58. eureka, I found it
“In a way, I understand you. In a way, I don’t.” Denver heard the end
of the message Vella was leaving as he ran up the stairs to his
apartment after fetching the mail and chatting a bit with Janet. He
turned down the volume of the television and punched play. While
listening to Vella’s message, he went over to the window and stood
watching a bum with long dreadlocks and horsy teeth, dressed in a
colorful assortment of layered clothing walk by pushing a shopping cart.
“Hello Denver. Denver? Denver, are you there? It’s me Vella, again.
I’m doing okay, I suppose. Working a lot, but I don’t think work is a
reason to live. I still want to drink anti-freeze. I heard it’s sweet
if you drink it with orange juice, though it does make you queasy. I
think maybe you’d puke your brains out. I think every year I’m
getting poorer and poorer. Denver, I don’t have a credit card. I
don’t have a car. My budget is in deep red and it worries me all the
time. I own nothing. You know what that means? I am a non-person. An
it. I have been crying for hours in that totally ridiculous
sentimentalist way that I have. Denver.” She sniffled and sniveled on.
“I mean, I’ve been crying because I watched the psychic pet host put
a dog down, just by laying her hands on it. I watched it die and that
set me off. Can you believe it? I started thinking about all my cats,
and then all the people who have died, about your father, and about
Benny. I’m so glad that I can call you. I don’t always listen to my
answering machine. When it’s full, I just erase. I got an invite to
the Bunny Ball at the SoToDo Gallery. Another fund-raiser! The fine
art of begging. What are we supposed to do, dress as rabbits and go
hopping around the dance floor. Denver, it just sounds too surreal
for me. Would you say hello to Micky, I mean, Icky for me? Ah, I will
always call him Micky. Tell him I miss him and I would love to hear
>from him, and that I really appreciate his postcards.” She dared not
take a long pause knowing from experience that Denver’s answering
machine would click off.
“Do you want a bundle of dead flowers for your opening? I don’t know
for sure if I can come to your show. I’ll be in town for my
psychiatrist appointment, and I am showing my designer beer coasters
at Big Art. So I don’t know if I’ll have the time. That marijuana
plant you gave me for my birthday is dead. I have a black hand.
Everything I touch dies. Can you talk to your nextdoor neighbor and
get me some speed? I’ve been thinking about what you said about
Benny. You know, there has got to be a better way to go. Oh Denver, I
don’t want to start crying again. I mean, in a way, I understand you and
in a way, I don’t.” She sighed deeply and paused, and three beeps
ended the message.
He continued staring outside his apartment window what seemed like
minutes until he realized that the noises in his daydream were
actually the sound of a staple gun and not of a cat sneezing. Denver
made his way to the front door. From the porch, he watched his
landlord, Mr. Black from the Delta Housing Agency, walk around the
victorian.
He went outside and read the sign that had just been posted to the
wood siding of the victorian two-plex.
PUBLIC NOTICE
This building is hereby scheduled for demolition.
For further information, please contact the Sacramento Housing
Authority.
DO NOT REMOVE THIS SIGN UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.
“Well, ain’t that shit!” Denver ripped the notice off the facade and
marched towards Mr. Black with intent to maim. Denver had been
terrorized by the Delta Housing Agency ever since they had made plans
to construct a two-story office cube on the property. Unfortunately,
the hundred-year-old house stood in the way of progress. To add fuel
to the fire, if the rent was late by even a week, the bitches at
Delta would start phoning and leave terse little threats of eviction
if he did not pay immediately. He watched as his slumlord slimmed
into his gray American Motors sedan with an ’I Found It’ bumper-
sticker and drove away before Denver had a chance to confront him.
“I can’t believe this. You can’t tear this place down. It’s a public
institution. The N street Commune. We have helped so many people.
When their cars broke down, we were friendly. We welcomed them to the Grid, assimilated them into the Sacramento cultural drift.” As he
shouted, Denver tore the notice to pieces and dropped them on the
ground. “You can’t take it away,” he cried, and kicked at the last
pieces before they blew away in the icy wind.
He watched his feet shuffle along the concrete sidewalk as he walked
back to his apartment while thinking. Sacramento is a nice place.
Boring as hell, but beautiful. Paradise on earth for those who can
pay taxes and own a firearm to annihilate their problem. But that
problem is boredom. It’s a town that is almost a city and where
almost everything could happen but nothing actually does. There are
just too many city fathers trying their best to improve the
stagnating quality of life. A member of the Manson cult, a female
serial killer, and myself are pretty much its only claims to fame.
He tore off the other notice posted on his building and marched up
the stairs to telephone the city.
“Hello. This is the City of Sacramento Building Department. No one is
in the office to take your call right now. Applications for the
Sacramento Camellia Festival can be submitted directly by going to
the convention center between the hours of …”
Denver hung up. “Why shit, ain’t life sweet!” he bitterly mumbled.
“How much more can I lose in a year?”
Denver sat down on a cushion to the left of his altar with his back
against the wall and surveyed his apartment. Scattered throughout,
were new and powerful works constructed out of the charred ruins of
his parental home. The altar to his father had grown to incorporate
half the studio. The entire apartment smelled like an extinguished
campfire, badly masked with an ever-present scent of incense, a
combination of smells that reminded him of Airsick Room deodorizer.
In the weeks following the tragedy, Denver’s life had been like a
wormhole gone spellbound. Everything, -where and –one had become
fixated on that moment, from which marked a break with the past.
Nothing else had seemed to matter. Sickness, death, holidays, his up-
coming show at the Gallery of the deceased Benjamin Levy, had
temporarily lost their significance after that fateful night.
