Chapter 8 Ed
Chapter eight
Ed
Tuesday is one of the best days of the week.
Partly because I get a hand-delivered coffee and a pastry, but mostly because the day ends in Lutek’s workshop behind the gallery and café, hanging out with some of my most favourite Port Derrumites and pursuing my own creative endeavour of writing.
Which means I get to see Bess twice in one day.
The official name for the weekly event is Tuesday Night Art Fight.
It's less a no-holds barred, paint-slinging death match and more a gentle evening for arty people to share the processes around their various artistic mediums. And drink wine.
But Bess came up with the name, naturally, so it just sounds like a no-holds barred, paint-slinging death match.
But, who knows? Sometimes after the fourth bottle of wine is collectively consumed, things can get a little messy, so there's still time for the evening to live up to its ridiculous moniker.
It’s open to all Port Derrum artists, but invariably, it ends up being the same crew every week.
Elly’s son, Jackson, who’s only a backyard and a flight of stairs away, sleeps soundly on the baby monitor next to her workstation, which show-cases her latest venture in Glitterland. She’s made a glitter Rorschach inkblot.
I quite like it. The shape shifts as you walk past, the light catching the shimmery pieces in sequence, so that it seems almost animated.
"Does the shape have any meaning?" I ask. "Like, if I say it's a donkey instead of a toaster, I'm a sociopath or something?"
"You think I'm clever enough to create art that does psychometric testing?"
"Yes."
Elly raises her eyebrows, then offers me a grin of the quality last seen on Himmler. "Do you think it's a donkey and not a toaster?"
"I'm...not telling you."
She rolls out a laugh in a way that is universally understood to be specific to evil geniuses, then gestures towards Jeanette, who announced at the beginning of the evening she was trying something new. "If we're going to do any amateur psycho-analysis, it needs to be on that."
Jeanette's something new is buttock butter dishes. She smooths clay over the round cheeks that form the lid of the dish, and leans into the movement, her eyes closed and a smile on her face.
"You having a good time there, Jeanette?" I ask.
"I am having the loveliest sensory moment."
The dishes are an extension of her Ladies at Leisure pottery figurine series, all of which have generously proportioned bottoms. "It's like running your hands over actual women's buttocks. So – beautifully – sleek and – silky." She says each word with a push of her hands.
After a moment, she opens her eyes and laughs, then asks if anyone else would like a go.
We all would. Of course we want a sensory moment with simulated female buttocks.
Well, most of us. Carlos would like to read us the poem he's just finished.
"It's called 'God isn't'.
I read it on the wall and you have backyard limbs spread in supplication
Singing that Texas Chainsaw Massacre lite motif
On the turn.
I can't imagine what one would see in revolution
Curtained puppet shows early on a sexy Sunday morning
Revealing your rust above the flapping and clapping
Of your two-dimensional crowds."
Jeanette claps the backs of her hands together to avoid splattering the clay on her palms, Elly snaps her fingers as per poetry-reading etiquette, and Lutek and I clap in the conventional manner because we just aren't that cool.
"It's actually not bad," says Elly. "I have absolutely no idea what it's about, but it sounds confusing enough for it to be good poetry."
Jeanette nods at her like she hasn't given a compliment so backhanded it left knuckle-shaped indentations.
"Is it...about early morning children's TV shows?" asks Lutek.
"It's about a squeaky rotary washing line, isn't it?" I venture.
Carlos stares at me for several seconds. Then he throws his hands up in the air. "Damnation." He pulls a silver cigarette lighter out of his jacket pocket, flicks it open, sets fire to the piece of paper and drops it onto the concrete floor.
We watch its edges curl blackly and its centre turn to ash.
"Oh no." Despite her words implying an exclamation, Jeanette's voice is light and soft. Her voice is always light and soft, no matter the urgency or meaning, like she doesn't have the strength in her diaphragm to provide volume. "That was a waste of good creative energy, Carlos."
"Well, they can't have it now, can they?" he says.
"They certainly can't, my friend," I say. "But I'm glad we got to hear it."
Jeanette moves from mournful to upbeat so quickly it might have given us all whiplash were it not so very Jeanette. "There's a kind of fragile beauty in temporary art, isn't there? It makes it more valuable, because you've only got moments to enjoy it before it disappears forever."
