However many there are, you must sell themThat was Elizabeth, of courseI heard another version of her, however, and because I had to make this voice up, what I heard was Ilse's voice as it had been as a child There's treasure, Daddy, this voice saidYou can get it if you put on your mask and snorkelI can show you where to look 677 xi I was up with the dawnI thought I could go to sleep again, but not until I took one of the few Oxycontin pills I still had put aside, and until I made a telephone callI took the pill, then dialed the Scoto and got the answering machine - there wouldn't be a living person in the gallery for hours yetArtistic types aren't morning people I pushed 11 for Dario Nannuzzi's extension, and after the beep I said: "Dario, it's EdgarI've changed my mind about the Girl and Ship seriesI want to sell them after all, okay? The only dior monogram bag caveat is that they should all go to different people, if possible I hung up and went back to bedLay there for fifteen minutes watching the overhead fan turn lazily and listening to the shells whisper beneath meThe pill was working, but I wasn't drifting off I got up again, hit redial, listened to the recorded message, then punched in Dario's 678 extension one more timeHis recorded voice invited me to leave a message at the beep"That one is still NFS And why was it NFS? Not because it was genius, although I think it was Not even because when I looked at it, it was - for me - like listening to the darkest part of my heart telling its taleIt was because I felt that something had let me live just to paint it, and that to sell it would be to deny my own life, and all the pain I had undergone to reclaim it "That one's mine, Dario," I said Then I went chanel replica handbags back to bed, and that time I slept How to Draw a Picture (VII) Remember that "seeing is believing" puts the cart before the horseArt is the concrete artifact of faith and expectation, the realization of a world that would otherwise be little more than a veil of pointless consciousness stretched over a gulf of mysteryAnd besides - if you don't believe what you see, who will believe your art? 679 The trouble after the treasure all had to do with beliefElizabeth was fiercely talented, but she was only a child - and with children, faith is a givenIt's part of the standard equipmentNor are children, even the talented ones (especially the talented ones), in full possession of their facultiesTheir reason still sleeps, and the sleep of reason breeds monsters Here's a picture I never painted: Identical twins in identical jumpers, except one is red, with knock off chanel an L on the front, and the other is blue, with a T The girls are holding hands as they run along the path that leads to Shade Beach They call it that because for most of the day it's in the shadow of Hag's RockThere are tear-tracks on their pale round faces, but they will soon be gone because by now they are too terrorized to cry If you can believe this, you can see the rest A giant crow flies slowly past them, upside-down, its wings outstretchedIt speaks to them in their Daddy's voice Lo-Lo falls and cuts her knees on the shells Tessie pulls her to her feetIt isn't the upside-down talking crow they are afraid 680 of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so louis vuitton miroir handbags much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadowReal enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumpsThey have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn't come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is day, and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining The next time it's Tessie who falls and Lo-Lo who pulls her up, casting a terrified glance behind her at the thing chasing themIt's surrounded by dancing bugs it sometimes licks out of the air Lo-Lo can see Tessie in one bulging, stupid eye She herself is in the other They burst onto the beach gasping and out of breath and now there's nowhere to go but the water Except maybe there is, because the boat is back 681 again, the one they have seen more and more frequently in the last few omega automatic watches we