Big Picture: Stories (17 page)

There was a knock at the door and when Joshua opened it, there was Dheaper, still smiling, really more of a smirk, looking past the older man for Michael.

“Is he okay?” Dheaper asked.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Joshua said. “You know how artists can be.”

“Oh, I know,” Dheaper said. “And I’m still going to buy the painting. I have to now.”

Michael was staring at the man, confused.

Dheaper chuckled softly. “After that scene, the painting is going to be worth a bundle.”

Joshua nodded, sharing the chuckle.

“And that reporter broad from the
Post
is out there, too. This is terrific.” Dheaper looked right at Michael. “Good show, chum.” With that, he backed out of the room and began to close the door, saying to Joshua, “This is really outstanding.”

Michael fell into the chair behind the desk. “This is a dream. A nightmare.”

“So, it worked out,” Joshua said. “But that doesn’t change the facts. You’re nuts and childish and apparently don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Michael said and rested his head on his arms on the desk. “Or whatever you people do.”

“Oh, it’s that way, is it?” Joshua said.

“No, it’s not
that way,
” Michael said. “I don’t care what you do. All I know is, I don’t want to fuck you. And I don’t want you fucking me, which is what you just did out there.”

Joshua stormed out and was replaced by Karen. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“No,” he said without lifting his head.

“Oh, my sweet sensitive Michael,” she said, coming around the desk to him and stroking his head. The way she was talking, he expected to hear her say,
Did the big bad man steal your wittle painting?
but instead she said, “I understand. There’s so much of you in that canvas. It must be so hard.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said, standing. “Let’s go back to the hotel and go to bed.”

During the cab ride back to the hotel, Michael was staring absently out the window and Karen was still whirring, petting his arm with measured touches, but he could feel her exhilaration.

“You liked all of that, didn’t you?” he asked, turning to look at her in the dark.

“No,” she said.

“You’re still buzzing from it. I didn’t like it. I’m dying inside. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Karen said nothing.

“Listen,” he said, “I spent a lot of time on that canvas. I thought I could get that guy up on the price.”

“You didn’t think that,” she said.

“Yes, I did. Didn’t you hear him say it was worth twice that?”

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Don’t believe me, then. It doesn’t matter.” Michael looked out the window again. “That’s the last time I let that fucking Joshua handle a piece.”

“It’s his job to sell,” Karen said. “He’s not an artist.”

“Neither am I,” Michael snapped. “I’m a fraud, a phony, a pretender. I don’t ever know what the hell I’m doing when I put paint on canvas.”

Karen began to stroke his arm again.

Michael sighed.

In the hotel room, Karen sat at the desk and began to make a journal entry while Michael stripped to his boxers and watched television.

“Do you know why people never put televisions in paintings?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to say anything. “It’s because no matter how you look at it, it looks stupid. Look at it now.”

Karen did.

Michael tilted his head and flipped through a couple of stations with the remote. “Stupid, stupider, stupidest.” He muted the sound and watched the mouths work harmlessly. “I can’t paint anything that abstract.”

Karen continued writing and Michael stayed with the soundless picture, but he was seething inside, aching; the thought of that man sitting in his greasy, gaudy, probably tidy home with that beautiful painting was killing him. Yes, it was beautiful perhaps, not because of its appearance, its colors, or its texture, but because of what was between the oils and the canvas: the sweat, the insecurities, the bad dreams, and the headaches. There was one spot in the picture, a spot smaller than a postcard, that Michael loved. Although put on wet together, Naples Yellow and Permanent Blue had not fused into green. The two colors remained so painfully separate that Michael wanted to cry each time he saw it.

Michael sat up.

“What is it?” Karen asked. “Is your head okay?”

“It’s fine.”

“I hate it when you lie about the pain,” she said. “Where’s the phone book?”

“I don’t know. In one of the drawers, I guess.” She opened the drawer at the desk where she was sitting. “It’s not in this one.”

Michael opened and closed the drawers in the nightstands on both sides of the bed. Then he went to the closet and found it near the extra blanket. “Why would they stick the directory up here?”

“I don’t know,” Karen said. “Why do you need it?”

