The artist snorted and flung the palette onto a paint-speckled table but kept the knife clutched in his fist, fingering its edge, wondering if there were more constructive uses for it. Such as hacking and slashing the canvas while laughing maniacally. The thought had some appeal.
So did the thought of taking that knife to his own wrists, his throat. Maybe his eyes. Either ending his life or ending his career as an artist. Would either end the pain?
The fact that he could not easily answer that question was the slim tether that held him back from an act of commission.
Destroyer held the knife in his left hand and laid the edge of the blade against his right wrist. The blade looked hungry, felt hungry, as if it—unlike its owner—possessed a true passion, a genuine intensity. It wanted to cut because that would be beautiful to it. The knife would be embracing its own nature, it would revel in the deep and vibrant redness of the ink of his veins. He closed his eyes, looking inward and downward at that possibility. At how easy it would be. At how many problems it would solve. At how much of the pain would drain out of him with his blood.
When Destroyer opened his eyes he expected to see the cut already made, or at least started. That would have shown some passion or intensity, maybe even artistic integrity. But the blade had not yet taken that first bite.
“Fucking coward,” he muttered, at the knife and at himself. He waited for the bellow of rage that surely had to be inside of him to burst out. It did not. Even his words lacked emphasis. He tried to force the tears, but although they stung, there was nothing more.
“Not even that?” he asked, aware of how pretentious the question was.
No, not pretentious. Trite. Obvious. Shallow. An affectation of passion rather than any species of passion itself.
He turned and walked away from the canvas, his feet clumsy even on the familiar floorboards. The night beckoned and he stood for a long time looking out at the darkness. His studio was on the very edge of the Fire Zone. Behind him, out of sight unless he chose to look through his bedroom windows, was the long hill down to the crooked line of Boundary Street. It was always cold down there. The lights never shone as brightly as they should, and even the Christmas lights glimmered with the hopeless desperation of lights on a sinking ship. He seldom went down there. Most of the people in the Zone avoided the place unless they grooved on the rough trade or if they were hunting for some guppies. Among his clique—the Invited, as they called themselves—there were predators who fed on the swimming innocents, or on the bottom-feeders from whom “Boundary” Street earned its name. Not a real barrier, of course, but what did that matter? It was all affectation—social class above all else. Being one of the Invited did not confer an actual invitation to a higher level of understanding. Some people thought that, but Destroyer had been running with the in crowd for so long that he knew the realities.
Becoming accepted as one of the fashionable, intellectual, artistic elite did not immediately confer spiritual ascendency or freedom from emotional entanglements. And it was sure as hell no proof against ennui.
He raised the knife and studied its edge. Most palette knives were dull, but he always kept his sharpened. Another affectation, he knew, because he liked to think that he was using it as a scalpel to cut deep into the flesh of whatever he was painting.
The song ended and a sprightly contemporary holiday song began playing. About kissing by the Christmas tree. Destroyer wanted so badly to throw himself out of the window and end it all with a splash painting on the sidewalk. At least that would make a statement of true drama.
The idea was so appealing. His fist closed around the handle so tightly his knuckles creaked.
“Portrait of a man who could use my help,” said a voice behind him.
Destroyer spun at the sound, the knife coming up ready to stab. Then he froze. A man stood leaning against the open door. Tall and slim, with very dark skin, amber-colored eyes, and a smile that was as bright as all the beauty in the world.
“Vee…,” said Destroyer, exhaling pent-up breath and smiling. It was his first smile of the day, the week, and a good part of that month. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Hello, my brother,” said Doctor Velocity. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“God, no.” The artist hurried over to shake the hand of his visitor. “I wasn’t expecting anyone…”
“Did you forget that we had plans to exchange gifts?” said the doctor. “Christmas Eve and all that.”
