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“That absolute fraud,” said Mrs. Angela when the man on my left was unable to complete his statement because he had broken into another fit of coughing. “I don’t think he’s even going to show up,” she continued. “He induces us to come to this hole-in-the-wall town. He says that this is the place where we need to collect for this excursion of his. But he doesn’t show his face anywhere around here. Where did he find this place, on one of those bus tours he was always talking about?”

It seemed that we had only ourselves and our own idiocy to blame for the situation we were in. Even though no one openly admitted it, the truth was that those of us who were present that day when Grossvogel entered the art gallery, gently requesting us to assist him in throwing all of his works on exhibit into the back of a battered pickup truck, were very much impressed with him. None of us in our small circle of artists and intellectuals had ever done anything remotely like that or even dreamed of doing something so drastic and full of drama. From that day it became our unspoken conviction that Grossvogel was on to something, and our disgraceful secret that we desired to attach ourselves to him in order to profit in some way by this association. At the same time, of course, we also resented Grossvogel’s daring behavior and were perfectly ready to welcome another failure on his part, perhaps even another collapse on the floor of the gallery where he and his artworks had already once failed (to everyone’s thorough satisfaction). Such a confusion of motives was more than enough reason for us to pay the exorbitant fee that Grossvogel charged for his new exhibit, which we afterward dismissed in one way or another.

Following the show that night I stood on the sidewalk outside the art gallery, listening once again to Mrs. Angela’s implications regarding the true source of Grossvogel’s metamorphic recovery and artistic inspiration. “Mr. Reiner Grossvogel has been medicated to the eyeballs ever since he came out of that hospital,” she said to me as if for the first time. “I know one of the girls who works at the drugstore that fills his prescriptions. She’s a very good customer of mine,” she added, her wrinkled and heavily made-up eyes flashing with self-satisfaction. Then she continued her scandalous revelations. “I think you might know the kind of medications prescribed for someone with Grossvogel’s medical condition, which really isn’t a medical condition at all but a psychophysical disorder that I or any of the people who work for me could have told him about a long time ago. Grossvogel’s brain has been swimming in all kinds of tranquilizers and antidepressants for months now, and not only that. He’s also been taking an antispasmodic compound for that condition of his that he’s supposed to have recovered from by such miraculous means. I’m not surprised he doesn’t think he has a mind or any kind of self, which is all just an act in any case. Antispasmodic” Mrs. Angela hissed at me as we stood on the sidewalk outside the art gallery following Grossvogel’s exhibit. “Do you know what that means?” she asked me, and then quickly answered her own question. “It means belladonna, a poisonous hallucinogenic. It means phenobarbital, a barbiturate. The girl from the drugstore told me all about it. He’s been overdosing himself on all of these drugs, do you understand? That’s why he’s been seeing things in that peculiar way he would have us believe. It’s not some shadow or whatever he says that’s activating his body. I would know about something like that, now wouldn’t I? I have a special gift that provides me with insight into things like that.”

But despite her purported gifts, along with her genuinely excellent pastries, Mrs. Angela’s psychic coffeehouse did not thrive as a business and ultimately went under altogether. On the other hand, Grossvogel’s sculptures, which he produced at a prolific pace, were an incredible success, both among local buyers of artistic products and among art merchants and collectors across the country, even reaching