The next morning, Shane awoke at his normal time, just as the sun was coming up.
He was a little surprised by this, considering how late he’d been up the night before, and how tired he’d felt when he’d finally fallen into bed. Apparently, the body’s long habits overruled temporary breaks in the routine.
He threw off the covers and padded to the shower, not even feeling particularly groggy, like he had the morning before. That had been the morning after he’d moved into the cottage, the morning after he had “celebrated” the move with almost an entire six pack of St. Pauli Girl beer, in the dark all by himself on the back patio. Shane had never been a heavy drinker, and when he did drink, he always felt it the next morning. Apparently, however, staying up to paint had the opposite effect. Not only did he feel alert and chipper, he felt positively energetic.
Maybe today he’d finally finish the matte painting. The moment he did, he’d take it off the big easel, prop it in the corner to dry—his symbolic gesture of
fini
—and head downstairs to call his new agent, a guy named Morrie Greenfeld who worked in a high rise office in downtown St. Louis. That would feel good. It would prove to both himself and Greenfeld that he was, indeed, a can-do artist, one who met the deadline, and with quality work.
Shane had been a little worried about that as of late, and he hated to think that Greenfeld might have shared his worries. The matte painting was the first gig Greenfeld had arranged for Shane, even if it had been Shane’s portfolio and pencil sketch that had sealed the deal. Shane knew how these things worked. If he couldn’t produce the art and impress the client his first time out, Greenfeld wouldn’t take the time to tell him to get his butt in gear. Shane would simply not hear from him again. Sure there were other agents looking for artists—this was St. Louis, after all, not Manhattan—but when word got out that an artist was hard to work with, it was a hard reputation to live down. If Shane didn’t get this matte painting done quickly, and if the result didn’t amaze the client, his shift would probably become eerily, depressingly easy.
Thus, Shane looked very forward to finishing this contract during today’s shift. The way he felt as he poured his coffee from the percolator and tramped up the stairs, he thought he just might do it, too. The foreman in his head was raring to go; he was back on track, blueprint in one hand, schedule in the other, and ready to make it happen.
In the studio, Shane raised the blinds on the single window, turned around and stopped for a moment. He saw last night’s work, lit in the rays of the morning sun, and realized that if he
did
finish the matte painting today, calling Morrie Greenfeld would
not
be the second thing he’d do after taking the painting off its easel. Rather, the second thing he’d do would be to move last night’s new painting from where it currently sat, on the old easel in the corner, to the main easel under the M. C. Escher quote.
It wasn’t just that the new painting was a little too big for the old easel. As he’d painted last night, Shane had come to suspect that this new creation was more than just a bizarre whim. For one thing, it was very, very good; Shane had recognized it even as the first rough strokes had begun to color the canvas. It was as if the painting already existed, and he’d glimpsed it, memorized it, and all he had to do now was excavate it from the white of the canvas, carefully, and without screwing it up.
And even more important than its quality, the painting seemed to
mean
something, even if Shane couldn’t quite grasp what it was. The painting was, in fact, possibly the first real
art
Shane had created in decades, the first painting made for itself, not to sell movie tickets, or fabric softener, or political candidates. It was hard to enter the room and not stop to stare at the new work. Even in its current state, rough and unfinished, it had a certain gravity, a gravity Shane wanted to orbit.
He nodded to himself. He would finish the matte painting today, and then he would move the new painting, the painting of the manor house, to his main easel, under the Escher quote, where he did his shift work. There were no other contracts for the next few weeks. Instead of lazing around playing Sudoku, going on bike rides and watching television, Shane would take his time and finish the new painting. And when he was done with it, maybe he’d do something with it that he hadn’t done with any of his other paintings: maybe he’d frame it and hang it up. Maybe he’d put it right over the fieldstone fireplace in the living room, where it could be visible from almost anywhere in the house. The last time any of his pictures had been displayed just for their art, they had been stuck to the front of his grandmother’s fridge, pinned down by magnets in the shapes of plastic fruit.
This new painting was different than anything Shane had painted for Tristan and Crane, or for any of his freelance clients, either before or since. Maybe the painting wasn’t really as good as Shane thought it was; maybe he only responded so strongly to it because it was the first thing he’d created with the help of the muse in his entire adult life. Or maybe it was just that it showed some idea of the manor house that had once been the big sister of the cottage he now lived in. Either way, it didn’t matter. He didn’t care if anyone else liked the painting. This one was just for him, and that in itself was a new, decidedly pleasant experience.
But Shane didn’t finish the matte painting that day. The shift went well, and he got close. He even entertained the idea of pushing past his normal two PM stopping time. After all, even bulldozer drivers had to put in a few hours’ overtime every now and then, didn’t they? He’d push on, at least until the foreman in his head decided to call it quits for the day. But then, unexpectedly, the phone downstairs had begun to ring. Shane froze, listening, his right hand still raised, the brush tip still touching the canvas.
Who would be calling him? Who even knew the number? Once again, his first thought was Steph, and he winced inwardly. Steph wouldn’t be calling anymore. Still, he supposed he’d been waiting for her to call again ever since that one last conversation, despite everything. The intellect may live in the realm of the logical, but the heart plays by its own rules. Shane sighed and set his brush on the side table, careful to let its tip stick over the ledge. He wiped his hands on an old towel as he tramped down the stairs, following the incessant ring of the cordless phone.
“Hi, Shane, how’s it going?” It was Morrie Greenfeld. Shane should’ve known.