“Um…no, no, it’s great,” said Destroyer, tripping over the lie but recovering quickly. He waved his friend to one of the big overstuffed chairs positioned haphazardly in front of the windows. Velocity sank down into his usual chair, crossed his legs, and leaned back, face serene. He removed a thin cigarette case from an inner pocket, selected one, lit it with a gold lighter, drew in a deep lungful, and blew smoke high into the air.
Doctor Velocity was nominally a pharmacist but was really an artist in his own right. His greatest skill was not chemistry but psychology and empathy. He listened in earnest and with insight, which most people did not or could not. He understood, too, and was often able to prescribe something—allopathic or homeopathic—with the subtlety of a true healer. He was that rare kind of person who could be “best friends” with virtually everyone he knew, and could be that without artifice. That alone would have made him invaluable, but Velocity was so much more, so many layers deeper.
Destroyer admired him as a work of art among all the other reasons. That the doctor was the coolest of the cool was obvious to everyone in the Fire Zone; even the ash of his slim French cigarette was correctly long and would not fall until his hand happened to pass idly over an ashtray, and then the ash would fall, untapped, into the precise center of the tray. That was part of Velocity’s charm, and Destroyer had no idea how he managed it. Art, sleight of hand, or possibly real magic. Anything seemed possible with the doctor. And, for some reason his cigarettes seemed to perfume a room rather than pollute it. They stank whenever Destroyer smoked one.
Doctor Velocity was so beautiful a person that he didn’t even need to be good-looking, but just to be that much more beautiful, he was devastatingly handsome. He had high cheekbones, a strong but not overpowering jawbone, and a patrician nose; he had full lips and a high, clear forehead with gently arching brows. Velocity was a tall man, a fact evident even while seated; he had long, strong limbs, thick wrists, big hands, and sensitive fingers. In contrast to Destroyer’s paint-smeared smock and corduroys, Velocity was composed in a charcoal suit of some rough weave, a coral shirt, and hand-painted tie, which blended gray and coral with a dozen other sea colors in a lovely, misty pattern.
He was smiling at exactly the correct angle.
Destroyer always felt grubby when he was with his friend, and yet never felt judged.
“I hope I’m not disturbing your creative process,” said Velocity, gesturing to the palette knife still clutched in the artist’s left hand.
“No, you’re a welcome intrusion, Vee,” confessed Destroyer. He looked down at the knife, winced, and tossed it onto a table. Then he pulled up a stool and perched on it like a frustrated vulture, exhaling a long and dispirited sigh. “I thought you’d be at Unlovely’s tonight,” he said. “Isn’t Tortureship debuting their new operetta?”
“That starts at midnight, though, and yes, I’m going.” The doctor nodded to the big canvas. “What’s wrong? The colors won’t come?”
“Oh, it’s far worse than that,” Destroyer said, sneering at the half-finished painting. “You know, I think I’ve actually used up what little talent I ever possessed.”
Velocity laughed out loud and then stopped, his smile fading. “You’re actually serious?”
“Very.”
Velocity took a slow drag on the cigarette. “Oh, come on, Des, you know how much everyone loves and admir
es you. Your paintings are hanging on all the very best walls. They’re on display in every gallery that matters. No one else in the trade deserves the right to clean your brushes.”
Destroyer snorted. “If that’s the case, then God help the art world.”
“It’s not as bad as all that, surely…”
Destroyer gave him a bleak stare. “Vee, right now I don’t think I could put red paint on a barn. God, it’s devastating.” He shook his head. Destroyer had a narrow face with a wide, generous mouth, a thin hooked Roman nose, and black eyes buried in deep wells. When he was in the flush of his passion, he was exotic, intense, even beautiful, but his disillusionment cast his face into ugliness, and he knew it. “Ahh…I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days.”
“I thought you were painting your heart out last week.”
“Who told you that?”
“A little bird.”
“Yeah, well, that was last week, and when I’m painting, last week is a million years ago. Last week might not even have existed. Painting is so right now.” He shrugged. “Besides, Oswald played ‘Fire Dreams’ last night. The live show.”
