The Colorman (20 page)

“But what were you going to say,” Rain said her question quietly, like she was begging.

Ben sighed, shrugged, walked over to Rain and put his big warm hand on her shoulder. “They look like you painted them for a show. And maybe…maybe your head was going in a different direction. And…and I feel a little bit responsible.”

A little bit!
Rain wanted to disappear on the spot. Didn't want to do the niceties of hugging and saying goodbye, of being offered help getting the work back out of the gallery, of being reassured that she'll do “great with them” somewhere else. So she just grabbed two of the paintings and walked out without saying a word.

Quinn was still in the gallery. When she walked past him dangling a painting in each hand, Quinn turned and beamed at her. He quickly caught on to what had just happened and trotted into the viewing room to collect more, quietly excusing himself to Ben as if he were the housekeeper.

Rain sat in the driver's seat while Quinn brought the rest of the pictures out, draped them in their plastic sheeting and filed them into the back. She was dry-eyed but in shock.

“Lock it up,” Quinn ordered. “The van'll be fine here. You come with me.”

Rain did as she was told and Quinn held her arm as they turned the corner and ducked into the Lucky Strike on Broome. It was only two o'clock, but Quinn ordered two scotches and sat quietly with her while they waited for them. When the drinks arrived, Quinn raised his glass and gurgled in a decent, if exaggerated, brogue, “To the stoooarms brrrutilizin' the cooooasts!”

Rain threw hers back and Quinn ordered another round.

Rain gasped as she weakly attempted and then finally managed to say, “This is such a cliché.”

“Clichés are there for a reason,” Quinn said, raising up his glass and gesturing encouragingly to Rain with his elbow. “It's spothitting is what it is. A scotch in the afternoon would never be this tasty without a good ass-whipping to warm you up for it.”

Tears literally flew forward out of Rain's eyes as she laughed and cried at the same time. When she regained her breath she said, “This was so goddamn embarrassing! It's going to be a good laugh for a lot of people!”

“What people?” Quinn asked, mock-looking around. “Besides, do you think this was the first time some dick gallery fuck has screwed someone?” Quinn nodded knowingly. “Promises,” he laughed ruefully. “Nothing is actually real until it's a memory!” He put down his glass.

“But why am I such a naïve asshole?”

“That's the best kind of asshole to be,” Quinn said.

Rain's voice was still squeaky and constricted and her breathing was still all wrong. “I…Karl and I…I think it has to do with me kicking Karl out.”

Quinn didn't look up at her, just nodded slowly. “You think it's over for good?”

Rain laughed again and coughed. “If it wasn't before, I'd think this would clinch it.”

“Then good riddance,” Quinn declared. “You're better off.”

“I know you never liked him,” Rain said, not particularly defensive.

“Not an easy guy to love,” Quinn said. “A little tightly wound I think. He struck me as a little bit… How can I put this…he seemed kind of alien to me. I got the feeling he didn't particularly enjoy me or Stan or anybody but you.”

“He knew better than to say that to me. Though I can't say I have any perspective at all at this point.” Rain took a sip off the top of the new shot glass. She shook her head. “I feel really, really stupid. Ben just basically said he never would have shown me in the first place. Like this thing with Karl actually released him from the obligation, rather than the other way around.”

“Let me tell you something Rain,” Quinn said. “I've witnessed some hair-raising nastiness in the art world and I'm not gonna say that wasn't a bad one, but the good things are always a result of dumb luck and perseverance. You're gonna get flattened again and again and the only difference between a hobbyist and a real artist is that the real artist is just too dumb to get discouraged.”

“Cliché?” Rain said, raising her glass.

“Cliché,” Quinn echoed, clinking glasses with her cheerily. “Another one?”

“No! No,” Rain protested. “I've got to get that van back. I shouldn't have had two.”

Quinn looked thoughtful. His car-free city life had never involved such calculations. Then he brightened. “One more, then we grab you a coffee and a movie to sober up. I don't have to be back at work this afternoon.”