Denver examined his most recent works of art, each of which he
considered to be brilliantly conceived, and executed in accordance
with his A.C.N.E. art style. He had carved the faces of the promenade
of talk-show hosts he had personally met into the dining table. He
called this piece, “We’ll be right back …”. The gang of four, as they
had been dubbed by the press, had gone through the gamut of these
shows for months, moving down the ranks from national to local, to
finally descend into the abyss as yet another piece of the antarctic ice
shelf broke off and topped their story.
For another piece, he had taken what was left of the travel posters
that had hung in his parents’ house and mounted them on a large piece
of plywood. He had stapled his mother’s playing cards to it as a
frame. He had drawn colored lines connecting ace to king in all four
suits. Afterwards, he had applied a yellow glaze to everything except
the tourist attractions depicted on the posters. He had then mounted
a clock that sang out birdcalls to mark the hour in the middle, and
as a final touch had painted little airplanes on the background. He
had named it, ’Going to Heaven on Flight 911’.
The third piece was named ‘Eureka Lost’. It was an earlier piece,
first executed to protest the support the local arts commission gave
to dead pop artists from Chicago or New York instead of to local
jewels within the community. Apparently, the commission deemed it
safer to exhibit dead out-of-state artists than to save the life of a
living local artist who might have an opinion. To symbolize
sacramento’s cultural apathy, he had taken empty cardboard boxes,
painted them yellow and painted omnipresent local icons on the sides.
On the first set of boxes, Dallas had originally painted multiple
images of John Sutter, the founding father, with various hair
lengths. He was depicted standing naked on the banks of the muddy
sacramento river with his member outstretched in a dramatic swooping
gesture as if fertilizing the land he had just conquered with his
devil seed. To them, he had recently added images of famous local TV
celebrities set in perspective as if clouds in the sky. Then Denver
had decided to fill the boxes with the objects of his life. He had
begun by placing man-made objects, especially those that required
electricity inside the Sutter boxes. He was now adding the books of
various religions and other materials that he considered violent.
On a second set of boxes, he had painted camellias, the city flower,
tomatoes, the city vegetable, or almonds, the city nut. He was now
adding the state bird, flower and motto, respectively, the quail, the
poppy, and ‘Eureka, I found it’, and planned to add other objects
associated with his home town or state. Inside these boxes he was
putting found objects, clothes, letters, photocopies of his diary,
photographs, and bits of nature such as stones, dried flowers and
seashells.
The third set of boxes was painted with images of the capitol
building, sacramento’s claim to fame. He had gone on to add the logos
of religious, corporate and state institutions. Inside, he was
putting any object that he deemed totally expendable.
While staring at his work and thinking about his message, Denver
realized that he was preparing for a change. There had been many a
moment during the year when he had resisted going with the flow, but
in the end the turn of events in his life and the way he had dealt
with them did indeed seem to be taking him where he wanted to go.
He heard the sound of someone ascending the stairs and reckoned that
it must be Icky by the sound of the footsteps. The door opened and
Icky exclaimed, “Heil Peace!” and walked over to Denver.
“Heil Peace!” Denver stood up to greet him and they patted each
other’s faces affectedly.
“I got busted.”
“Dilute man. No shit? What? You lit a firecracker?”
“You know I am not allowed to play with firecrackers anymore.” Icky
threw his arms in the air. “No. I got busted for somethin’ really
stupid.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Everything happened. My karma has been invaded.
My aura is browned by their ugly hands.”
“You want to take a bath? Wash away your discolorification?” Denver
pointed to the bathroom. “I’m sure I’ve got some kind of oil scented
for just such a purpose. Or you could use some of the mouthwash
sample I got in the mail the other day.”
“Yeah, like good idea, man. Man, I couldn’t believe what they did to
me and I didn’t do anythin’. I’m just livin’ but somehow I’m a
hopeless criminal.”
“Calm down. Do you want a hot toddy? I was just about to roll a joint.”
“Here. Let me sit down next to the campfire.” Icky went over to the
gas heater. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra!” he said,
and then unwrapped himself from his heavy tweed coat and threw it on
the couch. “Your place is lookin’ pretty sparse. So you are really
going to do it?”
Denver returned and handed Icky a cigarette.
“Thanks man. You read my thoughts.”
“Might as well. It is time to move on.”
Icky lit his cigarette from the flame of the gas heater. “Sorry to
say this, man, but your place smells pretty funky. You got some bad
funk, man.”
“You should speak. So do you.” Denver perched himself on the armrest
of his oversized commander chair. “It must be from your aura. It’s
putrid. Should I run a bath now? You can sleep here on the couch if
you want.” He went into the bathroom. “It’s not my funk,” he shouted
over the sound of running water. “It’s all the paint, charred
remnants and the incense I’m burning, dummy.” He came back into the
living room. “Myrrh.”
“Don’t growl at me. Hey where are your cats?” Icky patted his leg to
signal for the cats. “Here Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
“They’re on the sofa. You just threw your coat on top of them.”
Icky went over to the sofa, uncovered Paris and Berlin, sat down and
started to stroke the house pets. “I got somethin’ for ya’,” he said
reaching into his coat pocket. “You’re goin’ to be happy. I found
another Art Angles flyer. Do you want me to read it?”
“Give me the bad news first. Tell me how you got busted.”
“I smoked a cigarette.”
“What! Not at B. Queen again.”
“No. In capitol park.”
“What? Outside in the park?”
“Yeah. But it’s state property. I was just walkin’ through, takin’ a
shortcut and I was holdin’ a lit cig.”
“But didn’t the cops tell you to put it out first?”
“Yeah. But that’s when I started runnin’. You know, cigarettes are
expensive.”
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