A Date You Can't Refuse (35 page)

“Mrs. Winterbottom,” I said. “Tell us where they've gone and we'll leave you in peace. I'm sorry to tell you that you have—unwittingly, of course—delivered my brother into the care of two people who are not licensed drivers. I'll overlook that, but you need to tell me where he is before it becomes a legal issue and reaches the ears of the board of directors.”

The last three words were the magic ones. Mrs. Winterbottom dragged her eyes from Felix and fixed them on me. “The mission,” she snapped.

“He's on a mission?”

“Santa Barbara's Old Mission. For I Madonnari. They're off to look at your square.”

“My—what?”

“The square that was bought. By Mrs. Hays. City council. For your drawing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are
you deaf? The Chalk Festival, fool.”

I must have looked stupid enough to warrant the insult. With a huff, Mrs. Winterbottom stood, turned her back, and exposed her considerable bottom to us as she opened a filing cabinet behind her.

“Here,” she said, straightening up. She extracted from a file a piece of paper stapled to a brochure and handed it over. “And if by this dumb-bunny routine you mean you've forgotten or will not meet your obligation, exposing Haven Lane to public humiliation, leaving an empty square, paid for and donated to us by Mrs. Hays, our valued benefactress—” She took a deep breath. “Well, let me just assure you that your brother will suffer the consequences of your irresponsibility and lack of professionalism. Does he want to remain at Haven Lane?”

“Yes!” I said. “Of course he—”

“Would you care to see the waiting list ready to take his place? You
better learn which side your brother's bread is buttered on. You agreed to a portrait of the Blessed Virgin that will move and inspire, and that's what you'll produce. Or else. Because I have just about had it with you and your family. Do you hear me? I have
had
it.”

“You have had it,” Felix said, nodding.

I was trying to absorb the contents of the paper I was reading, with Joey and Fredreeq looking over my shoulder. It was an application, approved, specifying a twelve-by-twelve-foot square bought and paid for by a Mrs. Jake Hays on behalf of Haven Lane, for the Memorial Day weekend street-painting festival of I Madonnari. A box was checked next to “We will provide our own volunteer street painter.” The name of the artist was filled in, along with the address and phone number. The handwriting was my brother's.

The artist, of course, was me.

“‘I
Madonnari,’” Joey said, reading from the brochure, “‘is an annual festival based on the Italian chalk festival of the same name. The plaza of the Old Mission will be transformed with two hundred colorful, large-scale street paintings. The artists, or madonnari’— so-called because of their obsession with the Madonna, I presume—blah, blah, blah. ‘For twenty-five thousand annual visitors—’”

“Twenty-five thousand?” I screamed. I drove wildly through the streets of Santa Barbara, or as wildly as possible, given the sluggishness of traffic and the occasional dead stops. All twenty-five thousand visitors must have been behind the wheel at that moment, driving badly.

“‘Artwork must be appropriate for public viewing,’” Joey went on. “‘No words or symbols intended as advertising may appear within the image.’”

“Can I use acrylic?” I asked. “I'm at home with acrylic. I could toss off a decent Madonna in an hour, in acrylic.”

“‘Only chalk pastels in a solid form may be used for the street painting, no acrylic paints, liquid pastels, et cetera, are acceptable.’ The good news is, they provide the chalk.”

“I don't do chalk! Chalk's not my medium! I suck at chalk!”

“But this is opportunity,” Felix said. “Maybe, after today, you don't suck at chalk.”

“But the learning curve takes time,” I said. “I'm slow. I'm plodding. Contemplative. I'm a plodding, contemplative, poky artist. That's how I work. I'm a dawdler.”

“So change your style. Do it fast and sloppy,” Fredreeq said.

“I can't,” I yelled. “Twenty-five thousand people are going to be looking at it!”

“Do we know the peoples?” Zbiggo asked.

“It doesn't matter. My name is on it.”

“Professional ethics,” Felix said. “Yes. I understand.”

“So why you don't quit?” Zbiggo asked. “Just to quit, that is best.”

