The Disenchantments (23 page)

Back outside, under the sunshine, amid the bicycles, I head into the café and order a coffee. The barista grinds up beans, pours hot water through a paper filter straight into my white cup. I still have half an hour before René will get here, so I take my time drinking the coffee, sketching the people around me. A woman sitting in the corner of the room reads a book—John Berger’s
Ways of Seeing
, which we studied in our senior thesis class—and takes the occasional sip of her coffee. She has long hair; I try to capture the way it falls over her shoulders. When I’ve finished with her I turn the page sideways and draw the barista in the white space above where I’ve drawn the woman. In life, and in my sketchbook, he waits behind the long, sleek espresso machine for the next customer.

I finish my drawing and go up to the counter to ask him if I can have one of the paper espresso cups. He says sure, hands it to me. Back at my chair, I fill the cup with silver paint and unroll the butcher paper, letting the ends hang over both sides of the table.

I want to re-create the design I made for The Disenchantments’ first show: the silver, crying eyes with the band name spelled above it. There is no reason that tonight’s show will be any different from the others, but it’s the last time they’ll play together—if not forever, at least
for now—and after everything that’s happened on this trip, endings feel important.

I don’t have Bev here to model for me, but it hardly matters. I close my eyes and a moment later see her face.

I open my eyes to the sunny room and start painting.

At first, the eyes look almost exactly as they did on the shirts. The shape is the same; the shade of silver is the same. The makeup looks a little smeared; I try to make the lashes appear wet and stuck together, which is easier this time around because Bev’s eyes have been so sad. When I’ve finished it, I stand up to see, and though it still looks similar to the first version, it looks more real. I dip my brush back into the paper cup, and paint the words:
The Disenchantments
.

Every letter is perfect.

A man walks in, and I know, immediately, that it’s René. I also know that I recognize him from somewhere. He scans the room and I stand up and do this kind of half wave, and he heads over to my table.

“You must be Colby.”

I nod and say, “René,” and he says, “Yeah,” and sits.

And then it hits me.

“Oh my God,” I say. “You’re René Alvarez.”

“Yeah?” he says. He laughs. “You were expecting me, right? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“No, I mean,” I shake my head, embarrassed. “I knew I
was here to meet you, but I didn’t know that you were
you
.”

“You mean you know my work?”

“Yeah,” I say, “You’re
Novio
.” And for a second I’m starstruck but then I’m just excited, because when I was doing my senior project René was one of the artists I focused on. It was almost impossible to find anything out about him—he doesn’t have a website and he isn’t even close to famous like Banksy or Barry McGee.

“I saw your piece on Florida Street.”

“In San Francisco?”

“That’s where I live. Those trains that you did? Those were amazing.”

He looks genuinely happy to hear this, and we talk a little more about that piece before I ask him to tell me about the tattoo.

“All right,” he says. “It’s like this. Lawrence and I go way back. I was drifting for a while and he let me stay with him in Fort Bragg, and I was just hanging out in his shop one day, looking through the binders and found that little bird. It just made me laugh. I was like, ‘That’s one lucky little dude.’ And it was interesting because it wasn’t my style, but the content was the same. I had been doing all these birds, you know, and telephone wires.”

“I know!” I say. “There was that one you did in Mexico City with the birds and the wires and that creature—”

“The camazotz. Man, you did your research. So yeah, I was working a lot with those images. And there’s such a
history, you know, of taking something that is originally someone else’s and making it your own. Like how sampling works in music.”

“Appropriation art,” I say.

“Yeah, well. I’m not the art school type but, yeah, I’m familiar with that term. So I thought, what if I take this little guy and put him into one of
my
scenes, you know?”

He pulls off his white T-shirt. Underneath is a white tank top and, covering the entire upper half of his arm, is the tattoo.

The bird looks identical to my mother’s original painting and to the bird on Drew’s back, but everything else is different. The rain clouds are more elaborate and foreboding, the raindrops luminous, the telephone wires tangled and thick. If the bird in my mom’s painting is lucky not to get a little wet, this bird is escaping some modern-day, Biblical-style flood. Before Meg and Jasper, I never cared that much about tattoos, but there’s no denying that this is a work of art.

