by ezwritr
“What do I do?” she asked me.
“Just a thought, but maybe this is the time to make your name. Make sure you grab the big ones.”
“What about the friends, the neighbors?”
“Mix some of ‘em in,” I said. “But get the money ones. Hey, you’re in business now. Have your work seen all over the place, work hard for a year or two, do some shows while you have this popularity.” I saw it as an ideal situation for a painter. “Make some money, gather some fame. Then when you get tired of that, just pick the ones that interest you.”
Maria asked, in all seriousness, “Uh, Bubba, would you like to be my business manager?”
I had a few other things going on right then. I was writing a new story. I had a book being sold. I had an agent. I had to get one for Maria. “How about your friends? Who manages the ones with galleries? Maybe you need somebody more familiar with the art world.” It would be impossible to write and work a job and have a relationship with Maria, and manage her too.
I couldn’t manage my own business. There’s no way that I could manage hers.
Chapter Twelve
I put some money down on an old Datsun, and I was on the road again. The car was nothing fancy, just in case Old Tod wanted to flame this one, too. I parked all over the neighborhood. Next time my car was on fire, I wasn’t coming out.
“Tod lives with his mother,” Maria said. “And he can’t seem to hold a job for very long.”
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” I said. We were lying around at Maria’s place, not too many clothes on, during the week.
“He told me that he did great interviews, and each company liked his resume, all of that. Tod’d get hired, but he always got the menial entry-level jobs. He’d get bored in a few months, and piss some people off. The way he told it, he was smarter than everybody else, and they were jealous, and so they’d get rid of him.”
I could picture old Tod getting canned again, just for being himself. I could see me writing about him someday, just not right then, not while he was doing his warped vendetta on us. Even though my old car hadn’t been worth much, the thing had run okay, and I missed it. I figured that Tod had cost me upwards of two thousand dollars. Jeez, if there was just some way that I could get his last name and prove that he’d set my car on fire, maybe I could squeeze some money out of him.
Maria rolled over. I spotted a swipe of white paint on her thigh. Here’s the thing about oil paints and the painter: there was dried paint on her in the oddest places, small private places that she couldn’t see or didn’t think to look. Oil paint didn’t come off with normal washing. She had paint remover, but it was up to me to point out that blotch of blue on her elbow, the touch of red behind the knee. I wondered sometimes how it was possible for paint to end up where it did.
“Babe, there’s some paint on your thigh,” I said.
Coy smile from the artist. “You’ll just have to do something about that.”
In the shower with her, I became the scrubber. I applied the small scrub brush to her thigh. The paint disappeared all too fast. “I think I see some blue over here,” I said, a soapy hand between her legs.
And the Mona moan. “Oooh!”
With the proper brush and the right stroke I became the Marquis de Scrub, cleaning my Honey just oh, so well. “Here’s some, on your nipple!” Just a little rubba-rubba, oh, she moaned so nicely. Brush on the butt, and what a lovely one it was, soon to be pink from the brush, maybe we turn the brush over and give a few gentle whacks. “The bed,” I said at that point.
We were almost dry, the sheets were wet, and the sleekness of her naked body was under me, and again I felt Maria’s wonderful tight pussy. Swiftly now.
“Oooh,” and I felt her tighten on my cock as she came.
“Aaagh!” and that was it for me.
Once that little BDSM kink was out there, there was no going back. Sometimes I suspected that she painted herself on purpose, just to get us started.
***
It was Wanda Tyler on the phone. I hadn’t talked to her since that brief conversation a month ago or so; I had tried and succeeded in putting the whole thing out of my mind, like any submission to a publisher.
“Mr. Zielinski?” Wanda said.
“Call me Steve,” I said.
“Mr. Zielinski, Bulwark House has offered a three thousand dollar advance for your novel.” That was more information than my mind could deal with. Bulwark was one of the biggest publishing houses in New York. How much? Omigod, three grand! “Are you there?” Wanda said,
“Sorry,” I answered, doing the cold sweats one more time.
