Dead Artist

by Ivan Jenson

  “She’s fun,” he said to Milo, allowing himself to smile even though inside there was a hollowness.

  “Yes, she can be very funny.”

  Milo was thinking back to the Cirque du Soleil-like contortions of their attempts at love making the night before.

  Will they ever be able to consummate? Was Pablo right? Should Milo go ahead and marry this simple, kind, loyal Polish girl who majored in photography and who he had not seen in seven years? That is, not until last night. It was true they had a bond -- they shared one of the pivotal moments in modern history. Samantha and Milo were dating on 9/11.

  Samantha examined Vincent's richly textured painting. “You're doing a great job of capturing the mood of this afternoon. I wish I could paint like the two of you. You guys are so lucky. All I can do is take pictures, that is nothing compared to what you both do. Let me get a shot of you two.”

  Samantha had her digital camera hanging like a pendant from her neck. She pulled it over her head, and aimed the tiny high tech camera at Vincent who stood humbly and nervously next to Milo. She checked her view finder to see the image she had just taken. The review image showed Milo standing alone. There was no sign of Vincent or the easel or Vincent's painting of the East Town cafe. But she didn’t react, or call attention to what she now understood. She knew now that it was impossible for Vincent to appear in a photograph but she didn’t let on. Why ruin a precious moment?

  “May I see the picture?” Vincent asked sheepishly.

  “I want to surprise you later, when I Photoshop it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, okay, I understand.”

  Van Gogh took the canvas off the easel, folded the stand, and the three of them crossed the street to share a cup of coffee at the Cafe. The easel was the kind that could store all the oil paint in a wooden drawer. Milo never thought he would see the day when he would sit in an outdoor Cafe in Gold Haven Michigan with Vincent Van Gogh and his hippie-like ex-girlfriend, Samantha.

  Samantha didn't waste any time in asking what this was all about. “How is this all possible? What are you doing here Vincent?” she asked, and waited for an answer.

  Vincent confessed to her that he was back walking the earth mostly out of anger. He was peeved that things didn't work out in his lifetime and when he got wind of Milo’s up and coming re-emergence, Pablo and he agreed that it might be beneficial to hang around Milo to see that he got it right. “We just don’t want Milo to blow it.”

  Vincent poured so much sugar in his espresso that one could see a white island in the black sea of the cup, that is until the island sank. He said, “We had been watching as Milo diligently worked the streets of New York all those afternoons and evenings. Milo was willing to hustle his wares and play lotto with life all in the hope that one day he would strike it lucky. It was really touching and we all agreed that, you Milo, should be the one who would blow the roof off of what could be accomplished by an artist during his lifetime. You're going to blow up boy. Do it for me, you hear?” Vincent was coining a hip-hop phrase. He was in touch.

  The three of them laughed together and then Vincent's mood suddenly dropped. He excused himself, stood up and looked directly into the sun. Then, he stepped into the street, which was blazing and bright, and dematerialized, easel under his arm.

  Samantha had a deep compassion for others, especially older men. She did not make any mention of his ghostly disappearance. She had observed Vincent's demeanor closely though, and said, “Did you notice how he became suddenly despondent?”

  “He is always that way.”

  “No it is more than that, it seems to me like he has what is called “low affect.” I learned about it in a psych class, it’s when a person is unable to express a full range of emotion. Usually it is the residue of a mental breakdown or of medication. To me Vincent came off as clinically depressed, possibly on a downward spiral.”

  “Okay, so, what's new. Van Gogh has a mood disorder. Go figure.”

  “But,” Samantha said, smiling, “they have medications for that. There are treatments.”

  “Are you saying Van Gogh needs to take meds?”

  “Why not? It might help him bring down the intensity of his condition just one notch.”

  “Look! Can you blame him for getting depressed? People are making millions off of his art and he is dead and there is nothing he can do about it but sit back and watch.”

  “But he believes in you Milo.”

