Dead Artist

by Ivan Jenson

  Picasso could be playful, but when he made a specific request, Milo always complied. Denying Picasso would yield either a temperamental fit, or a full-blown tantrum.

  Pablo said, “In the Midwest I find it hard to maintain my French Riviera tan.”

  To appease Picasso they went to the tanning salon called Midnight Tan. They each headed toward their tanning booth. Milo stripped down to his underwear and stood in front of the lamps. Vents on either side of him blasted cool air on his body. He put on his glasses and chose the hip-hop channel for his headset. Before putting in the ear buds, he listened through the thin wall as Pablo chatted up the girl from the salon staff, the one with the tight black shorts and nose ring. When Pablo started groaning in ecstasy, Milo turned up the music.

  When they came out, they both felt invigorated. Milo saw he had a message from Nick on his cell phone.

  The shipment of new paintings has arrived. I received forty two paintings and one hundred drawings. This is a lot of inventory, and they should really do the trick for you. Hang in there, and very, very soon we'll get you out of the Midwest.

  “It’s my dealer Nick,” Milo said to Pablo. “He loves the new paintings.”

  “I am happy for you,” Pablo said. But Pablo was also envious. His life was over, it was Milo’s turn now and he resented it. Yet he was willing to support Milo, that is why he had materialized. To help.

  Chapter Three

  Luna:

  ...and so things are happening for Milo and I am happy for him. He gets this last minute second chance, a second wind. I have always thought that he had a charmed life anyhow. It is as if a lucky star has always shined over him. He got to live in his own world, I guess we all underestimated him. And all this is happening because one single person believes in him. Sometimes that is all it takes.

  People once believed in me, I wasn't always a sloppy mother with a messy house. I didn’t always have short hair, which I have to dye black now or it would be totally gray. I used to have flowing locks and a face straight out of a Da Vinci painting. Older people just loved me. I was the perfect child. I was on TV with Johnny Carson. He called me, “Love.” They used to call me the “Love child.”

  Because I was in an ad for “Love” soap, it was gentle enough for babies but adults loved it too.

  I remember Johnny Carson said, “You are a lovely girl. So tell me what do you like to do when you aren’t starring in cute-as-a-button TV commercials about soap?”

  I sat in that chair next to Johnny Carson with my feet propped up on a little cushioned stool they had brought out just for me. I was totally relaxed, when I said, “I love to be with my brother Milo, he is an artist.”

  “So would you say your brother is your hobby?”

  “Yeah, he’s my hubby.”

  The audience laughed, they didn’t realize that I really was trying to say hobby, but it came out all wrong. Oh well, I didn’t care.

  Milo and I, we used to spend so much time together.

  Milo, you used to draw and paint me even when I wasn’t there. I was always amazed at your capacity to be alone, and to like it.

  You taught yourself to be a painter. I used to envy you, you seemed to have so many fathers, Picasso, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Lautrec. And then you tried to be so many things before you settled on the lonely life of being a visual artist. You used to write songs, okay, so your voice was not so pretty. Bob Dylan's voice isn’t pretty either, and how about Rod Stewart's? He sounds like he has a sore throat all the time and everybody still loves him. I was your biggest fan...until I met my husband from San Jose at the age of nineteen. My real hubby. I was too young to decide to leave home. I left the family so early, and for an older man no less. Papa wouldn't talk to me for a year and he wouldn't talk to my husband.

  Remember the crisis team told us that when families break apart one member always feels the pull.

  Mom really suffered when I left home. But I just had to stay away, even when she tried to kill herself I wouldn't come to see her. Mom and I were just way too close.

  You and I were too close too.

  Remember how we looked alike Milo?