“You’ll have to do some promotion, come to New York, eventually do some book signings, all in due time. That’s if you want to give it to them.”
“Uh, I think so,” I said.
“I want to advise you that promotion is a big part of selling your book. Are you prepared to do that?”
Why wouldn’t I be? Can I do this instead of working for a living? Can I do this for my living? Write and promote and party and all of that stuff? “Uh, sure, I can do that.”
“The three thousand is an advance. The actual sale is for forty thousand, minus my commission. Then there’s the matter of rights, and hardbound sales, and paperback, and reprints, and foreign distribution…”
I just about passed out with all of that. “Uh, thanks, Wanda.”
“Then there’s the matter of a follow-up book. What else do you have?”
There was the first novel. There was the second novel. There was the new piece, quickly developing to novel length. “Uh, I have a couple of things.”
“Good. Just didn’t want another one-hit wonder on my hands.”
“No, Wanda, my guess is that we can do a lot of business.”
***
Now we really had something to celebrate. We were both making it, Maria and I, both doing the thing that we do. Man! How could it get better than that?
We went back to my old neighborhood, to an Italian restaurant near Wrigley Field. The Cubs were on the road, still tearing up their division, and a more cheery place didn’t exist on this planet.
As we were seated, I spotted him. Damn. It was Mr. Clean, old Tod, sitting with a woman in her fifties. The woman looked like Jonathan Winters in drag, yet there was a resemblance between the two.
Maria grabbed my arm. “Uh, Bubba, please don’t make a scene.”
“I’ll be discreet,” I told her. Then I looked at Tod. Got you now, I thought. I walked up to him. “Whatcher last name?”
The woman answered. “What’s it to ya?”
“Your boy set fire to my car.”
She turned to her son. “Swee’pea, do you know anything about this?”
“No, Ma.”
“He’s lying,” I said.
“My son doesn’t lie.”
I remembered how whacko they were on religion, and of course nobody lied there. I knew how to penetrate that barrier. “Your son had sex out of wedlock,” I said.
“Cheap shot,” Mr. Clean said. “Why don’t you get out of here?”
“Swee’pea, is that true?”
Tod stood up. He was four or five inches taller than me, and quite a bit heavier. “I think you better leave.”
“Answer your mother,” I said. I can’t believe the smirk that I had on my face.
“Shut up!” Tod grabbed at me, and enveloped me in a bear hug.
“Oooof!” The wind was driven right out of me. Damn! It was a vise grip, and I struggled. I couldn’t breathe! I did the only thing that I could under the circumstances. Wiggling an arm somewhat free, I grabbed Tod by the balls and squeezed as hard as I could.
“Aaaagh!” Tod let go, and held his nuts. “You…you…” In pain, he was still censoring himself, with his mother nearby. “You jerk!”
I punched Mr. Clean in the nose, splat! A fine left that started from about five feet away, a huge swing that wouldn’t have hit anybody but older women and a marshmallow like Tod
.
“Ow!” the heavy man said.
“Ow!” I moaned, and held my hand. And in the middle of chaos, I wondered, is this going to affect my typing?
Tod grabbed at me again. Headlock!
Muffled, I said, “I’m gonna kick you in the nuts this time!” Was nothing sacred? Where was the macho guy fighting code, here?
“Kill you if you do!” Like he wasn’t doing that with the headlock.
And suddenly there was assistance from the most unexpected place. “Sonny, you let go of that man!”
“Ma, he’s saying bad things about me!”
Just that momentary distraction was all I needed. I fumbled around and grabbed a ketchup bottle from the table. With all of my might, against Tod’s skull, thwack! The bottle literally bounced off of him. It was plastic, and I could hit him with it all day long and it wouldn’t have the desired effect.
“Summbitch!” Tod screamed.
“Sonny!” his ma said. “You swore!”
