An Artist’s Follies

One would think that being an artist himself, Gonga would know the wiles of the artists and be adept at avoiding them, especially the female artists. Unfortunately, this has proved a false assumption. The simple fact that Gonga is artistic has both blinded him and made him more susceptible in a single blow.

The most recent example happened a week ago. Gogna was sitting near Middlebush, playing his accordion with all his might. A few passers tossed spare change and dollar bills into his suitcase. Between classes, students gathered in a knot around him to observe his playing and enjoy the music.

One girl in particular placed herself squarely opposite him on the ground and listened with rapt attention. Her reddish hair gleamed, and her peasant style shirt fluttered slightly in the breeze. He liked having her watch him. He liked it even more when she threw back her head and laughed at his fumbling, and his exaggerated clownish behavior.

This particular girl with the broad face and rapturous smile sat and watched him for two days in a row. On the third day, she came by a bit earlier in the morning. But this time she had a frown on her face.

Her voice was gently accented when she spoke, “I’m horribly sorry. I feel like such an awful person even asking this.” She paused, “I have no money for the parking meter. And I thought…” her voice trailed off and Gonga watched her eyes drift to the coins lying in his suitcase.

“Take,” he grunted in his gorilla voice, reaching down and catching up a handful of quarters.

“Oh thank you!” she cried, her eyes shining.

And so began a very long habit of the peasantly artistic student using Gogna’s accordion money to fill her parking meter day after day. She sat and watched him occasionally after that. But more and more, she looked rushed. At times she would appear covered in clay or pottery. Other times it was paint. And once her hair even looked as though it might have been dyed purple with wash-out dye, but there hadn’t quite been time to thoroughly get the dye washed out.

Of course, the height of it all occurred the day she, stammering, asked to borrow the textbook someone had just dropped in his accordion case. He planned to sell it at the Textbook Game and make some real money for a change. But she looked so forlorn as she explained that she had that very Physics test in less than four hours and desperately needed to study.

Gonga let her borrow the book.

It wasn’t till that evening when he headed back to The Textbook Game that he realized he had been taken in by a fellow artist. She popped out of the store right as he entered, refusing to make eye contact with him, and rushed on her way. Gonga saw the cashier lifting the book he had just purchased from the girl and putting on the trolley behind him. It was the Physics book.