by Rebecca Creger

 

            Lorenzo Smith took a long, tortured swig of black coffee. Then he immediately spat it out right on his masterpiece in progress, Fallen Angels on Ripped Canvas, because he had brought the coffee to a boil five times to emulate the bitter pill that was his career as a starving artist/writer/poet/musician/actor.

            He scrutinized the dripping canvas carefully. It was a pretty good effect; the dark stain that was making the painted faces bleed brought to life so perfectly their anguish and despair. He smiled, satisfied, not noticing the globs of white paint in his fair hair that resembled a rat’s nest. He thought he might actually be having a breakthrough. Maybe the way to convey his hidden genius and artistic vision was to actually make the canvas experience his torment!

            Lorenzo stood up, paintbrush in fist, took ten steps back in his large but cluttered flat, and flung the brush as hard as he could at the canvas, putting as much angst and frustration into the movement as he could muster, willing it to translate onto the canvas. The brush, dipped in white gouache, cart wheeled through the air and missed the canvas by inches, though not before leaving a generous splattering of paint over the angels heads. Then it hit his favorite Tiffany vase, which promptly toppled over and smashed into a million pieces. Lorenzo almost sobbed at the loss of his vase, but hoped that this sacrifice would result in a great work of art. He examined his canvas. The white splatters over the angel’s heads looked like bird crap, and not something that would go down too well at a gallery. Pathetic. His life was empty, meaningless, without inspiration. He stared dejectedly out the grimy window onto the bright blinding street at the passersby, resenting their blissful ignorance of the harsh emptiness of life.

            Lorenzo had grown up on the Upper East Side, the product of a socialite and prominent lawyer. Though his father hadn’t known it when he was born, his mother had named him after her old favorite Italian callboy, which was one of the reasons Lorenzo thought their marriage had deteriorated so quickly, leaving him as a child of divorce at age three. Growing up he had all but ignored the social obligations of his mother’s world and hid himself away in his private obsession with emulating absinthe-soaked bohemians. He’d always longed to get as far as he could from Park Avenue and had decided that for the sake of his career as an artist/writer/musician/actor that he should get a taste of the “real world,” to fuel his creative spark. He knew his genius could not be contained in some superficial arts degree and decided to skip college and start his own career, just like the greats. But so far he had produced absolutely nothing. His piano, violin, tuba, and expensive home recording studio gathered dust and cigarette butt marks. In frustrated rages his canvases and occasional sculptures were usually dropped out the window into the dumpster in the alleyway beside his apartment. His crappy poems, written on napkins, littered the floor, and his Remington typewriter was sticky with coffee stains. He hadn’t even been able to drag himself to any theater auditions, because he was almost disabled by his lack of inspiration.

            He was living mainly off his generous savings account, which would probably run out two weeks from now. His trust fund was cut off for three years, an attempt by his mother to force him to sustain himself as an artist/musician/writer/poet/actor. 

            Lorenzo blamed his lack of inspiration mainly upon the neighborhood children who invaded his creative space with their tricycle road rage on the sidewalk, their stampeding up and down the stairs of the apartment complex, and the constant wailing of infants keeping him from his beauty sleep. He hated anything under the age of ten. He was living in a part of Brooklyn which was supposed to be a hotbed of bohemian activity, but in more recent times had been invaded by families and their flocks of screaming kids. Faint from his scant diet of coffee, cigarettes, and truffle-stuffed Foie Gras he flung himself melodramatically into an armchair by the window, wracking his brains for inspiration. Maybe if he cut off his ear like Van Gogh he would become inspired....

            It was then that Lorenzo experienced a life-changing moment. His face squished up against the window in despair at his fruitless career, he heard a crash outside in the hall; then a muffled swear word and another crash. Irritated beyond belief at this interruption of his emotional breakdown, he slouched over to his front door, fully prepared to shout at the perpetrator, probably Nathan Jr. from 3C playing with his nun chucks.

             When he threw open the door it was like one of those monumental scenes, like he was Vronsky in Anna Karenina, seeing Anna for the first time through the train window. There was an angel on his landing, an angel with D-cups and an apparent lack of coordination, for she had dropped one of the cardboard boxes she had been carrying and there were pots, pans, kitchen utensils, papers, and toiletries spilled across the hall. She was on her knees, trying desperately to clean up the mess. She looked up at Lorenzo in the doorway and it was like being hit with a wall of blinding sunlight

            “Oh god, I’m so sorry for being so clumsy and making all this racket, I’m moving into 3B.”