  “It would seem that way.”

  “Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  “Okay, so a couple of dead artists believe in me. What good is that going to do me?”

  “You should be flattered.”

  “Okay, so I am flattered.”

  “I wish I was granted other worldly visitations. You see Milo, you have a charmed life.”

  She gave him a peck on the cheek and he felt again the comfort that she had offered him so many years ago.

  Chapter Eleven

  You were an art world soldier in your street days, living on rations of beans and rice during the cold harsh winter. You wore combat boots and brought out your own canteen of water and a thermos of black coffee. You wore thermal underwear and thick socks. You had a “stone-cold” no-frills sales tactic, only answering customers' questions pertaining directly to your art. You didn’t divulge one iota about your education or training and didn't allow customers to talk about other living artists when they came to your makeshift aluminum table with your paintings leaning against it. You sold on the street seven days a week from 3:00pm until 6:00pm, and never deviated from these hours, even on New Years Day, 3:00pm to 6:00pm, as always, and the results were that within this three hour window your sales increased several-fold within one year.

  Milo's hard core guerrilla tactics worked. One hot summer night, a group of well-dressed Beverly Hills tourists approached Milo's table and said: “Tell us, what is the story behind this painting of the bearded man?”

  Coldly, Milo responded. “Could you step away from the paintings, please,” expecting them to walk away. But, while the finely dressed ladies may have been taken aback by his firm tone, the seriousness of his tone intrigued one of the rich housewives.

  She persisted, and asked again, “So what is the meaning of this painting?”

  Milo answered. “The explanation behind that painting is reserved for the person that purchases the painting. If I were to tell you the meaning behind that painting and you didn’t buy it, then you would bring me bad Karma.”

  Within twenty minutes, and an explanation the buyer may not have understood, Milo closed on twelve hundred dollars worth of art. With that, Milo learned that by being proprietary about his art he could bring up the prices for each piece.

  Milo answered his cell phone on the fourth ring. “Ola, Milo, dis is Consuelo.” Consuelo was the twenty-four hour duty nurse who watched over his mother after her release from the hospital. She had a thick accent and high pitched chirp of a voice and with her primitive Spanglish, she was barely communicative. She was a Costa Rican girl who was painfully shy and short, but glowed emotionally ever since she had met her fiancee who washed dishes at a nearby Mexican restaurant called La Cantina. Consuelo would soon be married, but had to conceal her joy because these were solemn times indeed for Doña Sonia who was fading away into delirium and oblivion.

  “Your madre, emergencia. You come to casa quickly.”

  When the taxi pulled up at the house, Consuelo was in her loose fitting nurse's uniform standing on the front lawn. There was a ladder leaning against the front of the house and Consuelo was gesturing and pointing upward. After paying the cabbie, Milo positioned himself in the center of the lawn. He looked like he was saluting but he was only shielding his eyes from the glaring sun so he could witness what had worked Consuelo up so.

  Sonia Sonas was at the top of the ladder, in a free flowing flannel night gown holding a small shovel in her hand.

  “What are you doing up there?” Milo yelled up to his mother.


  Milo found this vision harder to believe than his visions of Picasso and Van Gogh. His mother had been bedridden for weeks and yet, there she was, at the top of a ladder in the summer sun. Had she gone mad? Was she dead, and just visiting?

  “Oh, hello Milo. Beautiful day, no? A wonderful day to clean the gutters.”

  Clean the gutters? He could not wrap his mind around what he was seeing. She was dying. It was the sunset of her life, the end of her era.

  He called out to her, “You know I promised to help you out with the gutters. You aren't supposed to be up there. Must I remind you that you are 79 years old and that if you fall off that ladder you could break your bones and old, brittle bones don’t heal. What if you broke your hip? I have heard about terrible things happening to old people when they break their hips.”

  Was he really having this conversation?

  “If you call me an old person one more time, I am going to sock you one. I don’t like labels. Not today or any day. Can’t you see that this afternoon I feel forty?”