Michael didn’t answer her, but sat on the bed beside the phone and started through the pages. He dialed and waited, looking over to find Karen silently, but aggressively waiting for a response to her last question.

“Hello,” he said into the receiver. “Do you rent vans? You do. Do you have any? You do. What time do you close? Okay. This will be a one-way rental. To Denver, Colorado.” Michael looked at Karen. “I’m on hold,” he said.

“What are you doing?” she asked, coming around the desk to sit on the bed next to him, and looking at the yellow pages as if there were some clue to his thinking and actions there. “Michael?”

He paused her with a raised hand and then into the phone said, “Yes? How much? How much? Twenty-three hundred dollars? Are you sure?”

“Twenty-three hundred?” Karen echoed.

“I don’t care,” Michael said. “Can I come pick it up right away? A driver’s license and a major credit card. No problem. What? I don’t want to get it in the morning. No, I’m coming to pick it up now. I don’t care about that. See you in a few minutes.” Michael hung up.

“What in the world?” Karen said.

“Get packed,” Michael said. “We’re checking out.”

“Checking out? Wait a second. Let’s slow down here. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Michael stopped taking his socks and underwear out of a drawer of the dresser and said, “We’re going to take that painting home with us.”

“You can’t do that.”

“It’s my painting.”

“It’s sold.”

“I’m unselling it.”

Karen shook her head, almost smiling. “Would you please just sit down and take a minute to think about this?”

“No. Just get packed. Please get packed. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you get packed now. You’ve got a plane ticket. I’ll meet you in Denver.”

“Do you honestly think Joshua is just going to hand over that painting to you?” she asked.

“Do you honestly think I’m going to ask for that bastard’s permission?”

“Then how are you going to get in?”

“I’ll meet you in Denver.”

“You’re not going to break in, are you?”

Michael stopped packing and sat down in a chair. “I have to do this. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got to do it. Now, I’ve got,” he looked at the clock, “forty-three minutes to get over to the car-rental place. I’ll understand if you fly home. In fact, that’s a better plan. Okay?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Whatever. I don’t have time to discuss it either way.” He resumed packing.

“I’m coming with you,” Karen repeated and started packing her clothes along with him.

The car rental was part of a chain, and was located on New York Avenue not far from the hotel. The place was surrounded by a twelve-foot, chain-link fence with razor wire spiraled along its top, and fat circles of white light spilled from evenly spaced floods on the sides of the building. The cars and trucks huddled in clumps as if for protection, and Michael, even in his raving state, managed a pun silently, thinking the cars were waiting to be jumped. The Ethiopian taxi driver waited while Michael and Karen spoke to the intercom at the gate. Michael looked into the closed-circuit camera and spoke loudly.

“I’m here to pick up a van,” he said.

“What’s your reference number?” a static-covered, lethargic voice asked.

“You didn’t give me a reference number.”

“We give everybody a reference number.”

“Let’s just go,” Karen said.

“My name is Lawson. Don’t you remember talking to me? The van to Denver?”

“I remember, but I need the reference number,” the voice insisted.

“You didn’t give me one, you asshole.” There was silence from the speaker.

“I’m here to rent a van for twenty-three-fucking-hundred dollars. I want to know what your fucking name is so I can tell your fucking boss why I had to go to fucking Avis to rent a fucking van.”

The gate made a loud double-clack as it unlocked and Michael pushed it ajar, then waved the taxi driver on. He and Karen carried their bags across the asphalt lot, past the clusters of cars and vans to the door where they were briefly scrutinized by yet another camera before being let in. The attendant was seated behind a metal table, his pajama bottoms and bedroom slippers visible for all the world to see. Michael looked at the man, frowning. His age was a mystery—the ratty blond beard, crew cut, and the red eyes set into sallow sockets. Michael felt sick.

“I was sure I gave you a reference number,” the man said.

Michael didn’t say anything, but opened his wallet to find his license and credit card.

“This is a rough neighborhood,” the man said. “You can’t be too careful. They would just as soon eat your liver as look at you.”

“Who’s they?” Michael asked.

“Them punks.”

Michael put the cards on the table.

