by Kate Russo
Because he’s proud to still have his signature waves, he spends the most time on his hair. His hairdresser recommends two products for him: some frizz-fighting Moroccan argan oil and a gel that helps give his waves definition. He squirts a dollop of each into his hand and rubs them together vigorously, before running the mixture through his hair, root to tip.
Ready for the day, he emerges from the bathroom and turns on the electric kettle. Across the room from his futon, he’s set up a makeshift kitchen. He keeps the space compact and tidy so that he has more room to prop canvases along the rest of the back wall. He got a great deal on a small, electric two-hob cooker and a short fridge on eBay; with the money he saved, he splurged on a toaster oven and a microwave from John Lewis. A sink had already been plumbed into the Formica countertop that had once been just a brush-washing station. Now, a cutting board, the kettle, an iPod dock, and a fruit bowl occupy the surface. He eats a lot of fruit these days because it’s the perfect food for anyone who wants to eat while doing something else. Bennett peels back a banana while he waits for the kettle to boil. He’s careful not to look out the front window again. He wants to appear aloof to Mrs. Easton, who is still sitting at the kitchen island. He wonders for a second what kind of artwork she makes. Probably conceptual, he thinks, bitterly.
Hitting Play on the iPod dock, he gazes down the length of the room, across all his canvases to the fabric stacked at the end. When the hip-hop starts playing, he can feel his shoulders drop, the silence, deadened. He’s just a middle-aged man, who happens to like hip-hop, keeping the beat and eating a banana in his studio. Nothing to see here. He bobs up and down with something bordering on abandon as he waits for the water to boil. He taps his teaspoon on the edge of the counter.
More vibe, more vibe, more pressure, more vibe.
More vibe, more pressure, more pressure, more vibe.
The kettle rumbles and turns itself off. He fishes his hand into the box of PG Tips and pulls out the last tea bag. This afternoon, he’ll have to go to the shop. Probably just as well, as he hasn’t left the studio in days.
Mug of tea in hand, he plops down on his paint-coated rolling chair. Between the yellow painting on the back wall and the windows on the front of the studio, there is nothing but the chair. He likes to have this space completely clear so that he can engage with his paintings at any distance. To his right are the stacks of fabric and in the dead center of the room are two wallpapering tables, covered in paint tubes, a glass palette, rags, and brushes, dividing the living and work spaces. The looming problem is the lack of storage space for finished canvases. They don’t go straight to a gallery anymore like they used to. They go into a locked room on the first floor of the house—Eliza’s old study. It’s nearly full now, with paintings stacked precariously against the radiator. Of course, the simplest answer to the storage question is to stop painting. But then what the fuck would he do with himself all day?
He wheels over to the wall of fabrics, taking a big gulp of his tea before pulling one of the yellow striped fabrics from the bottom of the stack. He’d spotted it from across the room while he was waiting for the kettle to boil. The patterns have a way of calling to him, or so he thinks, when it is their turn to be immortalized in paint. He knows that his fabrics aren’t actually sentient, but he imagines himself in conversation with them. The lonelier the days get, the more personified his possessions become, especially for a man who already has a natural proclivity for assigning human emotion to inanimate objects. He holds the chosen fabric up to the painting. The yellows in the latter, which had a lemon quality before, are now ringing more orange next to the greener yellows in the striped fabric. He squints his eyes and watches a halo form between the colors, the greens becoming more orange and the oranges becoming more green. These are the kinds of magical moments he’s looking for, colors glowing and changing when they’re brought together. People don’t do that enough.
After laying the striped fabric over the back of his chair, he squirts some cobalt blue paint onto his palette of yellows. He flattens it into the glass with the palette knife, scraping it along the smooth surface until the paint stops. Twenty years ago, when he was painting nudes, he found capturing the expression of his sitters to be the most difficult part. When painting naked women, Bennett preferred to separate himself by thinking of them anatomically, instead of emotionally. He was good at anatomy; he understood the figure and its proportions beautifully. It was mood he couldn’t master. Something about painting those women’s feelings felt a little bit like cheating on Eliza. To understand another woman enough that he could paint her emotions was akin to infidelity. When he painted fabric, however, or from a still life, he could extract from his subjects all of their truth, an apple’s need to nourish, a fabric’s desire to clothe. In fact, reviewers often complained that “Bennett Driscoll seems to care more about the fabric his nudes recline on than the nudes themselves.” One reviewer even went as far as to say, “Maybe Driscoll should just ditch the nude all together?”
Where, Bennett wonders, is that reviewer now? He listened to the bastard and now he’s broke. Taking a heaping palette knife full of cadmium yellow light, he spreads it across the layer of blue. Maybe it’s his recent single-dom, or maybe it’s being broke, but lately Bennett’s been thinking about reintroducing the figure into his paintings. It could have several potential benefits, he thinks. It might get galleries interested in his work again. Collectors didn’t care what the critics thought. The nudes sold.
He folds the yellow paint into the blue, methodically, like a baker folding eggs into flour. The blue and yellow, turning from two colors into one.