            Lorenzo didn’t say anything. He wasn’t having his best moment, (whenever that was) with his mouth hanging open, white paint like bird crap in his hair, coffee stains down his Hugo Boss cashmere sweater, and a stare like some crack head anticipating his dealer. The angel smiled uncertainly, hitched up her white tube top and held out a hand. Lorenzo nearly choked.

            “I’m Lydia Lovett.”

            “L-L-Lorenzo Smith. I live here.” I live here, Lorenzo thought, shaking her soft hand a bit too hard and wanting to kick himself, what the fuck is wrong with you? “I mean,“ he stuttered, “it looks like you could use a hand with moving in.”

            He got on his hands and knees too and began helping her put things back in the cardboard boxes, which also gave him a nice view of her endowments. When they had cleared everything off the floor, Lorenzo had two heavy boxes in his arms, insisting that it was no trouble, that his weak skinny arms could easily carry the boxes up two flights of stairs. Lorenzo could swear there was magic in the air between them, as he welcomed her to the building and told her about his “work,” as they mounted the stairs. He was gasping and wheezing all the way up, always a few steps behind her, but listening to her beautiful voice with all his might.

            Lydia Lovett was in her mid-twenties but could have passed for barely legal, with waves of golden hair making a halo around her wide, innocent, almost virginal face and deep blue eyes. She was extremely fit and more muscular than she looked, for she carried three cardboard boxes with apparent ease, while he struggled with two, and was perhaps, the most exquisite pieces of ass he’d ever laid eyes on. She worked two jobs, kept up with her dancing, and used to be a gymnast and even better, a contortionist. 

            He was already addicted, and knew at that moment that he life would never be the same. He could feel a connection between them, something special, something called destiny. Lydia Lovett didn’t realize it yet, but she was his muse. Their creative and spiritual union was a match made in an artist’s/writer’s/poet’s/musician’s heaven… 

            “HIIIIIIIIIIIIYAAAAH!”

            Lorenzo had nearly reached the third floor landing, heaving his foot up onto the last step when something very small and fast sped past him, hitting him in the side on the way, Lorenzo stumbled sideways and collapsed against the wall, and it took all he had to not drop the boxes. Meanwhile, Lorenzo was hearing the most horrible sound in the world, a nauseating cooing coming from Lydia, as she gazed adoringly down at the creature who had interrupted their special moment.

             Lorenzo stared in horror at the monster, which leered sadistically up at him, smug in the security of his mother’s love, clinging to her leg like a ball and chain.

            “Mommy, mommy, I carried the box up so fast, and it’s almost as big as me!” The child got up and jumped up on the enormous cardboard box he had put down, and pulled up the white sleeve of his karate uniform to flex an alarmingly muscled arm for an eight year old.

            Lorenzo was introduced to Kyle, an extremely hyper kid about four feet tall who was on the verge of getting a black belt and was the center of Lydia’s universe. He had never hated anyone as strongly as this before, and refused to accept that this demon could belong to Lydia, the incarnation of perfection.

            He helped her move the rest of her things into her apartment, and he was sad to see how little possessions she owned. She and Kyle slept on futons, and ate on trays; their only furniture seemed to consist of a large dresser, a side table, and a small desk. Their apartment was so small that it hardly mattered, but it was still depressingly bare.

            Lydia thanked Lorenzo graciously, mentioning how interesting his work seemed. Not one who had experienced much outside interest in his work, and Lorenzo eagerly offered to show her his apartment. They left Kyle upstairs to practice his martial arts, and Lorenzo could hardly contain his joy at her unusual fascination with his various pieces of art music, poetry and writing in progress, and nearly wet himself when she admired his old Victorian wardrobe, commenting on the cleverness of the hand-made screws, (she apparently had a lot of mechanical and technical skills and a friend who owned an antique shop, so she under stood the value of these things)

            “The landlady told me about you and your work. This place is like a novel!” she gushed, and Lorenzo flushed crimson all over. But all too soon she had to leave to go to bed because she had to get up early for work at a local flower shop.

            Lorenzo couldn’t sleep. He fretted about his first impression on her, god what a wreck he’d been. She must have though he was crazy, and probably would stay away, being a concerned mother about the effects of secondhand smoke on an impressionable child. Lorenzo threw his lit cigarette into the dark, disgusted with himself. He had to clean himself up. He also had to put out the fire small fire on his sheets that had been started by his flaming cigarette, so he doused the flames with a pot of Folger’s and declared to himself that from that moment on he was a changed man.

