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[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static] [beeps]
When I said I was grateful for you keeping things short, I didn’t mean you had to only send one word, but okay.
I’m assuming this is your first question. Just the word Harry and a question mark.
[click, static]
Harry. What can be said about Harry... [click, static]
Well, first of all, she’s never been a huge fan of that nickname. But I’ve never been a huge fan of my full name and she never called me by anything else even though the nickname for my full name is plenty common, so...
Harriet. Her name’s Harriet. Harriet Statdler. If you happened to be really tapped into the West Village art scene, you might have actually heard of her. But I’m going to guess that...you’re not and you haven’t.
She was a painter. Is a painter. Because oil paints were deemed essential supplies that were worth going outside of our little boundary for, when trying to track down a coffee grinder so that we could actually use the whole bean coffee we found would involve “too much exploring” and be “too risky”.
[click, static]
As you might be able to guess, Harry was the more paranoid out of the two of us.
[click, staticc]
Which I guess makes sense. She lived a lot more carefully than I did. I mean, she had a legitimate—if not particularly profitable—career as a an artist under her real name. That’s how good she was at hiding what she did to actually make money. And I guess having a certain amount of paranoia is helpful for someone like that.
We...
[click, static]
Oh what the hell, it’s probably pretty obvious by now—what Harry and I did was not exactly what you’d call “legal”. The two of us...Pete, Richie, Don, fucking Francis Lennon—we were all part of a, uh...underground art appreciation group.
[click, static]
Well, Harry and Francis appreciated the art. I appreciated the money. [click, static]
There were other folks we worked with, and every job wasn’t always all of us, but that was the core group. Francis, of course, was never on the jobs, his role came...after. And sometimes before, when he had a good tip.
Harry was the art expert we would take with us. She knew everything about it, knew how to handle it, how to protect it, transport it. Would know if there was something particularly valuable that we might overlook.
[click, static]
I remember being so excited when she joined the team. The guys were never...rude or weird about working with a woman, but it was still...it was isolating, sometimes, being the only woman in my line of work. At least on all the crews I was on. So I guess I thought it might be nice to have someone around who got it, you know? Who understood what it was like to have certain people underestimate you the moment they saw you.
[click, static]
But Harry...well, Harry was not there to understand anyone. We were all gathered, planning the job, and I made one stupid joke about the piece we were targeting—I don’t even remember what the joke was, but the piece was one of those modern sculpture things that looked like it was molded by a five year old and—
[click, static]
You know, I probably said something pretty much just like that. And Harry, well, she did not care for it. She dressed me down in front of everyone, called me some kind of five dollar word like...plebeian or philistine or something and...that was that.
That was probably the friendliest interaction we had while working together.
[click, static]
So, uh, that’s Harry. She’s someone I used to work with. And she’s a total snob.
[click, static]
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[Harry?]