  It seemed his mother was experiencing a second wind.

  “Por favor,” Consuelo said, her voice barely audible with the sound of the passing traffic on the street. “Dona Sonia, please come down, por favor.”

  Sonia dug out some decayed leaves and tossed them playfully at her son. “These gutters must be cleaned before the next big rainfall.” She scooped up more dirt and flung it freely into the wind.

  “Your mother is a real stinker.” Samantha said, gently stroking Milo’s back. And now the three of them, Consuelo, Samantha and Milo couldn't keep from breaking into contagious laughter.

  Chapter Twelve

  “We have never seen this sort of thing happen,” Dr. Basil said to Milo. “Your mother has an irregular heart beat, and congestive heart failure. She has swelling and water retention in her joints, and prior to this spontaneous recovery our recommendation was for you to transfer her to hospice care. Now our diagnosis has changed, and we can only take a wait-and-see approach. All I can say is please try to keep your mother off the roof, for God's sake.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Milo’s private counsel with the doctor was complete with that exchange, and he returned to the waiting room where his mother was filling up on the hospitality decaf.

  As she sugared up her coffee she said to Milo, “What I can’t understand is that you seem disappointed that I am better. It is as if you wanted me to die or something.”

  “No Mother, I don’t want you to die...but I will admit I was resigning myself to that very real inevitability.”

  “I have spontaneously recovered due to all that is happening for you. And you deserve it after all you have been through, honey. That’s why I’m still here -- for you.”

  During the taxi ride home from the hospital there was total silence.

  On the streets of New York City Milo chased a dream of immortality. Each time he made a painting he was freeze drying a moment. Frozen moments are everlasting. While people are reluctant to surrender two hours to a movie, there will always be people who will stand in line outside a museum just for the chance of walking by the soundless works on canvas, or the mute creations made of wood or steel or marble. And the tired, yet eager tourists from around the world will line up year round to crane their necks upward to witness Michelangelo’s “orgy like” ode to flesh, gesture and muscle which is the Sistine Chapel. You would think by the long lines that this was the opening of a Harry Potter movie, but no, it is for Michelangelo, Picasso and Van Gogh that they wait and will continue to wait to see their art. Clusters of people queue around the bullet proof shrine that is the Mona Lisa, just to catch a glimpse of her monochrome mystery. These works will always be relevant to those that travel and those that just wander in the afternoons.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Your nervous crack up really knocked you out of the art game. And, your complete disappearance from the New York scene made your artwork rise in value. Your last day selling on the street in Union Square was most memorable. You sold a painting of Vincent Van Gogh for three hundred bucks, cash, and you knew in your heart that it was the end of your era. You knew that any day the paintings would show your weariness. You couldn’t go on without sleep.

  Milo had forgotten how to sleep. And yet, he never tired. After the quick sale on Union Square he rolled up his cart of paintings and stopped in Union Square Park. Looking around him, he saw others like himself lying in the grass. He saw lovers, and he saw single people just lying down in the afternoon. He realized he had never let himself rest, not for twenty years. So he found a spot and a patch of grass, and he positioned himself on the ground and looked up at the sky. He simply could not go on. He closed his eyes but could not sleep. After maybe twenty minutes he got up again and returned to his urban cave where he poured the colors onto the plates, and began another rather muted portrait of Vincent. Always Vincent. He was obsessed with Vincent, and the street crowds from all walks of life loved his versions of the Dutch master, that crazy shaman. But this last painting of Vincent he could not finish.

  Mid-painting, Milo found that he could not hold the brush any longer, and he let it drop into the plate of white paint. He could not go on this way. He was now a casualty of New York. A victim of his own hopes and ambitions. He had become someone who wandered in the afternoon, and then he collapsed.

