Big Picture: Stories

Big Picture

Michael walked out and down toward Massachusetts Avenue, hearing the horns of the traffic, smelling the exhaust, remembering how once he was passed up four times in the rain in D.C. by cabbies who wouldn’t stop for a black man. The clincher was that two of the drivers had been black as well. It was a Thursday, the night of Washington’s so-called “gallery walk”—“so-called” because, although some of the galleries in Adams-Morgan and Georgetown were within walking distance from one another, most were scattered all over the place, near Dupont Circle, well up Connecticut and downtown. Michael didn’t really want to be there; he wasn’t sure why he maintained a relationship with the small gallery. Washington was not terribly important in the art world, but the owner had been an early supporter of his. The owner was a flamboyantly gay man who had sold the occasional painting when Michael was starving and really needed a sale. Now, sales were common, and welcome, but the news of them did little to move Michael beyond the sense of loss he felt knowing the paintings were gone. Joshua, the gallery owner, had talked Michael into the show, telling him that Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and New York were not the only places where art happened.

“Where do you live, my lovely Michael?” Joshua had asked over the phone. “Do you live in Los Angeles, my sweet? No, you don’t. Have you become so jaded and mainstream and, how shall I put it, American?”

It was the last word that had gotten under Michael’s skin. Now the wonderful irony was that to prove to himself that he hadn’t succumbed to some simple American idiocy about the location of art, he was having a show he didn’t need in the nation’s capital.

“Michael, oh, Michael,” Joshua called, leaning out of the doorway of the gallery.

Michael turned and looked at him.

Joshua waved frantically for him to come back. “I need you!” he called.

Michael walked slowly back to him, wondering where Karen was. He last saw her talking and laughing with a woman from the Post. She liked these things more than he did.

When Michael was close, Joshua said softly, excitedly, “I think I’ve sold the big one.”

A pain shot through Michael’s head like a ricocheting bullet as he considered the six-by-eight-foot canvas that he had thought about withholding from the show. He had included it because of the strength of the work, believing that no one would buy it. “People aren’t buying big anymore,” Joshua had complained, hearing about the piece. It was also priced at a whopping thirty thousand dollars, more than twice as much as any of his other canvases in Santa Fe, Los Angeles, or New York.

“The big one?” Michael said.

“Can you believe it?” Joshua pulled him by the arm into the gallery, squeezing his bicep happily, lovingly. He led Michael to the canvas, in front of which stood about fifteen people.

Karen came over, kissed Michael’s cheek, and wrapped herself about his other arm. Michael looked at her illuminated face, and found her way too happy. Karen had been his wife for less than a year; she was so young, innocent, as unblemished as her skin. He knew it was not the money that was exciting her, rather the electricity of everything, the people buzzing like shiny-eyed bees. She was guiltless, after all, but still it was disconcerting, agitating even, to see her as animated as she was, staring at the man in the double-breasted suit who stood so conspicuously before everyone, admiring the painting.

Michael took an instant dislike to the man, seeing his high-flown clothes as symptom, his exaggeratedly relaxed posture as contrivance.

“Douglass Dheaper,” the double-breasted man said, reaching to shake Michael’s hand. Upon taking it, he gave it a gentle, but imperious squeeze. “You are a genius,” he said, turning back to admire the painting. “It’s so daring, so reckless, impertinent even. Wouldn’t you say so, Laura?” he said to the woman beside him who nodded her painted face. “Laura agrees.”

“It’s thirty thousand dollars,” Michael said flatly.

“A steal,” Dheaper said. “It’s worth twice that.” He smiled broadly, “But you’ve already stated a price, so there’s no changing it.” He laughed.

The people standing around laughed with him. Karen laughed too, but a look from Michael silenced her, causing him to feel immediately like a bully.

“It’s not for sale,” Michael said.

Laughter caught in their throats as they gasped.

Douglass Dheaper grinned smartly. “I beg your pardon?”

Joshua stepped in. “No, I beg your pardon,” he said to Michael, pinching him on the arm.

Michael pulled away. “I don’t like this guy. He’s a phony and I don’t want my painting near him.”

Joshua pushed Michael into the office, closing the door, leaving behind Karen and the excitedly muttering mob. “Are you crazy?” he asked.

“Possibly. Definitely, if I let Mister Grease out there walk away with that painting.” Michael rubbed his arm where Joshua had pinched him.

Joshua pointed to the sore spot. “And there’s more where that came from.” He paused to catch his breath. “That man, grease or no grease, was about to spend thirty thousand dollars. That would have been fifteen thousand dollars for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What have you been doing? Is it the paint fumes?”

“I don’t like him,” Michael said.

“You don’t have to like him.”

“I don’t want to sell the painting.”

