http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/prk2000001031/
Arteum
was drunk, again. He was comfortable enough. The wool of his collar had ceased
to bother him and the November sun sat pleasantly on his red cheeks. The
photographer pressed away, capturing him against the cotton station. Fiddling
with cigarette, Arteum thought about the night before and how, quite
unexpectedly, it had turned into this particular morning. He had only intended
to stand a round, and had only intended to allow himself to stand 2 – but as
the shift supervisor, he reasoned, he was obligated in some way to give back to
those who which his own position so clearly depended on. And they were a
relatively competent bunch, and he did make nearly double what his nearest
subordinate made and he did after all truly and deeply enjoy drinking. Not
getting drunk, which he regarded as a grim and bearable necessity, and not
being at the bar exactly – which he considered tacky and inhospitable – but he
held the actual act of drinking in the highest regard. There was a certain warmth
to the coolness of the glass pressed to his lips, the slow fullness a little
lower, and the dawning numbness lower still (his wife had run him ragged
recently trying to conceive their fourth, and it was only when he was so drunk,
utterly incapable of physical arousal that she exasperatedly left him alone).
And so
he was, leaning against the unseasonably warm breeze, still drunk and perfectly
happy: our tour-guide-shift-supervisor of the Botanical Garden, next to a laughably
impossible plot of cotton. The photographer stopped and poked his head up.
“Could
I get one with your hands folded in front of you?”
Arteum flicked
his cigarette over his right shoulder, clasped his hands together and showed
the man his teeth.
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