Oswald Four was the Fire Zone’s most famous deejay. He was not exactly a musician but instead let the music in the Zone play through him and out of him and out through the ten thousand speakers mounted along the streets and boulevards and parks. It was more of the magic of this place that Destroyer understood on a subconscious and instinctual level but could never explain to himself—or anyone else—in rational terms. It just was. Oswald Four sat in his glass cubicle at Unlovely’s, the largest of the dance clubs in the Zone, and took the music played by the most profound of the local musicians and transformed it and elevated it into Music. Capital M because it seemed to become alive and self-aware.
Destroyer did not quite understand it all, and he was aware that he could be completely wrong, but it was his theory that in the Zone, the music had been played so long, so well, with such superb artistry and insight that it had actual consciousness. The song “Fire Dreams,” recorded by the supergroup Tortureship, had become a kind of anthem for the Invited. It meant something and told a story of profound truth, even if it was different to everyone who heard it. When Destroyer heard that song it awakened something in him, but like insights gained during a psychedelic high, the thing that was awakened was fickle and fleeting and could never actually be captured. Certainly never tamed.
Destroyer said, “I recorded the concert and played ‘Fire Dreams’ twenty, thirty, fifty times. I mean, of course, I could paint.”
“Ah,” said Velocity, nodding his understanding. “And tonight…?”
“Tonight even that song seems stale, so I’m back where I was before I heard ‘Dreams.’ ”
“Which is where?”
“Which is nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.” Destroyer rubbed his eyes, then stared down at the colorful speckles and smears on his fingers. “You know me better than anyone, you know how it works for me. Paint isn’t just grease and oil and chemicals. It’s alive. Each color is a separate living thing, and when I blend them they tell me their stories, they evolve, they become something that even I can’t explain. They’re sacred to me, if that isn’t too corny a word.”
“No,” said Velocity, “I absolutely understand you. I’ve watched you work, and I’ve sat for more hours than I can count in front of the paintings of yours I own. The one of the young woman with the cracked glass…? I know her entire story from looking at that one painting. I know her damage, her history, her terrors, and her loss, but I also know her power, I’ve glimpsed her inner light, I know what she’s looking for, and I know what she fears. It’s all there, a story that tells me another chapter every time I look at it. It’s never the same painting twice. So, yes, I get that you’ve conjured something alive in your painting, and that is not me being patronizing.”
Destroyer nodded and he felt a knife every bit as real as the one he’d been holding twist a slow quarter turn in his heart.
“That’s the problem, Vee. Tonight…and for the last couple of days, the paint feels dead, Vee…inert. I mean, I can apply it to the canvas, but I can’t breathe any life into it. Christ, if this keeps up I’m going to spend my retirement at one of those little booths on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, doing insipid sketches of ugly tourists for ten dollars a pop.”
Velocity grinned. “Two words: as if.”
“Or I’ll be dead,” said Destroyer.
The room paused as if taking a breath. Velocity studied him. “You’re not joking, are you?”
Destroyer shook his head. “I think it’s me. I mean…there’s something just…I don’t know…lacking in me. Something lost.”
“Such as what? Inspiration?”
“No, it’s more than that. I mean, I know what I want to paint, I can even see it in my mind, but there’s some kind of short circuit between mind and hand. I can’t seem to generate the emotional drive necessary to transfer what I see to the canvas. Not in any way that isn’t inert, ordinary, merely representational. It’s like I have something plugging up my emotions. Somebody’s torn out all my wiring.”
“Ah. So, I can assume your affair with Aztec is over?”
Destroyer gave him a bleak stare. “Aztec…? Over? Dead is the word you’re looking for. He walked out on me last week.”
“May I ask why?”
“Oh, it’s the same old story with him: one day it’s men, the next it’s women. I mean, I’m liberal, I can understand being bi-curious, bisexual, or even polyamorous, but the man is just plain screwed up. He doesn’t know what he wants. I swear, it’ll be sheepdogs one of these days.”
