The Medium of Desire

by Alex McGlothlin

  She started to move, and he scooted away, but it became readily apparent she was going not for him but a cigarette.

  “I make you so jittery,” she said. She rested the cigarette between her lips and lit it.

  “You don’t seem like a smoker,” he said.

  “I hadn’t taken myself for a painter either, but I am today.”

  He nodded agreeably.

  She took two drags of the cigarette and flicked it in the distance, just as she must have observed him do.

  “What do you want to do now?” she asked, again leaning towards him. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to do a lot of things to her, but he knew this was his last chance to avoid a decision he would regret. He couldn’t risk a guilty conscience.

  “I’m afraid I have some other things to get to,” he said.

  “Yea?” she said, a little hurt in her voice.

  “I’m afraid so. Let’s do this again soon. I’m really, really pleased with your progress. I think this is going to work out phenomenally.”

  That perked her up a bit. “You really think so?”

  “I can definitely tell.” he said. Then he slid off the couch and walked over to her painting of the apple and studied it, pretending to continue to study it while she washed up and gathered her things. He wanted to avoid walking her to the door, but when she asked he lacked a device by which to say no. He tried to follow behind her, but she walked so slowly. He took the lead, but she quickly caught up. They reached the door at the same time. He reached for the handle, only she stood too close for him to slide it open without touching her.

  “Excuse me,” he said, nervously. She stepped aside with a large grin on her face, and he smiled back at her.

  “Ciao,” she said, over her shoulder, holding his gaze as she walked without looking where she was going. He slid the door closed.

  He exhaled and rested his forehead against the lukewarm steel door. Dear God.

  He compulsively picked up his brush and began painting, trying to think about something else when there was nothing else. He painted an orange-jerseyed basketball player towering over and blocking the shot of his adversary; he painted a man in a coat and tie walking a city street looking glum with his tie undone and his college degrees and other office effects in a cardboard box. He painted two Native Americans overlooking the sunset on a cliff while a small line of smoke rose skyward on the far horizon; he painted Olivia, walking along a sidewalk looking over her shoulder. He painted in two hours what would normally take him two weeks. By the time his arms fell limp and numb, it was seven in the morning, and he curled up on his sofa in the studio underneath a drop cloth, as satisfied as he could remember.

  Chapter 10

  A pink glow ribboned across a silver blue sky as Paco and Brett hurried on foot to a birthday party for their childhood friend, Tyreed Washington. Tyreed had been a basketball star in high school and then at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in the wake of having signed a lucrative contract extension with the Portland Trailblazers, he invited people from all over town for a throw down on the rooftop of the Quirk Hotel.

  “I really want to see the sky before sunset,” Brett said.

  “I really wish we’d considered that food truck on the showroom floor,” Paco said.

  Paco was referring to the shiny $165,000 food truck they’d been offered earlier in the day, before opting to put a deposit down on a far less-expensive cart.

  “You know they do that shit on purpose. They put their top dollar item up front, because if they show you the one that’s reasonably priced in the back, then no one buys the top dollar one, and they make a fifth the commission they could otherwise. It’s part of the problem with America. It’s all driven by desire, but what’s fucked is they plant these desires in us we didn’t even know we had. Like you didn’t know you liked that truck we saw until you’d seen it, and now the one you got, the one you needed, looks less appealing by comparison. That should be a crime.”

  They walked further down Franklin Street, past the decadent Jefferson Hotel, a chalice of Richmond’s old-world charm.

  “The place in Alexandria has so much more stuff, I can’t believe you’re too chicken shit to roll up there,” Paco said.

  “I’m the financier. I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  “You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”

  “I wouldn’t be living up to the role if I wasn’t,” Brett said.

  Paco’s face turned flush red, and he muttered what Brett assumed were Portuguese obscenities. They walked through the lobby of the opulent hotel, Richmond’s sole boarding house that had dared chuck a historical style in favor of an L.A. chic, a décor that practically compelled guests submit positive TripAdvisor reviews. Where other would-be rooftop revelers were being turned down by a familiar bouncer, the guys were allowed to pass through the red velvet ropes to the elevators, without the indignity of submitting their names to the scrutiny of the clipboard.

  No sooner than they started their ascent, Paco pushed the emergency-stop button and the elevator jerked to a halt.

  “What the hell man?” Brett asked.

  Paco opened his hand, exposing a joint rolled into a perfect white cylinder, rolled so tight it would have made a cowboy blush.

  Brett reached to disengage the emergency-stop button, but Paco smacked his hand away.

  “What the hell?”

  “Let’s smoke this thing.”

  “Here?”

  “I don’t want to blaze around two hundred people. I don’t know who’s cops.”

  Brett wanted to lodge a protest, but before he could glue his argument together, Paco flared the end of the joint in an orange-red tuft of Rastafarian smoke. Smoke wafted and filled the narrow box, immersing them in a dense fog of tetrahydrocannabinol. They took turns, taking long, hard drags until the thing was so short it burned fingers. Paco licked and put the joint out on the palm of his hand.