Also, there’s the more pressing issue of human contact. He needs to start talking to more people, not just AirBed guests with inane requests for the best place to get a curry. Try India, you knob! Having a model in the studio would mean having someone to talk to for several hours a day. And she’d have to talk to him, because he’d be paying her. Payment. That would be a problem. Models don’t come cheap. He’d have to up his nightly rate on the house, but that’s a possibility. He never did raise his rates when he became a Super Host, which most people do. And who knows, maybe the model would have sex with him? No, wait, he can’t pay her and fuck her.
That’s a prostitute, you twat.
He steps back from the palette. He’s mixed a bright green, a St. Patrick’s Day green. The wrong fucking green. He wanted a greenish-yellow. Resentfully, he squirts out a big blob of cadmium yellow on top of the green, as though the color has insulted him. What resembled gently folding eggs into batter, before, is now more akin to cracking eggs into a high-velocity blender. His palette knife furiously flips the paint, sending flecks of it flying across the glass. It’s still too green, so he siphons off half of it and sets it to the side of the palette. He wonders if Mrs. Easton can mix color. Bet she uses the colors straight from the tube. She’s still sitting there at the island. Doesn’t she have anything to do.
He squints at the fabric resting over the back of his rolling chair. He needs to make his color more neutral because, now that he’s looked again, the yellow he’s after is actually brownish-greenish-yellow. What he needs, is brown ochre. Ninety-nine percent of the time, brown ochre is the answer. He should learn to start there. He searches around on his workbench for the color—unlike his fabrics, the paint tubes are not lined up chromatically, but rather jumbled up in a big messy pile. Given the ochre’s demand, it’s no surprise that when he locates the tube, it’s empty.
* * *
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When he leaves the studio after lunch—a lunch that consisted of two apples and a red-netted bundle of mini Babybel cheese—he has in his pocket a note that reads: brown ochre and tea bags. He shouldn’t need a shopping list for two items, but if he didn’t write them down, he’d forget one. His memory, like his knees, is also fifty-five. Now that he needs paint, he’ll have to go to Boss Art, the large art supply
store in Soho that sells paint at prices so low it’s no wonder that the people who work there can’t tell a paintbrush from a pencil.
He hasn’t been out of his studio since Sunday, when he checked in the Eastons. It’s now Thursday. Stepping into the chilly February air, he clocks Mrs. Easton still sitting at the kitchen island, still staring at her phone. He wonders if this is what it was like for Eliza to watch him all those years; her parting words—I can’t stand still with you anymore—are ringing in his ears. He reaches back into the studio and grabs his sketchbook and a couple of pencils, tossing them in a canvas shoulder bag that’s been hanging by the door collecting dust. He’s going out and he’s staying out. After all, he put on new underwear.
* * *
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Khoury’s Market, by the station, always has the door propped open, even in the dead of winter. The corner shop stocks all of Bennett’s daily needs as a single man: pasta, pesto, fruit, Babybel, and most importantly, tea. He makes a beeline to the back of the store where, much to his frustration, the tea is located—past the wine and next to the washing powder. It’s the Khoury daughter sitting behind the till today; she’s not so friendly, so he sets the tea on the counter without a word. She’s got her hair pulled back in a ponytail so tight that it looks painful. She gives him a blank look, so he pushes the box a little closer to her. It used to be her dad behind the till, but recently, Bennett’s been seeing more and more of the daughter. Mr. Khoury was friendly, always looking up from his copy of the Sun to ask Bennett if he’d seen Match of the Day. Bennett has never watched Match of the Day in his life, but it makes him happy that he passes with Mr. Khoury for the type of man that might.
“Two quid, mate.” The daughter doesn’t like to make eye contact. She stares out the open door to the street. She taps her fingernails on the counter while she waits. They look sharp enough to slit a man’s throat.
“Can I ask why you keep the tea all the way in the back?” he is surprised to hear himself ask, while fishing in his pocket for a two-pound coin.
She shrugs.
“It’s probably your most popular item, right? Why not put it by the counter.” He should stop, but it feels so good to speak to someone.
“Most people buy something else as well,” she says, indifferent, taking his money. “You know, like, on the way they see stuff they didn’t know they needed.”
“Right.” He lifts the box of tea. “What else do they buy?”
“Crisps and that.” She shrugs. “Salad cream.”
That sounds like a disgusting combination. “So you were hoping I’d buy some salad cream as well?”
“Not really, mate. Don’t care.”
Figures.
* * *
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Soho is the place to go for old farts like Bennett who still want to feel hip. It’s full of washed-up guys searching for relevance. They’re mostly film and television types that populate the cafes and bars of Dean and Frith Streets. Bennett has tucked himself into a back table at the Claret. Somewhere between a French wine bar and a British pub, it was a favorite of the artist Francis Bacon, and is therefore a favorite of Bennett Driscoll. He’s ordered a large glass of red wine, Syrah, he thinks, but honestly he’s not sure what the barmaid poured. He can’t remember the last time he had a glass of wine before five p.m., but he’s assured himself it isn’t a big deal. He’s already bought his brown ochre paint, a very quick errand for a comparatively long journey into town, and besides, he told himself he would stay out. Before he left the studio, he went to the effort of changing out of his paint clothes and into a nice pair of jeans, his favorite black cashmere jumper, and his brown lace-up boots. Francis Bacon wouldn’t have given a fuck about drinking at three-thirty in the afternoon. Although, Bennett reminds himself, Francis Bacon was an alcoholic.