“That’s too bad. We have an agreement.”

Michael didn’t say anything, but walked across the room and looked at a Klee print.

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.

A gust of wind hit the canvas as he exited and took him several paces in the wrong direction, but he turned and got the edge pointed into the breeze and pushed back to the driveway where he had left Karen. The canvas was large enough that he didn’t see the goings-on at the van until he was very close, although he thought he heard Karen’s voice calling to him. When he could see what was going on he thought about running. Karen was leaning against the side of the van with her palms flat and her arms raised. There were two men standing with her, one going through her purse with a flashlight and another speaking on a walkie-talkie.

“What’s going on?” Michael said.

“Is this your van?” the man with the walkie-talkie asked. He had an accent, Middle Eastern, Michael thought.

“Yes. And this woman is my wife.”

“What is your business here?” the man asked.

“I was picking up a painting.” Michael directed attention to the huge canvas he was resting on his foot.

“This is the Moroccan Embassy. You cannot park in this driveway.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “We’re done now. See, I’ve got the painting and we’re ready to go.”

“Are you an American citizen?” the man asked.

Michael nodded.

“May I see your identification?”

“May I put the painting in the van first?”

The man snapped his fingers at Karen and said, “You, wife, hold the picture.”

Karen began to balk, but Michael said, “Please, honey, so we can get out of here.”

Karen held the painting up while Michael produced his driver’s license. The man studied it as the other man held the flashlight over his shoulder. Both men nodded, appeared satisfied, and then a blue-and-white police car pulled up and blocked the driveway. The Moroccan man with the walkie-talkie spoke into it and one of the cops spoke on his walkie-talkie and suddenly the night seemed, to Michael, to be full of static and muffled voices.

“What do we have here?” the fatter of the two fat cops asked.

“These people parked in our driveway.” the man with the flashlight said. “Appears it was a mistake.”

“Let me see your license,” the cop said to Michael.

Michael handed it to him, since he hadn’t yet put it away. The other cop walked around the van, examining it with his big flashlight.

“Okay, now turn around and put your hands against the van.”

“Wait a second,” Michael said.

The cop spun Michael around and pushed him against the wall of the vehicle. “Long way from home, aren’t you, Mr. Lawson?” the policeman said.

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“You staying around here?”

“We were in the Henley Park Hotel, but we checked out.”

“Your van?”

The other cop made a complete circle around the vehicle and now stood with his partner. The two Moroccans stepped back and were quietly watching.

“No, the van is rented,” Michael said.

“May I see those papers?”

“They’re in my jacket pocket.”

The cop reached around him, pulled the pages from his pocket, and looked them over.

“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.

“I had to get something from next door.”

The cops looked over at Joshua’s.

“It’s a gallery,” Michael said. “I had to pick up one of my paintings. This one.” He pointed to the canvas with a nod. “See, it’s got my name down on the corner of it. Michael Lawson. And on the back you’ll find my name again and my address on a blue card.”

The two fat cops talked to each other and cast a few glances at the gallery. The talking cop came back.

“It’s just a little late to be picking up stuff, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’re headed back to Denver and it was the only time we had. The owner left the door open for me and told me to lock up. The painting has my name on it.”

“It does have his name,” the until-then-silent cop said.

“You guys got a problem with these people?” the first fat cop asked the two Moroccans.

“No problem.”

The cop handed Michael his license, then gave the painting a good look, turning his light onto it. “You painted this, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Get paid for stuff like this?”

“Yes.”

“Hell, my kid could do that. Hell, he does do it.” He laughed and his fat partner laughed with him as they waddled back to their patrol car.

As Michael and Karen loaded the canvas into the back of the van, the Moroccan men watched them. The one who had spoken said, “I like the picture. Nice colors. Makes me homesick.” The other man nodded.

In the car, Karen was shaking. Michael studied her, feeling bad for her, hating himself for what he was putting her through. He knew he was acting like a shit, knew that she only wanted to be let in and he was taking unfair and cruel advantage, in his way laughing at her. He had all but made fun of her for being interested in the business of the art world. Why shouldn’t she have been interested? Simply because he was behaving, as Joshua had pointed out, like a childish and selfish dimwit?

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She looked at him.

He turned left, following the signs to the freeway. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you. I really love the way you’re interested in what I feel, the way you’re interested in my work.”

She seemed moved by this.

“Thank you for coming with me.”

She looked forward out the window.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Michael asked, merging into the fast-moving traffic.

“No,” she said.

“Tell the truth.”

“No.”

Michael decided then, that in some way, probably not a significant or pivotal way, Karen was not to be trusted — that her judgment was at best suspect or that she was simply a liar. Whether she was seeking to protect him or not, it didn’t much matter.