I’m fine. Just come home.
—
Robin met me at the door, still in her work overalls, hands drumming her hips, bouncing on her feet.
Not like her, and Blanche was also keyed up, snorting and rotating her head.
I said, “What’s going on, girls?”
Robin took my hand, led me to my office, pointed at my computer. “Sent it to you from my laptop because your screen’s wide.”
Faded color and curvaceous form filled the monitor.
A painting, blurred, busy.
From a distance, the interior of what looked to be a Renaissance drawing room. Voluptuous folds of satin and velvet and embroidered cloth, intricate brocade, tides of sable and ermine fur. All that excess punctuated by gem-like dots of metallic trim.
Luxuriant heaps of far-too-much in a confined space suggested imminent collapse.
I sat down, took a closer look, and amended my first impression: not a room; a horse-drawn coach crowded with people.
Up front a driver gripped the reins in a white-gloved hand as he craned back toward his passengers. Beyond him a star-flecked night sky, in front of him a hint of dappled equine haunches.
Black man. Literally. His skin rendered in inky tones limned blue and lilac.
Scarlet lips, milky teeth, the sclera of eyes tinted butterscotch as he leered at his passengers. No subtlety to racist intention.
He wore the type of Moorish garb that had filled the fantasies of Europeans travelers centuries ago as they indulged in “Orientalist” art: three gold hoops in one pendulous ear, grape-purple livery edged in silver, a creamy white turban.
The leer cartoonish.
I shifted to the objects of the driver’s attention.
The passenger sitting farthest from the viewer—next to the coach’s window—was a sallow, child-sized man of uncertain age with a tiny, scrunched, capuchin-monkey face. His slight frame was covered by a grass-green, high-buttoned tunic hemmed at the bottom by yellow triangles ending in bells.
Hooding his tiny head was more green cloth adorned by floppy donkey ears.
Bucktoothed smile.
Professional fool, on the job.
Closest to the eye, bathed in a ray of what had probably been bright-golden light centuries ago but was now ecru, sat a handsome, young, rosy-cheeked man, resplendent in blue silk and white lace. Glossy ringlets of dark hair trailed below his shoulders. Gold epaulets on his shoulders suggested military rank. So did a royal-blue cavalier’s hat balanced on his right knee.
The smirking expression of a spoiled adolescent. A waxed mustache and a wispy triangle of hair on his chin failed to add maturity. Nor did slumping posture, drunken eyes, and an agape mouth molded into a besotted grin. In the center of the mouth, a tongue tinted and shaped like a Japanese eggplant curled backward, a fleshy nautilus probing the innards beyond.
Sitting between the men, pressed close to the cavalier’s right flank, was a hook-nosed crone in a fraying, dust-colored dress, the garment baggy but unable to conceal a barrel of girth.
A black beret roosted lopsided atop strands of white hair so wild they appeared electrified. Drool beaded on her chin. The dress was cut low and square, exposing puckered cleavage that dipped to the withered roseate of the woman’s right nipple.
Like the three men, smiling. Crafty smile, as if a spell had been cast. Two brown teeth on top, a single incisor below.
The hag’s right hand, gnarled and liver-spotted, circled the young man’s penis. Small organ, but erect.
On the floor of the coach, two snub-nosed dogs, tongues drooping, observing the merriment. Resting on a bed of scarlet taffeta.
I turned away, heart racing. Robin’s hands alit on my shoulders and stayed there.
I put my hand on hers. “How did you find this?”