And then the police jumped in. Just two of them, they were just having a beer after work, but two Chicago cops were more than enough. Within fifteen seconds, both Tod and I were facedown on the restaurant floor.
“You have the right to remain silent.”
“That asshole set my car on fire!” I said.
“Wish I’d set you on fire instead,” Tod moaned.
***
And there it was, enough of an admission of guilt for just about any court in the land. We all went to the Town Hall Police Station to sort it out. I signed a complaint about my car.
“Is that true, Swee’pea?” his mother asked. “Did you set fire to his car?”
And he had to tell the fundamentalist truth. “Yeah, Ma.” So the cops charged Tod, booked him, took ugly pictures of him and let him go, into his loving mother’s care.
“Wait ‘til I get you home,” she said.
Tod turned to Maria. “We’re through,” he said.
“Oh, Tod,” Maria said, “Thank you so much.”
Damages. Who was going to pay for the damages? What damages? A dented ketchup bottle?
“I will.” It was Maria. She turned to me. “Butch, let’s get some ice on that hand, all right?”
“Let’s go home.” I meant my place, but there it was. I was telling her, Let’s go to our home, wherever that was.
And that was the moment that you could finally say that we were a couple.
***
A really weird thing happened with the Cubs. They played well for an entire season, and managed to win their division, something witnessed by me only twice previous in a lifetime. They went to the playoffs, and beat Atlanta, sent them home in the first round, an unheard-of development in Cubdom. Who were these guys, anyway?
Then the Cubs played the Marlins, a team equally star-crossed, and you know something had to give. The Cubs were suddenly up three games to one, and needed to win just one of the next three games to go to the World Series. They lost the first. The second game had an incident that will reverberate in Cubs history for the next hundred years. A fan interfered with a ball in play, and made a Cubs outfielder miss it. Of course the Marlins followed with a rally, and that game was lost, too. Then the Cubs reverted to form, allowed ninety-five years of ineptitude to take them over, and they lost the final game, too.
Well, what had I expected? These are the Cubs we’re talking about!
Whew, they could’ve won the World Series, killed several jinxes, joined the rest of mankind. But then what would I write about?
***
We haven’t seen Tod since the judge told him to stay away from us. I received five hundred dollars from his mother, and I sort of felt sorry for her, look at that son of hers anyway, but then I thought, in a most self-righteous mood, the old lady reaped what she had sown. Then another religious cliché smacked me in the face, there but for the grace of god go I, and I think, Jesus, I’m just glad it’s not me in the shower. I pictured them alternating all day long. Hope there’s enough hot water for ‘em.
***
Happily ever after?
It was mostly true with Maria and her art, and me and my writing, and us, as this dreadfully unstable couple. If somebody promised us a good five or ten years together, I’d snap it up in a second. Life was just that uncertain.
I had to hang on to my job for another year, until my novel was printed and on the market. I hoped that it would sell like crazy, and I would have an easy transition into the life of a full-time writer. If that book didn’t make a lot of money, well, I was almost done with another one, and it would be easier to sell it. Hey, I was a proven writer now.
Maria got to quit her job first. She had commissions past a hundred thousand dollars, and she was in a panic about how she’d ever get all of that done. “Slowly,” I told her. “Don’t think about all of them. Think about the one in front of you, take your time, have fun with it, make it yours. Make it Maria perfect.”
“And that,” she said, “That’s why I’m with you.”
We live together in the small apartment, still in Bucktown. She has her apartment in Oak Park, but it’s just her studio now. Maybe if the book sells, and if Maria cranks out enough portraits, maybe we’ll get a bigger place in Lake View.
We’d have to watch where we park, though.
The end.
About the Author
ezwritr was born in Chicago sometime in the last century. He currently lives in a western suburb with his schnauzer, Heinie, where they both enjoy a degree of anonymity. His neighbors think that he keeps a decent lawn, and they have no idea that he’s a moderately successful writer of erotica. ez’s life has been mystically entwined with the fate of the Chicago Cubs, though he’s enjoyed a bit more success.