Belinda by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online

been thirteen, but she had the body of a six-year-old?" I had died laughing.
    With Belinda it was the face that was six years old.
    I wanted to start painting immediately from these-a whole series was coming into my head-but I was too worried about her.
    I knew she'd be back, of course she would, she had to come back here. But what was happening to her now? I don't think a parent could have been more worried about her than I was, even if that parent had known about me.
    LATE Saturday afternoon I couldn't stand it any longer. I went down to the Haight to look for her.
    The heat wave had not let up, the fog had not rolled in, and I had the top down on my old MG-TD as I crawled through the streets from Divisadero to the park and back again, scanning the shoppers and the drifters, the street vendors and the strollers who made up the crowds.
    People say the Haight is coming back, that the new boutiques and restaurants are resurrecting the neighborhood that became a slum after the great hippie invasion of the late sixties-that a new era has begun. I cannot see it. Some of the finest Victorians are in this part of town, true, and when they are restored, they are magnificent, and, yes, trendy clothing stores and toy shops and bookstores are bringing the money in.
    But there are still bars across the front windows. The drugged out, the insane, still stand on the corners spouting obscenities. You see the hungry and the dangerous hovering in doorways, sprawled on front steps. The walls are scarred with insipid graffiti. And the young people who drift into the cafes and ice cream parlors are often soiled, disheveled, dressed in thrift shop rags. These places themselves have a desolate look. Tables are greasy. There is no heat. You see the evidence of pain and neglect still everywhere you turn.
    The place is interesting, I give it that. But no amount of vitality makes it hospitable. But then it never was.
    Back in the days when I had my first painting studio in the Haight, before the flower children flocked there, it was a hard, cold part of town. The merchants didn't make conversation. You didn't get to know the people downstairs. The bars were tough. It was a neighborhood of people who rented from out-of-town landlords.
    The downtown Castro District, where I eventually settled, was an entirely different place. The Castro has always had the feeling of a small town, the same families owning their homes for as long as a century. And the influx of gay men and women in recent years has only created another community within the community. There is a mellowness in the Castro, a sense of people looking out for one another. And of course there is the warmth, the sun.
    The day-to-day San Francisco fog often dies at the top of Twin Peaks just above the Castro. You can drive out of the chill of other neighborhoods and find yourself home under a blue sky.
    But it's hard to say what the Haight might become. Writers, artists, students still seek it out for the low rents, the poetry readings, the thrift shops, and the bookstores. It does have a lot of bookstores. And to prowl there on Saturday afternoons can be fun.
    If you're not looking for a runaway teenage girl. Then it becomes the proverbial jungle. Every bum is a potential rapist or pimp.
    ! didn't find her. I parked the car, ate dinner at one of the miserable little cafes-cold food, indifferent service, a girl with sores on her face talking to herself in a corner-and I walked around. I couldn't bring myself to show the pictures to the kids I saw, ask if they'd seen her. I didn't feel I had the right to do that.
    WHEN I got home, I found that painting her was the best thing I could do to get my mind off her. I went up to the attic, looked over the photographs, and set to work on a full-scale painting immediately. Belinda on the Carousel Horse.
    Unlike many artists, I don't grind my own pigments. I buy the best that is commercially available, and I use my paints right out of the tube, since there