Winston looked up at the window of his room. “How much did you pay for them?”
“A buck.”
“I’ll give you five for them,” Winston said.
The man pondered, then said, “Hell, they don’t fit no way.” He took the five-dollar bill from Winston and placed the teeth in his open palm.
Winston nearly fainted, actually swayed before collecting himself enough to sprint across the hotel lobby, and into the public rest room. He set the teeth on the sink and began to wash his hands furiously. One of the tourists standing at a neighboring sink seemed frightened. “Found my friend’s teeth,” Winston said. The man ran out. Winston washed for many minutes. He grabbed the dentures in a couple of paper towels and took them upstairs to the room.
“Found them,” he said as he stepped in.
Jubal let out a sigh. “Thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you,” he said. He took them from Winston and paused. “Where’d you find them?”
Winston coughed, cleared his throat. “I found them in the street, Jubal, just lying there.”
Jubal blew out a whistle between bare gums. “Good.” He took them to the bathroom and held them under the water. He loaded them into his face and worked his jaw a bit.
Winston went to the window and started to put the room back together. He slipped the curtain hooks through the rod eyes. Below he could see the derelict turn the corner and pass out of sight.
“Just lying in the street, huh?” Jubal asked.
“Just lying there.”
“Funny. Wonder how they got down there.”
Winston turned to look at Jubal, thinking that the man didn’t believe him. But Jubal showed nothing but puzzlement as he began to help put the room back together. Winston was pretty sure that Lucius Carter had come into the room and taken the teeth, but he wasn’t going to talk about it with Jubal.
“You know, a man can walk in his sleep,” Jubal said. “Won’t have a notion in the morning of where he’s been.”
“Not uncommon,” Winston said.
“I ain’t never known myself to walk in my sleep.”
“Hmmm,” Winston said.
Jubal had the sheets and covers on top of the two beds and he sat down on his. “I want to thank you for helping me out last night. When I was choking, I mean.”
“You bet.”
“A dentist suggested I use some of that sticky stuff, you know, to hold my teeth firm, but I can’t stand it. Too much maintenance.”
Winston nodded, putting up the second curtain.
Jubal went to the window and looked at the street. “Just lyin’ there,” he said more to himself than to Winston. “Top and bottom together?”
“Mere inches apart.”
“Flat out luck.”
Winston worked a kink out of his shoulder. “Could be that I got them stuck to my sack or sleeve or something when I went to do my laundry and they fell off outside.”
The presence of even a lame explanation seemed to relax Jubal. He worked his bite. “Sun must have warped them a little.”
“Sorry.”
The older man waved it off. “Just glad to have ’em back. They’ll mold back. Besides, if I’d choked to death …” He stopped. “What do you say we grab some chow and shoot some pool?”
“Okay.”
It was ten o’clock in the morning, but late enough for burgers. Winston had a mug of milk with his food and talked a frowning Jubal into the same. They ate and shot a game and watched a boring baseball game on the set behind the bar. Every bite seemed an exercise for Jubal and Winston began to worry that the bum had damaged the dentures. He wondered if he needed to say something.
“Hey there, girls,” Lucius Carter called to them.
Jubal had made up his mind to ignore the man. He went off to the rest room.
Lucius came to the table with a big ugly smile on his face.
Winston looked at him. “Funny stunt with a man’s teeth.”
Lucius laughed and looked at the two half-eaten burgers. “No harm done. He found ’em, didn’t he?”
“Found them?” Winston felt hollow and a bit sick. “I wasn’t there when he found them. Where were they?”
Lucius looked at Winston with a crooked smile. “Don’t recall now.”
“That sort of shit make you feel like a big man?” Winston was on the prod.
“Like I said, no harm done.”
Winston slammed his cue stick down on the table. “Get the hell outta here!” His hand buzzed, he wanted to raise the stick high, but instead he let go.
The bartender called over, “No trouble.”
“Out, Carter.”
Lucius raised his hands. “Fine.” He looked over at the bartender. “No trouble.” He turned to Winston, smiled again and said, “Life’s hard, but then the pay is low.”
When Jubal came back out, Lucius was gone. “Where’s the dung bank?”
“He left.”
Jubal sat down behind his burger and rubbed his temples.
“How do your teeth feel?”
“Feel okay.” Jubal looked at Winston. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“How come you ain’t eatin’?” Jubal asked. “I’m not too hungry.”
They left the tavern and got into Winston’s truck. The sun was just past straight up and beating down on the cab. Winston looked before pulling out into the traffic.
“What do you think makes a fella end up like Lucius?” Winston asked.
“You mean, what makes him act the way he does?”
“Yeah.” Winston switched on the radio.
“Too much sun,” Jubal said. “Hell, I don’t know. He must have been drowned at birth.”
“Yeah, well.”
“He sure hates you,” Jubal said.
“Yep.”
Jubal was looking at Winston. “He hates you ‘cause you’re colored.”
“Black.”
“Whatever. But that’s why he hates you. Don’t make no sense to me. You can’t help what you are.”
Winston looked at the man. “I don’t need to help it.”
“Whatever.”
“How do you feel about the fact that I’m black?” Winston felt stupid asking the question.
“Don’t make me no never mind. You could be purple for all I fuckin’ care. Why all the questions?”
“I don’t know.”
They didn’t say much during the rest of the drive. Winston watched the road and Jubal gazed out the window at the landscape. As they rolled to a stop near the bunkhouse, Winston said, “You know I don’t mind that you’re white, Jubal.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jubal paused before opening his door. “What made you think to say that?”
“Just lookin’ at you,” Winston said.
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 o
f 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?”
Big Picture: Stories Page 13