Sea Lovers (12 page)

Walter Stack took five of the Beethovens, and in the next few weeks he sold three, which constituted a windfall for Philip. He was relieved to have the money; it was enough to pay his back rent and splurge on a bottle of wine, which we drank with the undercooked chicken cacciatore I whipped up in my gloomy kitchen. But something about this very limited success made Phil irritable and anxious. The fact that only three had sold was evidence that he need do no more, the craze was over. However, if the two remaining sold, as Walter expected they would, then he would be condemned to produce more, and the truth was, he was already sick of Beethoven. If he weren't careful he would be the guy who did Beethoven, which evidently struck him as an appalling fate.

“You don't have to do nothing but Beethoven,” I protested. “Beethoven could be a sideline.”

“I'm not a printmaker,” Phil snapped. “I don't do editions. Every painting is different. It has to be. One leads to the other.”

“Didn't Monet do a lot of water lilies?” I suggested hopefully. “And a series of Chartres Cathedral too. That was the same subject over and over.”

Phil gave me a guarded look, which encouraged me. “Don't artists always do a lot of studies before they finish a big project? Maybe all the Beethovens are just the warm-up for the big one.”

Phil drained his glass and poured out another full one. “That's ridiculous,” he said.

“You like to paint the rooftops again and again,” I persisted. “You've said yourself you don't tire of that.”

“Well, that's the point, isn't it,” he said. “Every time I look out the window, it's different. The light has changed; it's cloudy or clear, or raining. It's alive. Beethoven is dead.”

That shut me up. I pushed the chicken around with my fork, sipped my wine, keeping my eyes down.

“And I'm not Monet.” He said this resignedly, as if he didn't want to hurt my feelings.

I've never been much interested, as some women are, in trying to make something out of a man, in seeing his promise and compelling him to live up to it. I figured Phil was an artist and I wasn't, so he probably knew more about being one than I did. Everyone agreed that artists were, by their nature, difficult people. Maybe Phil's problem was that he wasn't difficult enough. He certainly wasn't egotistical, but he was stubborn. He did no more Beethovens that summer, and I said nothing more about it. He started doing self-portraits on the wallpaper samples, choosing some of the ugliest designs in the books, dark swirls and metallic stripes, paper for a child's room with romping pink elephants chasing beach balls. There was something sinister about these pictures. The likeness was good, but the eyes were wrong, unfocused and as lightless as a blind man's. As soon as they were done, Phil put them away in an old cardboard portfolio.

One evening when we were drinking beer with Sid and Wendy, Sid asked Phil what he was working on. “I'm in transition,” Phil said. This answer struck me as unnecessarily vague; it wasn't as if Phil was not working. “He's doing self-portraits,” I said. Sid stroked his well-kept beard, an irritating habit he had. “On the wallpaper,” he said.

“Sure,” Phil said. I started turning my coaster around on the table, waiting for Sid's pronouncement, which would provoke the usual argument, but Sid said nothing. When I looked up, he was signaling the waitress. “I'll buy a round,” he said.

Phil drained the glass he'd been lingering over, his eyes fixed coldly on Sid's back. If Sid was buying, it meant we were in for a lecture.

“Thanks,” I said to Wendy, who smiled.

“We're celebrating,” she said. “We have good news.”

Sid turned to us, his face radiating self-importance, but he left it to Wendy to satisfy our curiosity.

“Sid's taken a job at Dave Gravier's agency.”

Even I had heard of the Gravier agency, which had produced the stylish Jazz and Crawfish festival posters that hung in upscale restaurants and shops all over town. “That's great,” I said.

“It's just part-time,” Sid said.

Phil fumbled a cigarette from his pack, his mouth fixed in a lopsided smile. The waitress arrived with our beers and a basket of tortilla chips, which Sid pulled closer to himself.

“So you sold out,” Phil said softly.

Sid took a chip, bit it, chewed ruminatively as he rolled his eyes heavenward.

“And I knew you would,” Phil added.

Sid swallowed his chip while Wendy and I exchanged speculative glances. “It's just part-time,” Sid repeated.

“For now,” Phil said.

“No, not just for now, Philip,” Sid insisted. “I made it very clear to Dave that I am only willing to work for him three days a week because I'm planning a new series of paintings, large canvases, bigger than anything I've done before, and they'll be expensive to produce. So I'm willing to work part-time in order to increase my creative options, not, as you imply, to limit them, which means I'm not selling out. It's the opposite of selling out. I'm interested in doing important work, lasting work, and I can't do that by painting on grocery bags or feed sacks, or linoleum tiles I pull up from the kitchen floor. I need canvas and lots of it, big, sturdy frames, a lot of paint, and that stuff, as you may not know these days, my friend, because you are living in a dream, is expensive.”

“Tell yourself that lie,” Phil said, giving me a sidelong glance that presupposed my agreement.

“No,” I said. “I see your point.”

“An artist has to live in the real world,” Sid informed us.

“Right,” Phil snapped, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. “And the real world has got to be a lot more comfortable than the one I'm living in. Which is what, would you say, some kind of antireality? A counterworld?”

“Money is freedom,” Sid replied, ignoring, I thought, Phil's excellent point, which was that everything is reality—suffering, success, poverty, wealth, a rat-infested hovel or a mansion, it's all the same stuff. “And I need freedom to work. I'm not stymied. I'm not making excuses for myself, I'm not ‘in transition,' I'm not afraid to work, and I'm not selling out to the establishment. I'm grateful for the establishment. I need money, and now I won't have to worry about getting it and I can work in peace.”