  That afternoon on your ninth birthday when it was raining and you thought everyone forgot your birthday. And you came home soaked from the July rain and there we all were. We remembered after all! Momma, Papa, our brothers and sisters Amelia and Paul and Becky and Ray. And they gave you tubes of paint instead of toys. But then Ray ruined that day when he told you that some crazed maniac had taken a sledge hammer to Michelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican. I remember you were so upset, you wept for days. You have always had an old soul, Milo. And you also had what I thought could only be called a Michelangelo complex. I know there is no such thing, sure many boys had Oedipal complexes, you had a dose of that too. But it is not normal for a boy to watch Charlton Heston as Michelangelo in the Agony and the Ecstasy over and over again in your room. You were a prodigy at being obsessive.

  My husband still looks like you Milo, that’s what I first noticed about him. That similarity. It's a vibe, Milo, we all look the same, we all have big innocent eyes, thick lips, we look like Botticelli people. We look like we belong in another century. Another time. Another place. But at least my husband and I found a place that is proper and acceptable in this world. I have children, five of them. While you Milo crashed at friends' houses. Now it kills me that you live in that creepy hotel in Gold Haven. There was a time when you made everybody laugh. But then everybody kinda gave up on you without realizing it. We forgot about you. You fell between the cracks. But now that man named Nick who lives on the East Coast believes in you and your paintings and that is making all the difference. So it turns out you are going to be a household name. Well, I am happy for you. Kinda yes, and kinda no. It’s hard on me because I have harbored the hope that one day I would be in a commercial again, or perhaps do some acting, even if it was just in a soap. I don’t mean like Love Soap, I mean like as in a soap opera. But I don’t have an agent, haven’t had one in thirty years. It hurts a little that it is happening for you and not me. But I can take it. I have learned that as we get older, life humbles us.

  I just wonder how Ray is going to react to your resurgence in the art world.

  Chapter Four

  Milo was imagining his agent unwrapping the paintings in New York. It all felt so strange, but he had to keep reminding himself that this is something that he had always wanted. This would be his last summer in Gold Haven, his last summer as a washed up artist, a modern day ne’er-do-well. Nobody would believe him if he were to tell them that a cosmic force has taken over his life. He could feel this full force in his chest, making his heart palpitate and his breathing short and shallow. But for now he still played the sport of extreme loneliness.

  “I really hope you make a lot of money.” The voice on the phone was brittle, soft, and it sounded old and gravelly. It was Dr. Hyatt.

  Milo answered, “I just want to thank you for being here for me all these years.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Not many people have someone like Dr. Hyatt in their lives. But Milo did.

  “I would like to see you when I come out to New York,” Milo said.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  Dr. Hyatt was Milo’s mentor, his wise old sage, his therapist, and sometimes, his verbal punching bag. Milo called him “Doctor” Hyatt even though the old man had lost his license years ago. Dr. Hyatt lost his psychiatric license when he prescribed Ativan indiscriminately to a patient and the patient became addicted. He also once had an affair with one of his young female charges. And now things were becoming even more dire for Dr. Hyatt. He said to Milo, “They passed a law in New York that requires all therapists to have a license to provide therapy. I think it is total bullshit, but that's the way it is. So we can no longer have office visits nor can you send me payments.”

  “Well I am living in Gold Haven, Michigan and you in New York, so it is unlikely we will have an o
ffice visit any time soon. But I can’t believe I cannot pay you for your services. You mean I can never write that big thank you check for all the years you have been there for me?”

  “That’s right, you’re off the hook.”

  “You know Dr. Hyatt, I never thought that it would really happen for me.”

  “Most success comes to a man in his middle years.”

  “And how have you been Dr. Hyatt?”

  “I don’t go out at night like I used to. And my back hurts. Old age sucks. But let's not talk about me, let's talk about you, Milo Sonas.”

  “I went to the local Mall with Picasso today, we went to a tanning salon.”

  “That's nice,” the former doctor said.

  “You still don’t think I am crazy because I am friends with Picasso?”

  “You don’t sound crazy.”

  “But Picasso visits me, and we spend time together, we are friends and he is dead.”

