Color Blind (15 page)

Kate peered along with him. “Actually, I don’t know.” But it reminded her to find out.

“Too bad it’s not obsessive doodles of naked little girls—or boys. Not that work has to be perverse to be outsider art, but it helps. Everyone is striving for that unschooled look now that outsider is such a desirable label. Do you believe there are students with art degrees from Yale making paintings with a brush between their toes in an attempt to look
primitive
?” He made quotation-mark signs with his fingers. “Absurd. The true outsider artist lives largely by his or her own rules, knows nothing about the art world or the system.” Bloom’s tone turned serious. “These are culturally isolated individuals, living on the fringe of society—and often quite disturbed.” His words resonated.

Living by their own rules…culturally isolated…on the fringe of society…disturbed.

“I’ve just taken on the work of a young woman, well, not exactly,” said Bloom. “She’s a hermaphrodite who chooses to live as female but refuses to have the operation to remove her male genitalia. She told me she has grown too fond of it, likes to occasionally bend it into her vagina and poke it around in there.” His eyebrows made arcing circles above his glasses. “She lives in a tiny little house in the middle of rural Kentucky that her granddaddy left her and makes the most extraordinary drawings with a ballpoint pen of—well, let me show you.” Bloom slid open a drawer of a metal flat file. “Here, have a look.”

From the distance of a few feet Kate thought she was looking at nothing more than drawings of circles and lines, tightly packed abstract doodles that obsessively covered the entire piece of paper—not totally unlike the borders in the Bronx paintings.

“Look closely,” Bloom urged.

In close-up, the circles and lines turned out to be a mass of intertwined penises and vaginas. “Oh,” said Kate.

“Oh, indeed,” said Bloom. “She—or
he
—has produced one of these drawings every week for the past ten years. Each one in blue ballpoint pen. They take a full week, ten hours of concentrated work each day—which I know to be true, as I spent a most unsettling week watching her draw one. To put it in your modernist terminology—the work is surreal, but not surrealist in the art historical sense.” He removed his Elton specs and looked squarely at Kate. “The artist has no knowledge of surrealism. In fact, no knowledge of art, period. She rarely leaves her little Kentucky cottage.”

No knowledge of art.
The idea resonated. A self-trained artist. Obsessed.

“How does she feed herself?” Kate honestly wanted to know.

“A neighbor shops for her once a week, though I never saw her eat anything but the occasional Slim Jim. She weighs, oh, I would guess…no more than a hundred pounds, is almost six feet tall with long shiny red hair and a wonderfully silky mustache.” Bloom paused. “I’m sending a photographer to Kentucky. I want a huge portrait of her for my show, which opens next month. I couldn’t convince her to come to New York, though I tried. I think she’d be the new
it
girl—or boy.” He grinned. “But seriously, the imagery in these drawings is obviously so very close to her, or his, heart. It’s all about her—his
predicament
.” He glanced back at the Bronx pictures. “Now, if you could furnish me with some terrifically bizarre backstory for your odd-color painter, you know…he or she has been institutionalized for the past twenty years and makes these paintings while communing with the spirit of a dead dog…”He laughed. “Well, I exaggerate, but you get my drift. It would help give them
meaning,
which might interest a serious collector so that I could sell them for you and then we could get started on putting together your outsider collection.”

Kate peered closely at the borders of the Bronx pictures again, but the doodles did not suddenly become penises or vaginas, or anything, for that matter. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful. And I’ll be back.” She gathered the Bronx pictures before Bloom could convince her to write out a check for one of the hermaphrodite’s drawings, though she considered it. They were definitely haunting.

T
hose low clouds were still hovering as Kate made her way back to the station, Bloom’s words echoing in her head:
Living by their own rules. Culturally isolated. On the fringe of society. Disturbed.

The art dealer could have been describing a sociopath.

The hermaphrodite made art of male and female genitalia—subject matter, as Bloom had said,
close to her heart
.

