Dead Artist

by Ivan Jenson

  He had been stood up so many times he could be listed in the Guinness book of records. Eli used to say with his impasto Israeli accent, “You Milo are a tortured soul. You wait for these women to arrive, rearranging your studio, scrubbing, mopping, buying cheap beer, chips and tequila. Why do you do it?” And, he did it on a 99 cent shop budget. Milo could wine and dine women from the confines of his cave-like studio at a fraction of the cost most bachelors spent.

  “Milo?” Mr. Handsome called.

  He stood at the balcony rail and a crowd formed at the terrace doors. He looked over at worried faces, and looked through the confused looks on what seemed like total strangers. His mind returned to the streets, and his other famous hunting grounds – the Met and Barnes and Noble. The bookstore was a nightclub, tall skim lattes were the liquor, and the whole place was just a singles mixer without name tags. Milo brazenly struck up conversations in Barnes and Noble, trawling the place for single women. One he had snared told him her name was Cleopatra, and claimed it was her birth name. Milo didn't believe it. He didn't care. He listened while she said she was looking for work, and that she might take up work at a new gallery in Chelsea. Great, something in common. He gave her his card and moved on. The rule is, they must call him.

  And she did, that same night. She came to his cave, ate his spicy beans and rice, drank his Shlitz beer from the can, did some tequila shots, and devoured his salad. They had apple sauce for desert, and Milo air popped popcorn. Puffed kernels shot into the air like Fourth of July fireworks and he wasn't going to bother to sweep them up. It made the kitchen festive, and he was celebrating the conquest of a beautiful girl. It didn’t take long for them to get drunk and start feeling good. She told him sexy risqué stories, and then later as they sat close she took them all back and claimed none of them were true. Confused, but already having made the investment in her, Milo went for the kiss and she said “she doesn’t feel it”, and that this “was not enough for her.” But she said, “I can be your girlfriend for fifty dollars an hour.” She'd even sleep over, but not in his bed.

  This didn't fit Milo's budget, but he was drunk and there was a fifty in his wallet. In one hour she did everything to him and nothing for him, because that wasn't what he wanted. All he really wanted was, was...something else.

  “Are you happy?” The worried host of Milo's last cocktail party in Manhattan asked again and again.

  And then, Milo found he couldn’t stop the tears and said, simply, “No.”

  That's all he could remember.

  It was time for New York to spit you out.

  So Milo left New York for Michigan to have his nervous breakdown elsewhere.

  Nick was always reminding Milo that, “Leaving New York, disappearing and getting off the streets was the best thing that ever happened to your artistic career. It gave you all the artistic advantages of dying, without the downside. Things always happen for a reason.”

  Milo lived with constant paranoia as he created an extensive inventory of new canvases. Would Nick kill him off so that he could market a trove of works by a dead artist?

  Milo Sonas. Dead artist.

  Maybe Milo was a bit obsessed with death during this peculiar time when his mother kept dying and coming back to life. He never knew if he was mourning her imminent death or rejoicing her rebounding health.

  It was a time of great duality. He seemed to have two things happening simultaneously. Here he was on the cusp of a major career re-emergence, a chance to be world renowned, but at the same time his mother was in terrible shape. He had heard people say that tending to somebody who is dying could actually be a beautiful, memorable experience. He had read about one middle aged woman who found that tending to her grandmother’s death was so touching that she decided to seek work at a hospice after her grandmother’s passing. She just couldn’t get enough of it.

  Milo found his mother’s imminent death to be like an anchor tugging him down into an abyss.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I think I understand now why you came here,” Milo said. Samantha was in the bathtub.

  He knew it was because they had been through 9/11 together. Prior to the moment when the planes hit the Towers, they had been drifting apart as lovers. But as soon as it happened, as soon as he saw the footage on TV, and then looked outside his door and saw the people heading up Second Avenue covered in white dust, that is when he called her and pleaded with her to be with him. And he still believed that her subsequent availability was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. The phenomena of having a girlfriend, somebody in his life during that hellish historic time prolonged his psyche's survival.

