The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [78]
The problem was that Hobart hadn’t produced anything noteworthy in years. “It’s the university,” he complained. “It sucks the creativity right out of you.” Caleb, barely scraping by with his stipend from Hobart and his adjunct teaching jobs, was not so sure that a secure job, with benefits, would do anything other than help his art. “Trust me, Caleb, art works best when it’s born out of desperation. The only reason I stay here is that someone has to teach the children so that we aren’t stuck with the same terrible art we’ve got now.” One night, Hobart asleep in his easy chair, Caleb sifted through the notes his mentor had been working on for weeks and found that they consisted of hundreds of representations of Hobart’s signature, nothing more. It was at that moment, tracing his finger along the lines that made up Hobart’s name, that Caleb realized that if something meaningful was going to happen, he would have to be the one to set it in motion.
That night, Camille in his bed, technically still his student, he outlined his plan. She wasn’t even twenty-one, and yet he understood that she had a keen eye for what would and would not work, how art should be made. Three months previous, entirely on her own, she had developed a performance piece where she stole expensive items from department stores and pharmacies and then held a raffle for people to win those stolen goods. She then used the money to pay back the stores, usually a significantly higher amount than the actual price, and she would explain her transgressions to the manager. Not a single store had decided to press charges and one department store wondered if she might be interested in continuing the performance. He was ten years her senior, would be fired from his middling job if anyone discovered their relationship, and yet he found it impossible to stay away from her. She was poised, confident, the product of an affluent upbringing, everything that he wasn’t. All they wanted to do was create something important, and they were beginning to understand that they might need each other to accomplish anything of value.
“This is a bad idea, Caleb,” she told him, smoking an expertly rolled joint with intense focus. “It’s got failure written all over it.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied. It could work, and if it did, Hobart would be the most famous artist in the country. If it didn’t, Caleb allowed, then Caleb would probably end up in jail for a very long time. “Great art is difficult,” he said, hoping that hearing it said aloud would convince him that it was true.
When Caleb unveiled the plan to Hobart, explained the potential ramifications of such an ambitious project, the older man smiled, waved his hands as if to say that he needed no further explanation, and said, “Yes.”
Camille would not let him do it alone. The day of the happening, she threatened to ruin the whole thing if she wasn’t allowed to take part. Caleb, secretly, was relieved to have someone accompany him, an accomplice, another name in the police blotter to take attention away from his own. For the most part, however, he simply welcomed the idea of collaboration, for which he had suspected he was best suited, and so they left his apartment that morning hand in hand, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
They set up in Hobart’s own office,