The Mural

I was at a dinner party the other night and I got too talking with a woman. She seemed nice enough. She was the kind of woman I normally wouldn’t talk to unless I was at a dinner party.

During the course of our conversation she mentioned that she once lived in San Francisco.

“So did I,” I said, “where'd you live?”

“North Beach.”

“I lived there too.’

“I went to the art institute,” she said.

“The school with the Diego River mural?

“I don’t remember a mural.”

I had to check myself for a moment.

“The school on the hill, built in a Spanish style?” I asked her.

“That’s the one,” she said.

I was beginning to have my doubts about the lady. I thought everybody knew about the Diego Rivera mural that was in the main gallery. This woman must be absent I thought.

“It’s a famous mural, Diego’s on a scaffold with his buttocks sticking out.”

She was confused. I didn’t belabor the point, but I found it odd that she didn’t know about the mural.

Then the woman told me a story about how she use to man handle her dog when he was a poppy. She looked stone cold crazy while she told the story.

Sometime later the woman got up to leave the party. She looked at me with a scow as she walked out. She looked mean, as if she wanted to kill me. What did I do?

I waved to her and said bye, but I had a bad feeling about her.

On my way home it occurred to me that woman was lying about attending the art institute. She had to be lying. There is no way you can attend that school and not know about the Rivera painting. Why would she lie about something like that? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had.