  “Apparently for you he isn't. Listen I have another call I have to attend to. I’ll be here at ten thirty if you need to talk some more.”

  “Dr. Hyatt, thank you, really, I mean it.”

  “You talk like I am going to die.”

  “Well you might, it could happen at any second.”

  “But it might not.”

  Milo may have had a Michelangelo complex as a boy, but then when he hit adolescence he developed a Picasso complex, a Van Gogh, and a Lolita complex all put together.

  Now, it was a warm summer night and the fourth of July was drawing near. Yes, it would soon be Independence Day, and Van Gogh was in Gold Haven, Michigan watching VH1 and holding Milo’s dog Moon. Vincent said, “You know, they have done psychological studies and found that those that don’t have physical affection in their life, if these people are given paints, the paintings they make are more likely to be filled with a lot of pigment and texture. Lonely people paint with a brush loaded with paint. Maybe that's why both you and I paint with a loaded brush. But maybe now that your ship is coming in Milo, and when you find love, your paintings will become more smooth and graphic, because soon you will be bedding all those beautiful truffles. All that I ask is that you don’t forget about me when I am gone.”

  “Where are you going?” Milo asks casually.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I am not sure why I said that.”

  Picasso stepped out of the bathroom. “Of course Milo should forget you. What good will it do the world to have another artist as victim? My advice to you Milo is to completely disassociate yourself from Vincent. But I do advise you to keep making those Pop style versions of Van Gogh, because those suckers are going to make you a millionaire.”

  “You guys, I need to get some sleep,” Milo said, snatching Moon from Van Gogh and transferring her to his bed.

  Before hitting the sack there was one ritual he just had to do. Milo lit a candle, and then he stood in the center of his room raised his hands into the air, and verbally called forth the cosmic forces of the universe. He felt a power shoot through him. Yes this was finally working.

  Yes!

  Chapter Five

  Late June

  Ray:

  It isn't often that a person feels like they could just kill somebody. But I do. What that means is that I am willing to sacrifice my freedom to end someone else's.

  Summer makes people do things. Maybe it is the summer that is making me want to do this. People say I am an angry person. Damn right I am angry. Nobody ever gave me anything. Nada. I have always had to work, and work hard, I've even driven a cab in New York and I had no qualms with doing that. Since then I have become a painter. Not an artist mind you, but a house painter. There is a difference. Artists use a full spectrum of color and design and express themselves on canvas after canvas...but house painters, those like me, simply paint white on walls. And it really hurts when you are a painter and you have a brother who is an artist. It’s enough to drive one mad crazy. Meanwhile right now I am getting wind that my own little brother is suddenly slated to be some kind of shooting star in the art world. Give me a break! For the past five years he has been completely and totally down and out, living in a one-star hotel, and I remember how he calls me and says he has a dream of one day moving to Chicago or back to New York and I told him, “maybe there is a halfway house you can move to.” Look I know it was a callous thing to say. But shit, that guy has always had some kind of lucky star shining down on his life, even when he is all fucked up it seems to be up there and glowing. The guy used to just go out on the streets of New York and he would get totally showered in cash, don’t know how he did it. I was jealous of all that money coming at him while I drove a damn cab. I know the guy has had it tough, having that nervous breakdown or whatever it was he had. Knocked him right off his feet. It looked like he was down for good and I will be honest, I felt kinda good about it. It gave me a chance to maybe get ahead in life. But I just keep on painting houses. I work alone. I tape the interior walls, plaster up the gaps and lay down the tarp, and if there is a Mrs. who is home while I work, a Mrs. who is delirious of the fact that her MasterCard can buy her the manual labor of a guy like me; who is by the way, if I say so myself, ruggedly handsome. I am like a male hustler that costs forty an hour, and I paint shirtless to boot. I wear a mask because of the latex fumes, but sometimes I think that the fumes get to the wives, because that's why I have slept with more than just a few of 'em. And why not have a little afternoon delight?

