Chapter Five
▲
Maple
Three days after checking into the Nivora Hotel, Mary and Etta help me drag my suitcases and newly acquired boxes up five floors to a new room.
“Why are we doing this?” Mary asks, bangs flying as she huffs under the weight of the art supplies I risked venturing into the city earlier today to acquire. “Miss,” she adds when Etta glares at her.
“What she means to ask,” Etta corrects sternly, “is if there was something wrong with your previous room? We’re happy to help you relocate, of course, but if something isn’t to your liking, we can fix it without the change.”
I wave her off as I trudge several large canvases and an easel into the elevator.
I leave room in the cramped lift for her to push a luggage cart loaded up with boxes in next to me, and Mary follows.
“I just need more space,” I tell them. “And light.” Much more light.
My previous room might as well have been a dungeon for all the natural light it offered.
I could hardly be expected to paint in there.
I don’t think I could even tell my cadmium from my crimson in such conditions.
Etta eyes my easel. “You plan to paint in the hotel?”
I blink at her in surprise. “Well… yes? Where else am I supposed to do it?” My studio is at Ivy’s, and I can’t just not paint.
I have creative muscles to stretch. I have techniques to practice.
I have emotions to express. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, hiding from Ivy, but I do know that three days is already too long for me to have been away from my art.
I need paint in my hands. I need charcoal beneath my fingers.
I need to step into the shower and see a riot of color convalescing at my feet.
I need to feel a little more like me and a little less like a woman who’s lost and floundering.
Etta clears her throat, smoothing wild toffee curls away from her face. Slowly but firmly, Etta says, “We charge extra for special housekeeping needs.”
“Really?” I ask, perking. “How much extra?” Maybe I could create special housekeeping needs in all of my rooms. Ivy’s credit card hasn’t been used in an age, it feels like—not since I bought the supplies we’re transporting, and that was hours ago.
The poor little piece of plastic is sure to feel neglected if I don’t swipe it, and soon.
A host of extra cleaning fees could be just the thing to remedy its pitiful state.
“A specialty clean with an outside contractor could cost anywhere from $25 to $500 depending on the severity of the clean up, ma’am.”
I resist the urge to rub my hands together and cackle.
“I’d like to request specialty cleans on all of my rooms,” I declare.
“Of the highest order. You never know where I might track paint, after all. Best to get it cleaned up super well just in case.” Dollar bills flash through my mind, flinging themselves out of Ivy’s wallet and into the economy at a rapid pace. “Tips, too! Lots of tips!”
Mary and Etta exchange looks. They’ve been on the receiving end of my tips more than once during my stay.
They know how much money I’m talking about.
Mary’s eyes grow huge and worried. Etta shrugs.
It’s not her money I’m throwing around. “Of course,” the older woman demures.
“I’ll make sure it’s arranged to your liking. ”
My spirits are uplifted in conjunction with the downfall of Iverson’s bank ledger.
The elevator dings, and I step out with an extra pep in my step.
My companions follow with grunts and groans.
“The room’s just here,” I tell them not even halfway down the hall, more as an encouragement that the end of their strenuous journey is near than because I think they don’t know where my new abode is.
They work here. Of course they know where the rooms are.
I swipe my keycard and hope the ding announcing it worked pushes them through the final stretch.
“You guys can drop that stuff inside the door, and I’ll handle unloading it. ”
I don’t have to tell them twice. Etta pushes the cart against the wall with a final grunt, and Mary drops her box on the floor beside it.
The box thuds loud enough to have us all eyeing the bottom, looking for damage to the smooth tile beneath.
When none appears, the two women let out bated breaths.
My shoulder’s slump. Construction-type fix-it work is expensive. I could only be so lucky. Apparently.
“Add one-fifty each, please,” I tell Etta before they can make their escape.
She nods, though I notice it’s a little more hesitant than when I first started drowning them in money.
Hm. It seems someone is uncomfortable with her current cash flow.
Two someone’s, if I can trust the pinching of Mary’s mouth as discomfort.
Anything could be the cause of that, though, and surely not just her aversion to taking large chunks of money from me.
Mary is often uncomfortable. For all I know, she accidentally stared at the carpet too long and the particular shade of tan wreaked havoc on her sensitive nervous system.
The nearly a thousand dollars she’s earned in less than half a week might not have anything to do with her currently twisting fingers at all.
Despite their aversion to Iverson’s money—or possibly some other, unrelated and unfathomable-to-me circumstance—Etta agrees to charge the tips to Ivy’s card, and they scuttle out of my room.
Once alone, I leave my stuff momentarily to get the lay of the land.
Where my other accommodation was a not-big, not-small hotel room with a bed, a desk, a closet, and a bathroom, my upgrade comes with quite a bit more space.
In truth, what I’m standing in isn’t classified as a room so much as a suite, I’m surprised to see.
I wonder momentarily if I need a suite. Then I decide I don’t care if I need it or not, so long as it has the lighting I requested. So what if it feels a bit obnoxious to stay in a suite when it’s only me here? It’s not like someone else is going to be able to make use of the space.
I shrug. As long as it has good lighting, then it is what it is, and what it is is mine.
I check out the set of windows in the small living room first, then walk down a hallway to the only one of two bedrooms that would have an outside view to consider its windows, too.
Comparatively, the bedroom windows would win every time.
They stretch from the floor up to the ceiling, letting in at least fifty percent more light than my other option.
The bed will need to be moved to make room, which probably means fully relocating the desk, but… This will definitely work.
