Haron sits on a wooden bench awaiting his train. A bashful man, forty-seven, with a boyish face and short gray hair, Haron has never been in a relationship with a woman—not counting his mother—that lasted more than six months. The women he is attracted to—women his own age or somewhat older than he—always seem to find him lacking, whereas women much younger than he seem to find him irresistible.
Haron’s most recent relationship—the one that lasted six months—was with a woman half his age, and though she adored him and wanted to marry him, and though he admired her wit and sensuality and emotional honesty, he was never comfortable with the idea of such a young beauty loving such an elderly pauper as he perceives himself to be.
He has seventeen minutes to wait, so he decides to finish the drawing he began this morning at the breakfast table. He makes his drawings in a large notebook using a fine-tipped pen and black ink. His drawings are of whatever he sees directly in front of him—whimsical, poignant, mysterious renderings of the placement of objects in space—tableaus imbued with the promise of imminent change.
For reasons Haron has never fully understood, nearly everyone who sees his drawings wishes to possess them, and his lifetime habit—since he was three years old—is to give the finished drawing to whomever asks for it first. More often than not, the person sitting or standing beside Haron at the moment the picture is completed becomes its owner.
Over the years, many people have urged Haron to sell his art, but he secretly believes that if he ever takes money for his drawings, he will lose his ability to draw. And since drawing has been the one constant pleasure of his life, he has never been willing to risk the loss.
Yet lately he has been thinking seriously about trying to support himself by selling his drawings. Until two weeks ago, Haron was a clerk in an independent stationery store. But when the store was swallowed by a gargantuan corporation responsible for denuding one of the last ancient forests on earth—and despite grave uncertainty about what his next employment might be—Haron quit his job.
Prior to working in the stationery store he was a sandwich maker, a bicycle messenger, a gardener, a night watchman, and a toll taker on the Golden Gate Bridge, but he has no desire to retrace any of those steps. His rent is low, his needs are few, and he would love nothing better than to make ends meet by making art.
But what if he takes money for his art, and the unseen powers of the universe punish him by drying up the astonishing fluidity with which he renders the scenes of life? This is the question that plagues him now, and only ceases to bother him when he is lost in the magic of making a picture.
He is, as it happens, on his way to discuss this very dilemma with a therapist he met one evening some months ago in a pub. He was finishing a drawing of two men playing darts—the foreground filled with the looming presence of a pint glass brimming with dark ale—when the therapist, making her way through the crowded tavern, caught sight of the drawing, asked if she might buy it, and was pleasantly stunned when Haron simply removed the gorgeous thing from his notebook, placed it in one of the heavy cardboard envelopes he carries for just such purposes, and gave it to her. She insisted he take her card and call her if he ever needed the services of a therapist—or if he wanted to go out with her.
Her card—Uma Ishkar, Motivational Psychotherapy—now resides on Haron’s refrigerator between the Van Gogh sunflower magnet and a Picasso Blue Period harlequin postcard, and never fails to remind him of the woman it represents—pretty and vivacious, her dark hair peppered with gray, her speech complex yet precise, her voice deep and full of confidence, her laughter infectious.
Uma was at the pub with a woman friend, but Haron is certain she is an unattached heterosexual. He has been afraid to call her because his previous experiences with women his own age or somewhat older than he have always ended sadly.
But so haunted is he by this question of taking money for his art, that he was emboldened to call Uma. When he explained who he was, she crowed with delight and went on and on about how much she loved his drawing—how studying the image had literally changed the way she looked at things.
However, when Haron said he wanted to make an appointment for therapy, the excitement in Uma’s voice diminished dramatically.
A FEW MINUTES before his train is due, the station fills with commuters. A handsome woman—tall and blond and tan—wearing an elegant business suit and sensible shoes sits beside Haron, glances at his drawing and exclaims, “Oh my. That’s fantastic. Is that your cat?”
“It is,” says Haron, adding the last few strokes to the picture of Moby, a blotched tabby, sitting atop the morning newspaper, Haron’s cup of tea in the foreground, the scene illuminated by slanting sunlight—the cat and newspaper and teacup casting marvelously curving shadows.
“I’m sure you must have a gallery representing you,” says the woman, her eyes wide with interest, “but do you ever sell your work directly?”
“Well,” says Haron, taking a deep breath, “if you’d like to buy this one, I’d be happy to sell it to you.”
“Really?” says the woman, stunned by his reply. “What are you asking?”
Gazing at his drawing, Haron finds himself attached to his creation in a way he has never felt attached to anything he has ever made.
“How does . . . seven hundred dollars sound?”
“Oh, but that’s giving it away,” she says, gaping at him.
“Well, I’ve always given my drawings away.” He smiles at her. “I’m so glad you like it.”
“Like it? I love it. Will you take a check?”
“I will,” he says, carefully removing the page from his notebook. “And I’ll put the drawing in a sturdy envelope so it won’t get damaged in transit.”
“I’ll take it straight to my framer.” She makes the check out for nine hundred. “And I must get on your mailing list so I don’t miss your next show. Do you work large?”
“I may,” says Haron, taking her check and her business card and sequestering them in his otherwise empty wallet. “Soon.”
JUST BEFORE HIS train arrives, Haron goes to the pay phone and calls Uma Ishkar, motivational psychotherapist, and asks if she would consider changing his therapy session to a dinner date—since he just sold a picture.
And Uma is positively overjoyed to say, “Yes!”
