8 a.m.: I stare into space.
9 a.m.: brush in hand. I’m supposed to be working, but instead I’m brooding. I’m thinking about Hugo—his voice, his mouth—and then Lucas, alive in my dreams last night.
And my call display shows three calls from Erik, but there are no messages. Erik doesn’t call. Ever. I’m trying not to think about him and now this.
And what have I got to show for my efforts this morning?
A blob.
A distinctly non-geometric, un-Zen-like chartreuse blob on a background of smaller red blobs.
Christmas Travesty, I should call it, or Christmas Blob. Snotty Nose Blown onto Canvas is another option.
Pathetic.
Not only that, but I slept in this morning, and no amount of coffee is going to restore me to productivity today.
Basically, love is bad for art. Lust too.
I am jerked out of my morass of self-pity by a sharp tapping sound on my back door. I look out the window and see a stocky middle-aged man in a dark suit standing in my backyard.
Sal—my unlikely patron and friend.
I turn the painting around and open the door.
“Thanks for scaring the crap out of me,” I say.
“Aw, it’s good for ya,” he says, “besides, it didn’t look like you were doing much.”
I feel my face flush.
“Hey, kidding,” he says, then pulls me in for the European two-cheek kiss and simultaneously pinches my butt.
I pinch him back.
“Yow!” he says.
“Hi, Sal.”
“Hey, babe.”
No one but Sal has ever called me babe, but somehow coming from him, it works. Sal is a New World man, a second-generation Canadian, a self-made man with expensive shoes, an Alpha Romeo, and the vocal delivery of a construction worker.
“So, babe, I got your message,” he says. “Whadya got for me?”
My five recent pieces are stacked on the back wall, but I’d rather he didn’t see today’s work.
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” I say.
Once inside, I offer Sal a drink from the bottle of grappa I keep especially for him, but he declines.
“Too early,” he says. He settles into a chair with his feet planted wide and slaps his hands on his thighs. “Ya got coffee?”
“Sure,” I say, and try to hide a smile.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that shit, what’s funny?”
“You really know how to take up a chair, Sal.”
“You expect me to cross my legs like some kind of fairy?”
“Hey, I’m fond of fairies—both kinds,” I say, and take the espresso from the freezer.
“I know, I know. Thing is, my boys need space, they need room to breathe.”
I glance at his crotch. “Thanks for the visual.”
“Oh, if it’s visual you want, I can do better.”
“Don’t even think about it, Sal.”
He grins up at me with a hand on his belt buckle.
“Ya sure?”
“Quite,” I say, and start the espresso machine.
“Door’s always open.”
“Don’t you mean the fly?”
Sal guffaws and slaps his hands on his thighs again.
I shake my head.
“It’s good to see you, Sal.”
“You too.”
I hand him the coffee and sit down at the table. He studies my face.
“You okay? You look a little off.”
“I’m fine, Sal. I’m good.”
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“Okay,” he says, “but I don’t like to see you...you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He doesn’t like to see me falling apart.
I wasn’t exactly at my best when Sal and I met. Lucas was gone and I was jobless, drunk nightly, unable to paint. Bernadette was worried crazy. My parents, of course, were happy in their lifetime presumption that I was fine. I wasn’t.
I went to work as the nighttime security guard at a chichi Queen’s Quay condo building where I had lots of time to ponder the screwed-up state of my life and sip from a flask I kept tucked under the desk. Sal was a slightly annoying resident who came in late and liked to lean on my desk and talk about his girlfriends, his stocks, and the bars he’d been to that night. His visits alleviated the tedium of my job, though, and I started looking forward to seeing him.
One night someone called in a noise complaint and I found myself in the foyer of Sal’s stunning penthouse. He invited me to join the party, but I refused.
A week later, he asked me to come up for a drink after my shift.
I probably should have said no, but two things compromised my common sense: first, I liked him; second, in the brief time I’d spent in his foyer, I’d seen his walls. And his walls were covered, bursting, with unusual and fabulous paintings. The man had incredible taste, or a decorator with incredible taste. Either way, he had a Collection, and I had to get another look at it.
Turned out it was his taste. His taste, his collection.
“You’re thinkin’ I’m an unlikely collector,” he said when I asked him how he got interested in art.
I was tipsy and therefore blunt. “It doesn’t really fit with your image.”
He leaned back in his leather chair, loosened his tie and smiled.
“My first wife, the best one, somehow she loved me even though she said I acted like a thug. A rich thug, I told her.” He cleared his throat. “Anyways, she was artsy-fartsy. She’d drag my ass to museums and galleries and shit. I was bored but I felt so lucky to have her, I’d do anything. Then I got into it. We bought some stuff and I thought, shit, this is a big investment, I better learn somethin’. Plus I didn’t like my lady knowing more than me, ya know? So I did some research, went to the library, talked to some people, got into it.”
“Wow.”
“So now she’s gone, but I got the passion.”
“And the collection.”
“Yeah. That too.”
“What happened to her?”
He sighed, then leaned forward and refilled my glass. “Ask me somethin’ else, babe, I don’t like that question.”
That I could understand.
“Or maybe I can give you the full tour? I can tell you’re dyin’ to look around.”
“That’d be great.”
The pieces on his walls made me ache, made me feel high, crazy, reckless.
And Sal started to stand closer to me, to touch my shoulder or my waist as he guided me from one work of art to the next. Standing next to him, his breath tickled my neck.
Do you fuck a man for the sake of his art collection?
Of course not.
Do you fuck him for his excellent taste?
Probably not.
Do you fuck him for the artistic soul beneath the macho facade? Because you’re drunk and lonely and have nothing better to do?