My skin buzzes in satisfaction. The room will work. My plan will work.
I walk back to the living room, passing an open doorway leading to a second, windowless bedroom, identical to the first in all ways but natural lighting.
A thick, white comforter covers the bed, topped with plush pillows.
A nightstand holds a jet black analog phone and a lamp, and I’d bet so much of Ivy’s money that the drawer has a Bible in it.
On the opposite wall from the bed, a TV hangs above a faux wood desk, and a closet takes up residence next to them.
Not the best hotel room I’ve ever been in, but not the worst, either, and I know that the bed will look a whole lot more inviting at the end of a full day on my feet painting.
A bathroom juts off the living room rather than the hallway, and I start my unpacking there. The toiletries take no time at all to unload, giving me a boost of can-do energy to carry me through the more arduous process of turning a hotel suite bedroom into a makeshift art studio.
Toothbrush settled and energy attained, I shove a claw clip in my hair and get to work.
First thing’s first, I roll my cart of supplies into the far bedroom and squish it into a corner where it will be mostly out of the way until I need it.
I figure I can use it as a guide for how much space I need once furniture gets moving.
Which is… now, I guess. Right now. This second.
The time when things are happening = the present.
I shake out my arms, convince myself moving the heavy cart was a warm-up exercise, and flatten my hands against the side of the desk.
It moves with way more ease than I was expecting, requiring zero percent of my pre-push hype.
I maneuver it out of the bedroom and into the living room quickly, setting it up beneath the subpar windows there.
Next, I pick up an equally easy to move nightstand and tuck it into an empty corner before I tackle my biggest and probably-actually-deserving-of-a-pep-talk problem: the bed.
Queen-sized and resting on a thick base, it fights me.
No amount of cart-related warm ups could help me heft the weight of this thing without the use of torque or leverage or something.
So I find some torque or leverage or something.
I sit my bottom on the ground. Jerking my legs out of the tangle of my dress’ skirt, I plant my feet on the side of the bedframe, steady my back against the wall of windows, and push.
The bed moves a total of two inches.
I huff and push again only to receive similar results.
I glare at the stupid thing.
“I am not in the mood,” I grumble. “I haven’t painted in three days, and you’re the only thing preventing me from rectifying that atrocious hardship. You’re moving, or you’re burning.”
I put all of my strength into my next push, imagining I’m pushing Ivy’s wallet toward a thousand-dollar bill, and the bed yields to my torque/leverage/something, moving nearly half a foot. I use the same strategy four more times—until the frame meets the wall.
Satisfied, and a little sweaty, I rise to relocate the final nightstand without fuss. Afterward, I survey my newly cleared space. It is absolutely gorgeous. Nine-ish feet by six-ish feet of uninterrupted wiggle room.
My fingers tingle, aware of how close they are to the task they so desperately wish to do.
The easel goes up first and fastest.
I set one of the large blank canvases on its little shelf before leaning the rest against the wall behind it.
Next, I lay my new paints in a line on the floor at the base of the windows, watercolor followed by gouache and then acrylic.
I set two cups of paintbrushes next to them, then an empty cup for water.
A roll of paper towels drops from my fingers in the general direction of my other supplies, and I hang an apron over the top of the easel where the wooden tripod base meets at a point.
When my main tools are settled to my liking, I lift a large segmented picnic basket full of charcoal, colored pencils, regular pencils, erasers, sharpeners, and the like from the luggage cart.
I set the basket at the base of the easel beside my paper towels.
A different basket filled with sketchbooks goes behind them, then I squeeze a box of small canvases amidst the baskets.
Back at the cart I unearth a tarp, and realize I probably should have packed it at the top so I could have put it down first. I’m all for hiring a specialty crew, but it was never my intention to cause any damage or undo mess to the space.
Thus, the tarp. Which I packed underneath the rest of my art paraphernalia.
Alas, hindsight is 20/20.
I sigh. Then, with no other option, I carefully spread the tarp out over the floor and crawl my way around the edges, lifting supplies to smooth the thick plastic underneath them before returning them to their spots.
It’s tedious and frustrating, made even more maddening by the knowledge that I could have had a much simpler time of it if I had packed with intelligence.
By the time I’m finished, I’ve tugged my skirt out from under my crawling knees no less than four hundred times, and I’ve cursed the entire premise of art as an industry—as is the custom of artists everywhere.
The last thing I have to set up are my tables—three small TV tray style tables that I unfold quickly and place strategically around my easel. One for my ready paints, one for my other implements, and one for my drinks and snacks.
The bottom of the cart holds more supplies, stuff I probably didn’t need but since Iverson was paying… Well, I won’t need to stock up for a while no matter where I end up, so they won’t go to waste. I leave them on the cart.
My fingers flex. Despite the dull beginnings of soreness from putting this makeshift studio together, my body still aches to dive headfirst into my creative process.
I want to pick up a paintbrush, or a pencil, or a charcoal, or a flagging crayon, and I want to put it to the blank canvas resting on my easel, and I want to let out all of the pent-up emotions I’ve been wallowing in since leaving Ivy’s house.
I want to forget about the real world for a while and lose myself until there is nothing left of my being but canvas and color.
I want to make something beautiful out of the ugly burn of betrayal sitting like a stinging lash on my chest.
I stretch my arms above my head, roll my neck on my shoulders, and approach the window to pick out my colors. Then I heed the call of my body, and I do it readily, allowing myself the release I so badly need.
I paint.