Spectacles

Pierre has again done something strictly to get attention. He removed his clothes at the opera house. We hope the attention lasts long enough for him to sell his latest nude. He doesn’t realize it hasn’t sold only because its paint’s still wet. He keeps calling his model back, even though he can’t afford her. * Gustav worked on his novel at sidewalk cafés, scribbling in a dozen notebooks. He changed its characters or plot every week for two years. He drank too much coffee, had a heart attack, stood up, and fell into the street where he was run over by a truck. * Victor played piano for the burlesque and claimed he could play either sober or drunk, but this was hard to prove because he was always drunk. He made it a challenge for management to keep him on his bench. One attractive dancer appealed to him. He tried to climb out of the pit to dance with her, but fell back in and broke his neck. At the inquest they tried to determine if this was a suicide or an accident. * Maurice stood on a soapbox at noon at the Arc de Triomphe and tried to frighten the tourists with vain threats of anarchy. He claimed that their guidebooks would suddenly catch fire; he warned the men against removing their hats, lest the rats attack them; he yelled that they were in danger of being innocent, and of not knowing the proper word for “bourgeois”; he told them to beware of catastrophic sewer collapse; he said there was an ominous plot to poison all tourists at dinner, but that no cockroach was safe.