  His phone call had awakened her, and she was still groggy when he said: “Two planes have just hit the Twin Towers. Come to me, please come to me, I think it’s war, and if it's the end of the world I want you here with me.”

  He stepped outside with his cell phone, and he saw his tall lanky neighbor who was a dead ringer for Kramer in Seinfeld. And instantly their long standing grudge disappeared and they shook hands. His neighbor was a real “Hey Joe” character and swore, “I will personally beat the shit out of whomever is responsible for hitting those Towers.”

  Samantha took the subway from Queens and made it to Milo’s cave before the City cut subway service. That afternoon, thinking it might be the end of the world, they made love and miraculously that day her psycho-sexual condition subsided and her body accepted him. They came together like patriotic clashes of chimes. She joined him on September 12th when he had no choice but to get back to work and sell his art on Union Square, though he felt like he shouldn't have gone out to the streets out of respect for the victims. But he was broke and he had no choice. He sold a painting of Lady Liberty on 9/12 for three hundred and fifty dollars, and the customer blessed him. In September of 2001, he symbolized one of the things that made New York City great – genuine hard-working street artists.

  As he rolled home from that sale he ran into an art world acquaintance who also blessed him. The man was a journalist for an obscure downtown periodical and they chatted for a bit. This man told Milo that he knew of an artist who had won a competition to have a studio set up in the Twin Towers, and that the artist had chosen to spend the night in his studio. He was there when the Towers fell. As the writer spoke, Milo suddenly recalled that he had also entered that World Trade Center art competition. When Milo got back to his place he searched through his filing cabinets and found the application to that foundation, it was filled out but never sent.

  With night came thunder above the great city. Samantha and Milo couldn't help but think that New York was being bombed.

  And ashes filled the air like a macabre Christmas snow and Milo had to wear a tee shirt tied like a bandana around his mouth when he went out to pick up some items from the Korean grocer on the corner. Those first few days it seemed as though all of New York was suffering together from a collective neurosis. Milo had canceled his appointment with Dr. Hyatt that week because the doctor was on the eleventh floor and because he didn’t want to ride in an elevator. It also seemed as though the world had fallen in love with New York all over again, just as Milo fell back in love with Samantha. Milo’s family had called trying to convince him to take a train to the Midwest, but Milo couldn't bring himself to leave the drama, the love making, the feeling of camaraderie on the streets, the street selling, the city, the strangely exhilarating feeling of survival in a time of doom.

  It seemed Samantha was waiting for Milo to do something, to make his move, perhaps to propose. He never did. And so when Thanksgiving came, she unconsciously took revenge on him by refusing to get out of bed and catch the flight with him to Gold Haven.

  And now, seven years later, Samantha said to him, “We shared 9/11 together, and I have come to see you now. Some people can say we will always have Paris. But we can say we will always have 9/11. And even though, in so many ways, it was a terrible time, in some ways, I am ashamed to say it, it was the most wonderful time o
f my life. Because it brought everyone together, including us.”

  They both remembered how for a time it seemed that everybody in the city loved each other.

  Milo reminded Samantha that she stood him up on that, oh so important Thanksgiving after the attacks.

  “My father didn’t want me to continue seeing you. He said you weren’t ambitious enough and that he wouldn't support me if I kept seeing you. I’m sorry.” She paused and looked to him for a reaction. “And then I heard you left New York City. Why did you leave?”

  “I just didn’t want to live the rest of my life in that cave.”

  “I understand.”

  “Plus as you know I had a pretty bad nervous breakdown.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay now, there is a happy ending. And old collector of mine, he believes in me. His name is Nick.”

  “Sometimes it only takes one person to make a difference.”

  “Samantha will you stay here, until my mother is gone?”

  “Yes of course I will, no matter how long it takes.”

  “Well, it’s not like we are rushing her, she will go when she is ready to go.” Milo smiled.