           

            He had no excuse to go and see her without seeming like a stalker and became dangerously depressed, not eating or sleeping. Instead he threw himself into his work, ferociously inspired, and devoted hours to immortalizing her in art and writing thousands of words and lyrics about her. She worked very late hours, so he rarely saw her coming home in the evening, and it was like she was a ghost. He blamed the kid; if it weren’t for him standing between them they would have been soul mates already.

            Thankfully a week later, the damsel in distress knocked on his door. Lorenzo was so overjoyed that he almost cried when she asked him to baby sit Kyle while she made flower deliveries. Lorenzo agreed enthusiastically, carefully keeping the door closed enough so that she couldn’t see that life size portrait he’d made of her leaning against the wall.

            When Kyle came over that night, Lorenzo showed him around just as he had his mother, having hidden all evidence of his obsession with his mother. Kyle examined every inch of the apartment very closely and scrutinized his collected valuables carefully before proclaiming he was bored.

            “I wanted to watch TV.” He said, staring Lorenzo down, daring him to refuse. Lorenzo had no TV, for he believed himself to be above such superficial media, and the two proceeded to engage in a glaring match, which Kyle won of course.

            “Ha I beat you!” Kyle yelled and punched Lorenzo triumphantly in the ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs.  Kyle then contented himself with testing his karate strength, seeing which antique objects he could lift in the apartment. In the end he was able to carry easily about 90% of his antique bohemian relics including all the armchairs and Lorenzo, but not including the wardrobe, and the bed. Then he spent to rest of the time forcing Lorenzo to help him practice his martial arts by blocking vicious karate punches with his bare hands. By the end of the visit poor out of shape Lorenzo was close to tears and quite sure Kyle had dislocated several of his ribs.   

            At eleven o’clock Lydia came by to pick up Kyle, and thanked Lorenzo warmly and presented him with a bunch of flowers left over from the day, not knowing that this simple gesture would inspire a incredibly bad poem beginning with the sentence

            Contorting angel, you yearn soooooooo much for me,

            Only

            Me,

            Just me,

            As your

            Thoughts twist into obscene

            Positions,

            Yet all you can do is give me flowers.

            The visit had gone surprisingly well apparently, for only two days later Lydia came to his door asking him to baby sit again since Kyle had so enjoyed hanging out at his apartment. Lorenzo hated the little shit but agreed nonetheless and two more visits went by in the same fashion until it was a month after Lydia had moved in and Lorenzo was disgruntled that things weren’t moving faster with Lydia.

            By the fourth time he babysat Kyle, Kyle was getting bored of his apartment and demanded that Lorenzo take him to down town to get a hotdog. Lorenzo agreed, but he wasn’t really paying attention that day, because he scheming on how he’d ask Lydia to pose for a painting nude.

            They walked for three, miles past hundreds of hot dog stands until Kyle found one he thought was suitable. Kyle knawed absently on his hot dog, ignoring Lorenzo’s walking tour of Brooklyn’s wealth of artists’ havens. It was getting to be lunch hour and Lorenzo couldn’t stop thinking about Lydia, not even complaining when Kyle bounced his balled up hot dog wrapper off the back of his head. Then the fateful moment.

            “It’s the ice cream truck!” Kyle squealed, and he was of, scampering through the lunchtime crowds on the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Lorenzo ran as fast as he could, he really did, after that freakishly fast kid, whose pursuit of the elusive ice cream seemed to be taking them on a chase after a truck that was trying to avoid them.

            ‘Kyle, wait!” Lorenzo gasped, pushing through the crowds and trying to keep his eyes on Kyle’s red jacket. A minute later, it was gone.

            Lorenzo kept pushing through the crowds, scanning them desperately for the boy, and taking great wheezing breaths through his nicotine-racked lungs. That little shit.

            “Kyle!”

            He ran as he’d never before, calling his name constantly, but no little voice answered him. He turned random corner after random corner, searching asking anyone if they’d see a little boy or for that matter an ice cream truck. No one had. Tears steamed from his eyes as he fumbled through his pockets for some change to use a phone booth, (he didn’t believe in cell phones) but the seven dollars and seventy-five cents that had been there this morning had been pick pocketed by someone mean enough to steal from a “starving” artist. He asked around until someone would tell him where the nearest police station was, and trekked towards it for an hour to report the missing child. When he finally got there he had to wait in line for hours until he made it up the line. When the police looked up Kyle Lovett, but nothing came up on record. Confused and dreading her reaction, Lorenzo asked them to call Lydia. Her name didn’t show up on record either, and by that time the police officers were looking at him funny. Thinking the whole world had gone crazy Lorenzo had a slight fit of hysteria and had to be escorted out by two officers.