“I can't quit, Zbiggo. You heard Mrs. Winterbottom. If I disappoint her, she'll take it out on my brother. She's mad now, but add to that social humiliation and it's all over for P.B. If he gets kicked out of this halfway house, it's a catastrophe. There is no good ending to that scenario. And Mrs. Winterbottom can make it happen.” Even with government intervention, on orders from the FBI—assuming the feds did in fact back me up—in a fight between Mrs. Winterbottom and Bennett Graham, it was probably a dead heat. “If twenty-five thousand people see a blank square where Haven Lane is supposed to have a Virgin Mary in chalk—”

“Forget the peoples,” Zbiggo said. “Is the chalks. You fight the chalks, you make the chalks fear, you see only the chalks, you don't see the peoples, you don't think the peoples.”

It was so unexpected, to get motivational advice from Zbiggo, that I had no response. And how did one instill fear in a stick of chalk?

“Petition the Virgin to make you draw fast,” Felix suggested.

“You
can
draw fast,” Joey said. “I've seen you sketch greeting cards in seconds.”

“That's different,” I said. “Line drawings. Black and white. Small. Impressionistic. Which I can tear up and rework until I'm satisfied.” I honked at a Viper trying to cut me off. “Twelve feet by twelve feet? That's gigantic. That's bigger than my last apartment! In chalk! Chalk's not my medium! I can't do it!”

“Calm down, Frida Kahlo,” Fredreeq said. “How come you didn't get the word on this till ten minutes ago?”

“Because P.B. volunteered me without telling me, obviously. And forged my signature, for all I know. Joey, where are we?”

“Couple more blocks, then left on Laguna,” she said, consulting a map.

“This mission, is it a government building?” Felix asked.

“I guess,” Joey said. “It's a historical landmark. They're all over California, these missions.”

“Monuments to past popes,” Fredreeq said, “who imposed their tacky religious values on the Native Americans, taking away their peyote and sweat lodges, and now we spend tax dollars to preserve the buildings so that bored schoolkids who would rather be working on their soccer skills are forced to take field trips and write term papers on them, in clear violation of the separation between church and state.”

“Interesting perspective, Fredreeq,” Joey said.

“I'm quoting my ninth grader. I typed the term paper. She broke her wrist at soccer.”

“So this building is federal?” Felix asked.

There was a moment of silence. “That's a strange question,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror. And a rather arcane distinction, for a guy who was still working on the English for “dressing on the side.” Felix avoided my eye in the mirror.

“I think those friars still run them,” Fredreeq said. “So I guess they belong to the Vatican. But why exactly do we care about this?”

“Here's what I care about,” I said. “Does anyone in this car have artistic talent? Or a feel for chalk?”

This was met with a chorus of no's. I was not surprised. Drawing scares some people the way singing scares me.

There was no way out. I was the responsible party.

I took a deep breath. Everyone could go off to lunch without me. I'd collect my designated chalk, find my designated square, and somehow crank out a substandard, half-baked image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a thought that made me crabby to the point of madness. And a little nauseous. Unless that was me being poisoned.

First, though, I had to find P.B.

The mission grounds were bustling with prefestival activity. The mission itself was refreshingly authentic-looking, humble when compared to your average cathedral. It was white adobe with a red roof, adorned with medieval-looking flags. We walked past a fountain with just a trickle of water coming out and approached the artists' sector.

The blacktop parking-lot area surrounding the church steps was measured and marked with masking tape, creating rows of squares in various sizes. Each square featured the name of its sponsor, stenciled in chalk across the bottom, everything from Tri-County Court Reporters to the Afghanistan Dental Relief Project, Inc. My own square wasn't in view, as this area was reserved for smaller spaces. I longed for a nice, manageable four-by-six rectangle. Or even a seven-by-seven. Why twelve feet? That was me times two, laid end to end.

“This is fabulous,” Fredreeq said. “I wish I'd brought my kids. This is a lot more cultural than paintball or bowling.”