I’m speechless, and then all I can do is laugh.

“Wait,” I say. “I can’t believe this. You’re fucking
Novio
and you have my
mom’s
bird on your arm.”

He joins in, bellows so loud it fills the café.

“Yeah, well, you must have quite a mother,” he says. “But look at this.” He checks out my Disenchantments painting. “This is not too shabby.”

“Nah,” I say. “It’s just something I drew one day.”

“That’s all you do, though,” René says. “You get an image
going and you just do it. Lay it down everywhere you go. Get some stickers made and slap them on parking signs in New York and L.A. and suddenly you’re someone.”

He makes it sound so easy that I think that maybe I should do that, but I already know that that isn’t my dream.

“So what’s the story? You live in S.F. but you’re up here?”

“I drove up to Portland with a few people to drop our friend off at college, and then Jasper told me about the tattoo so I made the drive up here.”

“Hold on,”
René says. “Are you headed back down to Portland today?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a friend, needs to get down there by tonight. You have an extra seat?”

“Sure.”

He pulls out his phone and keys something slowly.

Soon his phone buzzes and he checks the text.

“What time you leaving?”

“Pretty soon,” I say. “I need to be back by, like, seven.”

He sends another slow-motion message.

“You sure you’re good with this? I mean, the dude’s cool. Part of my crew here.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Definitely.”

“All right.” He leans back, surveys me. “The camazotz? Shit. You really knew about that?”

I shrug. “It was great,” I say. “I’ve never seen spray
paint used that way. In some places the style was almost, like, Fauvist.”

“Almost what?”

“Fauvist. You know, Les Fauves?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, no.”

“They were cool. Matisse started it, but there were a bunch of other painters involved. Camoin and Rouault, and Braque, you know, before he became a Cubist.”

He cracks up. “Okay, Art School,” he says.

“Whoa,” I say. “Did René Alvarez just give me a graffiti name?”

“Looks like it.”

“That’s cool,” I say. “But I’m not going to art school. I mean, it’s possible that sometime in the future I might go, like, after I’ve worked for a while or something, but I’m not going now.”

“I’m not talking about what your plans are,” he says. “You’ve been sitting here schooling me about Les Fauves and Matisse and shit, right? I don’t pass out names everyday, son, the least you can do is accept it.”

“Okay,” I say. “Accepted.”

René and I drive about a mile through the city, to a strip mall with a Laundromat, a pawnshop, and a check-cashing place. He tells me to park and I follow him into the pawnshop and up to the cash register where it becomes clear that the dude
in René’s crew is the five-foot-two girl flipping the pages of a gardening magazine behind the counter.

“Abbie, this is Art School, also known as Colby.”

She closes the magazine.

“This is my ride? Kid, how old are you?”

“Old enough,” I try. But she’s narrowing her eyes at me, and even though she’s cute and tiny and dressed like a boy in a loose T-shirt and skewed baseball cap, I can tell that she’s older, probably in her late twenties, or maybe even thirties, like René.

“Eighteen,” I say.

Then René laughs his tremendously loud and happy laugh, and Abbie and I both join in. She has these adorable freckles all over the bridge of her nose, and she steps around the counter, holding her hand out for me to shake.

“If you’re surprised by his age, wait till you check out his ride,” René says.

“You could drive a pogo stick and I would hop on. My car broke down this morning and I have to get to Portland tonight. No joke, Colby. You’re saving me.”

“No problem,” I tell her. “I have to drive back anyway.”

Then she and René launch into a conversation about a mutual friend who it seems has made it into a museum show somewhere in the middle of the country. Abbie thinks it’s Michigan but René swears it’s Colorado, and the more they talk about it the less I follow. So I take a look at the stuff for sale.

I’ve never been in a pawnshop before, and the variety is pretty awesome. You could buy an engagement ring and a television, a guitar and a knife, a stereo system and a fur coat. I wander over to the electronics to check out the speakers, and something catches my attention: a record player. It looks like an old model—a blue base with a matching top that snaps onto it so it can be moved from place to place—but, at least from what I can see, it’s in perfect condition.