            “You see, this is why you don’t drugs,” said one of the officers sternly, nudging Lorenzo out onto the sidewalk.

            “Take it easy man,” said the other officer sympathetically “happy hour just started.” He patted Lorenzo on the head and they left, roaring with laughter.  

            Lorenzo made his tired way home, getting lost twice and feeling like he was trapped in a nightmare. Lydia wouldn’t never forgive him or speak to him against if something happened to her little angel. He suppressed the urge to vomit and trudged up his street, past the toothless old guy sitting on the sidewalk trying to sell chalk drawings. The guy leered up at him, as he chalked in the boobs of his drawing of a blonde bombshell on the sidewalk.

            “Great knockers right?” he said, chuckling, thinking Lorenzo was admiring the drawing, “She was moving out of that apartment today so I just drew her as she walked in and out. Lots of bending over, mmmm.”

            Lorenzo realized it was Lydia, and as the words “”moving out” registered, he starting running up the stairs, even more disorientated and confused.

            He sprinted all the way up the to the third floor and pounded on her door for five minutes, but no one answered. He had been abstaining from smoking around Kyle, to impress Lydia, so his head was spinning and he couldn’t really think straight from lack of oral fixation. He needed a cigarette. He slouched dejectedly down to his apartment.

            If he thought before that he had fallen into some insane parallel universe since Kyle had run off, he fully believed it by now because he thought he had walked into the wrong apartment. It was completely empty, except for pieces of his attempts at artistic greatness littering the floor. The wardrobe was gone, as was his bed and the rest of his furniture. His musical instruments had disappeared, and there were screw holes in the floor where his home recording studio had been. All his books were gone, most notably his collection of first editions. They had even taken most of the appliances in the kitchen, all the potted plants, and even the toilet paper.

            The window was open, and Lorenzo peered up the wall and the pipe running up it to that third floor apartment with the open window, the apartment he had fantasized about entering, without the interference of that demon child.

            Lorenzo still needed a cigarette. He hunted around the place until he found a half finished one in a drift of ashes in the fireplace and lit it. There was a slip of paper lying on the mantle piece, and he read the hastily scribbled note, as wave upon wave of shock hit him. The note said simply:

            “Kyle is ok.”

            Lorenzo sat down on a birdbath sculpture he had attempted to make, whose basin was supported by Lydia’s clay figure. He would have called his mother, or the police, or the bank, but someone had unscrewed his vintage phone from the wall with obvious mechanical skill.

The Cherry Cheesecake flavored cigarette soothed his senses slightly but his hands were shaking and the shock was only beginning to register. He’d have to walk for miles and cross the bridge to get to Manhattan and his formidable mother.

            He took a long angst-filled drag on the cigarette, glancing out the window at the old guy sitting on the sidewalk. He watched him for a moment. When the cigarette burnt out he didn’t throw it away; holding it firmly between his lips, he strode out of his empty flat, down the front stairs, and past the homeless artist sitting on the sidewalk. It would be a long walk to Manhattan. He steered a little clear of the old guy, so he wouldn’t have to look at the guy’s near-perfect chalk rendition of his former muse.

            “You ‘goin after her?” The old guy cackled, now accessorizing chalk Lydia with stilettos.

            Lorenzo shrugged. He stopped, looked down the street toward Manhattan, and turned his head the other way, looking towards the heart of Brooklyn. He knew this was a crossroads in his life and artistic career. He knew which path would take him into the smothering maternal arms of The Man, and which path would help him heal and find his inner genius. He spat out the cigarette stub and crushed it beneath one of his calfskin loafers.

                    

 

Three weeks later.

 

            “Paint spill in Aisle Five,” Lorenzo monotoned into the speaker. He watched from a distance as three employees sprinted out of the employees lounge towards Aisle Five, mops in hands. It gave him a rather godlike feeling, to have such control over the employees, but then, he had spilled the paint himself. He just needed the nice closet in the empty lounge for some alone time with the Green Fairy. He trotted cheerfully down the sweeping aisles of the enormous Wall Mart, heading toward the welcoming arms of his muse.

            The job certainly didn’t pay enough for him to continue living the spacious flat he and his sunken illusions had previously inhabited, but he had a cozy little plot in Central Park, which was part of a campsite full of other bohemians like himself. It was great not giving into the Man. He reached the dark closet, closed the door behind him, took the pretty bottle out from his employees apron, and within minutes, was soon blissfully inspired