Day 12: Success Story

Yup.  I skipped Day 11.  Maybe eventually I'll write a Day 11 story and post it.  Backdated.  How will you know that it wasn't there all along?  I'll know.  But how will you know?

Success Story

Alex lay in bed, trying to figure out if the numbness in his head was only exhaustion, or a headache waiting to appear.

He opened his eyes and saw the bear's face. Immobile and slightly glossy, with empty holes for eyes. A vacuformed piece of plastic, painted (or was it silk-screened?) with a bear's muzzle. The mask hung on the radiator by his bed. Rissa must have left it there. Or one of Rissa's friends. He couldn't remember who was wearing it last.

He heard a guy yelling. A truck backing up. Warm air, scented with diesel, blew across Alex's face. Monday morning, and the furniture warehouse downstairs had opened for business.

Alex got out of bed and picked his way across the floor, stepping around beer cans and pizza boxes. Wine bottles and glasses and the ruins of a feast covered the table. 


The table was an old door set on sawhorses, the tablecloth an unprimed canvas draped across it.

He showered. Drank sixteen ounces of water. Standing with wet hair, wearing his boxers, he ate two pieces of stale cheese and a crust of bread from the ruins on the table. He cleaned the bottles and cans from around his paints, canvas, and easel. He put on his baggies and a Rancid t-shirt. 


He started to paint.

At 10am he noticed the message light on his mobile blinking. Probably Rissa. Talk to her later. Maybe. He plugged the mobile into the charger and went back to painting.

The canvas was coming along. Someone would like it. Maybe someone would pay for it. Someday.

Maybe not.

Noon came. Alex washed his hands, did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups and a hundred air squats, ate a couple of slices of cold pizza. 


Then he went back to painting.

Two hours later he sealed his paints for the day, cleaned his brushes, wiped off his hands with baby wipes, ditched the baggies and painting shirt, put on his chinos and a clean t-shirt and some scrubby deck shoes, and pocketed his wallet and phone.

On the way out of the loft, he saw the pair of panties hanging on the front door. What the hell?

Oh, yeah. A final fuck-you from Rissa. Who after throwing him a party in his loft with his beer and paying for pizza out of his wallet, had decided he didn't really love her because he wasn't there to rescue her from a creepy conversation with Nick the Dick. Nick was creepy, yeah. But Rissa also complained that Alex never had any money, never got anywhere with his painting, so how long was he going to be a starving artist in a crappy Bushwick loft?

So she left his favorite panties on the door. Pink silk bikini panties, trimmed in white lace. Why did she do that?

That's right. So he can jerk off with them, because that's as close as he's going to get to fucking her anymore.

Alex stuffed the panties in the pocket of his chinos and went out the door, locked it, headed to the freight elevator. The bare wooden planks shifted under his deck shoes. The whole hallway creaked as he walked.

Rissa had showed up at his door 6pm last night, wearing the bear mask, a trench coat, and the panties. And her stupid UGG boots. She offered to do a lot of things before everyone else showed up, but before they could get started, everyone else showed up.

In the middle of the party, she started with the quiet, vicious digs.

Later she attacked him out loud, for abandoning her to Nick.

Which he probably did, because he had gotten tired of her digs.

Anyway.

Alex walked out the security door of his building. Sunlight and diesel. Cobblestones peeking out from under asphalt. The three guys from the furniture warehouse, standing on the sidewalk, passing a joint. “THE FUTURE SUCKED” was stenciled with spray paint, in Westminster, that old-school 1960's futuristic font, on the wall across the street.

He walked several blocks down to the bodega. The panties he had stuffed into his pocket started to get on his nerves, the lumpy pocket rubbing at his thigh crease. He passed a dumpster, and threw the panties into it.

Well, that's done.

Alex pulled out his phone. Message light blinking. A text from Rissa: “FUCK YOU.” Not original, but he got the point. Delete.

Light still blinking. A couple of missed calls, a voice mail.

The missed calls were from a Manhattan number that Alex did not know. Still, the voice mail could be from Rissa. That would be fun.

Alex listened. Then he played the message again. Then he put his phone away and walked on toward to bodega.

Ten thousand bucks for his big canvas. The one canvas that he'd been able to into a gallery in SoHo. How did he go from five hundred a painting to ten grand?

Did it matter?

Oh, what else did the message say? They would like another one.

Alex broke out in a sweat all down his spine.

Ten grand.

Alex smiled.

He ran toward the bodega.

He stopped.

He jumped up in the air.

Ten grand!

He punched the wall.

Then he walked the rest of the way to the bodega and went in.

Mohammed said Hello. Alex said Hello, and grabbed orange juice and yogurt and corn chips and a six-pack of a Brooklyn micro-brew. Then he headed to the register.

“How are you today, buddy?” Mohammed asked.

Alex thought about the ten grand.

“I'm doing alright,” Alex said.

“Yeah? What's new?”

Alex thought.

“Nothing. Nothing much.”

And took his change, and the black plastic bag, crinkling with his groceries.

Alex walked back to his building.

Took the elevator back up.

Walked back to his door.

Inside the apartment, Alex flopped on his unmade bed and thought about what he wanted to do. Go camping on the Pine Barrens. Lay on the beach in the Hamptons. Or, hell, fly to Vegas. It's a crappy time of year for Vegas, but what the hell! Ten grand!

He could do anything he wanted to, for the next week.

Alex stared at the ceiling.

Then he got up, walked to his easel, and started setting out his paints.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein