And unbeknownst to Leo, four blocks away a building burned.
*
In times past, Leo had held down a drafting table and an Associate Art Director’s throne with AdWorks, Ltd., pulling down a cool $54 thou per annum, plus percs. Not too shabby.
Advertising was a strange breed in the white collar world, a peculiar hybrid of business and hands-on creativity that allowed for far more individual expression that did the average corporate cubbyhole. It mattered less that he was a shaggy-headed hulk who looked as if he should be battling the Sheriff of Nottingham, than it did that he delivered goods par excellence. A substantial portion of which was artwork intended to hype the latest in high-tech barbarian toys to all those little would-be twenty-first century Conans.
Tweak the kids’ interest, spark their imaginations, whet the latent healthy species aggression in us all, and the little tykes clamored for the newest Lord Avatar gadgetry. Power swords and guns, shields and beasts and helmets, action figures sold separately. All featured in the continuing adventures of Lord Avatar himself, as seen advertised in Sunday newspaper comics, and coming soon to a Saturday morning cartoon near you.
The manufacturer was happy. AdWorks was happy. Wife Natalie was happy. And while money may not buy peace of mind, it at least affords one plenty of places to rest a weary head, and so Leo managed to live with himself.
Until the day a six-year-old in Green Bay got hold of his grandfather’s prized World War Two vintage samurai sword and skewered a playmate. Because the Lord Avatar plastic just wasn’t real enough anymore, and anyway, it never seemed to hurt on TV.
Peace of mind, once elusive, now fled to parts unknown. There had to be a better way than this to make a living. The flames of fast-track career burnout were raging. After a month of miserable deliberation Leo resigned his post at AdWorks and talked Natalie into selling the suburban split-level.
He wasn’t sure why he wanted to move to the inner city. Perhaps a deep-seated desire to immerse himself into a locale with a genuine past, true personality, traits the mass-erected outlying clone dwellings had neatly managed to avoid. Whatever the reason, it felt as strong as a biological need. And at first Natalie was game for the idea. Change was healthy. Change was stimulating.
The inner city was not without hope, and better days ahead. The past years had seen the renaissance of restoration. Instead of the demolition of old buildings and sprouting of bland housing, the powers that be were finally getting it right: working with what was already there, leaving architectural personalities intact while rehabbing the buildings where they stood.
An area downtown, a racial stewpot of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites, was slated for a double-barreled blast of benefits: federally funded renewal and private sector gentrification. Leo jumped on the bandwagon and bought their own urban homestead, a rowhouse in which he and Natalie could live, and out of which he could operate his own freelance commercial art studio. With no pressure to accept assignments that might offend his newly awakened sensibilities.
But for reasons never made satisfactorily public, the plug was pulled on the entire life support system. And the private sector — businesspeople with plans to relocate office and retail space in rehabbed art deco buildings — didn’t find the area nearly as attractive as before. There’s no bread, let them eat cake, and federal cuts had claimed another casualty before Leo’s eyes.
It wasn’t much longer before Natalie pulled the plug, as well. This slumming business had a certain tres chic appeal, but really, enough was quite enough.
Leo decided to tough it out awhile. If all others had lost interest in making the area look brighter, perhaps the job fell to him by default. The only way he knew how, with brick walls for canvas and spray cans for brushes. Not much, but it would at least be an honest effort.
It seemed a losing battle only when he let his eyes stray too far from those little oases of beauty he managed to create.
Or when he listened in the dead of night and sometimes thought he heard a low, thick laughter rumbling through the streets.
*
Leo had replaced his missing paints by the next night, and went back to work on the stems. This time, Calvin visited of his own free will, with no intent of arson. Nor was he alone.
“Told you I met the painter,” Calvin was saying. “That’s him, there, word up. I told you.”
The guy Calvin had brought along was older, perhaps twenty, with unsmiling flint eyes and skin a coffee-with- cream color. An X-insignia ballcap sat bass-ackwards on a high-top fade. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of loose black pants, with taut muscles sculpted behind his T and a hooded sweatshirt. Air Jordans anchored him to the asphalt.
“That’s good work, cuz,” the new arrival said quietly. “You not bad, that’s for damn sure, you know what I’m saying?”
“Told you he good,” Calvin whispered. Eyes taking in the huge pair of roses trellised up the wall.
Leo’s breath, which had momentarily hitched, came easier now. And if he wasn’t yet sure of the new guy’s intentions, he still seemed civil enough.
The two walked closer, this stranger coolly appraising Leo’s work as if a prospective buyer in a gallery. Calvin asked Leo if he had any more cigarettes, so he parted with a few more. Calvin grinned, put them all in a frayed shirt pocket.
“Don’t be looking at me that way, ain’t nobody come here to pop a cap in your ass.” The older guy’s eyes met Leo’s for the first time. “So why you do this, cuz?”
Leo shrugged blocky shoulders, green paint still in hand. “I just want to, is all. Makes me feel good. Feel better.”
The stranger looked to one side, considering this. Grinning faintly at some private joke. He gently shook his head.
“Then you some kinda fool.”
Leo’s heart sank.
“Who are you, anyway?” Leo asked. “Are you the one they call Bricklord?”
“Who,
