To top off his afternoon, Neza then showed up from out of some hole or other, striking her gaudy pink cane onto the floor of the ballroom with every step. She did not bother with polite greetings.
"What the hellation is wrong with you!" she screamed at him. "We open our home to the Collective, invite strangers onto our property, and then we're expected to do all the work? My nieces have been slaving on this show. Yesterday was bad enough, but today! I don't know where to start. Do you know that one of your precious students pushed me into a wall? Because I couldn't get out of his way fast enough! And then, was he in a hurry to get to work? No," – Neza grabbed Professor Vitebskin's coverall and tried to yank him closer to her livid face – "he sat down on one of your precious new paintings. He could have crushed it and he could have broken my leg."
She stopped ranting and let go of Professor Vitebskin. Veronica, who had not known this had happened, ran up to them.
"What? Lordy, are you all right? Who was it? I will shove whoever it was face-first through one of these damn paintings," Veronica said to her aunt. Then she whipped around to Professor Vitebskin.
"This is how we're to be treated? Is it?" she snarled at him.
He swiftly stepped back out of range of Veronica's much stronger hands, straightened his coverall collar and smoothed the front where Neza's hands had worked wrinkles into the crisply ironed cloth. His mind raced. Veronica could throw them out of the White Elephant and cancel the show. He couldn't locate another venue on zero notice, even the substandard one on the university's grounds. And then he'd have to move all those paintings. What would potential patrons say about his competence and abilities to manage people?
"It is not, Miss Bradwell," he replied icily. "I am appalled at the Collective's behavior. I will start by punishing the miscreant. Who was it?"
Neza pointed the student out, using her cane to be sure everyone saw at whom she was aiming. He was the same lout who had informed Veronica the day before that he was too refined for manual labor.
Veronica said, "Oh that one! No surprise there. He was a problem for me yesterday." She smirked at the Professor as she threw fuel onto the fire. "He doesn't think he needs to do any work at all for the good of the Collective. He told me so himself."
Professor Vitebskin grew even angrier. He knew this particular joker well, having long suspected that he had been the one who smuggled the kitten calendar into the studio, thus defacing that sacred temple with venal, commercial hackwork. This lazy mazhor was marginally talented, believing his connections could overcome his lack of artistic ability. He was wrong on that score and now he was jeopardizing a show that Professor Vitebskin was counting on to keep his name in front of everyone in the Panschin art establishment.
He grabbed his soon-to-be-former student by the front of his coverall, although with a much firmer grip than Neza had used, and started his lecture, his angry face close enough to bite off the student's nose.
If Veronica had thought Professor Vitebskin had turned the air bright blue before, she marveled at the new, more intense shade he evoked.
Lulu whispered to her, "wow. I have never heard language like that before, anywhere, even in the tunnel bars under Dome Four. Just wow. Where did he learn those words, a fancy professor like him?"
Neza said, "that wretch didn't hurt me, Veronica. And, I have to say, I feel much better now, watching him get called on for his behavior. My goodness. Such language. I would faint if that arrogant sod didn't deserve every word."
Shelby said, "oh. That jerk. Reyansh Philpott. He's nasty to everyone. I hope Vitebskin throws him out of the house."
Veronica asked, "he's been nasty to you?"
Shelby's mouth tightened at the memories. "Oh yeah." Her face had gone dark with fury and she hunched her shoulders over as though warding off a blow.
"Shelby, sweetie, I will make sure he does," her sister replied. So, Reyansh Philpott had hurt two members of her family, the sod.
She didn't have to try. As Veronica marched up to Vitebskin with her new demand that if he wanted to the show to go on, he had to get rid of Reyansh Philpott, the professor reached a pinnacle of rhetoric.
"You've jeopardized everything, everything I and the Collective have worked for! Get out. You have failed the semester, you've failed your degree program, and I will see to it that the University throws you out on your lazy, worthless, disrespectful ass."
Reyansh Philpott looked around and around and saw no support from anyone. His bridges burned, he shouted, "You are a sterile ass, everyone in the Collective is a pack of suck-ups, and you couldn't draw anything recognizable if your life depended on it. Your vision is just as empty as your ball-sack. You'll be hearing from my dad. He'll sue you and PanU!"
He stomped off, leaving Professor Vitebskin purple with rage.
Shelby watched Philpott storm out of the ballroom, watched everyone else stand around mesmerized by the spectacle, watched the spluttering and incoherent professor, thought of the family's need for money, and steeled herself.
"Professor?" she called over the gasps and chatter from the Collective. This story was going to race around PanU at top speed and might even push aside the gossip about her. It was well known but never publicly admitted that none of Professor Vitebskin's three wives or his numerous liaisons had produced offspring. He also never drew anything identifiable, leaving that kind of mundane drawing instruction to one of the lesser adjunct professors.
"Don't listen to him." She glanced over at Veronica, trying to beam her a message. "We don't have much time to finish getting ready. People will be here soon."
Veronica gaped at her little mine mouse of a sister in amazement, then caught Shelby's underlying message. Not just people would be here soon but paying people and the White Elephant was due half the door receipts.
