The 1st Deadly Sin Read Free Page B

scooped seeds and soft pulp from the other half, then filled the cavity with Familia, a Swiss organic cereal. He squeezed a slice of fresh lemon over all. He ate it steadily, standing, staring at his reflection in the mirror over the kitchen sink.
    Finished, he dumped melon rind into the garbage can and rinsed his fingers. Then he moved from room to room, turning the light on in the next before turning it off in the last. Undressing in his bedroom he found the note in his shirt pocket: “…Thousands of fantastic pipple…” He placed it on his bedside table where he’d see it upon awakening.
    He closed the bathroom door tightly before taking a shower so hot it filled the air with heavy steam, clouding the mirrors and sweating the tiles. He lathered with an emollient soap of cocoa butter that slicked his skin. After rinsing in cool water and turning off the shower, he rubbed his wet body with a cosmetically treated tissue claiming to “restore natural oils to dry skin” and “smooth, soften, and lubricate the epidermis.”
    His twice-a-week maid had been in during the afternoon. His bed was made with fresh sheets and pillowcases. The top sheet and sateen comforter were turned down. It was hardly 11:00 p.m., but he was pleasantly weary and wanted sleep.
    Naked, allowing water and tiny oil globules to dry on his exposed body, he moved about the apartment, drawing drapes, checking window latches and door locks. He stepped into the bathroom again to swallow a mild sleeping pill. He felt sure he would not need it, but he didn’t want to think in bed.
    The long living room was dimly lit by light from the bedroom. The end of the living room faced north, with drapes over wide plate glass windows that could not be opened. The east wall, abutting the bedroom, was almost 25 feet long and nine feet high.
    This expanse, painted a flat white, Daniel Blank had decorated with mirrors. He had allowed a space four feet from the floor to accommodate a couch, chairs, end tables, lamps, a bookcase, a wheeled cart of hi-fi equipment. But above that four-foot level, the wall was covered with mirrors.
    Not one mirror or fitted tiles of mirrors, but more than fifty individual mirrors adorned that wall; tiny mirrors and large mirrors, flat and beveled, true and exaggerative, round and square, oval and rectangular. The wall quivered with silver reflections.
    Each mirror was framed and hung separately: frames of wood and metal, painted and bare, plain and ornate, modern and rococo, carved wood and bland plastic. Some were fogged antiques; one was a 3X4-inch sheet of polished metal: the mirror issued to Marines in World War II.
    The mirrors were not arranged in a planned pattern on this nervous wall; they had been hung as they were purchased. But somehow, haphazardly, as the wall filled, frames and reflections had grown an asymmetrical composition. His city was there, sprung and lurching.
    Padding back to the bedroom, naked, scented, oiled, Daniel Blank looked to his mirrored wall. He was chopped and fragmented. As he moved, his image jumped, glass to glass. A nose there. Ear. Knee. Chest. Navel. Foot. Elbow. All leaped, were held, disappeared to be born again in something new.
    He stopped, fascinated. But even motionless he was minced and snapped, all of him divided by silvered glass that tilted this way and that. He felt himself and saw twenty hands moving, a hundred fingers probing: wonder and delight.
    He went into the bedroom, adjusted the air-conditioner thermostat, slid into bed. He fell asleep seeing in the dim glow of the nightlight those myriad eyes reflecting him in framed detail. Waist in steel. Shoulder in carved oak. Neck in plastic. Knee in copper. Penis in worm-eaten walnut.
    Art.

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    S HE HAD BEEN one of the first women in Manhattan to leave off her brassiere. He had been one of the first men in Manhattan to use a necktie as a belt. She had been one of the first to adopt a workman’s lunch pail as a purse. He had been one of the