Free The Truth About Lorin Jones by Alison Lurie

play the neurotic unapproachable prima donna.’ ”
    “You don’t think that maybe —”
    “What?”
    “Well, I just wondered. I mean, suppose it was Garrett Jones who had all those complaints, really, only he put them off on his wife.”
    “I shouldn’t think so.” Jacky frowned. “I mean, you’ve met Garrett; he’s a fairly reasonable man, for a critic. Some people think he has an exaggerated opinion of himself, but then, why shouldn’t he? He’s been right about the New York art scene time and time again.”
    Or he’s forced his views on the New York art scene time and time again, Polly thought.
    “And Lorin ... well... I mean, we all know that most artists are a bit peculiar. You have to expect that, aren’t I right?”
    “I suppose so,” Polly said, realizing that as far as Jacky knew she was not now and never had been an artist.
    “Well, Lorin was very very peculiar. And after a while, even her husband couldn’t cope with her.”
    “Really,” Polly said as neutrally as she could manage.
    “The main problem was, she simply wouldn’t let go of her paintings. She’d agree to have work ready for a show, and Garrett would promise to make sure that she met the deadline, and then nothing would appear. Over and over, it’d be like that. You see, she never thought a canvas was finished.”
    “I expect that often happens,” Polly said, recalling her own experience.
    “Well, not that often. Occasionally. But it was much much worse with Lorin. Even when her pictures were up on the walls she couldn’t let them alone. The day after her first one-woman show here, Paolo told me, he came back from lunch, and a little still life next to the elevator was gone. He thought at first that’d it’d been stolen, naturally. But it turned out that Lorin had taken it herself; she’d decided it wasn’t right yet. The assistant Paolo had then had tried to reason with her, but it simply wasn’t any use. She just wrenched the picture off the wall and carried it away. She never brought it back, either. But of course it was still listed in the printed brochure, and for three weeks Paolo had to answer questions about it. You can imagine how trying that was.
    “Um-hm,” Polly murmured, attempting to sound sympathetic. What came to her mind, though, was a red-and-gray semi-Pollock canvas in her own show, back in Rochester. As soon as she saw it at the opening, she’d wished she’d never let it out of the house. If only she’d had the courage to take the miserable thing away the next day! What Jacky had said earlier, though he probably meant it only as flattery, was true: she was the right, the only person to do this book. The more she found out, the surer she was of her instinctive understanding of what Lorin Jones must have felt and thought.
    “Well, Paolo was determined that would never happen again, and it didn’t. I expect Garrett spoke to her firmly. Anyhow, for a while she was more reasonable. But then she left him, and things really got out of hand.”
    “Um-hm?”
    “The real trouble began with her sixty-four show, the last one. It was over a year late to start with, because Lorin couldn’t make up her mind that the work was ready, as usual, and Garrett wasn’t around to make her see reason. Then, just after the opening, I came in one morning, and there was Lorin Jones over by the window, with a dirty Bloomingdale’s carrier bag on the floor beside her, scrubbing one of the biggest canvases with a rag soaked in turpentine, and scraping at it with a palette knife.”
    “Really.”
    “I was horrified, I can tell you.” Jacky giggled. “What made it worse, I’d only met her once or twice at that point, and at first I didn’t recognize her, the way she was got up — in a dirty old black sweater and her hair all over the place. I assumed I had some crazy bag lady on my hands. I thought Paolo was going to kill me first and fire me afterward.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Well, naturally I rushed