Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) Read Online Free PDF

Spoilt by his mother, no doubt, thinks his charm makes the world go round. Ricky wished he had insisted on waiting at the doctor’s office after all.
    “You’re way ahead of me, Dorothea,” George admitted ruefully, “as usual. I’d like something only you can give me: a picture for our posters, our program cover, all our publicity. One real knock-out of a picture for a knock-out, nation-wide campaign.”
    Dorothea looked taken aback. “But George, you know I’m not political. I don’t do protest art. Why not try Ernest Stimme, or some up-and-coming young Indian or Spanish painter who could use the boost?”
    “Because their stuff wouldn’t pack the punch that yours would,” George said. “Face it, Dorothea: the retrospective show in New York has made you, well, a leading figure, like it or not. And you are an artist who’s part of a sort of oppressed population. The feminist slant would mean something.”
    “Um,” Dorothea said drily, “happy housewife who left her family for art, led a wild Bohemian life, and now lives in the wilderness heroically gives up her hard-won peace and quiet to come to the support of the Rankoviches of this world. Inspiring.”
    “Your don’t have to be so negative,” George said plaintively. “What do you think, Rick? Doesn’t Dorothea owe it to her own career, if nothing else, to get in on this? I’m talking about nation-wide publicity, tremendous exposure for a piece of her work.”
    “Very valuable, I’m sure,” Ricky said, “to someone who wants it.”
    “I am not in the message business,” Dorothea said. “Matter of fact, I’m not in the picture business any more. I don’t have anything to offer you.”
    “Yes you do. I’ve seen it.”
    To Ricky’s astonishment and alarm, Dorothea blanched.
    The odious young man pressed on, oblivious, “One time when I was out at your old place to talk to Nathan, this was just a little while before you two broke up, I saw some pictures tacked up in there — drawings, ink and wash I think, I’m not sure now, a series: cliffs and stones and light, a few gnarly trees. Simple, powerful stuff, a perfect statement about the toughness of creativity under pressure.”
    Dorothea laughed. Ricky felt relieved for her. Whatever the threat was, it had not materialized. He hugged to himself the pleasure of knowing there was some sort of secret, and that it was for the moment safe from George.
    “What you saw was old work, trivial work,” she said with a shrug of dismissal.
    The coffee came. George waited out the waiter.
    Ricky saw George take a breath for a renewed attack and thought, why am I so angry? Jealousy. I’ve come all this way, and there is only so much time, and here is this oaf crashing our private party. She is beautiful, my fox-faced friend, she is self-possessed and patient and alert, and everyone wants their piece. I’ve got my bit — the cheek of it, landing myself on her like this! — why grudge this twit a try for his? Especially when he’s doing so damned badly. You don’t want to let yourself turn possessive, old boy, not when you’re within hailing distance of having to surrender the lot.
    They wrangled on, but Ricky didn’t listen. Dorothea could hold her own. She didn’t need his creaking defense of her.
    To his delight, as he gazed out the window, a rider came galloping up the shoulder of the highway outside, a young man on a buckskin horse. He wore overalls, a t-shirt, and an open-backed billed cap, and in his free hand he carried a coiled lariat. Ricky felt as if a breeze from a wilder, simpler time had brown briskly through his thoughts.

    If he turns from the window, she thought in terror, I’ll see his face.
    She floated in a miasma of dread that indeed the figure at the window would turn, a warm glow of lamplight shifting among the folds of his black gown and then falling along jaw and brow and the rise of his cheek.
    Some huge effort on her part, rooted in the knowledge that to continue this