ernie leads giles into what Giles hopes is a meeting room but is merely a vacant office inside which has been wedged a table and two chairs. Bernie doesn’t sit, so Giles doesn’t, either. It feels unconvivial after the smiles and handshakes of the waiting room, even as Giles reminds himself that, if he has a friend here, it is Bernie Clay, not those rich old men in the lobby slurping down his mixed drinks. Bernie was part of the vote that kicked Giles out of the firm twenty years ago, it’s true, but his heart hadn’t been in it, and Giles reminds himself of the futility of martyrs—Bernie’s family had to eat, too, didn’t they?

Memories of the inciting event deject Giles, mostly because of its pedestrian predictability; clichés are anathema to any artist. That certain bar in Mount Vernon, the police storming in with raised badges. During the night he spent in jail, he’d thought of one thing: how the police blotter had always been his father’s favorite section of the paper. Giles hoped the old man’s eyesight, like his own, had worsened to the point that he couldn’t read the blotter’s small type, and then, when Giles never heard from his father again, knew that it hadn’t. Within a week of being fired, Giles adopted his first cat.

Finagling meetings with Bernie has become a large part of Giles’s job. But how can he complain? No one else at the firm, Mr. Klein and Mr. Saunders included, approves of Giles’s freelance involvement. Giles applies a big, red grin, just like the father in his newest painting. More advertising, he thinks, this time for himself.

“What in heavens happened to Hazel? I never knew her to miss a day.”

Bernie tugs loose his tie. “You wouldn’t believe it, Gilesy. The old broad made doe eyes at a beverage bottler and whoosh. They make off to Los Angeles. Took the account with them, too.”

“No! Good for her, I suppose.”

“Bad for us. That’s why everything’s haywire, so apologies for the room, we’re backed up. You know a good girl, you let me know, all right?”

Giles does, in fact, know a good girl, one whose job at a totalitarian research facility has been going nowhere for years. If only answering phone calls was Elisa’s forte. The few seconds Giles spends musing in silence make Bernie fidget and what’s left of Giles’s spirit sinks. Bernie is alone inside a closed room with a confirmed fruit. As eager as Giles is to jabber about the good old ad biz, he can’t let himself be the cause of this man’s distress.

“Well, here, let me show you the work—”

“I’ve really only got a few—”

Both are grateful for the distracting clank of the case’s buckle and slap of opening leather. Giles sets the canvas upon the table and gestures proudly. But what he feels is panic. Is there something screwy with the overhead lights? The bone structure of the family he painted is too pronounced, like their skin has worn down to an Andrzej polish. And did he really draw four bodiless heads? Did he not see how ghoulish that was? Even the colors look off, except for the gelatin, which, due to his all-night mixing, is the magmatic apotheosis of red.

“The red,” Bernie sighs.

“Too red,” Giles says. “I concur wholeheartedly.”

“It’s not that. Although the father’s lips do look a little … bloody. It’s the color in general. Red’s out. We’re not doing red centerpieces for anything anymore. Didn’t I tell you that? Maybe I didn’t. Like I said, things are haywire. Red’s being axed across the board. The new thing—are you ready? The new thing is green.”

“Green?”

“Bicycles. Electric guitars. Breakfast cereal. Eye shadow. Green’s the future all of a sudden. Even the new flavors coming in, wall-to-wall green. Apple, melon, green grape, pesto, pistachio, mint.”

Giles tries to ignore the quartet of mocking skulls and scrutinizes the gelatin of their desire. He feels so stupid, so blind. It doesn’t matter if Bernie mentioned the color before or not. If Giles had any judgment at all, he would have known better. What kind of ogre’s appetite would be roused by gelatin so red it looked as if sliced from a beating heart?

“It’s not me, Gilesy,” Bernie says. “It’s photographs. Every client who walks through that door today, they want photo shoots, pretty girls holding hamburgers or encyclopedia sets or what have you. They want to be invited to the casting calls to check out the goods. I’m the last guy at this firm selling the bosses on actual art. Great art is great art, that’s what I tell them. And you, Gilesy, are a great artist. Hey, you making any time for your own stuff these days?”

The painting is like key-lime-pie leftovers seen apart from the brilliant lights of Dixie Doug’s: untantalizing. Giles slips it back into his portfolio case. The weight of the case on the way home will bring him none of the comfort it gave on the trip here. His own stuff? No, Bernie. Not for years. Not when he’s busy painting and repainting gelatin that nobody wants, no matter the color of the future.