“Two dollars,” he yelled. “Two lousy dollars! What kind of man are you, Flagg, not to give two dollars’ credit to your best customer? Tell me that!”
Mr. Flagg continued to shake his head. “My best customer? My worst maybe.”
“Your worst—” The man drew himself up, brows peaked. “Every cent I get goes into your miserable store, Flagg. Every cent! I hardly eat. I go without because of your greedy profit margin.”
“You owe more than you've ever spent,” said Flagg.
“Capitalist!” the man cried.
Flagg nodded. “I have to make a living.”
“In Europe they treat artists like human beings. With respect!”
“Sorry, Sidney. Why don't you just put back two dollars worth and take what you can pay for?”
“Because I need this paint! Every can! Otherwise, would I be here, pleading like a common beggar?”
“Sorry. I can't carry you for any more.”
“Demeaning! That's what it is!” Sidney brightened suddenly. “How about I make you some more sale cards?”
“Nope. Couldn't anybody read the last ones.”
“Ye gads!” Sidney rolled his eyes. “That's America for you. Can't even read their own language! How can you expect them to appreciate a great artist!”
“Those cards were pretty far-out, even for you, Sid.”
“Look, I've got to have this paint.” Sidney shook his finger in Flagg's face. “I have a big show coming up in Basil, Switzerland. You understand? I must have this paint!”
“Sorry.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Sidney slapped one palm against his forehead. “Isn't anyone sympathetic to the poor artist anymore? Is the whole world a slave to the hundred percent markup?” His gaze fixed on Harley in the art department.
“I wish I could do something,” Flagg was saying, “but you owe me near four hundred dollars already.”
Sidney turned on Flagg again, arms flying, “Four hundred dollars? My friend, what is four hundred dollars? I've sold mere pencil sketches for four hundred dollars!”
“Why don't you sell one then.”
“Because first I have to have something to make drawings with!”
“Sorry, Sidney.”
Sidney beat the air. “Well, let me tell you, Flagg, I'm not the first genius to have a difficult time with pea-brained commercialism. And you won't be the first fat merchant to go down in history as a cheap miser and a fool, either!” Sidney's gray beard jutted at Flagg. “And how are you going to like being remembered like that? The man who refused the great Sidney Siegelman credit!”
Flagg shrugged. “Four hundred bucks already.”
“Ye gads! Two miserable dollars.” Sidney pounded on the counter. His bouncing gaze skidded to a stop on Harley again. He blinked like a chicken. His head craned forward and he came flat-footing down the aisle, feet splaying out to either side, paint-splattered cuffs slapping against bare ankles. His arms lifted and his head tilted as if greeting a long-lost friend.
“Aha!” he said. “Another poor artist, I take it. Another fallen comrade on the battlefield of creativity, sucked bloodless by these anal-retentive vampires of commerce, no doubt.”
“ ’Scuse me?”
Sidney stopped directly in front of Harley, craning into his face, hands clasped. “Would you, dear brother in suffering, float a two-dollar loan to a bereaved genius? A disciple of Cézanne and a dedicated devotee to the true light of modernism?”
“The true—”
“A loan, my friend, a loan! I need two bucks to get my paint out of this Babylonian den of materialism and home to my simple but honest studio, my humble place of abode.”
Harley couldn't help but grin.
“Well?” Sidney leaned into Harley's face, rubbing his hands impatiently. His white hair stood up, lines fanned back from the sharp hump of his nose.
“You’re a real artist?'
Sidney's eyes rolled up, his shoulders hunched; he gestured toward the heavens with open palms. “My friend, not only am I a real artist, I'm a great artist, probably the greatest artist you'll ever meet, much less have the opportunity of befriending with a two-buck loan. What do you say?”
“You wouldn't be trying to beat me out of two bucks, would you?” But he was already reaching into his back pocket, taking two dollars from his wallet.
Sidney swelled with pleasure. He sighed. His craggy face went soft, his eyes riveted on Harley and Harley's wallet with gentle affection. “Bless you, my son, bless you. May the muse wrap her legs around you until your balls burst.”
