Big Picture: Stories

by Percival Everett

  “Twenty-three hundred?” Karen echoed.

  “I don’t care,” Michael said. “Can I come pick it up right away? A driver’s license and a major credit card. No problem. What? I don’t want to get it in the morning. No, I’m coming to pick it up now. I don’t care about that. See you in a few minutes.” Michael hung up.

  “What in the world?” Karen said.

  “Get packed,” Michael said. “We’re checking out.”

  “Checking out? Wait a second. Let’s slow down here. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  Michael stopped taking his socks and underwear out of a drawer of the dresser and said, “We’re going to take that painting home with us.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “It’s my painting.”

  “It’s sold.”

  “I’m unselling it.”

  Karen shook her head, almost smiling. “Would you please just sit down and take a minute to think about this?”

  “No. Just get packed. Please get packed. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you get packed now. You’ve got a plane ticket. I’ll meet you in Denver.”

  “Do you honestly think Joshua is just going to hand over that painting to you?” she asked.

  “Do you honestly think I’m going to ask for that bastard’s permission?”

  “Then how are you going to get in?”

  “I’ll meet you in Denver.”

  “You’re not going to break in, are you?”

  Michael stopped packing and sat down in a chair. “I have to do this. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got to do it. Now, I’ve got,” he looked at the clock, “forty-three minutes to get over to the car-rental place. I’ll understand if you fly home. In fact, that’s a better plan. Okay?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Whatever. I don’t have time to discuss it either way.” He resumed packing.

  “I’m coming with you,” Karen repeated and started packing her clothes along with him.

  The car rental was part of a chain, and was located on New York Avenue not far from the hotel. The place was surrounded by a twelve-foot, chain-link fence with razor wire spiraled along its top, and fat circles of white light spilled from evenly spaced floods on the sides of the building. The cars and trucks huddled in clumps as if for protection, and Michael, even in his raving state, managed a pun silently, thinking the cars were waiting to be jumped. The Ethiopian taxi driver waited while Michael and Karen spoke to the intercom at the gate. Michael looked into the closed-circuit camera and spoke loudly.

  “I’m here to pick up a van,” he said.

  “What’s your reference number?” a static-covered, lethargic voice asked.

  “You didn’t give me a reference number.”

  “We give everybody a reference number.”

  “Let’s just go,” Karen said.

  “My name is Lawson. Don’t you remember talking to me? The van to Denver?”

  “I remember, but I need the reference number,” the voice insisted.

  “You didn’t give me one, you asshole.” There was silence from the speaker.

  “I’m here to rent a van for twenty-three-fucking-hundred dollars. I want to know what your fucking name is so I can tell your fucking boss why I had to go to fucking Avis to rent a fucking van.”

  The gate made a loud double-clack as it unlocked and Michael pushed it ajar, then waved the taxi driver on. He and Karen carried their bags across the asphalt lot, past the clusters of cars and vans to the door where they were briefly scrutinized by yet another camera before being let in. The attendant was seated behind a metal table, his pajama bottoms and bedroom slippers visible for all the world to see. Michael looked at the man, frowning. His age was a mystery—the ratty blond beard, crew cut, and the red eyes set into sallow sockets. Michael felt sick.

  “I was sure I gave you a reference number,” the man said.

  Michael didn’t say anything, but opened his wallet to find his license and credit card.

  “This is a rough neighborhood,” the man said. “You can’t be too careful. They would just as soon eat your liver as look at you.”

  “Who’s they?” Michael asked.

  “Them punks.”

  Michael put the cards on the table.

  “All the way to Denver, eh?”

  Karen nodded, looking around.

  “Don’t worry ma’am,” the attendant said. “This place is sealed up tighter than a flea’s asshole.”

  “How nice,” Karen said.

  “But once you leave this yard, well, may God have mercy on you.”

  “Shut up,” Michael said. “Charge it to the card and I don’t want the insurance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Michael, let’s forget this and take a cab back to the hotel,” Karen said, pulling at the sleeve of his jacket, pleading with her eyes.

  “You won’t get a cab to pick you up here,” the attendant said. “Hell, if you was stabbed and bleeding to death, no ambulance would come here. Not at night anyway.”

  “Just hurry up with the van,” Michael said.

  The man finished the paperwork and Michael signed it, then stuffed his card and license back into his wallet.

