“First things first, I always say,” said Fred, as he took the utensil firmly, but tenderly in hand. “I know I know what I’m doing. It’s just that I haven’t bothered to recently review my reasons for doing it.”
Nevertheless, he gave the fingerpick a flip and launched into a torpid rendition of Melancholy Baby. What color! What luminescent balls! The story of six thousand generations locked tightly in the circular tones of a fifth octave Sousa march! It like to knock your socks off.
These things; these things and more occurred to Fred, through the medium of Esmerelda as she shed her desires and unfolded on the floor by the blazing hearth. “What now should I make him do?” she asked herself. And this was a significant change indeed, for before, she had been making him do as she pleased. But now, she only thought to manipulate him as she ought.
It wasn’t long before the answer occurred to her. She would make him paint a picture. She would bring him structures. She would bring him a fine muslin and a crystal of blue glass. She would bring him yellow ochre and lime juice. He would paint. He would realize her finest idealism. He would grow in his own eyes and in the eyes of the public. He would get rich.
That was the plan. Then could come the small house in Montgomery County, the backwoods pavilion where she could hold her divine parties. Esmerelda and the Architects of the New Society would blossom into a true historical entity. But Fred. What of Fred? Poor, dear Fred: who only knew the driving passion and the utter loneliness of his worship. What comfort would there be for him? Esmerelda could not bother about that now. That would come with time. All the difficult answers would surely come with time. You know?