Possibly.
Do you keep fucking him because you like him, even though he’s fat and bald and has at least three other girlfriends not to mention an ex-wife and a daughter your own age?
Yep.
For a while you do. And for a while you’re almost happy, if the absence of total misery and a good fuck to look forward to equal happiness, which sometimes they do.
Then Sal, while helping me move to a new apartment, found out I painted.
“Whoa, babe,” he said. “What’re you doin’ with all this? You do this?”
“I used to.”
“Used to, bullshit! What’s the matter with you?”
“Sal, I can’t. I can’t talk about it. Can you tape this box?”
“We’re not done talkin’ about this.”
“Okay. Another day though, okay?”
A couple of months later, Sal was still bugging me.
“What are you working on? Why aren’t you painting? What the fuck you doin’ workin’ security? You gonna let it go to waste, babe, or are you gonna put your balls on the line?” Etcetera.
I ducked and dithered and stonewalled until I was exhausted.
One day, I lay on his satin-covered bed in a post-coital, alcoholic stupor, and he started in again.
“You’re a fuckin’ mess, aren’tcha?” he said.
“Hunh?”
“About the art. You used to look at it like you wanted to eat it or somethin’, but now...”
“What?”
“Now you don’t,” he said.
“So? I’m used to it. I’ve seen it. I’d rather look at you.”
“Bullshit,” he said, and got up from the bed and started pacing naked around the room. “You’re avoiding it. That Kostabi in the hallway? The one you used to stand in front of all the time? Just today I saw you look away from it, like it might burn you.”
I was silent.
“You think I don’t know?” he said. “I may seem like a meathead to you—”
“No.”
“Or maybe I don’t seem enlightened, or whatever that shit is women want these days, but I’m not stupid, and I know an artist when I see one. I know when a person’s wasting their life, too.”
“Can I have a drink?” I said.
“And that’s another thing.”
“What?”
“You know.”
I looked away. “Sal, I’m fine.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, babe. It pisses me off.”
I looked back at him. He stood at the foot of the bed, eyes glaring, penis dangling, hands on hips, looking like a bulldog.
“What would it take to get you outta this sorry state?”
“I don’t want out of it. I’m fine.”
“Right. Listen, much as I think you’re a great piece of ass, I don’t think the drinking and the fucking are gonna do it for you long term.”
I shrugged.
“Fine, your funeral, babe,” he said, and walked out of the bedroom and shut the door.
Great piece of ass. Humph.
I found him an hour later staring out the window at his million-dollar view of downtown. I reached out to touch his arm.
“Sal...”
“I got an idea,” he said. “I’m gonna get you fired.”
“What?”
“From downstairs.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great idea.”
“And I wanna buy all your stuff.”
“What!”
“Some of it’s shit, but some of it isn’t. I can do something with it.”
“Like what?”
“Like what? Like sell it, whaddya think like what?”
“Oh. Well—”
“Wait, I’m not done,” he continued. “And don’t say no right away.”
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna buy your stuff, and be your, whaddya call it? Patron. I’ll be your patron and like, pay you to paint. But you gotta be disciplined, do it every day.”
“And?”
“And you gotta stop drinking—it’s shit for you, babe, and it’s gonna get worse.”
“What else?”
“Not much—just I own what you produce.”
“What if I don’t produce anything?”
“No paintings, no money.”
“What if you don’t like any of it?”
“Tough shit for me then, but I doubt it’ll happen, babe.”
I moved to sit on the couch.
“Sal,” I said, “I don’t know if I can. It hurts to paint the kind of stuff I was doing early on, it puts me in a bad place.”
“Hey, start simple, you know? Abstract. I like that rectangular stuff, for example. Could you do more of that?”
I considered. “Maybe, but...”
“Come on, whaddya say?”
Of course I said no.
Of course he refused my refusal and insisted I think about it. Then he had a contract drawn up and couriered it to me with a big check for my completed works to show his good faith—a check big enough for a down payment, if only for a tiny bungalow in the east end.
Coincidentally, I got fired because Mrs. Teimen on the fifth floor said she smelled alcohol on my breath and told the management she thought I was “fraternizing” with one of the residents. All true, unfortunately.
I took the contract to my mom’s lawyer who suggested a few changes, including a renewal clause that would allow us to re-evaluate annually.
It was time to get my shit together.
Sal’s smile practically cracked his face open when I when I presented him with the modified contract. We signed it, got it witnessed, and went to dinner to celebrate.
“I promise you, no more drinking after tonight,” I told him. “You’re right about that.”
“Good girl,” he said, and ordered a bottle of Dom.
Later we screwed like it was our final night on earth, until at last I slumped over him and buried my face in his neck.
“So, babe, that’s it, hunh?” he said. “For the fucking, I mean.”
His voice was hoarse, his eyes knowing.
I ducked my head, swallowed. “Probably. Yeah. Don’t you think?”
“I figured that’d be the deal when you said yes.”
“Well, you know, otherwise it’s a little...”
“I know, babe, I know.”
“Okay.”
“This wasn’t gonna be forever anyway.”
“No.” I smiled at him and then lay my head on his chest.
“I’ll miss ya. I kinda love ya.”
My throat tightened.
“Me too,” I said.
“And you’re a great fuck. Don’t ever let anyone tell ya different.”
Such a charmer, that Sal.
And he basically saved my life, so I try not to disappoint him.
He likes the five new pieces, pats me on the back.
I help him carry them to the trunk of his car.
“These’ll do good,” he says, and then kisses my cheeks again, gets into the vehicle, and drives away.