The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe (4 page)

9

T
he first person through my door looked like the black version of that Mr. Clean guy pictured on the label of my kitchen cleaner. Except he didn't have an earring and was wearing a suit so perfectly tailored that you couldn't see the pistol holstered under the lapel.

It was Charles Webbe, the FBI agent who saved my life when the owner of the Austrian restaurant I worked in tried to murder me. I don't understand why the owner tried to kill me; all he had to do was wait for the food to do that.

“Heard you were involved in a racial incident,” Charles said.

“The FBI is keeping tabs on me?”

“You think the CIA are the only ones who spy on ordinary citizens?” He laughed and then said, “The bartender at Blackbird Buvette is a friend. He told me James Mintars was hassling you and Miss Clarke.”

“Is Mintars a big black guy?”

“Yes. And well known to the local police.”

“So why should the FBI be involved?”

“The Bureau isn't involved. But if you want me to, I can have an informal talk with him.” He smiled and added, “Brother to brother—make sure he doesn't bother you again.”

Despite having a waistline no larger than mine, Agent Webbe is six-three and 225 pounds of muscle. A talk with him would put even Vladimir Putin on the straight and narrow.

“Thanks for the offer, but I don't think you need to do that. Sharice put him in his place—told him he had a face that could blow the cover off a manhole.”

“
Une tête à faire sauter les plaques d'égouts,
” he said.

“You speak French?”

He nodded. “Russian too.”

Maybe sending him for a talk with Putin was a better idea than I'd realized.

I brewed some New Mexico Piñon Coffee while we talked. I save the good stuff for people like Charles, who appreciate it.

When I handed him a cup, he commented on my remembering that he takes it without cream or sugar.

“How could I forget? When I first asked you how you took your coffee, you said, ‘Black—like your girlfriend.'”

“I was just hassling you because you lied to me about having a black girlfriend.”

“I
do
have a black girlfriend.”

“You do now. You didn't then. Got any of those cuernos de azucar you fed me the last time I was here?”

“No, but I have some fresh buñuelos.”

Buñuelos fly apart like clay pigeons when you bite into them, but Charles ate two without a single speck of the crisp fried dough showing on his dark-blue suit or starched white shirt.

The motto of the FBI is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” Maybe they should add
Neatness
.

“I'm happy you're not worried about Mintars,” he said, “but there will be others. This is what happens when a white guy has a black girlfriend.”

“I don't think of Sharice as black.”

“You got a vision problem?”

“What I mean is I don't think of her as my ‘black girlfriend.' That sounds like a phrase to distinguish her from my white one or my brown one. I have only one girlfriend. She just happens to be black. Just like I don't think of you as a black FBI agent. You're an agent who happens to be black. And I don't think of myself as a white treasure hunter. I'm a treasure hunter who happens to be white.”

“You're not a treasure hunter of any color. You're a pot thief.”

“You going to arrest me for that?” I asked with a smile.

“I'll leave that to the BLM.” He put his empty cup on the counter. “Thanks for the coffee. I liked it.”

He turned back after opening the door. “Your idealism is sappy, but I like it too.”

After Charles left, my optimistic side hoped for a customer. My realistic side didn't share that hope, so I hung up my
BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES
sign and walked to Treasure House Books and Gifts on the south side of the Plaza. I counted five O'Keeffe posters along the way, as well as maybe a dozen of her flowers and bleached skulls adorning everything from calendars to T-shirts.

I suppose it was one of those cases of noticing things already on your mind, in this case the worn canvas Susannah thought was an O'Keeffe.

I bought three books, one by her, one about her and one with pictures of her New Mexico paintings.

Looking at those paintings made me think O'Keeffe liked New Mexico for the same reasons I do, but Susanna tells me you can't tell much about artists by looking at their work. For all we know, Andy Warhol never sipped a single spoon of Campbell's soup.

I wondered if she'd ever been in Old Town. Maybe even in my building before I owned it.

I wondered if she thought of Alfred Stieglitz as her Jewish husband or Juan Hamilton as her Hispanic boyfriend.

10

S
he gave me one of her looks. “
Consummate?
It sounds like a soup.”

I had closed the shop with the inventory intact, alas, and had just told Susannah that although Sharice and I slept together, we didn't consummate our relationship. “It means—”

“I know what it means, Hubert. People don't use that word these days. What I don't understand is how you two slept together in the nude and didn't have sex.”

“I thought pure thoughts.”

“Right. Given what she said about your ‘pesky little friend,' he evidently didn't get the no-sex-tonight memo.”