Harley grinned. This was worth two bucks. He picked up his own basket of colors and followed Sidney's jaunty step back into the paint and wallpaper section, where Mr. Flagg stood near the cash register.
Sidney drew himself up before Flagg. “A young man with respect!” he announced. Flagg smiled dryly. Harley figured they both took him for a sucker, giving two bucks to a raving lunatic. He dumped his own tubes on the counter.
“You really having a show in Switzerland?”
Sidney arched his brows. “Indeed I am, my friend. Indeed I am.” He closed his eyes and smiled dreamily, deep lines breaking pleasantly around his eyes. “Ah. Basil. Now, there's a city for you.”
Harley glanced at the cluster of cans on the counter—several quarts of oil-based house paint. “What kinda work do you do?”
“What kind?” Sidney smiled, head back, looking down his nose. “Brilliant work. Simply brilliant.”
“You one of those abstract painters? You know, ‘the true light of modernism,’ or whatever it was you said back there?”
“My friend, there is only one kind of art, and that is art.” Sidney was counting his money one more time before laying it on the counter before Flagg.
“What do you mean, ‘art is art’?”
Flagg totaled Harley’s bill and he paid out. Flagg had put Sidney's purchases in three cardboard boxes. Sidney took one up under each arm. “Here,” he said to Harley of the third, “bring that along, will you?”
Harley dropped his own sack of tubes in the remaining box, took it up and followed.
At the door, Sidney turned and drew himself up, smiling broadly at Flagg. “It has been another memorable occasion, Flagg. And indeed, I look forward to our next encounter with relish.”
“Bring money.”
“Ah, the man has the soul of a poet.”
Harley followed Sidney around the corner to an old ’49 Ford parked in a no-parking zone near a fire hydrant. “What do you mean, ‘art is art’?”
“That's it. Art is art.” Sidney opened the rear door and put the boxes in the footwell. “Anything other than art simply isn't art.”
Harley slid his box in next to Sidney's and took his own bag of paints out. “What's so all-fired brilliant about that?”
Sidney stretched, rubbing the small of his back with both hands. “The truth of it. The mere simplicity, that’s what’s brilliant about—” He bent forward suddenly, his gaze fixed on the pavement near the fire hydrant. “Fantastic!” he breathed.
Harley stepped back, looking, but he saw nothing other than a big slab of black asphalt patched into the graveled surface. Two asphalt ribbons ran out to a smaller patch.
“Marvelous,” Sidney said with something like reverence. “Just marvelous.”
“What is?” Harley looked from Sidney to the asphalt and back.
“My friend, that is art!”
“You mean that tar patch?”
“Reminiscent of Dubuffet. Are you familiar with the work of Jean Dubuffet?”
In the year Harley had been in Dallas, he’d spent his evenings studying the art magazines, and his weekends browsing the art section of the public libraries. But he wasn’t familiar with this Jean Dubuffet.
“Sorry. I don’t know his work.”
“Too bad, my friend.”
“You really think that's art?”
Sidney took a piece of chalk from his pocket; then, scrabbling around on h
ands and knees, he drew a loose rectangle around the patch. “Look at that, my friend. Look. at. that!” He took a small notebook from his pocket; made a quick pencil copy, and scribbled in the margin.
Harley knelt beside him. “I don't get it.”
“My friend. First, art is awareness.”
“How so?”
“Look at the shapes, the unity, the harmony, the structure and texture.”
Harley looked at the patch. “That might be interesting, but it's just accidental. There must be about ten thousand of these in the next ten blocks.”
“Ah, yes. That's why I take notes. I have all the locations noted. I intend to dig them all out when I get the proper equipment.”
Harley stared. “Say what?”
“A jackhammer, my friend. A jackhammer with a flathead chisel. I've seen city workers cutting up sections like that. I'm going to disguise myself as a worker and lift these right out—zing-o!”
