Peter Heller - The Painter

He was big into Pablo Neruda and Rilke. I read some of them. Seemed like very different guys, to me, what do I know. Neruda making little doves out of his lover’s hands and wheat fields out of her stomach and stretching out like a root in the dark, he made me horny he really did. Made me want to find a Latin lover, Spanish or Chilean, not too young, one with hips and eyelashes and a voice like dusk rubbing over a calm water. Read enough Neruda you can’t stop.

Rilke on the other hand did not make me horny at all. He walked around like a man who had been skinned alive, didn’t know what to do with all those acute impressions and so made his poems. I can see why Pete Doerr was fascinated by him. I mean Rilke wrote the Duino Elegies in three weeks in the so named castle. I paint fast, but not that fast. Anyway, I admired Rilke as I read him and loved some of his poems, especially the part in the Elegies where he talks about animals, and the one poem about the panther in the cage which has to just slay you:

The cell phone rings. The house has no phone line, it’s off the grid, all the electricity comes from four solar panels on a pole off the northeast corner. Doerr was probably some sort of an environmentalist with this solar power, the woodstove, these thick dirt walls that absorb the sun coming in from the big plate windows on the south side. No phone, no grid, a little propane, the poet was an idealist and an environmentalist and so probably mostly miserable.

The phone rings. It’s Steve. He’s my dealer in Santa Fe. Has been for almost twenty years. The Stephen Lily Gallery. Very high end.

“How’s my clean and sober genius?”

I wince. How does a guy who has known me for twenty years talk to me like this? Hmp. Maybe exactly because he has known me that long, I think.

“You are, aren’t you?” Edge of anxiety.

That’s his big sweat. I am one of his top earners. The gambling addiction, the costly divorces, these things he can absorb with epic calm, without even a little pit stain on his immaculately pressed madras shirt. Those times, the chaos, they actually serve him because when I get hard up and desperate I paint faster. But when I binge, forget it. He might not see a canvas for three months. That makes him nervous. I suspect he has payments on things even his wife doesn’t know about.

“Huh?” I say. All muffled and growly. “Who the fuck’s jis?” I slur it.

I can almost hear the sharp intake of breath.

“Jim? Jim?”

Poor bastard. I relent.

“Oh, Steve, it’s you. Christ. I thought it was the collection agency.”

His relief is a cool wind through the airwaves. “You’re not in trouble with the car payments?” he says hopefully. “Or the rent?” His good cheer is truly obnoxious. How can I love a guy I want to strangle most of the time? I do love him, I don’t know why. Maybe because he knew I was good before anyone else.

“I’ve got good news and better news,” he says.

I notice that his attempts at fraternal concern have been forgotten, thank God. When he just acts like the ruthless predatory sonofabitch he is I can respect him.

“You there?”

“Barely.”

“Effy Sidell bought your Fish Swallowing All Those Houses . What were we going to title it? The Continuing Housing Crisis ? Well it was perfect. The timing. He came in and saw it just as we were hanging it. You have to dream about timing like that. I saw the gleam in his eye, how he pretended to move on, how his eye kept flitting back to it. He was rattling on about this and that, covering his excitement, then very casual he says, What is Jim working on these days?

“Well, we didn’t want to pique his interest in anything else did we? So I said: A series of dung beetles I think. Whatever the shiny ones are. Jim says they are his best bug work yet. Definitely worth waiting for!

“Sounds like it, Eff said drily. Then he gestured at the Fish House thing and says very offhand, That’s interesting.

“Yes, we love that, I said. Several collectors have expressed interest already. But I told everyone we hadn’t even set a price yet.

“Why haven’t you called me? he shot back angrily. I mean he tried to sound suave, but you know Eff.

“Oh, well. I mean. Two regulars just dropped in this morning. It was leaning against the wall.

“Pim Pantela, he almost snarled. Well? Have you priced it?

“Yes, I said without thinking. Instinct, Jim, instinct. I tacked on two thousand plus the ten percent consideration I would take off because he was so decisive.

“Twenty-two thousand, I said.

“I’ll take it, he said. Have it sent up to the house today. Tomorrow is Margaret’s birthday.

“Can you believe that? He told me he loves you like a brother.”

“No shit.”

“He said that if you have anything that isn’t a goddamn bug to call him first.”

Pause while he catches his breath.

“Don’t go out and get hammered to celebrate?” he says with sudden seriousness.

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

“Well, there’s better news,” Steve said.

I was looking out the window. Heavy clouds were blowing in on the mountain ridges from the southwest. No wind here though. And the air had that darkening, heavy, pressure drop feel. If the wind didn’t pick up it would be a perfect afternoon for throwing some flies up on the Sulphur. We were in a gibbous moon if I was remembering right. They might be feeding at night, might not be too hungry, but if it spat a little rain so much the better. Hadn’t been fishing in maybe four days.

I have to admit that the prospect of thousands of dollars pouring into my Paonia State Bank account via instantaneous electronic transfer right now was appealing. I would not bet on horses or even a baseball game, and I certainly wouldn’t play online Texas hold ’em. I mean only a stupid compulsive idiot would do that.

“So?” I say into the phone. “And?”

“The aforementioned Pim Pantela wants to fly you down here for a week. He is commissioning a large portrait of his daughters. We talked about size and came to fifty by eighty.”

That woke me up.

“What do you mean you ‘came to’? I don’t recall you asking me.”

“Jim, your phone has been off for ten days.”

He had a point. I just found the charger in my truck last night. It was down in a clutter of Backwoods cigar pouches and old tippet spools. Tippet is the thinner gauge fishing line you tie on the end of your leader. I had lost the charger that plugs into a house outlet. I only had the one for the cigarette lighter, so I had to charge it driving to the coffee shop and back.

“A week? I’ve met his kids. They came in that one afternoon right? In matching polka dots?”

“Right!”

“I could paint them in two hours.”

“He wants you to cut loose, Be Jim. Really be yourself. You know, throw in some chickens if you want. Or a coal train.”

“For fuck’s sake. Be Jim ? A coal train?”

I was now officially steamed. Steve had already said yes.

“I’m just getting to work here, Steve. I’m doing good work. Tell him another time. Anyway I need to get off now.”

The silence now was stony. Slight clearing of the throat. “He has offered thirty-five grand. Since I made the commitment without asking you, I admit, I am willing to take a forty-sixty split.” His voice was cool the way it almost never is.

“I’ll think about it. Gotta go.” I hung up before I could blow my top.