  Milo has always said that he had many fathers, Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo to name a few, I don’t know why he couldn't just focus on the one true father we did have. I know why, because our father was a welfare dad. A kept man. A stay at home Papa, long before that ever became fashionable. Okay, so he fancied himself to be a freelance writer. He was always writing and re-writing, editing and re-editing a novel he titled “Cuckold to Contessa.” I read some pages, it was something about his nymphomaniac first wife who fucked, or so it seemed, every man in my father’s life at the time. Apparently this dame fucked my father’s best friend, his brother, his electrician, etc. Our father died unpublished. I guess that everybody in this family has made a desperate stab at success, I call it small time desperation.

  Milo’s stab at the big time came when he went out on a street corner in the early eighties and became an overnight success, it only took him six months to turn into an East Village phenomena. The guy rubs shoulders with everybody from Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and even Basquiat stops by and says hello to him while he sold his paintings out there on West Broadway. He becomes best friends with a billionaire, and almost makes it all the way. But then the stock market crashes, the art world dries up, and my brother's refrain becomes, “Close, but no banana.”

  Jeez!

  Chapter Six

  These most certainly were the last days that Milo would hear the operatic basso of his mother's voice echoing through the house as she made phone calls to various family members and relayed current events. His mother relayed gossip about cousin Mandy who was no longer little, no, she was all grown up now and tall as a shooting bamboo and getting straight A’s in high school while also winning tennis tournaments and it really wasn’t fair that she should be tall, pretty and smart. And my how her grandson Donny could shovel down food, his cheeks bulging with every heaping mouthful. The boy was only sixteen and already he weighed over two hundred pounds, and oh, the way he talked about girls! Like they were nothing but playthings, Luna even overheard him refer to them as bitches and ho's. And Hilda is already nineteen and going to study abroad in Paris, no less, and her poor good son Paul, you know he is pushing sixty, how she feels for him. He's a handyman now, at least he is no longer a courier, but anyhow he makes good money playing his violin at weddings on weekends. He is happy, yes happy. He just took a discount cruise to Europe with his wife, okay so it was a cruise with senior citizens but old people can be sweet, and at least poor Paul got to scuba dive in Monaco. And Becky keeps trying to make her first movie, and Luna, sometimes she worri
es about her. She doesn’t think one ever gets over being a child star, maybe it was all a big mistake. Everyone is just so busy...and she talks about her youngest, yes Milo, things are changing for him the most. Pretty soon if things keep going the way they are going, he won’t even talk to us anymore, but maybe it will just be a false alarm, there have been so many close calls for him, when we thought he was really going to get there...he has gotten so close, and I do wish so much that this time it really happens.

  Mrs. Sonas was jaded from twenty years of looking out for Milo. It had been a long time since he was last famous. But this time it looked like it was really going to happen again, and so she took a sudden interest in her own health and well being and she began to take walks on the treadmill in her bedroom. She was booking appointments with her doctor, taking her vitamins, hoping to stay alive long enough to witness Milo's success. But it was during one of these physical check ups up that she was told she was dying.

  Nick called Milo and said, “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, but I think I am going to rent a gallery in the Chelsea District to display your art during the international auction. Does that sound good to you?”

  “Sure,” Milo said. “That sounds fantastic.”

  Meanwhile Milo was thinking, will mother be alive to see it all? Mothers, they just don’t last...it is like that with mothers.

  Milo remembered having dinner with his New York lawyer and his wife and her mother. This woman was vivacious and looked healthy and filled with life. His lawyer, who he had met on the street, lived in a villa in Mamaroneck. At one point Milo cracked an innocent joke, he didn’t remember the punch line, or the set up. But later he wondered if this joke was perhaps at somebody else's expense, maybe it was, because the lady died the next day. In the back of his mind he always felt he was responsible for her death in some eerie way.