I got a few days’ work painting for Lou Conte, a nice guy in a high-rise. On Tuesday afternoon the doorman in his building chewed me out for riding in the elevator. He said, “How did you get upstairs this morning? How?” The main elevator is burled walnut. It was very clean, and riding in it, I wondered why anyone might ever think to deface anything so beautiful. Not that it was defaced. The doorman marched me around back to the service entrance. He said, “Our tenants don’t want to come home and find people like you in the lobby.” I just happen to be a college graduate, I wanted to say. But of
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