“All the way to Denver, eh?”

Karen nodded, looking around.

“Don’t worry ma’am,” the attendant said. “This place is sealed up tighter than a flea’s asshole.”

“How nice,” Karen said.

“But once you leave this yard, well, may God have mercy on you.”

“Shut up,” Michael said. “Charge it to the card and I don’t want the insurance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Michael, let’s forget this and take a cab back to the hotel,” Karen said, pulling at the sleeve of his jacket, pleading with her eyes.

“You won’t get a cab to pick you up here,” the attendant said. “Hell, if you was stabbed and bleeding to death, no ambulance would come here. Not at night anyway.”

“Just hurry up with the van,” Michael said.

The man finished the paperwork and Michael signed it, then stuffed his card and license back into his wallet.

“Here are the keys,” the attendant said. “Number one-five-one.”

“Where is it?” Michael asked.

“It’s out there somewheres.”

“Just give me some fucking idea where it is, man. Christ, you’ve got vans all over the place out there.” Michael looked out the window. Just seeing all of the vehicles under the puddles of light made his head throb. “Look, there’s three-two-seven. Let me have three-two-seven.”

The man didn’t want to change anything, but he scratched out the number on the form and wrote in the new one. “Okay, there you go.” He handed over the papers to Michael along with a different set of keys.

Michael gave the man one last hard look.

“Just honk when you’re at the gate and I’ll let you out.”

As they walked out to the van, Karen said, “Michael, please listen to me.”

“No.”

Michael unlocked the vehicle, Karen’s side first. The key stuck and turned abrasively in the hole, and then they got in. “Why do they all smell like this?” he said, inserting the key into the ignition and giving it a turn. The first attempt provided nothing but a click. On the second try the engine was slow to turn over, but did. Michael gunned it a couple times, extra loud, for the benefit of the man inside who was watching them through the window. He honked at the gate, the gate opened, and they drove out onto New York Avenue.

The journey through town to Dupont Circle was tedious and uneventful. At the circle Michael drove around twice before getting on Massachusetts in the right direction. After a series of turns he managed to locate Joshua’s gallery and parked the van in the circular driveway of the neighboring building. It was nearly eleven o’clock.

“You’re actually going to break in?” Karen said.

“Yes. You wait here in the van.”

“Michael,” she complained. “What about the alarm?”

“Joshua doesn’t have an alarm. He has a sign that says he has an alarm, but no alarm. He’s too cheap.”

“I’m scared.”

“Wait here.” He started to get out, then leaned back to kiss her. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Michael went first to the front door and, finding it secure, he made his way along the side of the building, looking for another way in. There were three levels and Joshua lived on the top.

Michael was convinced there would be a way into the gallery. The painting was a piece of him; it had come to represent that part of himself which was still real, that part which was about the art alone, pure expression, his soul, his heart. There would be a way in. He found a window at the rear of the building that, because of its age, was loose and rattled to the touch, and he managed to work the lock open with his pocket knife. He pulled himself up and into the storage room/kitchen, being careful not to knock over the empty cartons that had been stacked haphazardly on a table beneath the window. There were spots of light throughout the rooms, lime-colored night-lights plugged into the wall outlets; an awful green, he thought, but somehow soothing to the pain in his head. He paused at the open stairway and listened for movement in the building.

Michael found the office, the same room in which he had had his last argument with Joshua. He started looking through the drawers of the file cabinet. He wanted to find any documents that pertained to his painting. He found the agreement he had signed with Joshua and burned it in the fireplace. He also burned another paper that served more or less as an inventory of the paintings delivered and the delivery manifest that listed the number of paintings.

He then went out into the gallery and saw the painting there in the dark, glowing the way he always hoped his paintings would glow in the dark. Just a few feet from it, twelve inches above the floor, was one of Joshua’s hideous night-lights. Michael, with great difficulty, managed to get the painting off the wall. The canvas was not terribly heavy, but the size of it made it unwieldy. He stopped as he heard the creaking of floorboards upstairs, but the noise passed. He carried the painting to the front where he leaned the canvas against the wall of the vestibule while he unlocked and opened the door.