“Imagine,” Feldman was quoted as saying. “in Cro-Magnon times, mode of artistic expression did not change for over twenty thousand years. There must have been something deeply, extraordinarily satisfying about such a mode, and the reasons for it. It was a form of communion with nature and spirit. What higher value can one hold?”
Feldman strikes me as a belated mutant-child of romanticism, the author of the article, a Norman Ritter, had opined. Not a huge fan, James supposed.
I never like to classify my stuff, James thought. And Feldman seemed to be providing a permission slip for those like him. “It is a failed history,” Feldman had also said. “Cram it all you like with masters and masterpieces. It is still a failed history.”
One major impediment to James’ own art, when one got beyond those more surface-level such as Pops the Judge or the generally tame and tepid reception of his work, was the phantom responsibility James shouldered—and he imagined every American artist did, too—to create something New and Revolutionary.
Revolution—a word that strung together the DNA of the country. Something was not worth doing unless the artist could do it bigger, better, grander than anyone else, unless the artist pressed his name indelibly into textbooks, into journals, into popular consciousness. Yet at best, James’ art was an occasional hobby. Compared with those who were passionate—like the Max guy, from Sirens Shop—who thrived on it as sustenance, he was a watery wannabe.
And yet...maybe that was exactly the potential source of his own innovation. James could hug the wilder, untamed outskirts of expression, find something new that would flip mountains, leave a smoldering crater, persist on the tongues of succeeding generations. Lasting impact.
New and Revolutionary. Wipe the slate clean, as Clifford Feldman intimated. Fuck the critics, the naysayers, the teachers, the parents. He was as much himself as he could be. The truth of people was as diverse as people themselves. Whatever nature had hidden away in his clay, even if she’d hidden it in only him, it was all true, it was all art, it was all, in a way, divine.
Where do you get your inspiration? they’d ask him. What gets your juices flowing?
He’d put an arm around Pene—no, Teresa. Wait, fuck it. Come on, where is she? Not around. You’re your own universe now. Make of it what you will.
Penelope. The only person to have traipsed with him along those wild outskirts. Injected him back into him, reminded him how natural he could feel in his skin. She had said those things were okay. They did not make him crazy. By comparison what, then, were other aspects of himself with which he’d once wrestled, or resisted? James the Attorney? James the Artist? All basic no-brainer additions to the totem pole of his character. All beasts, all fragments, had within him a home. Because of her? Who could be sure. But she had helped.
James finished up, stood, and flushed the toilet.
***
Three knocks and Max awoke. He dragged himself from the mattress and stumbled toward the door, tripping over an empty butcher tray.
Karen stood at his door. Her nervous disjointed energy struck him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Just quit my job,” she said, launching herself into the room.
Max shut the door.
“Why? What happened?”
You know.
“James,” she said. “It’s that fucking James guy. You remember him?”
He nodded.
“He’s....” Karen gave a hesitant chuckle, as if just understanding the world’s punch line. “Okay, so he’s buying The Schoolhouse. He’s turning it into some kind of gallery.”
“Art gallery?”
“Apparently.”
Max shivered.
“I need a drink,” Karen said. She riffled her pockets, brought out a clip of bills. “Where’s the nearest bar?”
“I think there’s one just a block and a half east of here. The Saloon.”
“You all right joining?”
Max ran fingers through his hair. He was tired. Part of him never wanted to see or deal with Karen again. She brought with her a world too burdensome, too anarchic, too close to the bone.
“Sure,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said, as they made toward the door. “I don’t need to lose my entire grip, just loosen a few fingers.”
***
Decorated in the style of an old dude ranch, The Saloon was somewhere between a bar, a pub, and a museum. Karen ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Max ordered a beer. They slid into a booth in the far corner, huddled beneath a large buffalo head.
Tentatively, Max lifted his beer, sipped it. It had been a decade since his last taste, but it was not as bad as he remembered.
“This is the longest I’ve seen you with your hair down,” he said. “Not in a ponytail mood?”
“I think I left my scrunchie in Dwayne’s van,” Karen said. “Took it off when I napped and just forgot about it.”
“You could use a rubber band or something.”
“They’re rough on the hair, though. I figured I can let my hair breathe a little before I handcuff it again.”
“Sounds like you’re still in work mode.”
Karen looked at him.
“Handcuffing—sounds like Schoolhouse lingo.”
“Oh. Right. Well, fetishes don’t clock in and out.”
Max took a longer, fuller sip.
“It’s so weird. It just...ended. Dawn is such a sell-out.”
“Who’s Dawn?”
“The owner. She was so proud of the place, so proud to be...I don’t know....”
“Providing scarce services?”
“I guess. That she up and sells it off to someone whim-bam-boom is just strange. He must have offered her a lot.”
Max regarded her.
“You’re not....” Karen began. “I mean, you said he talked to you about being a part of this new venture of his? This gallery?”
“He did. And no, there’s no way I’m going to be a part of it.”
Karen exhaled. “Truth be told, I’m not sure how you would be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know really anything about it, but I got an impression from Rose and Monica that he wanted them still there. That he wasn’t going to lay them off.”
“He gonna make it a half-gallery, half-S&M dungeon or something?”
Karen shook her head, drank more. “Who fucking knows.”
Between two people, strangers not