But Bennett isn’t here to drink. He’s here to draw. He’s got his sketchbook out on the table, though so far it remains closed. His pencils are resting off to the side, making his intentions known—mostly to himself. Choosing a subject for his drawing is going to be difficult. There’s a group of stuffy old men around the bar with nothing better to do than drink on a Thursday afternoon. A few of them have wives, all with small glasses of white wine sitting next to their husbands’ larger glasses of red. He doesn’t want to get punched, so it’s probably not a good idea to sketch any of these mens’ wives. He doesn’t really want to sketch the old geezers, either, so he settles on the barmaid. Opening the sketchbook, he finds a clean page and takes a big gulp of his wine before picking up an HB pencil. From where he is sitting, he has a profile view of the middle-aged, red-haired woman behind the bar. He stares at her for a moment, trying to decide where to start. First, he draws the lines of the bar top to create a minimal environment for the figure. She’s slender, which isn’t surprising for a woman who stands all day. There’s something strange about her, sexy even. Though it’s not effortless, maybe a little awkward or nerdy, like she might know a lot about The Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’s her fairylike, deep crimson shirt with sleeves that flare at the wrists. He’ll begin there, with her hand, which rests on the edge of the counter. He follows her sleeve with his pencil until it dips below the bar. Next, he takes the line across to the pit of her elbow, then effortlessly up to her shoulder, then glides it, quickly, back down to complete the arm. All of this takes only thirty seconds. He’s surprised by the familiarity of the motion. He watches her as she gabs with the two wrinkly old gits on the other side of the bar—one in a flat cap and the other with an enormous, unruly beard. In another two minutes, he’s outlined most of her figure. He takes extra care to accentuate the lift in her small breasts, a detail that indicates she is younger than he had originally thought. Bennett is a fan of small, perky breasts, so he’s happy to linger.
He’s left the difficult task of capturing her expression for last. He works around the face by adding the details of her soft, shiny hair, which she’s pulled back in a loose, low bun. He sets down the pencil and takes another sip of wine for inspiration, studying her as she laughs at one of her customers’ jokes. Is it really funny or is she just being polite? This is his problem: he can’t tell. He contemplates just leaving her face blank. He wonders if maybe there is something interesting or mysterious about that, but he knows there isn’t. He’s just being a coward. He procrastinates by looking at the photos and artwork hanging on the walls of the pub. With more than a hundred years of history, the place is half boozer and half museum—covered in old photos and caricatures of its most famous patrons. Directly above him is a picture of Francis Bacon seated in a chair just like the one he is sitting in now. Bacon looks serious, but content, his legs crossed and lips closed in a straight line. He’s leaning forward in his chair in a manner that could be construed as aggressive. Bennett wonders if the artist knew, at that moment, just how important he was, how influential he would become. Photos of famous artists always carry a weight of genius, Bennett thinks. Bacon looks as though he knew all along, without a single shred of doubt, that he was extraordinary. Bennett can’t think of any photos of himself that have the same gravitas. For starters, in most photos, Bennett is smiling. In many, he is grinning like an idiot. He remembers when he was a child that his father would yell, “Smile for your mother,” pointing at the camera his mum was holding. Adding, “It’s the only thing that’ll make her happy.” Every photo of himself that he can think of, even as an adult, was taken by his mother. She loved going to his openings and snapping pictures of him posing next to his artwork, smiling like a boy in a school photo, dutiful and sweet.
Recently, he’s been thinking about Bacon’s use of the figure and, most importantly, how he painted his own fears into his work. A man haunted by death and failure, he seems to have mixed his paint with anxiety the way other artists might mix theirs with linseed oil. It was his true medium and necessary to his enduring success. The lack of such emotion in Bennett’
s own work, he fears, could be a factor in his gradual descent into obscurity. He hasn’t been mixing his paint with fear and doubt. He’s been mixing it with safety and predictability. Bennett has purposely lived his life as the sort of man he imagined would be easy to love, the opposite of his dad, who took pride in his failures as husband and father. Bennett tried to be both supportive and stable for his wife and daughter, but still Eliza left, describing him as “fucking frustrating.” Now he has no idea what kind of man he is or wants to be. What he considered “supportive and stable” was apparently “suffocating and stubborn” to Eliza, and maybe to Mia as well, he doesn’t dare ask her.
Returning to his drawing, he picks up his pencil again and squints the barmaid into focus. He draws her mouth in several quick motions, slightly open, lips curved with the tips of her front teeth just barely showing. Her eyes curl with laughter, revealing crow’s-feet. Bennett adds the lines like whiskers on a cat.
When she looks over in his direction, he quickly drops the pencil. She’s not actually looking at him, though. She’s checking the level of his wine, which is getting low. She lifts up a bottle of Syrah to him, her expression a question mark.
He lifts his glass to suggest, Yes, please.
She comes out from behind the bar, holding the bottle by the neck. It glides along her thigh as she strides to the table.