"I feel privileged to be one of the four people who heard it before it died," says Lutek. "Thank you, Carlos."
"Do you think there's money in it?" asks Jeanette. "Charging for the privilege of being the only one or two people in the world to experience a piece of art before it's destroyed?"
"Yes," says Elly. "You'd need a combination of two things: A superfan who also happens to be rich. It takes away the idea of ownership. Nobody should own art."
"Says the person actually selling art for people to own," I say.
"Hey. I live in a capitalist system. I have to survive in it somehow. It doesn't mean I agree with its ideologies. Obviously."
"Obviously," Jeanette parrots and winks at Elly. Jeanette might come across as flaky, but she's deceptively sharp-minded and well able to tease the young-and-full-of-attitude likes of Elly.
"Where's Bess?" asks Lutek. "She's never normally this late."
"No idea," I pull out my phone and call her.
No answer.
When she does turn up, I'm determined to behave in a way that doesn't make it apparent to everyone that I'm "smitten" with her. I shall be a picture of nonchalance. But not too nonchalant, because I'm also not particularly interested in being a dick.
"It's not like her," says Lutek, who has switched to his other love.
Crocheting. Given that his artistic voice is expressed through metal sculpture, which he makes a decent amount on selling as garden art, a quiet evening making stuff and creatively solving the problems of the world doesn't really accommodate steel fabrication.
But he's happy.
His cup warmers – little blankets crocheted to fit around mugs – were, according to Bess, a surprising hit last Christmas.
As he listens to the often ridiculous nature of our conversations, his fingers flex dexterously, working the crochet hook and wool.
Given he keeps coming back week after week, the smile that sits permanently on his face isn't just about the satisfaction of his work.
I think he rather enjoys the ridiculous nature of our conversations.
"Do you think a glitter nude would look any good?" asks Elly.
Knowing Elly carries through with all her creative ideas and her question is therefore rhetorical, I tap out a few more words on my keyboard and agree with Lutek that it is, indeed, not like Bess to be this late, but that she'll be fine.
The world would stop spinning before Bess allowed anything to get in the way of her ability to breathe.
Or create art. She'd look Death in the eye sockets and say, "I very dare you," and I've no doubt he'd hold up all ten phalanges and say, "As you were, ma'am. "
But...
...I pull my car keys out of my pocket. "I'll go for a drive. See if I can find her."
As I make my way towards the door, Elly says, "Lutek, can you pose for me?"
As Lutek says, "Oh, um," I say, "Not if he doesn't want to," and exit, knowing there's every chance Lutek will be naked and artfully posed upon my return.
I try Bess' house, the gallery, the gallery roof, all the main streets, and the areas around the seafront in which Bess might sit and contemplate if that is what she needs to be doing at this moment. She is nowhere.
Nor is she answering her phone.
A little knot of anxiety works its way into a lump low in my belly.
I feel impotent with the not knowing and the not being able to do anything about it, and all I can do is return to the workshop and hope she'll turn up soon with a completely excusable excuse or a promise not to make us worry like that ever again.
I swing the door open, hopeful Bess has turned up in the meantime.
The disappointment in her lack of presence is almost superseded by the vision of eighty-something-ish-year-old Carlos, posing with apple in hand and dried arrangement on full display.
Given Carlos' versatility with his behaviour, the first question that comes to mind is, "Where did the apple come from?"
Elly answers with, "From the chiller in the café that’s literally a thirty second walk from here? It's a pretty standard food item, Ed," which I totally deserve.
I place a hand on Lutek's shoulder on my way past. "Good on you."
"Lutek didn't get an opportunity to be strong-armed into stripping," says Jeanette with a little laugh. "Carlos volunteered with insistence as soon as you closed the door."
"Always fancied myself as a life drawing model," says Carlos. "I've got nothing to hide."
I lower myself into my chair. "Carlos, your entire being is about elusiveness and obfuscation."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Could be I'm doing the old double bluff. They think I think I'm hiding, when I could just be living the life of an eccentric gentleman."
"Which you are," says Elly with a roll of her eyes.
"Which I could be." He raises the apple higher and looks at it. "Or not."
Lutek sensibly changes the subject. "No Bess, then?"
"No Bess. She won't be far away," I say with a conviction meant for myself as much as anyone else.
I try to settle myself back into my work.