  “What’s going on with the girl?” Paco asked. “You hitting that?”

  “Which girl?”

  “Don’t be a dummy.”

  “Olivia? Nah,” Brett said, waving off Paco’s question. “She’s my student or something. I wouldn’t take advantage of her like that.”

  “Why not?” Paco asked. Brett wanted to get defensive or even reprimand Paco for teasing him, but Paco was being quite genuine.

  “She trusts me, and I’m not used to that. I’ve never taken advantage of my models, so I’m definitely not going to take advantage of a student.”

  “Never taken advantage of your models?” Paco asked.

  There was Teresa, of course, but that was different. They had dated before she modeled for him. He had painted beautiful, magnificent paintings of Teresa, which had opened up a whole new clientele to him. Sales of those paintings had set his current rates, and for that he was thankful. His warm feelings had turned to revulsion when she made out with a douchey lawyer, right in front of him, one night when she’d had too much to drink. Brett hadn’t been able to paint for months afterwards, and had it not been for a short-term loan from Salina, he would have been evicted from his apartment. With Salina’s loan came the requirement he act on her advice, and lucky him, it turned out she actually knew something about recovering from heartbreak, and after a couple of months he was standing in front of easels again, painting smoke just like before. Since then, he had tried to keep his love life and painting life as separate as practical, which was easy, given he hadn’t dated since. He had wondered how long he could hold out. Maybe he’d discovered his limit.

  “Can we go now?” Brett asked. It was a well-kept secret that he occasionally suffered from acute bouts of claustrophobia.

  Eyes as red as battlefield dirt, Paco pulled the emergency stop button, and they resumed their ascent. The elevator doors opened and in flooded house music, a sea of heads bobbing underneath a pastel-streaked sky.

  “I need a drink,” Paco said.

  “I want a soda,” Brett replied. “I’m buzzing
.”

  They stood in line at the bar, two rows back from service.

  “If it isn’t the city boys,” a familiar voice called out. It was Mateo Alcado, a 50-year old full-blooded Spaniard, a real estate hedge fund manager who resembled an olive-skinned Martin Scorsese. He was a hard-nosed businessman but wore his shirt undone a few buttons below what buttoned-up circles would normally permit. He was an early patron of Brett’s, and they regularly attended Richmond Kickers games together after Brett had bartered a few paintings in exchange for, among other things, a pair of Mateo’s season tickets.

  “What’s been up with you boys?”

  “Paco’s opening a business,” Brett said, patting Mateo on the chest, rubbing it real good.

  “That’s awesome. What industry?”

  “A food cart. Underground gourmet kebobs.”

  “That’s a fun venture. I eat lunch from this tuna salad cart below my office almost every day. How soon are you going to open?”

  “As soon as we get the cart in.”

  “That’s great. So you’ve got all your licenses and stuff squared away already?”

  “Licenses?” Paco asked, as puzzled as Brett.

  “You know, you’ll need a business license, cart permit, business formation, insurance, commissary time, health department permit, that sort of stuff before you start,” Mateo said.

  “Where the hell do I get that stuff?” Paco asked.

  “Most people just get their lawyer to do it.”

  “I don’t have a lawyer,” Paco said, sounding extra disappointed and extra stoned.

  “I’ll give you the name of a good, diligent lawyer. Theodore McPherson. He does a great job. He’s not too cheap, though.”

  “You think he’ll help us out?”

  “I don’t know. I know he will if he can, but lawyers have all

  those convoluted codes about conflicts of interest, professional responsibility, and all that jazz. It’s funny, the world’s able to keep spinning with lawyers making all these bizarre rules. I guess maybe there’s some logic to it? We’re all still here.” Mateo chuckled and scratched his forearm nervously.

  “I didn’t realize we were going to have to deal with a lawyer,” Paco said.

  “Me neither.”

  “They give me the willies,” Paco said. “Writing peoples’ wills, divvying up their shit when they die. It’s unseemly bro.”

  “Someone’s got to do it.”

  “Who do you think decided that the same person who hands out food cart permits should divvy up a dead man’s shit, too? Do you see a lot of overlap there?”

  “Why do doctors nurse people back to health and sell drugs?” Brett asked.

  “Doctors don’t sell drugs, they prescribe them.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t think I do,” Paco said.

  “I mean like, what do business people do? When someone says they work at a bank, but they aren’t a teller and they aren’t a banker, what do they do? Maybe human relations?”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “I guess they take care of people.”

  “Like bringing them milk and cookies and shit?”

  Brett shrugged.

  Mateo jingled in laughter.

  “Seems awfully juvenile for a bank,” Paco said. “I mean they’re adults, why do they need to pay people to take care of them. The haves and the have nots, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  “When the food cart really takes off, I’m going to hire a whole human relations department just to take care of me,” Paco said.

  Mateo had been giddy before, but he was dying from laughter now. “I like you guys,” Mateo said. “I’ll tell you what, Paco. You’re an ambitious guy. We communicate well. I was a communications major at Trinity, so it’s important to me. You want to make some real money, come work for me.”