"Shelby's right!" she announced. "We've got a gallery showing to get on. Professor Vitebskin, you take charge of the Collective in the ballroom and I'll get back to the atrium. Decide if you want any paintings moved around."
Professor Vitebskin recovered enough to seize the lifeline Veronica tossed him.
"Why is everyone standing around? Get back to work," he roared.
Things moved quickly after that.
As Professor Vitebskin calmed down, arranging and re-arranging the paintings to accommodate the arrival of his protégés' paintings and punish unworthy members of the Collective, he spared a moment's thought towards Shelby's own pitiful effort. He had allowed her to enter a single painting in the gallery showing, since it took place in the White Elephant. He went and stood in front of the offending piece, studying its slashes of various shades of brown and gray and, appallingly, smears of what looked suspiciously like a lavender-tinged tan verging on mauve. Should he move it to a better position, out of the backwater it currently languished in? She had, after all, worked hard despite her complete lack of artistic ability.
Across the ballroom, Shelby spotted him in front of her painting, stroking his fashionably razored beard in the manner she knew so well. She went to find her sister.
"Veronica," Shelby hissed. "Professor Vitebskin is looking at my painting. My painting! He might move it to a better location."
Veronica, via a tremendous act of will, managed not to roll her eyes. "So?"
"So he might like it."
She decided to let her sister down gently. "I suppose that could happen."
"I really worked hard on this one."
"I know you did. You work hard on all of them."
"Veronica, you're not taking me seriously."
Veronica gritted her teeth. "Shelby. Don't get your hopes up. Okay?"
"This time is different!"
"Miss Bradwell. Shelby," Professor Vitebskin called out. He strode over to the two women, Shelby eagerly smiling at him and Veronica trying hard to look less sour over what she was afraid was coming.
"Everything is in place. I'll return within the hour to greet our first guests."
"Of course, Professor," Veronica said. "And we get half the door receipts and a commission on every sale."
"Naturally."
"Are there any other changes, Professor Vitebskin," Shelby asked enthusiastically.
He gave her a look consigning her to a remote tunnel for her open stupidity.
"No, Shelby. I said everything was in place and I meant it. Good day, Miss Bradwell."
He spun on his heel and headed out the door.
Shelby stared at his back, then at the door closing behind him, then raced off to the ballroom to see if her painting had been moved. It had not. It was still tucked into a corner, where it was unlikely to be observed, hanging around with all the other rejects from the also-rans in the PanU art department. She stood rooted to the floor, seeing again how she rated against the other members of the Collective, despite how hard she tried.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," Veronica said, coming up behind her. She draped an arm around her sister. "He's a cave troll."
Shelby could feel her jaw trembling and she swallowed bile. "I really thought that maybe, this time, he'd…."
"It's his show and he wants everything exactly the way he wants it," her sister said. "This is what he wants, your painting shoved into a corner where no one will notice it because it doesn't suit his vision."
Shelby stared at her painting for a long, long moment. "It doesn't matter what I do, does it."
"I don't think so."
"And I'm stuck there."
"Maybe not. Auntie Neza got an appointment with the bursar next week."
"All right then," Shelby said. "All right then."
*****
Veronica saw the Collective out, closing the heavy front doors with more force than necessary. Everything was in place for paying guests to arrive. If the evening went as usual, a horde of wealthy art patrons would show up, pay their credits at the door, gawk at the paintings, gossip about each other, gossip more about the people who weren't present to defend themselves, and eat far more than a few credit's worth of food.
The evening always went better when it was well-lubricated, something they had learned after the first gallery show. Fortunately, Professor Vitebskin provided plenty of alcohol, probably using his art department expense account at PanU. Veronica had always been careful not to ask how he paid for this luxury, feeling she could then legitimately claim ignorance when he was audited.
Despite the presence of free food and copious amounts of wine – both now resting comfortably in the cold room -- she did not expect to sell any paintings during the evening. They rarely did. If a painting sold later on, afterwards, she wouldn't get a commission on the sale. In her more cynical moments, Veronica often wondered if the good professor arranged for the sales to take place elsewhere to stiff her on her fee and keep that money for himself.
Once the opening was over, she would be expected to open the White Elephant for the next two weeks to anyone willing to make an appointment to contemplate the paintings one on one and in quiet isolation. No matter how many appointments Professor Vitebskin arranged, somehow, paintings rarely sold. Yet Shelby told her that paintings did sell, according to the gossip back at the university. Maybe, Veronica thought to herself, she wasn't being cynical. She was being an astute observer of reality.
There was nothing she could do about it. What she could do was go upstairs and tell Mr. Jones and his party that the gallery show would be open soon and he could, if he wanted to, rub elbows with the art crowd of Panschin, while eating free food and drinking free wine. That might be enough to bring him down.
Why did she want Mr. Jones to come downstairs? He'd see a ballroom full of ugly art and get to see her walking around with a tray of snacks like any cocktail waitress. The idea was painful and humiliating, yet she would see him.
She angrily pushed those thoughts away. It must be the smell of paint, she decided, coupled with the frustration of dealing with the Collective. They were making her crazy. Then she marched back upstairs to do the right thing by her guests, giving them the schedule for the evening and explain the tentative schedule for the next two weeks.