“You knew he was fickle when you first asked him out, but now you sound surprised, as if this is all new to you. And it’s not like he hasn’t broken your heart before.”
The artist snorted. “The boy’s hurt me so many times I could actually qualify for handicapped plates.”
“There are other lovers, my brother. Maybe you might want to go out hunting in safer territory for a while. I mean, just until the wounds heal.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what Kamala Jane’s been telling me.”
“My little sister is usually right about such things. Wise lady.”
“I know. If I was straight, Vee, let me tell you…”
“I think you would have to stand in a long, long line.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll just paint her. Again.”
“That’d be nice.” Velocity took a slow drag on his cigarette. It smelled like incense. “What about doing some cruising? You know, get back in touch with your roots, so to speak.”
“Oh, hell, I can always pick up some tender young thing. I’m popular enough to have a different guy up here every night of the week, but it wouldn’t be the same. Let’s face it, Vee, I’ve both been there and done that. No, it’s Aztec I want. He may be an infuriating, annoying, contrary little son of a bitch, but I want him.” He paused and touched his eyes, looking for tears and still not finding them. “I think I love him. Or, maybe I used to. Or something.”
Velocity stubbed out his cigarette. “Love,” he said with a Gallic shrug, “is never easy.”
Destroyer looked at him. “What are you saying? That you’ve been jilted?”
“Everyone has.”
The artist gave him a wan smile. “I can’t imagine you losing a love unless you chose to end it.”
“Oh, hell, Des, I have my scars, too.”
“Mmmph. You hide yours pretty well.”
“Hide them?” Velocity pursed his lips and gave Destroyer a small shake of his head. “Not really. I guess I’ve just found my own rhythms and methods for dealing with them. It’s more or less a job requirement for me…my patients are more comfortable if I’m not bleeding all over them.”
Destroyer s
niffed. “Yeah, well. For my own part, I feel like I’m bleeding all over the floor. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to bleed this emotional gore onto the canvas.”
“And how well you phrase it.”
Destroyer almost managed a smile. His mouth was stiff, though, and not accepting of it. “It’s funny, Vee, how all this works, how emotion inspires or derails the creative process. I mean, I’m enough of an artist to function according to pure technique. I know structure and balance, light and shadow; I can mix paint and shade it to suggest emotion or mood—but all of that is pure technique. It’s the spark inside that’s missing; the deep, burning fire that makes me want to paint, and makes me want to paint something no one has ever painted before, something no one has ever seen. That’s art! That’s what real art is all about, to take a knife to one’s veins and bleed all over the canvas, to breathe onto it, to stir the paint with tears, to weep and rail and rage at each new smear of paint as it’s applied. The canvas should cringe, should tremble at your touch. When the process is over you don’t just sign your name and step back—you have to wrench yourself away from it and stagger back breathlessly, aware of how close you came to losing yourself entirely within the painting. When you’re finished, what remains is something that’s not just alive but immortal. Something whose energy is so strong that it must exist and must survive.”
Velocity’s eyes searched the artist’s face for long seconds. “And that’s what you’ve lost?”
Destroyer nodded wretchedly.
“Tell me, Des, that painting I have in my study—the view of the ocean as seen from Villa La Estancia? Didn’t you paint that after Aztec left you the first time?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you summon those same feelings? Isn’t this the same thing?”
“No, no, no, it’s totally different. When he left me the first time it was the Great Tragedy. You know what I mean: when you’re sure you’ve lost the love of your life, and you stagger around clutching your heart like there was a knife stuck in it, telling absolutely everyone how your life is over, et cetera, et cetera. That’s when the whole world burns down to just your life. You’re writhing in the flames, and you’re so in the moment that you are positive no one else could possibly understand because no one else has ever loved so well and lost so much. Your heart feels like it’s sustained actual physical damage, your arms ache to deliver unused embraces, your mouth is swollen with unshared kisses.” He gave Velocity a sharp look, catching the doctor’s smile. “Oh, yes, it’s to laugh. Such drama.”
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 21