I might have agreed, had I been here as a civilian. A number of artists were already at work. They knelt on pieces of cardboard or scraps of rug. Some wore knee pads. Many worked from sketches, in some cases lithographs of old masters. There were grids and graph paper in evidence, and a few serious types used long sticks with the chalk on the far end to get a sweeping gesture from a standing position. Great. I had no props. No tools of the trade. I had a huge square, no ideas, no preparation. I didn't belong here. I was a fraud.

I moved my group along, anxious to find my brother.

Across from the parking lot was a large grassy lawn that was being filled up with tables and tents and vendor booths. “There they are,” I said.

My brother wore ill-fitting cargo shorts and a T-shirt that said “Cat Lovers Against the Bomb” and had bits of grass in his hair, as though he'd been napping. My uncle was in his usual attire of natural fabrics, unironed. “Wollie!” he called, hopping up from the ground with more alacrity than one would expect in a man of his advanced years. “Wait until you see your canvas.”

“It is a primo spot,” Apollo said, jumping up too. “The whole world will see it.”

“Great news.” I hugged them. “Apollo, tell me you didn't drive here from Glendale.”

“He's quite good,” Uncle Theo said. “A better driver than even you, dear.”

“That's nice to hear, Uncle Theo, but he doesn't have a license.”

“Yes, but he's a very smart boy.”

“He could be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but he's still fifteen. The DMV doesn't have a genius exemption. And speaking of geniuses, P.B., what did you sign me up for?”

My brother looked up, his blue eyes shining. “Did you bring my book?”

“What?”

P.B.'s eyes narrowed.
“Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything
. You didn't bring it.”

“What am I, Supergirl? Explain this pastel thing, wouldja? What kind of opus is Mrs. Winterbottom expecting?”

“I can't believe you didn't bring it,” he said. “I asked you five times this week—”

“Look!” I yelled. “My plate has been just a little bit full of late, and—”

“Children, children,” Uncle Theo said, putting an arm around me. “Everything in its own time. Goodness, is that Joey? And Fredreeq! What a lovely day it's turning out to be. And is that Fredreeq's husband with her? A large fellow, isn't he?”

“Where?” I turned. “No, that's Zbiggo.” The trio approached, and I started to get a bad feeling. I looked around, quickly, then back at Joey and Fredreeq.

“Where's Felix?” I called. But I knew the answer as the question hung in the air.

Gone. I'd lost another one.

“P
lease God, don't let him have taken the Suburban,” I said.

“No, we checked,” Joey said. “It was the strangest thing. There one minute, gone the next. Hi, Uncle Theo. Hey, Apollo. Howdy, P.B.”

I introduced Zbiggo to everyone and explained that I'd misplaced my other date, Felix. “He expressed an unusual interest in the mission,” I said. “I'll take a look inside.”

“You stay. I'm on it,” Joey said, and jogged toward the building.

“Wollie, we'll find him,” Fredreeq said. “You need to start drawing your Virgin. See that tent over there? That's where you sign in and get your free chalk.”

“Free chalk” Uncle Theo said. “What a nice, unexpected treat.”

“Wollie,” P.B. said, “when are we going to the bookstore?”

“P.B.,” I said, “not now.”

“I would take you, P.B.,” Apollo said, “but I don't have a license.”

“I'll take you,” Fredreeq said, “but not in that Belarusian bus we drove here in. Whose car did you steal, Apollo?”

“My cousin Archimedes has given me the Kia. It is tiny, but very fun.”

“Forget it. We'll take the horse we rode in on. Keys, Wollie. Zbiggo, you stick with me. I'm not having you go missing too.”

Uncle Theo accompanied me to the artist sign-in tent, where I was issued a new box of forty-eight pastels, something that, even in my current state of anxiety, evoked a little
ping!
of pleasure. No one is immune to the charm of a new box of colored chalk.

“Too bad you couldn't come to the chalk party two weeks ago,” the chalk woman said, checking me off her list. “A lot of the artists made their own from pure pigments, much better than the commercial stuff. As you know.”