Susannah loves pushing me over my embarrassment threshold, an easy task considering it's no higher than the salt rim on my margarita. Actually, the salt was gone and so was the margarita. I managed to run out of both simultaneously. No mean feat, considering I'd been talking about my date with Sharice rather than gauging the diminution of my drink.

She saw I had finished and signaled Angie for a second round. “Just last week we were trying to figure out her deep dark secret, although you weren't much help.”

“At least I came up with three theories. You're the one who insisted we talk about it, and you didn't contribute anything.”

“Your three theories were that she's a virgin, she's from Canada and she's thinking about becoming a nun. Compared to that, my nothing looks good. We should have kept at it. I think I would have figured it out.”

“You would have guessed she had a mastectomy?”

She gave a little shudder. “Maybe not that specifically. But if a girl is hesitant about having sex even with a guy she really likes, one reason might be that she has a problem with her body.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. A hairy back? A tattoo of a walrus on her tummy? The point is it wasn't the sex
per se
—it was the getting naked part.”

“That was my favorite part.”

“Of course it was. You've been dying to see her in the altogether.” She was silent for a moment. “It doesn't bother you at all?”

“How could getting undressed with Sharice bother me? Well, it bothered me in the sense that we didn't—”

“Yeah. Pesky. What I mean is doesn't it bother you that she …”

She didn't know how to finish that sentence and neither did I. If there's a politically correct way of saying
she no longer has a left breast
that makes you feel less uncomfortable, I don't know what it is.

“No, it doesn't bother me. I was so surprised at how small the scar was that I didn't think about what had been there.” I hesitated. “I'm tempted to say something, but it might be oinky.”

“That's never stopped you in the past.”

“Okay, I'll just say it. I already knew she was flat-chested. I thought it went well with her thin, long limbs and petite features. You had a word for that look, but I don't remember it.”

“
Gamine
.”

“Jeez, another francophone.”

“That's like a bassoon, right?”

Sometimes I don't know if she's kidding. “So because she had small breasts to begin with, the operation didn't leave her looking lopsided.”

She stared at me for a few moments. “I'm not sure if that's oinky or not.”

“Whew. Anyway, I'm glad she showed me instead of telling me.”

“Well, of course you are. You got to see her naked.”

“Which was great, but that's not my point. My point is that if she'd
told
me, my imagination would have conjured up some horrible purply, bumpy disfiguration. But seeing it with no warning meant I hadn't mentally prepared for it. When she turned around, I just saw a scar. Actually, I just glanced at it. There was a lot of new and exciting scenery, so I didn't let my eyes stay in one place too long.”

“Do you think that's why she didn't have reconstructive surgery?”

“No. She didn't have reconstructive surgery because she couldn't afford it.”

“But she's from Canada. Isn't health care free up there?”

“My econ professor always reminded us there is no free lunch.”

“Yeah, I know. It isn't free because they pay taxes for it. But pooling money together to cover health care makes sense.”

“It does. But wouldn't it be better if it was pooled voluntarily rather than taxing Canadians who might want to spend their money on something else?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Hockey sticks and mukluks? Did I mention that Sharice roasts and grinds beans every time she makes coffee?”

“Twice.”

“I guess I was impressed. Anyway, she told me the whole story while we were drinking the world's best cappuccino. She was in dental school when she found the lump. She suffered extreme side effects from the drug they gave her. The good news is she's been cancer-free for years. When the treatments ended, she wanted to consider reconstructive surgery, but there are very few cosmetic surgeons in Canada.”

“Reconstructive breast surgery is not
cosmetic
, Hubert. It's not a facelift. For lots of women who've had a mastectomy, it reduces depression and raises self-esteem.” She took a sip of her saltless margarita. “Jeez, I sound like a brochure from the Susan Komen Foundation.”

I have no opinion on reconstructive breast surgery. Which is probably a good thing, because I don't think I have a right to an opinion on the subject.

“Reconstructive breast surgery may not be
cosmetic
,” I pointed out, “but it's performed by cosmetic surgeons, and there are very few of them up there because the goal of the Canadian socialized medicine program is to keep people healthy, not make them look good.”

She sighed. “I don't think they call it socialized medicine anymore.”

“Whatever it's called, it doesn't cover facelifts and tummy tucks, so that discourages doctors from pursuing the cosmetic surgery specialty. The result is that she faced a wait maybe as long as five years. She decided to do what many other Canadian women do—come to the US and pay for it. But she didn't have the money. So she decided to enter dental hygiene training because it takes a lot less time and money than going back to dental school. Her plan was to move to the States and make enough money as a dental hygienist to pay for a special operation that takes flesh from her butt and uses it to create a new breast.”