So why did the
Bronx painter
—as Kate was starting to call him—use wild, inaccurate color? What
meaning
did the paintings hold for him?

Kate stared past the traffic and passersby, lost in thought. She believed that every artist was searching for something, often trying to understand the world more clearly through their artwork. So what was it the Bronx painter was trying to understand?

Certainly, he wanted the public to see what he did. Why else bring a painting to a murder scene and leave it behind? But was it left as some sort of gift, an offering to the dead—or did he leave the paintings behind because they had served their purpose, which was…
what?

H
e has been standing outside, across the street from the familiar old stone building on West Fifty-seventh Street, a place he knows well. He aches to go inside, to see all the people at their easels, but knows better. Later, someone might remember him. And so he watches them come and go: students and teachers, young and old, white, black, Asian, Latin, some with large newsprint pads tucked under arms, others with paint boxes, and he despises every one of them.

He thinks back to when he was a boy, the chalk drawings he would create on the sidewalk, and the way they would get attention, occasionally someone giving him a dollar simply for the enjoyment of viewing his artwork. Then there were the others, mostly scared-looking middle-aged men in whom he recognized a need, whom he would smile at and allow to take him places—bus-station toilets, hotel rooms, and pay him for the kind of sex he was, by then, quite used to; only this money was not for her, this money he saved so that one day he could pay for art classes, and while they were doing whatever disgusting things they did to him he simply imagined himself here, in this building, and it was worth it.

Behind his sunglasses there are tears gathering in his eyes because if it had not been for the accident, he too could have been one of these students with paint-stained jeans, but the thought simply reinforces his resolve, and the little bit of emotion he felt a moment ago vanishes like smoke.

He has brought a small pad and a thick graphite pencil so that he will not look out of place, makes a rough sketch of the large old building itself, stopping every so often to look up and check someone out, to decide: Is she the one, or he? This one? Maybe that one? And finally has narrowed it down—either the pretty girl with light hair, or the guy whose hair is dark. Both carry paint boxes, which is what got them into the semifinals. But what sealed their fate was that each of them smiled at him. Who will win the contest is still a question. He’d love to do them both—
Double your pleasure, double your fun—
but that would be too much, at least for now.

Yesterday, when he started his quest, the girl was carrying a canvas and he cadged a peek at it—a still life—and was very pleased, because the painting would work perfectly. But he worries that it will not be so easy to get her to go with him. Girls, he knows, can be difficult. Whereas boys, a certain kind of boy, a kind he knows well, are easy, and this dark-haired boy, who is slender and graceful, with paint splotches on his jeans, is one of those kind. He could see it in the boy’s smile, which lasted too long.

Sunday Monday Happy Days—

He stares up at the art school and thinks about how much he misses working in his studio. But this is important. It will make it possible for him to continue to work and it is worth the sacrifice.

He has sacrificed plenty in his life. No one knows how much he has sacrificed. And suffered.

One time he told Dylan about some of it because he knew that Dylan had it rough too, and he was sure he’d understand. Naturally, Tony knows, but Tony would never tell anyone. “Right, Tony?”

You’re
g
rrrrrrrreat! Grrrrrrrreat! Grrrrrrrreat!

“Thanks,” he whispers. He’s glad Tony is here with him, keeping him company. He’s not sure where Dylan and Kelly and Brenda and Brandon are. Maybe over at Steve’s, having one of their pool parties. But he doesn’t hate them for that. They’ve been good friends to him and they are entitled to have a fun time.

The dark clouds have erased the tops of New York’s tallest skyscrapers and he is thankful. Still, he keeps his wraparound shades in place, which he hopes both the light-haired girl and dark-haired boy find mysterious and sexy.

The girl went inside the old stone building about three hours ago, which, if she is on the same schedule as yesterday, means she will be out any minute. He checks his watch, looks up, and
bingo!
There she is right on time, skipping down the stone steps, paint box in hand.

God, he’s smart.

You’re grrrrrrrrrrreat!

“Shhh, Tony. She’s coming.”