  “And more than that, I want to help Vincent out as well. I sense he is as lonely as you are. There is a friend of mine, I’ll call her. I just know they would hit it off. She doesn’t have much happening in her life right now and she is just the type to do something spontaneous. And I hope she will be able to actually see Vincent, like I can. Somehow I know he will be visible to her.”

  “You are the only person that I know that has been able to see Vincent.”

  “She will be able to, I just know it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  What so amazed Milo was how his mother lost interest in food and water, yet her biological mechanisms seemed to sustain themselves, waiting for each member of the family to fly out to Gold Haven to see her one last time.

  And, in contrast to Sonia's dwindling health, Milo and Samantha were rekindling their post-9/11 romance.

  Samantha was a simple girl, she loved jangling new rock bands that were rough around the edges, she loved boys who sang with high voices, she especially loved when they screamed and hyperventilated into microphones. She wore jeans with frayed ends that dragged on the ground picking up dust and dirt and grime. And so far, during her visit, she had yet to wear shoes, instead she either went barefoot or wore flip flops.

  Samantha called her friend but found that convincing a New York girl to come out to Gold Haven, Michigan was a hard sell. Her friend was living footloose in Brooklyn. When Samantha got off the phone with her friend she said to Milo, “She says she doesn’t want to come to some square bible belt community at this juncture in her life. And she said she certainly doesn’t want to hang out with some poor artist named Vincent. I didn’t tell her who he really was. I wanted to surprise her when she came out. I will try her again later.”

  Vincent was in the hotel room when she relayed this discouraging information. He was in a particularly testy mood having gone online to the Sotheby’s web site where he once again saw the astronomical prices that contemporary art was selling for, and this was art made by living artists. And it certainly didn't make him feel any better to see his paintings sell for tens of millions. He complained that he was born in the wrong century, he hated being a redhead, and he was bummed that he was spending eternity watching actors like Kirk Douglas or Jacques Dutronc play him with such annoying mannerisms.

  “What you need is the same thing you have always needed, and that is to get laid.” Samantha said.

  “A lot of good that will do me now.”

  She continued, “And more than that, you need to be loved, and I know just the right girl for you. It will just take some coaxing to get her out here. But don’t worry, I will do it.”

  Milo noticed Vincent was nodding off, he was falling in and out of consciousness, “I don’t think Vincent is listening. He has not been sleeping well. He has developed a sleeping disorder, and if he continues I will have to take him to a crisis intervention.”

  “Wait, before you do that let me see if I can convince my girlfriend to come and then everything will be alright. We have the chance here to change the course of history and make Vincent Van Gogh happy.”

  Milo’s troubles were mounting. He was running out of money and it was time to tell his dealer that he needed an advance against future sales.

  Milo always ran through the money his dealers gave him. He spent it on frivolous CDs. New running shoes. Trips to the movies with Picasso (Van Gogh took no interest in the movies). Pablo was visible to the ticket takers so Milo had to pay for him, and all the movie tickets, even if they were for matinees, were setting Milo back financially. Pablo found it humorous how Milo worried about money. “There is no such thing as money in the sixth dimension,” he'd say.

  Yes, the money was all spent.

  He spent the last of it on a particularly stimulating massage at a local Nail Salon called Shangri-La from a rather attractive twenty-something Asian masseuse. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked while slowly massaging his buttocks. “No,” he said, and then followed her direction to turn over. Then, she serviced him with a surprise.

  No, this was not a good time to go broke, not now, with Samantha visiting? Of course, there is seldom a good time for having no money. But, her visit was totally unexpected. Milo never seemed to achieve balance. Sometimes he would have love and sex but no money. And other times he would have lots of cash and nobody to spend it on. It was like his art. There were times when he would roll out his cart and sell out in minutes, and other times (like one terrible August) when he was unable to even give his paintings away. “When would life be orderly?” Milo wondered. Love, affection, bank account, home... so much was pending on the business savvy and know-how of Nick.