“I'll
do
it,” Rain said, imitating Stan in a way that made Quinn laugh.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Quinn teased, “you know what Stan would say about all this…”

“Hm,” Rain said, with an expectant smile.

“
Rain, Rain, go away
, ” he recited gravely and they both laughed. “
Come again some OTHER day!
”

Croton's rail yard was long and wide and stretched far north of the commuter parking lot and switching station. Rain drove in past the yellow and blue MTA pickups, dark green dumpsters and brown trailer sheds along the access road that ran between the rail cars and the river. Far past this was Croton's Municipal Garage with its mini-Alps of salt and gravel and its fleet of plows. At the end of the drive lay a few parking spots, two or three picnic tables and a boat launch where the access road sank gently below the water level and into the marsh flats. The water glittered with hot pink and dark blue reflections of the reddening Hudson sky. About a half hour south of Vanderkill, Croton's river front combined down-to-earth functional rail beds with an open public park and a little yacht club with its restaurant.

Driving away from the city, Rain had begun to feel the weight of her own head. She wasn't drunk anymore, just exhausted and beginning to feel everything from which those scotches had given her reprieve. Tired, vulnerable and sick, she drew the van to a halt just shy of the water at the launch. One other car was parked there, but it looked empty and Rain suspected it was a commuter avoiding the parking fees in the stadium-sized parking lot at the station. She put the van into park, shut the engine down and lowered her head down on the thin, oversized steering wheel.

The moment when Ben had turned back to face her started playing in her mind. The moment she recognized the meaning in his expression. It pressed in on her throat and face, coming unbidden and unstoppable. Rain pulled out her phone and hit the speed dial for Gwen.

“Haloo-aloo?” Gwen answered cheerily. Rain had gotten Gwen the cellphone for Christmas the previous year, despite Gwen's objections that she would never learn how to use it. It was too newfangled and she had no interest in being reachable. But she had adored the thing from the start and now knew more tricks with it than Rain did.

“Ra-ain. Is that you?” Gwen asked.

Rain's voice didn't work. She listened.

“Rain?”

“Yeah.” Rain managed to push out the word.

“I think I've got a bad connection, honey. Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Rain said.

“Is everything alright, dear?”

“Not really,” Rain's voice was all wrong. She was not sure why she was trying so hard not to cry, just that she might not ever stop. It might not ever be okay again. It was stupid. She didn't even really care about Ben Shuldenfrei anyway. It was probably the wrong place for her. Probably the wrong style of work. If it had gone well, if she had gotten the show, wouldn't she have been stuck with a style she had lost faith in?

“Rain, what's happened? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” Rain replied. She cleared her throat again and again, realizing that the attempt was futile. Just a tightness that wouldn't go away. She swallowed hard. “Ben Shuldenfrei took a pass.”

“I see,” Gwen said.

Rain waited.

“I don't think he really wanted to give me a show in the first place,” she continued. Gwen said nothing. “I kicked Karl out.”

“I thought he was gone,” Gwen said.

“He came back,” Rain said, “and then he left.”

After a silence, Gwen sighed. Clearly. Good connection after all. “Well, that's a good thing I suppose.”

“I think I was really stupid,” Rain choked, then erupted into a sob.

“Rain, sweetheart,” Gwen said, “in my experience there's only one way to get smart. And that is to be stupid sometimes.”

“I should have known,” Rain managed through her tears. “Ben was just offering it for Karl…”

“Look Rain, he's only trying to run a gallery. You can't be nice in this business. Artists' feelings cannot be a factor in these decisions. Critics and their good graces on the other hand…”

“But I should have known that. Why did I go in there?”

“Looking for punishment? I assure you I couldn't tell you, dear,” Gwen said. “Listen, you don't need Karl Madlin. He's not as powerful as he thinks he is. He has some friends and soon enough it won't be that interesting to block you anymore. What you need is to escape his influence. Do your own work. Then you'll find a place.”

“I'm not influenced.”

“Oh. Okay, alright. I think you were. You can't expect to be free of someone's hold on you in just a couple of days.”

“But he's been gone since August.”