“Great, Morrie, glad to hear from you. I was just finishing up.”
“Finishing up for the day?”
“Well, no, actually. I was planning on putting in another hour or two. I meant I’m almost finished with the matte. I thought I’d wrap it up today.”
“Glad to hear it,” Greenfeld said. Was there a note of chastisement in his voice? Shane was probably imagining it. “I’d love to see it myself. Any chance you could send me a few pics of it before I send somebody over to pick it up?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Shane replied quickly. “I’m happy with it, myself. I’ll snap off a few shots and email them to you this evening. Fair enough?”
“Perfect. You do that. If this comes off as well as I expect it to, I might have some more work for you later next week. You up for a quick turnaround on some postcard landscapes? Florida tourism is looking to go retro on some new promotional materials. ‘Wish you were here’ kind of stuff.”
“Sounds right up my alley,” Shane answered. For the moment, he dismissed the painting of the manor house. Work was work, and if he scored another quick job, he could take the time off to finish the manor house painting later. “You want me to come out to the office to discuss it?”
“Nah, don’t trouble yourself. I still need to nail down the details. They’re sending me some concept art on Monday. After that, maybe I’ll come out to you for a little sit-down at your place, take a look at the originals from your portfolio, if you’re comfortable with that.”
“Sure, sounds great. Just let me know beforehand so I can clean up all the empty tequila bottles and ladies’ underthings.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know how you artist types are. You talk a big game, but you spend most of your time writing emo poems about your long lost innocence and high school sweethearts.”
“Not me,” Shane said, falling easily into the banter. “I’m the live fast, die young type.”
“That explains the cottage out in the boondocks,” Greenfeld answered, and Shane could hear him grinning. Shane had only ever met Greenfeld once in person, at his St. Louis office a month earlier, and had decided then that this was the kind of guy most people would find a little too insightful and lot too obnoxiously blunt. Simply put, Greenfeld was one of those rare people who didn’t give a damn about getting others to like them. Shane
had
liked him, however, even if he himself tended to be just the opposite, more of a people-pleaser. Maybe it didn’t make for a particularly good artist-agent relationship, but then again, maybe it did.
Greenfeld went on, “What if I come over sometime middle of next week? Thursday afternoon, maybe? I can show you the Florida concepts and we can talk about the matte painting. If you liked doing it, there are a lot more out there. Less and less of you guys are doing them nowadays, since so many studios are crossing over to making computer generated virtual sets. The few purists who still like the look of paint on canvas are having a hard time finding professionals who are willing to do it. What do you say?”
“I say I still have a beer or two in the fridge with your name on them. I’ll see you on Thursday afternoon, Morrie.”
Greenfeld ended the phone call with characteristic brusqueness a few seconds later. He took some getting used to, but Shane was glad not to have to waste time on inane small talk.
That was one thing he didn’t miss about Tristan and Crane. There, as in any other office environment, small talk was like a sort of contagious disease. It was hard not to get sucked into it, and once it caught you, it was even harder to tear back out of it. Shane had never been the kind of artist who could chat the day away while he painted. Steph had always told him that when his shift was on, it was like he was a hundred fathoms deep, like some old-time deep sea diver in a metal suit and a glass face-plate, clanking around on the ocean floor with hundreds of feet of rubber hose connecting him to the surface. It took him a while to sink that deep, but it took him a lot longer to climb back to the surface, even just to answer a quick question about what he was doing for lunch or to remember the damned oatmeal cookie sitting there on his art table.
The call from Greenfeld had been thankfully short, but it had still been an interruption. Shane wasn’t fathoms deep anymore. Now, metaphorically speaking, he was sitting on the deck of the boat with his diving helmet off, blinking in the bright, briny sun, wondering if it was worth the effort to make the trek back into the deep again, or if it was time to just call it quits for the day.
He couldn’t do that, of course. Greenfeld was expecting photos of the finished matte painting emailed to him by the end of the day. Time to get out the rope and bucket and dip deep into the well of creativity. The foreman in his head would probably be a little cranky about being called back in to work, but occasional overtime was just part of the job, and he’d have to deal with it. For now, it was time to make the art happen. After tonight, it’d be all done and he could do whatever he wished.
When he got back upstairs to the studio, however, Shane stopped in the middle of the room. The new painting struck him all over again, and he stared at it. A moment later, he stepped lightly over to it, passing the matte painting on the main easel, but picking up the still-wet paintbrush from the edge of the work table.
He leaned toward the new painting, examining it, frowning slightly. Something wasn’t exactly right about it, some basic element. He could fix it, and quickly—it was that simple. He just had to figure out what it was.
He deliberately blurred his vision a little, making the image bleed together before his eyes. There it was. One brush stroke, part of the upright of the far right column, wasn’t quite right. It pulled the shape of the column out of the gentle taper, made it appear a little awkward and crooked. Shane dabbed, using whatever color was on the brush. It was red. He painted out the sloppy brush stroke. Later, he’d refine it, and cover the red, but just fixing that bad stroke made an amazing difference.
He shivered a little. The muse could be a demanding bitch, but she certainly made it worth your while. He stood back again, taking in the painting as a whole. It was incomplete, but it was right. Later, when he finished it, it was going to be excellent. For now, however, he had to get back to the matte painting. Time to clock a little overtime. Time to get back to work.
Instead, he dabbed at the new painting again, fleetingly. And then he leaned in, painting in earnest. Eventually, fifteen minutes later, he did cross back over to his main easel, but only for a moment.
Only long enough to grab his stool and his palette.