  “I really appreciate that Mateo,” Paco replied, without pausing to consider. “But I don’t think I’d be any good at something I’m not interested in.”

  “You’ve got stones, Paco. You both got them,” Mateo said. He cupped his hands as if he held imaginary billiard balls. Then he lifted his cocktail from the bar, sipping on it through a sippy straw.

  A handsome man with a blonde bowl cut and a flowing blue scarf and white V-neck t-shirt came up behind Mateo, wrapped his chiseled arms around the real estate titan and shook him up and down like a bottle of champagne he meant to pop and spew out all over the party. The ice in Mateo’s glass clinked and tumbled out of the glass, his face betraying the apprehension of a penguin during an Antarctic ice shelf earthquake.

  Brett prayed he wouldn’t have to physically intervene. His back muscles tensed as he stepped forward.

  The man released red-faced Mateo, who spun around to face his aggressor, but rather than get salty or retaliate, the two men laughed and embraced.

  Thank God. The last time Brett had thrown fists, he’d bruised them pretty good and struggled to hold a paintbrush in a trembling hand for a week.

  “Gents, this is my good friend Alonso.”

  “Alonso Green,” the man said, exchanging firm handshakes with Brett and Paco, who were glad to introduce themselves now that the tension had dissipated.

  “Alonso has a wildly successful cooking show down in Miami,” Mateo said.

  “Bullshit,” Paco replied.

  Brett turned around and nearly spilled his drink all over a 60-year-old cougar, her beauty still hanging around, with just enough wrinkles to betray her age. Her breasts popped out of her sequined dress like bodies going through a windshield in a head-on collision. His impulse was to run, but the crowd was elbow-to-elbow, seemingly tightening just as he felt the instinct to flee. She made no mistake of locking eyes, and though he looked desperately for a fracture in the crowd through which to escape, by the time she opened the conversation, he conceded that he was trapped.

  “Victoria Monahan,” she said, extending a bejeweled hand.

  “Brett Bale.”

  “How do you know Ty?”

  “We grew up together. How do you know him?”

  “My husband is his business manager.”

  “That’s nice.”

  She stepped in closer to him, so close they were exchanging CO2, so close she could kiss him before he could pull away.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “I’m an artist. A painter.”

  “Oh,” she said, an incredulous look spreading across her face. Was it because she was impressed or because she didn’t believe him? “How does one get involved in the art scene?”

  “I’ve always been interested in it, I guess.”

  “Just sort of fell into it, unconsciously then,” she said. Her chest brushed against his arm when she said unconsciously.

  “I guess so.”

  “I wish my husband could do something less inhibited. He’s always chasing another dollar, and I’m always at his service. What does that make me?” She chuckled, at what, he was afraid to speculate.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I mean, you mustn’t have any anxiety.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, surely it’s nice when you paint something savory to the eye, but what if you don’t? Empires don’t fall on an artist’s impotence.”

  Brett resurveyed for exits.

  “I mean, art serves no purpose. There were no artists back in the hunter-gatherer days because we don’t need art.”

  “We want it,” Brett replied. “Excuse me.”

  She grabbed him by the arm as he started past her, but he pushed on. As he pulled away, she left scratches on his arm, big deep red ravines across his forearm.

  Brett hovered by Paco and Alonso, who were still locked in a frenetic conversation, Paco awe-struck by Alonso’s fame and tenure, Alonso tickled by Paco’s upstart bravado. Alienated, Brett started to consider circulating the party on his own or even leaving, when Paco excused himself for a visit to the bathroom
.

  “So Brett, what do you do?” Alonso asked.

  “I paint.”

  “That’s great. Art in its most distilled form. Can be a tough field to turn a dime in I would imagine.”

  “I’ve been blessed.”

  “That’s incredible. Do you sell locally?”

  “Mostly, but I’ve got a broker who’s trying to help me break into broader markets.”

  “Distribution is so important in your business, any business. You know, I’ve been to some of the first Fridays around here, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard of you.”

  “You’re into art?”

  “My brother’s a painter. He’s at the bottom of the pecking order, but he’s young and motivated. He’s got time. He’s got nothing but time. So anyway, you have any big shows coming up? What’s the next big project?”

  “Painting has been pretty steady. I’m actually trying to get myself psyched up for a big interview in a few days.”

  “Oh yea. Who with?”

  “Arthur Pinstead. He’s a big-time art critic, apparently.”

  Alonso shook his head, a pained grin stitched across his face.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to mess with your business.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to psyche you out.”

  Brett crossed his arms severely and stared at Alonso with cement buckets, chains, and deep murky rivers on his mind.

  “You shot the bird. Let’s skin it.”

  “My brother had a friend, an artist who was about 10-years older than him. He worked his way up through the Miami art scene. He was applying to these high-profile exhibitions. He hadn’t been accepted to any of them, but he was getting encouraging letters to reapply next cycle. Then there was the big break. Arthur Pinstead reached out to review his work. Bobby was tickled to death. I don’t think he left his studio for a month trying to get ready. He stopped surfing. He lost weight. He missed his Mom’s birthday,” Alonso said.