"Do you want to talk about Patterson now? We don''t have to if you''re not in the mood." Ruth Murphy''s face went through a whole Olympics of different expressions--anger, sadness, resignation--before she spoke. "Patterson the joker, right? The joke ster , the clown, the idiot. That''s the Graham I knew. Back then, what wouldn''t the man do for a laugh? I assume you know about the time with the prosthetic arm? They were going to arrest him. They had him in handcuffs, for God''s sake! But he was so over-the-top goofy with the cops he made them laugh too, so they let the fool go. That time. There were others, and they didn''t end so happily.
" She knew she wasn''t being fair or telling the whole truth because there were so many other things she had loved about Patterson. But now she was old and alone, and old love unfulfilled can sometimes fester. The interviewer said gently, "But that was in his career as a comedian --long before he became famous and disappeared. You were together a long time . " "Three years. We stayed together because I loved him. You can love someone and still think they''re an idiot. I want to show you something.
" In the old woman''s lap was a battered, sun-bleached manila envelope. Opening it, she slowly slid out a large photograph. One side had a large crease, and overall the picture had not been well cared for. She handed it to James Arthur, the interviewer. He took one look and nodded--of course he''d seen it before. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people had seen it before. "That''s a very well-known picture, Ms. Murphy.
" "I know ," Ruth said irritably, having heard the condescension in his voice. "But it''s my line." "Excuse me?" Arthur straightened his back and tried to control the disbelief in his voice. "He used my line--I said it. Or rather, I wrote it to him in a note, right after we broke up. Turn the picture over and read what''s on the back." The man did, and saw written there in handwriting that was instantly familiar to him: "To Ruthie--who gave me the beginning with a Brownie. Thank you for that, and for so much more.
Great Love, Graham." "Whoa, amazing! It''s hard to believe. I''m sure you know how famous this photo is--it''s on par with anything by William Eggleston. Personally, I think it''s better." Ruth grumbled "I didn''t say I took it--that was all Graham''s doing. The picture, the way he framed the image, the lighting, he found the location . it was all him. But the line itself was mine.
I even remember writing it to him on a postcard." "Patterson would never say where the billboard was. It''s part of the mystery of the photograph." She touched her white hair, creating a little dramatic pause before spilling the beans. "Hallet, Nevada. Somewhere up in the Eureka district. Graham said it was originally called Hell It''s Nevada but they changed the name in the 1930s because the town was getting rich and the citizens wanted to make it sound more respectable. But when the silver mines nearby went bust in the 1950s, the place started dying and never stopped.
In its heyday, everyone in town hung out at Mr. Breakfast. It was apparently Hallet''s social center." "Wait, wait--I''m writing this down. How do you know all this?" Ruth Murphy moved slowly back and forth in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position. At least, one she could share more comfortably with her arthritis. The last days were closing in on her, and she knew it. She had no legacy, a son she hadn''t seen in two years, no business to pass on, and no life''s work she had created that would continue to exist after she was gone.
Nothing to show the future world there had once been a woman named Ruth Murphy. No, she knew the only thing that might bring her a few footnotes in some biography or a line in an appendix was the fact she had lived with Graham Patterson before he became Patterson . James Arthur handed the renowned photo back to her. She looked at it thoughtfully, pursing her lips. It showed a large run-down, vandalized, and badly boarded up salmon-colored roadside diner set alone on some bleak desert stretch of highway that looked like it could just as well have been on the moon. The first word to come to mind on seeing the image was forlorn . The diner had a long-faded red and white sign over the front door. It said "MR.
BREAKFAST," although two of the letters had fallen sideways over time, making the building look even sadder and more depressing. At the front of the diner''s empty parking lot was a giant weatherworn standalone statue of a smiling chef in a high toque holding up a tray with the name of the diner across the top. Below it, on the marquee sign where specialties of the house or community greetings like "Welcome Lions Club Members!" might once have been listed was a single sentence: SOLITUDE CAN BE A MOODY COMPANION In an early influential article about Patterson''s work, one art critic wrote what was so arresting about this photograph was because of the eerie way it was composed, it made a viewer feel the building itself was still somehow alive. The message on its giant sign was akin to a street beggar''s handwritten sign asking the world for help. Though, in the case of Mr. Breakfast, the place itself was saying, "I don''t want to be alone anymore." "Do you like the picture?" Ruth Murphy asked James Arthur. "''Mr.
Breakfast''? Oh yes, very much. It was the first Patterson I ever saw, so it was the picture that got me hooked. Don''t you like it?" The old woman sighed and thought a bit before answering. "I have mixed feelings. I can appreciate it as a work of art, famous image and all, but I also remember what was going on in Graham''s life then, and how much confusion he was in at the time he took it." ------------- It wasn''t supposed to happen like this. You buy a new car and it runs. It runs great for a few guaranteed years without anything going wrong.
After that, but only then, is it allowed to break down--not in the first month of ownership. Not with only 2,695 miles on the damned machine, and most definitely not when you''ve just base jumped off the cliff of your old life into the great foggy unknown. Could anything else go wrong in the Graham Patterson universe? His career--up in smoke. His love life? Down the toilet. His prospects for a rosy future? More likely to fit his fat body through the eye of a needle at that point. The day after he bombed so badly at the comedy club in Providence, Rhode Island, Graham Patterson went to a car dealer and bought a brand-new, lipstick red Ford Mustang convertible right off the showroom floor. A check for five figures? Boom! Done. Next, he went to a camera shop and bought the Nikon he''d been lusting after for months because he wanted a photographic record of the trip he was about to take.
He had a few thousand dollars left in his bank account afterward, which would get him across the country to where his patient and very successful brother Joel was waiting with a job, if he wanted it. What Patterson really wanted was to be paid to make people laugh, but it was never going to happen. He accepted this fact now, and he had finally resolved to give the dream of being a famous comedian a decent burial during the trip. He''d been trying for years to make it, but after so long, knew in his heart it wasn''t meant to be. It was time to accept failure and make new plans for the rest of his life. His father used to say, "There comes a point . " Patterson had reached that point in Providence, the quiet murmur of the audience in reaction to his best comedy routine the final devastation. Added to this humiliation were the looks of indifference, impatience, and even derision on the faces of people who''d come to laugh but did not.
To be fair, there had been some chuckling here and there, an amused snort or two and a few snickers at his best jokes, but big loud "ho ho!" laughs at Graham Patterson''s carefully crafted, torturously worked over act? De nada, baby. Nichts. So he buried his life''s dream and drove away from that cemetery in the new convertible, which took him as far as North Carolina before it died, too. Luckily, the problem was only a defective fuel pump. It was covered under the warranty and could be fixed in an afternoon. While waiting for the car to be repaired, Patterson decided to grab a bite to eat and take a walk around the town. Two pulled pork sandwiches and a large Royal Crown Cola later, he felt a tad better about the shape of his predicament. A few blocks from the sandwich shop on a small, nondescript side street, he passed a tattoo parlor called Hardy Fuse.
Thinking about it later, he didn''t know if he stopped to look in the window because of the odd name of the establishment or because of the photos on display in the store window. Patterson was no tattoo connoisseur or even much of a fan, but these were the most beautiful he had ever seen. Some were realistic, some abstract, but no matter where they were on the body, all of them were drawn and colored in such an arresting, singular way that it felt . it almost felt like the tattoos were speaking a whole new visual language to Patterson''s eyes and sensibilities. He had never seen anything like them before. He had to go into the place and investigate. A bell above the door tinkled thinly when he opened it. Once he was inside, a low woman''s voice with a heavy Southern accent sang out, "Sorry, but we''re closed.
"