We were all quiet for a moment, listening to the fact that Sid had used Phil's expression “in transition” as the locus of his general contempt. I expected Phil to fire back forcefully, but he just swallowed half his beer, set the glass down carefully, and said, “You're clueless, Sid.”

On the walk home, Phil was quiet. I chattered on about my visit with my parents, who were pressing me to go back to school, my dissatisfaction with my job, the roach problem in my kitchen, which boric acid wasn't touching. We trudged up the stairs to Phil's apartment, where the heat was packed in so tight it hurt to breathe. “For God's sake,” I said, “turn on the air conditioner.”

“It's broken,” he said.

I leaned against the table feeling my pores flush out across my forehead and back. “When did that happen?”

“This morning.” Phil had stripped his shirt off and was bending over a stack of wallpaper sample books.

“We can't stay here,” I said. “Let's go to my place. At least I have a fan.”

“You go,” he said pleasantly. “There's something I need to do here.”

“Are you going to paint?”

He gathered up a few of the sample books and carried them, weaving slightly, to the kitchen table. Then he pulled one of the jumbo garbage bags from the roll under the sink. “I'm getting rid of these,” he said.

“Tonight?” I said. “Can't it wait until tomorrow?”

“No,” he said.

I took up a dish towel and wiped it across my forehead. “It's too hot, Phil,” I complained. “And I'm too tired.”

“I don't need help,” he said. “Just go to bed. I'll see you in the morning.”

The thought of the comfortable bed in my clammy room off the alley was appealing. I rarely slept there because it was too narrow for both of us. The sheets were clean; the
tick-tick
of the oscillating fan always reminded me of sleeping at my grandmother's house when I was a child. “I'm going,” I said.

Phil scarcely looked up from the bagging of the sample books. “Goodnight,” he said. “Sleep well.”

A few days later Phil and I stopped by Walter Stack's gallery to see if the remaining Beethovens had sold. Phil had nothing new to offer; as far as I could tell, he had stopped painting and he was running out of money. “What is this? You're coming here empty-handed?” Walter complained as soon as we were inside the door.

“I'm working,” Phil replied. “I'll have something in a few days.”

I scanned the crowded walls and spotted Beethoven scowling out beneath a charcoal rendering of Charlie Chaplin. The famous-dead area, I presumed.

“I was wondering if you'd sold any of the Beethovens,” Phil asked. Something in Walter brought out a diffidence in Phil that made my stomach turn.

“I did sell one,” Walter said. “A lady from Oregon who plays the piano.” He turned to the cash register and punched the buttons until the drawer sprang open. I smiled at Phil; surely this was good news, but he was looking past me, out at the street, with an expression of such excitement mixed with fear that I turned to see what he saw. Two women were maneuvering an oversized portfolio through the heavy glass door. The one at the back was a tall, muscular redhead; the other, pushing in determinedly, was Ingrid.

“Look,” Walter said. “Now here's a working artist. What have you got for me, beautiful?”

Ingrid's hawkish eyes raked the room, drawing a bead on Phil, who was pocketing the single bill Walter had pulled from the register. “Hi, Phil,” she said, pleasantly enough.

“Hello, Ingrid,” Phil replied. He stepped away from the counter, close to me, and I assumed he was about to introduce me. Having cleared the door, the two women passed us and lifted the portfolio to the counter. While Ingrid unfastened the ribbons along the side, her friend engaged Walter in light banter about another dealer. I craned my neck, hoping to get a look at Ingrid's offering, but the counter was narrow and she was forced to hold the cover upright, blocking my view. Walter looked down doubtfully at whatever was displayed, working his jaw. I turned to Phil, thinking he must be as curious as I was.

He was leaning away from me, his weight all on one leg, his shoulders oddly hunched, and as I watched, he raised one hand and pressed the knuckles lightly against his lips. The color had drained from his face, and he swayed as if he might collapse, yet there was a vibration of energy around him, a kind of heat. His dark eyes were fixed with a febrile intensity on Ingrid's back, bathing her with such a combination of sweetness, longing, and terror that I thought she must feel it. Or hear it. Indeed, his expression aroused in me sensations similar to those evoked by the commencement of certain melancholy music: a shiver along the spine, the silencing of the inner colloquy, all the senses arrested by an unwelcome yet irresistible revelation of suffering.

Ingrid didn't feel it. She was engaged in bargaining, which was pointless, as Walter took everything on consignment and set the prices himself. Her friend brought up the other dealer again, suggesting that he would make a better offer, and Walter, obligingly, pretended outrage. Phil's hand had dropped to his side, but otherwise he didn't move. He was so rapt in his contemplation of Ingrid, so unconscious of everything else, including me, that when I touched his arm it startled him and he gripped my hand tightly. “Phil,” I said. “Let's go now,” and I led him, unprotesting, into the street. The group at the counter, absorbed in their transactions, took no notice of our departure.

Outside, the light and heat assailed us, and we clung to each other until we reached the covered sidewalk on Decatur Street. “Do you want to go for a coffee?” I asked, and Phil nodded. His eyes were wet, but his color had returned and he gave me a weak, convalescent smile. “We'll go inside,” he said. “It will be cool in there.”