both; but there wasn’t any girl, and the portrait was as it was painted.
“Portrait, keep your God-damn chin up so you can break my heart easier.”
It certainly was a lovely present, the Colonel thought.
“Can you maneuver?” he asked the portrait. “Good and fast?”
Portrait said nothing and the Colonel answered, You known damn well she can. She’d out-maneuver you the best day you were ever born and she would stay and fight where you would eff-off, discreetly.
“Portrait,” he said. “Boy or daughter or my one true love or whatever it is; you know what it is, portrait.”
The portrait, as before, did not answer. But the Colonel, who was a General now again, early in the morning at the only time he really knew, and with Valpolicella, knew as absolutely as though he had just read his third Wassermann that there was no eff-off in portrait, and he felt shame for having talked to portrait roughly.
“I’ll be the best God-damned boy you ever witnessed today. And you can tell your principal that.”
Portrait, as was her fashion, was silent.
She probably would speak to a horse-cavalryman, the General, for now he had two stars, and they grated on his shoulders, and showed white in the vague, scuffed red on the plaque in front of his jeep. He never used command cars, nor semi-armoured vehicles complete with sand bags.
“The hell with you, portrait,” he said. “Or get your