  “Here are the keys,” the attendant said. “Number one-five-one.”

  “Where is it?” Michael asked.

  “It’s out there somewheres.”

  “Just give me some fucking idea where it is, man. Christ, you’ve got vans all over the place out there.” Michael looked out the window. Just seeing all of the vehicles under the puddles of light made his head throb. “Look, there’s three-two-seven. Let me have three-two-seven.”

  The man didn’t want to change anything, but he scratched out the number on the form and wrote in the new one. “Okay, there you go.” He handed over the papers to Michael along with a different set of keys.

  Michael gave the man one last hard look.

  “Just honk when you’re at the gate and I’ll let you out.”

  As they walked out to the van, Karen said, “Michael, please listen to me.”

  “No.”

  Michael unlocked the vehicle, Karen’s side first. The key stuck and turned abrasively in the hole, and then they got in. “Why do they all smell like this?” he said, inserting the key into the ignition and giving it a turn. The first attempt provided nothing but a click. On the second try the engine was slow to turn over, but did. Michael gunned it a couple times, extra loud, for the benefit of the man inside who was watching them through the window. He honked at the gate, the gate opened, and they drove out onto New York Avenue.

  The journey through town to Dupont Circle was tedious and uneventful. At the circle Michael drove around twice before getting on Massachusetts in the right direction. After a series of turns he managed to locate Joshua’s gallery and parked the van in the circular driveway of the neighboring building. It was nearly eleven o’clock.

  “You’re actually going to break in?” Karen said.

  “Yes. You wait here in the van.”

  “Michael,” she complained. “What about the alarm?”

  “Joshua doesn’t have an alarm. He has a sign that says he has an alarm, but no alarm. He’s too cheap.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Wait here.” He started to get out, then leaned back to kiss her. “Thanks for coming with me.”

  Michael went first to the front door and, finding it secure, he made his way along the side of the building, looking for another way in. There were three levels and Joshua lived on the top.

  Michael was convinced there would be a way into the gallery. The painting was a piece of him; it had come to represent that part of himself which was still real, that part which was about the art alone, pure expression, his soul, his heart. There would be a way in. He found a window at the rear of the building that, because of its age, was loose and rattled to the touch, and he managed to work the lock open with his pocket knife. He pulled himself up and into the storage room/k
itchen, being careful not to knock over the empty cartons that had been stacked haphazardly on a table beneath the window. There were spots of light throughout the rooms, lime-colored night-lights plugged into the wall outlets; an awful green, he thought, but somehow soothing to the pain in his head. He paused at the open stairway and listened for movement in the building.

  Michael found the office, the same room in which he had had his last argument with Joshua. He started looking through the drawers of the file cabinet. He wanted to find any documents that pertained to his painting. He found the agreement he had signed with Joshua and burned it in the fireplace. He also burned another paper that served more or less as an inventory of the paintings delivered and the delivery manifest that listed the number of paintings.

  He then went out into the gallery and saw the painting there in the dark, glowing the way he always hoped his paintings would glow in the dark. Just a few feet from it, twelve inches above the floor, was one of Joshua’s hideous night-lights. Michael, with great difficulty, managed to get the painting off the wall. The canvas was not terribly heavy, but the size of it made it unwieldy. He stopped as he heard the creaking of floorboards upstairs, but the noise passed. He carried the painting to the front where he leaned the canvas against the wall of the vestibule while he unlocked and opened the door.

  A gust of wind hit the canvas as he exited and took him several paces in the wrong direction, but he turned and got the edge pointed into the breeze and pushed back to the driveway where he had left Karen. The canvas was large enough that he didn’t see the goings-on at the van until he was very close, although he thought he heard Karen’s voice calling to him. When he could see what was going on he thought about running. Karen was leaning against the side of the van with her palms flat and her arms raised. There were two men standing with her, one going through her purse with a flashlight and another speaking on a walkie-talkie.

  “What’s going on?” Michael said.

  “Is this your van?” the man with the walkie-talkie asked. He had an accent, Middle Eastern, Michael thought.

  “Yes. And this woman is my wife.”

  “What is your business here?” the man asked.

  “I was picking up a painting.” Michael directed attention to the huge canvas he was resting on his foot.

  “This is the Moroccan Embassy. You cannot park in this driveway.”

  “I’m sorry,” Michael said. “We’re done now. See, I’ve got the painting and we’re ready to go.”