“You mean…you're gonna dig up the streets…for these patches? And keep them?”
“Keep them?” Sidney rolled his eyes. “Of course I'm not going to keep them! I'm going to sell them!”
Harley studied him, then looked again at the chalked-off rectangle. “You really think that's art, huh?”
“I could live with it.”
“It is kind of interesting.”
Sidney stood up, smiling happily. “You afoot?”
“The bus,” he said.
“Where do you live?”
“Over on Gaston. Why?”
“Hop in. I'll give you a lift.”
“Uh, that's okay. Thanks anyway.”
“Consider it repayment of the loan.”
“Yeah? I can take the bus for fifteen cents.”
“But look at the invaluable company. Priceless.”
Harley gave Sidney another look, then climbed into the front passenger seat with a touch of trepidation. Sidney started the car and pulled out.
Sidney said, “So, you dabble in art?”
“Dabble?”
Sidney smiled. “Precious little pieces, I'll bet.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Those dinky little tubes you bought.”
“Dinky? Those are one-pound tubes.”
“I get more than that under my fingernails.”
“Yeah? I'd like to see some of your work.”
“Delighted, my friend. Delighted.”
“When?”
Sidney shrugged. “Now. How about now?”
Harley hesitated only briefly. “Sure. Why not.”
Sidney slowed and turned at the next intersection. He drove streets in residential sections Harley had never seen from the bus, all the time, ranting on about art; about pathetic weekend painters, their briar pipes, their Harris Tweed jackets with the leather-patched elbows, their bourgeois crank-up easels…
He drove into an alley and turned through an open gate in a chain-link fence. He brought the car to a stop before a triple-car garage apartment. All three bays were jam-packed with junk—bed frames, broken chairs, tables, bicycles, washing machines… The stuff poured out of the open garages and pushed out across the yard.
Harley got out. “What do you do with all this stuff?”
“Buy and sell,” Sidney said, taking two boxes from the rear footwells.
“Yeah? Who buys this stuff?”
“Ah! After the revolution, my friend, these things will be worth more than gold. Grab that other box, will you?”
“What revolution?”
“The revolution that's going to sweep this country. That revolution.”
Carrying one of the boxes, Harley followed Sidney up the outside staircase.
“Money will be useless,” Sidney said over his shoulder. “The barter system will prevail. And that, my friend, is when Sidney Siegelman will be sitting pretty.”
“So you think we're gonna have a revolution, huh?”
“Of course we are.” Sidney set one of boxes on the porch railing, unlocked the door, and motioned him inside. “Set that box right over there on that table.”
Harley stepped into the room and stopped in astonishment. It looked as if odds and ends of things in the yard had raced up the steps, jumped through a rainbow of color, and stuck themselves on the walls—and in the oddest configurations. They weren’t exactly paintings, or exactly sculptures, but they were certainly no longer just junk, either. An odd thrill shivered through him.
“I'm going to buy a little plot of ground in the country,” Sidney was saying, “grow my own food. Food, that's what will be of real value.”
Harley wasn't listening. His gaze danced over the room.
“People are going to be pouring out of the cities like rats. They won't have heat or fuel or food.
Harley walked around a work constructed on a low oak base: a half dozen oblong wooden pieces arranged in a circle on a piece of dark fur. The rounded ends of the wooden pieces all pointed toward an elliptical slit cut in the fur. A steel animal trap was tightly fitted into the slit. It was painted a sloppy red and it was set, though Harley was relieved to see that the trigger mechanism had a small weld so it wouldn’t spring shut. The rounded ends of the smooth wooden shafts were painted different colors: red, yellow, green, blue, all with a slash of black on the end like a watermelon seed. With a jolt, Harley realized they were penises…and the slit in the fur with the trap was a vagina.
“That piece is called Beaver Trap,” Sidney said.
Harley grinned and felt himself flushing.
“That's real beaver fur.”
Harley nodded.
“And the little pee-pees, they're what the trappers use to stretch beaver skins over.”
“That's, uh, interesting.”