  A good friend of Milo was an expatriate and happened to be in town. He came to visit that evening. When Milo saw him, he embraced him tightly, as if he were Milo's brother. The good one. But he was not good-brother Paul, nor was he bad-brother Ray, his name was Eli, and he had been Milo's best friend, prior to the time when he had left New York to live in Copacabana.

  All of Milo's friends had bailed out of New York City, and self-absorbed Milo suddenly realized that he missed them. Eli thought it strange that he was so touchy-feely with him. He confessed to Eli that his family beckoned, and that his mother wanted him to come home to the Midwest, to rest.

  “Please help me,” Milo pleaded. “I don’t want to spend one more day in this room.”

  “Of course,” he said with a thick Israeli accent, that sounded like the words first swam in his saliva before leaving his mouth. “I understand Milo. If I had to live in this dump for even a week, I would commit suicide. I'll get you out of here.”

  “Thanks, that's just what I needed to hear.” Milo quickly fell asleep while Eli stood over him.

  Eli took care of all the details, he could always be counted on to make arrangements, it was what he did best.

  This is how it happened, Milo's deliverance into the delusional dream of a nervous breakdown. At least, this is how Milo remembers it happening.

  Eli arranged for Milo to spend the night at a mutual friend who owned a French restaurant and a Bed and Breakfast on City Island. But first he was escorted to an Upper East Side cocktail party. His friends, at least the ones he recognized, tried to keep him occupied and entertained and well fed so that he could avoid recurring panic attacks. The condo had a balcony view of Park Avenue, and at times during the evening, Milo found himself unsure of how he was transported from his cellar squalor to Upper East Side luxury. Mr. Handsome Host lived in a comfortable if not slightly sanitized environment, and seemed to be married. His wife, a gentle, and clearly well-kept hostess quietly informed guests that Milo was “not well.”

  “I am fine,” Milo insisted, “I want to have a drink. Something hard.”

  Mrs. Handsome served Milo a dirty Martini, not denying him his right to a good stiff drink. After downing the martini, Milo stepped out onto the high-rise balcony and announced, “I have changed my mind, I don’t want to leave New York City in the morning.”

  Mr. Handsome, looked first at Milo, then the balcony rail, then over the side. With his male model stubble reflecting in the moonlight, he spoke firmly, “Milo, let me ask you a question.” He paused, waiting for Milo to make eye contact, and said, “Are you happy?” He smelled of cologne.

&n
bsp; “Who cares if I am happy?” Milo seemed to move closer to the balcony rail and raised his voice. “I don't want to go.”

  “That's good, Milo. But, think about it -- are you happy?”

  Milo stood silently. His mind was rushing, thinking of all the sidewalks down below where he had sold his canvases. He thought about Columbus Avenue, West Broadway, Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Astor Place, he thought about sales made after midnight in front of the Virgin Megastore downtown on Broadway. And he thought about setting up shop in front of movie houses, closing deals when the films let out. And, all the beautiful girls he had sold to, handsome gay couples, wealthy power couples, black and white, Asian and Hispanic. Milo had sold to collectors from Beirut to Delhi to Rome, and was very popular with Japanese tourists and the wealthy ladies of Spain.

  Milo felt dizzy and closed his eyes. Mr. Handsome took two steps closer to Milo and eyed the balcony rail, now within Milo's reach.

  That life, that primitive bohemian outgoing outdoor life in which all he had to do was roll his cart full of color drenched paintings, set up his table, take a seat in his canvas director chair and catch the cash that seemed to fall from the city trees, and then roll on home (often with some Lolita-like university coed girl in tow) or perhaps he rolled his cart home alone, just wearing head phones and listening to WBLS play retro R and B. In his mind, he looked back and it was all so magical, those afternoons of handing out business cards systematically to a dozen select women a day, playing the numbers game and then from that effort would come the messages on the phone from female voices. When the girls come calling, then you really have something they want. Yet for all his sexual conquests there were also spectacular failures.

  Time seemed to slow, and Milo shifted his weight.