Abbie calls me over to her to plan.

“So I hear you have to be back for something tonight,” she says.

I nod. “I need to get back by seven at the latest,” I say. I check the clock hanging above the counter. It’s only noon, and it’s a three-hour drive, so we have plenty of time.

But Abbie doesn’t look as relaxed.

“Thing is,” she says, “I need to swing by the place I’ve been staying, because I won’t be back in Seattle for some time.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll take you.”

“It’s a trek. We have to drive onto a ferry.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve never had to drive onto a ferry before in my life, but then I think of where we are right now, and what a ferry probably means.

“Waitasecond,”
I say. “Do you live on an island?”

“Vashon.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Vashon Island. It takes twenty minutes each way, not considering the ferry line, and then we’ll need to get to the farm to get all my stuff.”

“You live on a farm?”

René’s laugh fills the shop.

“Abbie’s full of surprises,” he tells me.

Abbie makes a phone call to tell someone she’s closing the shop early, and she turns off the lights and locks the cash register so quickly that I don’t even get a chance to ask about the record player. But then, as we’re heading out the door, I catch sight of it again and can’t help myself.

“That record player over there?”

“Uh-huh?”

“How much is it?”

Abbie walks over and checks it out. She stands for a moment, thinking.

Then she picks it up and says, “It’s a ride to Portland,” hands it to me, and locks up the shop.

Here I am, with a girl who isn’t Bev, traveling to an island I hadn’t planned to visit. I know it isn’t Stockholm but I can almost pretend it is as I inch Melinda forward onto the ferryboat.

We park and turn off the engine and the ferry leaves the dock, and then we are on the water, slowly passing the islands of the Puget Sound.

“Want to get out and look?” Abbie asks.

“Yeah,” I say. We lock up the car and head to the top of the boat where the view is better. The sun is shining but with the breeze off the water it’s almost cold.

“How did you end up on a farm?” I ask.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a scarf. “I’m learning how to do it.” She ties the scarf around her neck. “Farm,” she adds.

I’m impressed. But I mean I guess it’s logical that most people who live on farms work on them, too.

“How long have you been there?”

“This one, only a month. I’ve been moving from place to place for the last six months, though. I’m from Seattle, so I was glad to get back here, but now I’m leaving again.”

“René said you were in his crew, so I thought you did street art.”

“I mostly gave it up. Sometimes, though, if the feeling strikes me, I’ll go lay something down.”

“So are you going to Portland for a piece?”

“No, not this time. My best friend is getting married and I’m throwing her bridal shower tomorrow morning. From there I’m heading to a farm outside Bend. I have a farm stay set up for August. But first I have some flower arranging and champagne pouring to do. And a toast.”

“Wait,” I say. “So you’re like, moving? Right now?”

I see why she was checking her watch earlier. I pull out my phone and look at it now. It’s past one already.

“Yeah, but I don’t have much. Don’t worry,” she adds. “We’ll get back in time for your thing tonight.”

Once we pull into the dock at Vashon Island, the drive to the farm is short. We turn into a narrow driveway and up to a house.

“Is this where you live?” I ask as we walk toward it.

She shakes her head. “The owners used to live in it but they had to rent it out to make ends meet.” We curve up a path. “Now they live there,” she says, pointing to a tiny structure. “The husband and wife and their two kids. It’s a studio.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. It’s a hard life.”

“And you’re choosing it?”

She shrugs. “Can’t help it,” she says. “It feels right.”

Now we’re really in the farm. To the right, in a fenced-off area, are chickens. To the left are rows of tomatoes and squash and lettuce, and lots of other plants that I can’t identify. There’s a greenhouse. A couple of goats, chewing on grass. I don’t see any other buildings, though, and I don’t know where Abbie is taking me until we reach a tent.

“A tent?”

She laughs. “Yeah. Luxury, right? My stuff’s all packed.”