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Bond doing this?
    I felt trapped by progressive change.
    Wait! Accusing Bond of conspiracy was giving him too much credit. Lets face it, the sad truth was that … co-optation theory might be happening to me at last.
    These were my realizations in the eerie light of the flaming logo’d shirts:
    One of two things would happen. Either I would prove myself to Bond, he would let me in, and I would become like him. Or he would throw me one bone and then toss me away.
    With this new knowledge, I arrived at Glick’s house.

6. THE MOST UNKNOWN ARTIST
    G LICK’S ADDRESS, 123 Siege Street, was situated on a block I did not know, about a half mile from Old Ixtapa, just to the right of North Chelsea. This was a quiet neighborhood of Manhattan, filled with chicken bones. The residents entered the houses through ancient bodegas and then crossed interior courtyards with a hint of apple blossom and Old Gold.
    On the stoop there was a painting standing in for the former door. A man’s body had been painted over and over so many times that it had congealed into two green squares floating on top of some limb-like black. Then I got closer and found something very surprising. The black passing as both profile and background was actually filled with passion. The canvas cried out “Molest me!” so I put my hands all over it. What could have led me to act so inappropriately? To become so messy?
    Then … it happened. I had a revelation about life from the sequential foundation of a work of visual art. The order of feeling was revealed to me:
    hope light fear confusion lie
    hope light fear cowardice destruction
    hope light fear courage resolution
    The person who lived in this house never gave up.
    WOW , I could not wait to tell Nadine about this. And then, the real revelation occurred. It was about Nadine herself. That SHE was what made this excitement all worthwhile in the first place. Because I could share it with her. If I had no one to tell it to, what would be the purpose of living it? What was the point to learning how to love if there is no one to love? Then I understood Glick’s tragedy. She had learned how to love but had no place to enact her understanding except this sticky outdoor painting welcoming nonexistent guests to her nonexistent front door. It was the art of loneliness.
    After all, if a person wasn’t lonely, why would they ever make art? They could just be with Nadine instead.
    And then I rang the bell.
    “ What a sad surprise,” the bell sang to me. “ How unexpected. I wanted it to be different and so I’ve waited patiently for so long, with no reason. I waited for something better, but only missed out on fully realizing more of the same. Ding Dong.”
    It was that kind of doorbell you only press once.
    I guessed that Glick was some kind of eccentric. It made sense. As my friend Michi Barall says, “Alienation creates eccentrics and revolutionaries,” which are not, after all, the same thing. Her out-of-it-ness was obvious from the state of her front door. That was a fate I wanted desperately to avoid. Also, being considered by others to be a crackpot was out of the question. I’ve never been stable, so I don’t need stability. I don’t need safety, I’ve never been safe. But strength is a necessity for the strong.
    “Come in,” she said, standing in the doorway, blocking my way. And there you have it.
    Glick stared and stared until I finally took responsibility and pushed her aside so that I could follow her command. Then we sat down on mismatched kitchen chairs. The interview had begun. It was clear from the start that she was a typical old-fashioned artist from the Old-Fashioned School. The kind Nadine dreamed of joining. She was not conceptual, digital, aerospacial, or architectonic. She was not botanographical, electrictronicfecal, or Inter-D. Glick used paint. All her books had smudges on them. The refrigerator was covered in blue fingerprints. Every single article of clothing in her doorless closet