  “Are you an American citizen?” the man asked.

  Michael nodded.

  “May I see your identification?”

  “May I put the painting in the van first?”

  The man snapped his fingers at Karen and said, “You, wife, hold the picture.”

  Karen began to balk, but Michael said, “Please, honey, so we can get out of here.”

  Karen held the painting up while Michael produced his driver’s license. The man studied it as the other man held the flashlight over his shoulder. Both men nodded, appeared satisfied, and then a blue-and-white police car pulled up and blocked the driveway. The Moroccan man with the walkie-talkie spoke into it and one of the cops spoke on his walkie-talkie and suddenly the night seemed, to Michael, to be full of static and muffled voices.

  “What do we have here?” the fatter of the two fat cops asked.

  “These people parked in our driveway.” the man with the flashlight said. “Appears it was a mistake.”

  “Let me see your license,” the cop said to Michael.

  Michael handed it to him, since he hadn’t yet put it away. The other cop walked around the van, examining it with his big flashlight.

  “Okay, now turn around and put your hands against the van.”

  “Wait a second,” Michael said.

  The cop spun Michael around and pushed him against the wall of the vehicle. “Long way from home, aren’t you, Mr. Lawson?” the policeman said.

  “Yes, I guess I am.”

  “You staying around here?”

  “We were in the Henley Park Hotel, but we checked out.”

  “Your van?”

  The other cop made a complete circle around the vehicle and now stood with his partner. The two Moroccans stepped back and were quietly watching.

  “No, the van is rented,” Michael said.

  “May I see those papers?”

  “They’re in my jacket pocket.”

  The cop reached around him, pulled the pages from his pocket, and looked them over.

  “What are you doing here?” the cop asked.

  “I had to get something from next door.”

  The cops looked over at Joshua’s.

  “It’s a gallery,” Michael said. “I had to pick up one of my paintings. This one.” He pointed to the canvas with a nod. “See, it’s got my name down on the corner of it. Michael Lawson. And on the back you’ll find my name again and my address on a blue card.”

  The two fat cops talked to each other and cast a few glances at the gallery. The talking cop came back.

  “It’s just a little late to be picking up stuff, wouldn’t you say?”

  “We’re headed back to Denver and it was the only time we had. The owner left the door open for me and told me to lock up. The painting has my name on it.”

  “It does have his name,” the until-then-silent cop said.

  “You guys got a problem with these people?” the first fat cop asked the two Moroccans.

  “No problem.”

  The cop handed Michael his license, then gave the painting a good look, turning his light onto it. “You painted this, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get paid for stuff like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, my kid could do that. Hell, he does do it.” He laughed and his fat partner laughed with him as they waddled back to their patrol car.

  As Michael and Karen loaded the canvas into the back of the van, the Moroccan men watched them. The one who had spoken said, “I like the picture. Nice colors. Makes me homesick.” The other man nodded.

  In the car, Karen was shaking. Michael studied her, feeling bad for her, hating himself for what he was putting her through. He knew he was acting like a shit, knew that she only wanted to be let in and he was taking unfair and cruel advantage, in his way laughing at her. He had all but made fun of her for being interested in the business of the art world. Why shouldn’t she have been interested? Simply because he was behaving, as Joshua had pointed out, like a childish and selfish dimwit?

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She looked at him.

  He turned left, following the signs to the freeway. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you. I really love the way you’re interested in what I feel, the way you’re interested in my work.”

  She seemed moved by this.

  “Thank you for coming with me.”

  She looked forward out the window.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” Michael asked, merging into the fast-moving traffic.

  “No,” she said.

  “Tell the truth.”

  “No.”

  Michael decided then, that in some way, probably not a significant or pivotal way, Karen was not to be trusted—that her judgment was at best suspect or that she was simply a liar. Whether she was seeking to protect him or not, it didn’t much matter.

  PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of more than twenty books, including Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Assumption, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, and Erasure.

  This book was designed by Will Powers. It is set in Galliard and Modula Serif type by Stanton Publications Services, Inc. and manufactured by BookCrafters on acid-free paper. Cover design by Ann Artz.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments
<
br />   Contents

  Dedication

  Cerulean

  Turned Out

  Wolf at the Door

  Dicotyles Tajacu

  Pissing on Snakes

  Wash

  Throwing Earth

  Squeeze

  Big Picture

  About the Author