Page 16 of Paint Me Love
As a pause settles between us, Daniel starts bouncing his leg. He’s nervous, I can feel it. It pours off him in waves that I soak up like soil that hasn’t seen rain in ages.
“I, uh…” he says finally, losing this standoff I’ve decided is currently happening between us. “I think that no matter how dark the subject of a painting might be, hope is always there in some shape or form, just like how we can find it in the world around us.”
Arousal floods me. He’s naïve. In that way that riles me up, that makes me want to prove just how wrong this kind of thinking is. I want to taint him, to show him how shitty the world is once it decides to devour you, that there are some things that are so black no amount of light can ever touch them.
That’s what I am. A thing that cannot be fixed, a man who’s too far gone to be saved.
Or so I thought until I saw Daniel’s mural. It ignited something in me, awakened my soul and now that my routine has been disrupted, I don’t know what to do with myself other than see where this leads me.
I cross my arms and lean forward. “You really think that?”
It’s a rhetorical question. He does, or he wouldn’t be here. His art wouldn’t talk to me the way it does, it wouldn’t touch these raw places inside me.
“I do.” His leg stops bouncing, but the nervousness moves to his twiddling fingers. “I think it is always around us, Mr. Salinger. Even if we are not aware of it because it’s something simple we take for granted.” He offers me a smile then and in it I see sadness that clenches around my heart even though it doesn’t linger in his expression. “Like the sunny weather today when the forecast was for rain. Or”—he takes his phone out, slender fingers tapping out the password too fast for me to see—“I saw this in the morning.”
It’s a photo of a crow I think, holding a keychain with a star in its beak. It sits on a disfigured metal railing that’s been knocked down by some car when it decided the space provided by the parking lot wasn’t enough to accommodate its backside. Daniel has angled the shot in such a way that behind the railing and the crow you can see the green stretch of some unknown park and the verdant blue of the early morning sky.
The composition is great, a lot better than some of the photographs in the gallery out front that such-and-such’s rich kid took without even an ounce of thought expended on their end. People still buy those works, so I’m not worried about us selling them, but it’s because of who took it rather than the actual photo. It’s made-up prestige as opposed to quality, kind of like how it is with luxury brands that overcharge you for no reason.
“It’s a nice bird,” I offer, wanting to defy him. I get what he means—I might be rotten to the core, but I’m not blind—though I fail to see how a photo of a bird could make anything less shitty than it is.
“You disagree,” he infers after some frowning at me and at his phone. Then he beams. “It’s fine, though. Maybe it’s stupid to you, but I thought it was pretty, so I wanted to draw it.”
That’s all he says. His reason to radiate such joy is as simple as a bird he saw on the way here. It’s childish, unfathomable, ridiculous, yet it has me mesmerized and unable to rip my eyes from his. They twinkle, the light that’s hitting his face from the side enriching the red so much so it looks almost magical.
I clasp my right wrist and force myself to look at Cassandra, who’s said nothing so far and has just quietly observed our strange interaction. “Cassandra told me you’re self-taught?” I inquire, shooting the first question that comes to mind. “How long have you been drawing for?”
Daniel hesitates, thinking something through. It brings to his face that earlier hint I caught of a storm brewing on the inside, but it is momentary, dismissed and not given life to. “I’ve been doing art since I was ten, but I got serious about it around eight years ago.” I did skim through the competition winners’ files at some point, so I do remember they were all in their mid-twenties, so this puts him at about sixteen when he started getting into it. “I had a lot of time and I just enjoyed it, so I drew every day for hours.”
I don’t know this man as well as I wish I did, which makes it hard for me to read him accurately. Is this, all of it, an outward appearance like the one I maintain? Or is he being genuine? It’s not even about the art anymore, I’m still stuck on what he said earlier about the bird. It’s a philosophy of life I can’t comprehend but seem to want to, and it’s through him that I want to make it happen. I want to figure him out along the way, this alien of a human that has no right to disrupt the logic of the world around me just with a simple painting.
“You have an exceptional grasp of color and composition for someone self-taught,” I blurt out before I can veto my words, wincing internally as I catch Cassandra lifting an eyebrow.
“You know about such things, Mr. Salinger?” Daniel asks in turn, curiosity making his eyes sparkle.
“Not at all.” I shake my head. “I’m just relaying what Cassandra shared with me earlier.”
It is a lie. We did not discuss such things, but we did discuss Daniel’s works more generally and since I am a smart person, it is not unlikely that I would have inferred that. Improbable, sure, but not outright impossible, despite what Cassandra’s inquisitive look is implying right now.
Daniel cocks his head to one side, confusion swimming in his eyes.
“Mr. Salinger was complimenting you, I believe,” Cassandra offers helpfully, flicking hair off her shoulder.
“Oh. Thanks. I’m glad you like my paintings,” Daniel tells me, then turns to Cassandra. “And I’m super grateful for the feedback, Miss Diaz. I’ll try the exercises you suggested as soon as I get home.”
We chat a bit about his other works. Our meeting comes to a close too fast for my liking, but I don’t make a fuss. In fact, I welcome it, because I am not thinking straight right now and might do something stupid.
“Thank you again for this opportunity.” Daniel beams at Cassandra. And when he directs that sun-like smile at me, I feel it, right there at the base of my neck where the spine protrudes out the most, a spark that electrifies every nerve ending it touches. “I wish you success with your gallery, and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to paint a mural for it.”
“It was our pleasure to have you,” Cassandra assures him, shaking his hand. “And if you decide to try out social media again, drop me a line. I’ll be curious to follow you on your journey.”
This sounds a lot like a farewell, the logical conclusion to a meeting of this nature. I met Daniel, the artist whose art speaks to me like no other, and now I should let him go since my intense urge has been satisfied. He will go back to his simple life and I will go back to mine, landing deals and making money and thinking every now and then about the man in the painting on my gallery’s wall, who, unlike me, never got to touch that vibrant hope which forever remains just beyond his reach.
And it’s all because of Daniel.
“Wait!” I blurt out, halting Daniel at the door.
He turns around, confused and apprehensive, my tone likely at fault for that.
