“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t say it, you or this young lady. She’s a lady and you’re a gentleman and you wouldn’t say such a thing. Me, I’m an artist. An artist can say anything. It’s an edge the artist has over the gentleman. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Uh.”

“And you’re right to think it. I’m nobody, that’s who I am. Just a painter nobody ever heard of. All the same, I saw you looking at a real painter’s work, I saw you keep coming back to this painting, and right off I knew you could tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit, if you’ll pardon me once again, madam.”

“It’s all right,” Carolyn said.

“But it puts my back up to see people give serious attention to most of this crap. You know how you’ll read in the paper that a man takes a knife or a bottle of acid and attacks some famous painting? And you probably say to yourself what everybody else says. ‘How could anybody do such a thing? He’d have to be a madman.’ The person who does it is always an artist, and in the papers they call him a ‘self-styled’ artist. Meaning he says he’s an artist but you know and I know the poor fellow’s got shit for brains. Once again, dear madam-”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll say this,” he said, “and then I’ll leave you good people alone. It is a mark not of madness but of sanity to destroy bad art when it is placed on display in the nation’s temples. I’ll say more than that. The destruction of bad art is in itself a work of art. Bakunin said the urge to destroy is a creative urge. To slash some of these canvases-” He took a deep breath, expelled it all in a sigh. “But I’m a talker, not a destroyer. I’m an artist, I paint my paintings and I live my life. I saw the interest you were taking in my favorite painting and it provoked this outburst. Am I forgiven?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Carolyn told him.