  And, yes, it was wonderful that he was now signed exclusively to a sales agent. But money wasn't flowing yet. And it was times like these that he wished for his former street selling days, quick cash, in and out. It was now six o'clock. Samantha was sleeping, and it would have been a perfect time to roll out to the good ole Cooper Square and bask in the mad rush of the after-work crowd as they got off the subway and headed home. Oh, but to witness the blur of personhood and the pattern of certain repeating faces. There were those who used to greet him, and those that didn’t. He remembered the long legged woman who was a professional dog walker as she walked five dogs from a single lead. There were the flirting NYU and Cooper Union students. And often he would see ex-girlfriends or one-time lovers pass. And if he ever had anything on his mind or if he just wanted to vent, Milo would approach total strangers for free talk therapy. Milo had a keen intuition about strangers and he could always find somebody to talk to -- a fellow vendor, a security guard or a young woman with time to spare. Mostly young women. Oh the street days!

  “You know what I think?” Samantha said. It was the middle of the night and Milo's eyes were wide open and pondering. “I think that you are painfully, excruciatingly lonely. And I think that is why Pablo and Vincent visit you. It's as if you are beyond having any friends in the real world. It’s like you had to reach to another dimension for camaraderie. But I'm here now, Milo and everything is going to be all right. And Vincent, if you are in this room, hearing me, even though I can’t see you at this moment, listen, everything is going to be all right for you too.”

  Samantha had a theory about Milo. It was simple. Because he was brought up by a welfare father, he lacked a strong paternal figure to model himself after. And, because he was a failed novelist, his father did not command Milo's respect. Milo needed dead modern artists to fill his void.

  That night Milo dreamed his father was in a small room with a window looking out to a summery scene. His father was shirtless and hairy as he typed away on a manual Smith Corona. He was working on the same novel he always worked on, the one about his nympho first wife. He revised and revised, crumbling papers and throwing them to the
floor. Next to his desk, the television played a black and white Robert Mitchum movie. The sound was off. A hot August breeze came through the window. His father was short, whiskered, and wore his hair long. It fell into his dark green eyes. Milo and Samantha enter the room. Father Sonas says, “It's a pleasure to meet you Samantha, and you should be tickled to be with Milo.” He stood. “I got wind through the grapevine that wonderful things are soon to transpire in his life, and he will soon be transported into the stratosphere of fame and immortality. I am very, very proud, like I always told him: don’t do as I say, do as I do. No, that's not right. I mean, don’t do as I do, do as I say. No, that's not right either.” His father couldn't organize his thoughts. The words echoed, and then Milo woke up.

  As Samantha slept beside him, she seemed to be smiling, as if she might have shared his dream. Milo thought about all that would be left when he was gone. The paintings, those captured moments, that is all that would remain, that is what he would be remembered for. His life would only be known for the way he made colors slide, or peel, or fold. It was all about the contrast of blue against yellow.

  He mused. Maybe he would be remembered as the loneliest artist who ever lived, an artist who, by sheer luck, was rescued from desolation by Nick. He would be remembered as an artist with an estranged and angry brother named Ray who was so damn hard to get along with. Milo could never figure out his brother, so dark and handsome and yet so bitter. He was bestowed with luckier genes, yet could never be satisfied. Being a house painter could be frustrating for a would-be artist. After all his brother's only release came from his calculated seductions of the house wives mocked and imprisoned by the very white walls he painted. Ray had a keen ability to seduce other men's women. It always had to be another man's woman. He made love to these married ladies in their own homes, on the tarp. It was the risk of being discovered that made the fucking feel like it was shot up with crystal meth. And he was caught only twice, in one case the husband did not resort to gun or fist but instead he broke down, fell to his knees and wept. And then demanded to know the sexual details. As long as he knew each and every position, then he would not press charges. The other husband did fight Ray, with fists, and they duked it out John Wayne style, mano o mano, as top forty music played on the paint splattered transistor radio on the ground. The husband was beaten to a pulp, and this time it was the wife who broke down and wept.