Free Man With a Squirrel by Nicholas Kilmer

someone who’s so excited anticipating the prospect of finding what’s below his or her belt,” Molly said, “that he won’t look to see if he or she is a boy or a girl.” Or, as Clay put it, “I prefer, Fred, to rely, in the fullness of time, upon my own connoisseurship.” Fred was exhausted with the whole business. He sat to look at the day’s mail, saving the auction catalogs for last.
    Clay came spiraling down the circular staircase, cordovan shoes first, followed by lime-green socks, a suit designed to make a virgin dove ashamed, and a silk tie of green to echo, and rebuke, the socks while teasing them with orange spots. “Ah, Fred,” Clay said, as if surprised to see him. “I shall make a pilgrimage to examine the known Vermeers. I wish to become expert upon their supports, so as to make structural comparisons with my own.”
    Fred said, “Interesting sale coming up in Detroit. Three studies by Gérôme.” He held the flyer out for Clay to see the illustrations. “You want me to telephone for the catalog and transparencies?”
    â€œGérôme is pornography. Like French chocolates,” Clay decreed.
    â€œIt’s not harems,” Fred pointed out. “These are still-life studies of what the decorators call accessories.”
    â€œNonetheless,” Clay said, glancing briefly at the photograph of Gérôme’s rendition of a large clay pot, “you know what the man is thinking.” Clayton tapped his right foot. “What will be their response at the Gardner if I ask to see their file on The Concert? ”
    â€œBells and sirens. And a lot of attention you don’t want, for a long time,” Fred said. “You will wish you were in Holland.”
    Boston’s only known Vermeer had been among the cream of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection—a choice, Clay loved to point out, not of Berenson but of the painter and socialite Ralph Wormeley Curtis. However that might be, it was among the paintings stolen some years ago, along with Rembrandts, pastels by Degas, and a wonderful Manet. The stolen pictures had not been traced or recovered or heard of again.
    â€œMy painting is exactly the same dimensions as the Gardner’s,” Clay observed.
    Fred said, “We’ve been over that. And fractions of an inch away from Beit’s Lady Writing a Letter in Blessington, Ireland; and easy spitting distance from London’s Lady and Gentleman at the Virginals. So what? There may be reasons to go to Dresden and the Hague, Clay, but you are playing games.”
    â€œIt would be so much easier if I could go straight to Director Hawley,” Clay said.
    â€œAnd put all your cards on the table,” Fred reminded him, “as you are wont to do.”
    â€œIf only I could conceal my identity,” Clay mused.
    â€œClay, everyone always knows you,” Fred said. “With the exception of one airplane stewardess who mistook you for George Plimpton. You don’t disguise well.”
    Clay smirked and tutted. “My position would be improved if they had not mislaid the keystone of their collection. As you say, Fred, we want no one to suspect what we might have here. It puts us in a painfully anomalous position. I shall go to Holland. What do they call it now?” Clay went upstairs.
    Fred opened his paper. There was trouble in South Africa. Trouble in what had once been known as Yugoslavia. His eye fell on a lavish article, with action photo, in the Metro section, concerning Molly’s sphere of activity the previous night.
    â€œHope for the Devil’s Children” was the headline, under the picture of Dr. Eunice Cover-Hoover striding through a crowd that did not show Molly, unless she was behind a hefty young man who was following or flanking the doctor. Cover-Hoover was gorgeous in a Vogue way and looked as if she were a black-and-white photograph made dangerous flesh. She