• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

There was no shelter in sight. Anyone caught in that godforsaken moment in that godforsaken place would have to cower on that hot copper under those big wet boulders—would have to take whatever Nature was going to hurl down next.

It was an upsetting painting, a painting that only a museum or a dedicated collector would give houseroom to. Lazarro’s sales were few.

Lazarro himself was upsetting—seemingly crude and angry. He liked to seem dangerous, to seem the hoodlum he’d almost been. He wasn’t dangerous. He was afraid. He was afraid that he was the biggest humbug of all.

He lay fully dressed on his bed in the dark. The only light in his studio came from the overflow of Stedman’s profligate lighting scheme across the way. He was thinking morosely about the presents he had hoped to buy with his two-hundred-dollar first prize. The presents would have gone to his wife, but creditors had snatched the prize money away.

Sylvia left the window, sat down on the edge of his bed. She had been a pert, uncomplicated waitress when Lazarro had wooed her. Three years with a complicated, brilliant husband had put circles under her eyes. And bill collectors had reduced her pertness to gamely gay despair. But Sylvia wasn’t about to give up. She thought her husband was another Raphael.

“Why wouldn’t you read what the man said about you in the paper?” she said.

“Art critics never make any sense to me,” said Lazarro.

“You make a lot of sense to them,” said Sylvia.

“Hooray,” said Lazarro emptily. The more praise he got from critics, the more he secretly cowered on hot copper under a boulder sky. His hands and eyes were so poorly disciplined that he could not draw the simplest likeness. His paintings were brutal, not because he wished to express brutality, but because he could paint no other way. On the surface, Lazarro had only contempt for Stedman. Down deep, he was in awe of Stedman’s hands and eyes—hands and eyes that could do anything Stedman asked them to do.

“Lord Stedman has a birthday in ten days,” said Sylvia. She had nicknamed the Stedmans “Lord and Lady Stedman” because they were so rich—and because the Lazarros were so poor. “Lady Stedman just came out of the trailer and made a big speech about it.”

“Speech?” said Lazarro. “I didn’t know Lady Stedman had a voice.”

“She had one tonight,” said Sylvia. “She was clear off her rocker because the paper called her husband a humbug.”

Lazarro took her hand tenderly. “Will you protect me, baby, if anybody ever says that about me?”

“I’d kill anybody who said that about you,” said Sylvia.

“You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?” said Lazarro.

“Out,” said Sylvia. They had been out since noon.

“I thought maybe you’d found a pack hidden around,” said Lazarro.

Sylvia was on her feet. “I’ll borrow some next door,” she said.

Lazarro clung to her hand. “No, no—no,” he said. “Don’t borrow anything more next door.”

“If you want a cigarette so badly—” said Sylvia.

“Never mind. Forget it,” said Lazarro, a little wildly. “I’m giving ’em up. The first few days are the hardest. Save a lot of money—feel a lot better.”

Sylvia squeezed his hand, let go of it—went to the beaverboard wall and drummed with her fists. “It’s so unfair,” she said bitterly. “I hate them.”

“Hate who?” said Lazarro, sitting up.

“Lord and Lady Stedman!” said Sylvia through clenched teeth. “Showing off all their money over there. Lord Stedman with his big, fat twenty-five-cent cigar stuck in his face—selling those silly pictures of his hand over fist—and here’s you, trying to bring something new and wonderful and original into the world, and you can’t even have a cigarette when you want one!”

There was a firm knock on the door. There were the sounds of a small crowd out there, too, as though Stedman’s demonstration crowd had crossed the street.

And then Stedman himself spoke up outside the door, said plaintively, “Now, honey bunch—”

Sylvia went to the door, opened it.

Outside stood Lady Stedman,