Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [45]
A rap at the door broke my concentration. Brush in mouth, I walked down to the door expecting to shoo some drunk cadet and tell him that my door was not his dorm. Cigarette smoke and rowdy, bellied-up, bar noise met me as I cracked the door. I pulled it wider and she stepped from the shadows—a mink coat and pearls. I heard myself step back and suck in air. She smiled, shook her head and stepped past me. “You working?”
I looked at my watch and spoke around the edges of the brush. “Not anymore.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good.”
I shut the door and she let her eyes adjust to the dim light. The single bulb in the loft caught her attention. She craned her neck, spotted the canvas and began climbing the stairs. I followed, keeping my distance. She studied it several minutes, stepping closer, turning her head and then moving away.
“You mad?” I asked.
“No,” she said without looking at me. “I’m used to people stealing my picture.”
I handed her the canvas. “Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Why me?”
“’Cause you’re…you’re you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” She was quiet a minute and looked like she had something else she wanted to say. Finally, she said, “It usually takes somebody with Photoshop to make me look like that.”
I asked a second time. “You mad?”
“No, but I’m an easy target. Anybody can paint me. Don’t be like everybody else.” Her intensity surprised me. “People are always telling me I’m beautiful. Okay, so what. I’ve spent most of my life in front of cameras. People use my image to sell a product. That’s all. At the end of the day, they’ve used me—my face or figure, which by the way I had nothing to do with—to tell everyone else how they are not like me. Hence, you’re not beautiful. Or, you’re not pretty. Or, you don’t measure up.” Her eyes were glassy. She waved her hand across my studio. “If you want to make great art, something that can reach beyond time and space, find someone who isn’t and show them that they are. Paint the broken, the unlovely…and make them believe.”
A TIGHTLY WOUND spiral staircase led to the roof. At night, depending on the moon, streetlights and breeze, I’d often work up there. It was quiet, usually blanketed in a breeze and gave me a bird’s-eye view of the world. “Rooftop?” she asked. I nodded. “Can we?”
I climbed the stairs, pushed open the door and helped her up. The brick facade of my studio rose up above the flat roof and stood waist-high, separating us from the exhaust and noise of King Street. Fat pigeons, comfortable in their perch, sat cooing on the brick. I shut the door and they flushed, rising like Red Barons spiraling above us. She pointed at the closest, most daring purple pigeon. “Look, you little squirt. My daddy collects shotguns. You poop on this mink and I will personally hunt you down myself.” He arced hard right and flew off into the night.
She was a complexity unlike any I’d ever met, much less known. Serious one moment, laughing the next. But it was an ability whose transition that came at a price. She leaned against the brick and closed her eyes. “You better get me downstairs.”
“You okay?”
She nodded like a seasick sailor. “Migraines. Not much warning.”
We shuffled back down the stairs and by the time we reached the first floor, I was carrying her. I laid her in my bed, filled a ziplock bag with ice and placed it beneath her neck. My only set of sheets was dirty so I’d been sleeping on my sleeping bag laid out across the mattress. She palmed the mattress. “Nice sheets.”
“Sorry. After the other night and my WWF debut, they were a little bloody.” I pointed to the crumpled pile in the corner.
I took her shoes off, slid a pillow under her the backs of her knees and laid a blanket across her legs. Then I spread her mink across her arms and shoulders. She whispered, “You’ve done this before?”
“Yeah, my mom.”
She slept hard until sunup when the recycle truck brought King Street to life. I sat on a stool, my fingertips