I saw his eyes slowly trickle up to mine, and for the first time in weeks, I felt like I actually had his attention.
“This isn’t your first gallery,” he said.
“No, but it is my first professional one. The one in Seattle I tried to do in a park with all my things. You know, sort of a deviant, self-made type of deal.”
I smiled lightly, trying to lighten the mood, but his eyes soon fell back to my hands.
My hands and their nervous picking.
“Anyway, um, when I was wandering through L.A., I spotted him on his corner. He was selling sketches for money, and I decided to buy one.”
“He was what?” he asked.
“Selling sketches for money,” I said. “I didn’t realize until later that they were his sketches, and they were good, Bryan. They were really good.”
“What sketch did you buy?” he asked. “I mean, what was it of?”
“The one I bought was a little sketch of a dog, one he apparently saw around there a lot. It had no collar, and it was pretty shaggy, but he sold all sorts of sketches. Sunsets and purses. People he saw on a regular basis and lampposts. He drew what was in front of him, what he knew to be his own truth in that very moment.”
I saw Bryan nod his head, but he stayed silent while my hands continued to pick.
“John was always artistic,” he offered up. “Always. I learned I was a decent sketcher and shader from him. It was one of the ways we bonded.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“Yeah, but my parents didn’t support him. They supported me because I spun it into a
rchitecture but not John,” he said, snickering. “Never John.”
I wanted to reach out to him and take his hand. I wanted to comfort him as the pain rose in his eyes. I wanted to let him know that it was okay to talk and say anything he wanted to during this time, but I was petrified that if I made one wrong move, he’d be gone forever.
He might’ve been angry as hell at me, but at least he was still sitting in front of me.
“I set up a little shop in the small, six-hundred-square-foot space. The owner wasn’t even charging me rent. Just said to keep it up and not get into any trouble. He couldn’t ever do anything with the space, and he figured if I could attract people to his little plaza, that was an investment in and of itself.”
“Six hundred square feet?” he asked.
“It wasn’t much, especially since I was living in it at the time. It was enough to display two or three paintings and have art therapy classes that held about five people at a time,” I said.
“You were living in it, too?”
“Yeah. I did what I had to,” I said, shrugging.
For a split second, I saw a flash of something I’d never seen behind his eyes before. But it was gone so quickly, I had no chance of identifying it before his eyes fell back to my hands again.
“I kept passing by him for several days on my way to various artistic gatherings, and I guess I started to feel bad. It was obvious he was on drugs, selling his sketches to eat and fuel his habit, but something inside me just wanted to help like I tried to do in Seattle and like I think I did in Denver.”
“How many places did you live?” he asked.
“Many, but that’s not important,” I said quickly. “The point is, I decided to do what I could for him. I invited him over to the art studio and gave him a place to safely sketch. I let him use my utensils to really do up his pictures, so he could sell them for more. I figured if he charged more than ten dollars a sketch, maybe he’d feel compelled to, I don’t know ...”
“Do better for himself?” he asked.
“Yeah. I guess that was it. I don’t really know what possessed me to reach out to him, but I did. Usually, I only reached out to those who actively came to my art therapy classes. People coming into the class were taking the first step, so I already knew they were wanting help. That sort of thing.”
“Makes sense.”
The silence hung heavily between us as tears threatened to rise up into my eyes.