“Yes, indeed,” Sidney said. “I like the duality of it.” Sidney paused in a moment of introspection. “Listen, my young friend. Women fall within two polarities, the mercenaries and the sapiosexuals. There are shades between, of course, but usually women tend toward one or the other.”
“Sapio-what?”
“Sapiosexual. Women who are attracted to men for their intellectual gifts, their creativity. Then there are the mercenaries, materialistic women. They’re attracted to power, to money. Look at all the beautiful women married to ugly little runts with fat pockets. They won’t teach you this at Harvard, but as a young man just stepping out into the world, be aware.”
“That’s not true with men, too?”
Sidney threw his hands up in a hopeless gesture. “Men? Ha! We have two heads, the big one and the little one. When it comes to women, the little one renders the big one totally useless.”
“I know a lot of good women, married to ordinary men,” Harley said.
“Some, I suppose,” Sidney said with a dismissive shrug. “But everyone, both men and women, have one ear cocked toward the whisper of opportunity—a fatter wallet, a finer ass.”
Harley looked at Beaver Trap again. Though there wasn’t the least resemblance, he was reminded of de Kooning’s Woman series, the little animal teeth and big buglike eyes. It was the same view of women as predatory. It was a view he found unsettling.
He gazed around the room. There were rectangles of black roofing paper zigzagged with chalk and iridescent cartographer’s tape, and repetitious Xerox copies colored with crayons and dyes. In a baby’s coffin, a convoluted piece of filigreed driftwood had been painted black and lay half-buried in white plaster edged in old lace. There were shallow boxes with an assortment of unrelated objects placed in strange juxtaposition, each in its own cotton-padded cubicle under glass. And drawings—piles of drawings on shelves and tables and on the walls, finished drawings and drawings in progress and drawings cut up and taped together.
“This is…” He trailed off, finding no words. He knew instinctively that while the guy might be a kook, he was also truly inventive.
“Ah, yes,” Sidney said reverently. “This is art.”
“You can draw better than anybody I ever seen. It's ju
st so…so…”
Sidney cocked his head to one side. “Yes? Just so…so what?”
“So different.”
“From what?”
“From anything I've ever seen…or what I thought art was…” He realized he was babbling like an idiot.
Sidney watched him, amused. “The question of what art is seems to occupy a lot of your thinking.”
Harley gave Sidney a long, searching look. “If I'm going to be good, really good, I have to first determine just what art is. I know there's more to it than what I know. And things seem to be changing so fast. I want to learn everything I can, the sooner the better.”
Sidney peaked his eyebrows. “Ah? So you're going to be good, eh?”
“Well, yes. Yes, I am.”
“Good! Good! Good! And what makes you think so?”
“I like to draw. And I'm good at it.”
Sidney hunched his shoulders and made a face. “Hoo! He likes to draw and he's good at it. So? What else?”
“What do you mean, ‘what else’?”
“I mean what else? You know, what else?”
“I have a feeling for the way things are.”
“Hoo,” Sidney cooed again. “My friend, there are bums in the gutters who can draw better than either of us. There are little old grandmothers and dishwashers in flophouses who know more about ‘the way things are’ than you and I both together.” Sidney tapped his temple with his finger. “The difference is, most people who can draw can't think.” He leaned forward, squinting. “They can't see.” He let his face go slack. “They haven't an intellectual point of view. No opinions, no all-encompassing world vision.” Sidney's face lit up. His eyes gleamed. “Ideas! Point of view! Concept! Now, that's where we can begin to talk about art!”
“You've got to teach me,” Harley said, hearing his own voice, desperate.
Sidney arched his neck, drew his shoulders up. “Oh, I do now, do I?”
“I'll do whatever you say, help out around here, clean up, sweep out, whatever you say. I want to study with you. I've got to.”
Sidney did a quick-footed shuffle around the table. “You think you can just waltz in here? Take up my time? Pick my brains? And I'll be happy as a pig in slop to go along with it? You’re a pushy bastard!”
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