He knows that she has seen him, but does not look up from the drawing he is doing, furiously filling in an area of the page with his thick graphite pencil, and then, when she is right beside him, and he can feel her and smell her, he continues to keep his head down, working.

You deserve a break today…

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier without the shades?” the girl says. “Especially since there’s like, no sun today.”

“Without
what
?” he says, though he’s heard her perfectly.

“The shades. Without the
shades
.”

“Oh,” he says. “I like seeing the world this way.”

“Through rose-colored glasses?”

Rose-colored. Are they?
He takes them off, and squints at them.
No, they’re brown.
At least he always thought so.

“Your eyes are nice,” she says. “You shouldn’t hide them.”

He flashes his teen-idol smile, concentrates on not blinking or squinting, thinks:
What luck to be handsome. How handy.

He has practiced and cataloged his gestures—smiles, tilts of the head, a tug of the earlobe—mostly from TV, and knows how to use them, these convincing portrayals of charm and sanity. He traces a finger along his smooth, practically hairless chin, then with his fingertips takes turns ever so lightly tapping his full, almost feminine lips, the feature that most often elicits a reaction—
so pouty, pretty, sexy
—and hopes she will notice, though at that moment his mind is playing a reel of smudged pornographic scenes: dark alleys, claustrophobic booths, public rest rooms, hotels, all blurred memories without feeling. Never any feeling.

“Hey, you with me?”

“What? Oh, sure.” Another fast, practiced smile. “What’s it like?” He nods toward the building, at the Art Students League.

“Oh, it’s okay, I guess.” She shrugs.

He isn’t going to get any descriptions of art student camaraderie he used to dream about from her.

“You wanna get a coffee?” He slips the shades back into place, and sings, “You deserve a break today…”

She completes the tune: “…at McDonald’s!”

“Wow!” he says.

She laughs, shifts her weight from one foot to the other, breasts doing a little rumba under her tight cotton top.

“I’d really like to.” She takes in his heartthrob good looks, and sighs. “But I gotta get home or my roommate will like, totally kill me.”

“Really?” he asks, dead serious. “Do you think so?”

“You slay me,” the girl says, and laughs again. “Another time?” She tugs the pencil slowly out of his fingers and writes her telephone number on the back of his pad. “I’m Annie. Call me,” she says, and lopes off down the street. She turns back once and throws him a sexy smile, but he doesn’t bother to return it because he has just noticed the dark-haired boy coming out of the League, and this is his chance and he does not want to blow it.

What do you think, Tony? Is he the one?

Yeah. He’s grrrrrrreat!

The dark-haired boy stops on the bottom step, sets his paint box down, gets a cigarette between his lips and takes a long time lighting it. Then he leans back against the wall and lets the smoke drift out of his mouth slowly. It’s a pose that cries out for music, one of those girl groups that she liked so much, another oldie, the Shirelles or the Chiffons, with their oohs and aahs, and strings and heartbreak.
“Will you still love me tomorrow…”

Clearly the guy is posing it for him. He’d burst out laughing if it were not so important.

After a minute, the boy drops his cigarette and crushes it under his heel, then runs a hand through his longish dark hair, picks up his paint box and sprints across the street, dodging cars and taxis as if he were in a movie chase scene, and stops, catching his breath, just beside him, leans in close, the smell of tobacco on his breath. “Nice drawing, man.”

“Thanks.”

“What’d you do to your hand?” says the boy, taking in the jagged, purplish welt.

“Oh.” He tugs his shirt over his scarred wrist. “I did it a long time ago…when I was, uh…sharpening a pencil with a razor.” He takes off his wraparound sunglasses because everyone, not just that girl, has always said he has nice eyes, for whatever that’s worth—the irony could make him laugh, or cry. He can never get the emotions quite right. But he wants to distract the boy from the scar, get back on track, and smiles, trying very hard not to squint. He can see it’s worked because the boy’s smile has broadened and gone a little dreamy too.