“Karl's insidious. A sneak. The hooks he put in you will take years to work free.”

“You don't sound very sympathetic,” Rain said quietly. “I'm not sure why I called.”

“I think you've always known how I felt about him.”

“I guess I wanted to talk to Dad.”

“Yes, well, so do I, dear.”

Silence.

“Okay, bye,” Rain choked out and snapped her phone shut.

The whole world felt empty and shut off. Her father would have made her feel better. He would have made everything right again.

Rain watched the river turn purple under the tones of the spectacular deepening sky. Blending fields of crazy hues gestured dramatically across the horizon and stretched upward. Rain left the van to see it better. She had a clear view of the water, but the tracks lay in endless lines and crossings in the foreground. Rain opened the back of the van and took the box cutter out from the tool crate. Pulling one of the canvasses toward her, she slashed the plastic from it, yanked it free and held the piece up against the sky.

It was formulaic and facile. It was predictable and pompous. Deceitful and dead. It was just plain bad, and it was sticking to her like fly paper.

Rain gripped the stretcher bar and plunged her box cutter straight into the canvas. Past its gooey facade and into the weave. It stuck a little, the still-drying inner layers of paint hanging on to the blade and pushing the canvas inward. Yanking the blade out again, Rain hauled off and slashed the canvas straight through from left to right. A surprising waft of pleasure darted through her. She did it again. And then again and again and again. Ribbons of slashed canvas flapped and caught the fading light.

Rain frisbeed that one onto the ground and retrieved another one.

The stabbing and slashing, she knew, might look violent or angry, and while she was quite enjoying the self-absorbed drama, it was also a liberation she sought. Each stab was a release. Each slash unburdened barriers she hadn't realized she'd constructed. She went at it efficiently, methodically and passionately.

When she had destroyed the last one, Rain pulled the shreds from their stretcher bars just as if she were pulling leftovers from nearly spent Thanksgiving turkeys. Just…busy. Doing a job.

The exertion calmed her. She kicked around bits of canvas, grinding them into the dirt under her shoes. It was getting dark now, the light show of the Hudson River sunset spent. Rain took in the empty rail yard, the commuter trains still coming and going on the tracks further in toward the water.

The glow of the lamplight and hovering darkness made her self-conscious again. Rain kicked the mess she had made into a heap and bundled it into one of the dumpsters. She loaded the stretcher bars and larger pieces of plastic back into the van, retracted the box cutter and tossed it after them.

No one cares if you're not an artist, she thought. There are things in the world worthy of pain and self-sacrifice for which it is worth working past obstacles: curing disease, saving the environment, nurturing minds and bodies and spirits of needy children. But to be this distraught over a pass from a gallery? Doesn't even rank.

Rain started up the van and rolled quietly back to the entrance. The chain-link gates were shut. A thick steel chain was strung between poles and an oversized padlock secured them. Coils of barbed wire topped the fence. They seemed rather pointless seeing that she would need to get the van over, too.

Whatever gut feeling of release she had enjoyed during her fit was gone now, replaced by the certainty that she was just a stupid stupid girl. She felt dwarfed by everything outside her own stupid life, and she felt something she hadn't allowed herself in a long time: shame.

It all collapsed on her at once. The hollowness of her marriage. The emptiness in the wake of her father's loss. The sputtering, non-existent career. The waste of years on making art that was of no interest to anyone, that was useless, misguided and fraudulent. Her own personal just general distastefulness.

Her motherlessness.

Rain had stored most of her art supplies. Paints, brushes and solvents were packed in boxes. Photo compositions were pulled down and boxed away with them. Two empty boxes of hair dye and a pair of scissors lay next to the sink in the kitchen.

The high graphite wall where she had hung her work was barren. On it now, was only the small painting that had been there when she'd arrived, a pretty, loosely painted landscape signed A.M.

The place was stripped and dressed as a conventional little home, just with no one living in it. Empty tables, open space, the big mustard-colored couch gaping without the stacks of books and magazines. A case of good scotch sat on one of the tables. One bottle was opened and about four fingers down.