“Sheesh. It's not called
taking flesh from her butt and using it to create a new breast
. It's called autonomous breast reconstruction.”

“And you know about this because?”

“I volunteered at the Walk for the Cure and filled the time between registering walkers by reading brochures. It was interesting in a sort of morbid way.”

“Well, it's not
autonomous
—it's
autological
. I remember because Sharice loves word games.”

“Autological is a game like Scrabble?”

“I don't know if there's a commercial board game, but the way Sharice taught me is one person names a letter and the other person has to think of an autological word starting with that letter. Then you switch, and the first person to be stumped loses.”

“What's an autological word?”

“One that describes itself. Like
noun
or
short
.”

“Because
noun
is a noun and
short
is a short word?”

“Exactly. Want to try a round?”

“Sure. I'll start,” she said with her usual enthusiasm. “Give me one starting with
a
.”

“Avoidable.”

“How is that autological?”

“Because the word itself can be avoided.”

“Oh, right. Give me a letter.”

“
O
.”

I thought about it while she did and couldn't think of one. I was wishing I'd given her an easier letter when she said, “Old.”

“That's good. I couldn't think of one that starts with
o
.”

“Here's another one—
olde
.”

“You already said that.”

She shook her head. “This one has an
e
on the end.”

“Wow. You're as good at this as Sharice is. She always beats me.”

Angie arrived with our second round. I sipped my New Mexican limeade—also known as a margarita—to make sure it was as good as the last one. It was.

Susannah asked me why Sharice hadn't yet had the reconstructive surgery.

“Dental hygienists don't make all that much, and the operation is really expensive, so I—”

“No! Please tell me you didn't volunteer to help her pay for it.”

“Of course not. Volunteering to pay would make it sound like it matters to me.”

“That is so understanding.”

“And on top of that, I like the way her butt looks and don't want a scar on it.”

She threw a chip at me.

“Charles Webbe came to see me today.”

“They're probably still trying to figure out where all the money from Schnitzel went.”

“I don't doubt it, but that wasn't why Charles dropped in.” I told her about the incident at Blackbird Buvette. “Charles offered to have a man-to-man talk with the guy who hassled Sharice. He also predicted more problems, said that's what happens when a white guy has a black girlfriend.”

“And you probably told him about one of your SAPs.”

I have a growing list of astute observations about humankind. Each is a Schuze Anthropological Premise, abbreviated by Susannah as SAP because she says that's what you have to be to believe them.

“No, but I did tell him I don't think of Sharice as my black girlfriend. I think of her as my girlfriend who happens to be black.”

“I know you think that's a significant distinction, but most people probably think it's splitting hairs.”

“Before you were dating Baltazar, you dated Rafael Pacheco. Do you think of those two as your Hispanic boyfriends?”

“No. I think of Baltazar as a nice guy with sexy eyes. And since Rafael slithered away, I think of him as a snake.”

I laughed. “I wonder if Georgia O'Keeffe thought of Juan Hamilton as her Hispanic boyfriend.”

“Juan Hamilton isn't Hispanic. His real name is John Hamilton. His parents were missionaries or something in Latin America, and he grew up there and adopted the name Juan. And the rumors about him being her boyfriend may or may not be true. He was fifty years younger than her, but I'd like to think they were lovers just to turn the tables on that geezer Stieglitz.”

“But she and Stieglitz were at least married.”

“Right. He was fifty-eight when they met and the most powerful person in the entire art world. She was twenty-eight years old and totally unknown.”

“Maybe it was true love.”

“More like true lust. He used her, Hubie. He used the apartment he lived in with his wife to take nude photographs of O'Keeffe and deliberately timed it so that his wife would walk in on them. She threw him out, which is what he wanted but didn't have the courage to ask for.”

“Well, he
did
make her famous.”

“He made her famous initially, but she made him famous in the long run. He wouldn't be as widely known today if it weren't for her. And someone else would have eventually shown her work. It was the paintings that made her famous, not the man.”

I thought about the nudes of O'Keeffe we saw in the exhibit Susannah took me to. There was something creepy about knowing her husband took those photos.

In addition to the early nudes, there are thousands of other pictures of O'Keeffe, some of the most famous taken when she was in her eighties, her fierce independence more obvious than in the younger years. The wrinkles from the New Mexico sun couldn't hide her beauty, even in her eighties and nineties. No wonder there were rumors about her and Hamilton. She was the most photographed woman of the twentieth century. I thought about the words to Elton John's “Candle in the Wind”:

Your candle burned out long ago

Your legend never did

I doubt that Georgia O'Keeffe worried about her legend. She was too busy doing what she loved.