with someone.”
    Gilbert popped the cap from a beer with the opener on his Swiss Army knife and slid the bottle across the Formica.
    Cyril drank deeply.
    â€œSo why are you suddenly writing her? You think these fantasies about shows and New York will what, bring her running?”
    â€œI was drunk.”
    â€œA little bullshit can go a long way,” admitted Gilbert.
    â€œI wasn’t going to send it.”
    â€œMaybe you should.”
    â€œSend it?”
    â€œGo to New York.” Gilbert swirled his beer and looked at the sketches tacked to the walls, portraits, landscapes, houses, body parts, bottles, boxes, bugs, forks and spoons and knives. “Anything and everything,” he said. “You need to focus. You have no direction. You need a teacher. A mentor. Isn’t that how it worked in the old days, you apprenticed, mixed the master’s paints, shined his shoes, stretched his canvases?”

SIX
    FEARING THAT AT the grand old age of twenty-three he was too old to return to school, even if it was only night school, where all you had to do was pay your tuition to be admitted, Cyril was relieved to see students of all ages. They were mostly women, about a dozen, some in smocks with kerchiefs around their heads, others with elbow length hair and hoop earrings. The instructor was named Sandor Novak. His damp hair and dark eyes drooped like his moustache, and he moved with slow slapping steps as though his feet were flat and ankles weak. He showed them his own work, which focused almost entirely on dismembered dolls. He’d set their heads like boulders in bleak seascapes with crab claws and screwdrivers and broken rowboats and rat skulls. A doll’s foot, a doll’s butt, a doll’s eyes large and lidless, each rendered with detail verging on the mad. Many students exchanged sceptical glances. Cyril was excited. The juxtapositions of such strange and diverse subject matter was a revelation: suddenly everything had aesthetic