Gallery Stag
By Jeremy Garrett

Hennie's an island of quiet in the Market Street crowd. Alone on a city bench and slumped over his notebook he sketches a man from the street, a figure of a guy leaned against a gallery front who checks his watch every few minutes. Slowly, the man materializes onto the page from the dull tip of Hennie's pencil. Shading in a wet patch under the man's armpit, the lead snaps. Hennie can't sketch in the heat, his eyes burn with sweat, so he's up from the bench in a swift clap of pages and off to find Angela's gallery.

A hot Kentucky evening hasn't kept the people away. Art devotees crowd the sidewalk along the storefronts and spill into the street, and the roadblocks at the stoplight thwart cars from plunging into the drunken shuffle. The once-a-month gathering attracts all sorts: Elderly ladies browse through month-old Derby kitsch and force husbands to carry treasures of coarse plaster horses and framed prints of last year's dearly departed Derby winner, all the while teenagers weave through the crowd, not here for the art, but for the free liquor doled out in the back of galleries by shoulder shrugging workers too busy to ask a kid's age. Angela's right, the people are fake. "Glassy eyed mannequins without an ounce of life," she explained last night, while Hennie handled paper-wrapped canvases into the backseat of her car. "They don't know a thing about art either, stumbling around drunk with their paper cups of wine."

Hands in his pockets and notebook in his armpit, Hennie checks over his shoulder every so often as he strolls past the gallery fronts, set on catching a glimpse of the boy following him, the one from last month's show when the weather was cool and the bugs not so many, the kid Hennie invited home to his apartment. It's like some crime drama; he must've been spotted on the bench and followed since he tossed his pencil in the curbside trash. At the turn of his head, however, the boy ducks behind a streetlamp.

Hennie finds Angela's gallery in the basement of one of the shabbier buildings. Angela doesn't notice him; she's the artist, a goose in the boiling cauldron, and the people circle. She gets better with every brushstroke, Hennie thinks, judging a kiwifruit still life fixed to the wall. In the painting, a steak knife rests on the table beside the fruit, and the kiwi reflects in the gleaming blade. A slash in the fruit's fuzzed brown skin drips red. Kiwis don't bleed, but Angela makes it true. Hennie cools down in the basement air, there's a draft, and Angela floats towards him like the breeze. "Kiwi Tragedy," she says, and her voice turns Hennie around. "Tonight's favorite." 

"Smells down here," says Hennie, and it does. The brick walls bleed damp. Look up and the basement's missing a proper ceiling, and tangled pipes drip sweat into the gallery.

"Bad mood?" asks Angela.

"Just hot," he says, and pulls at his collar to let in the air.

"You're overdressed," she says. He shouldn't have worn long sleeves, but he's rolled them up to his elbow in an uncomfortable bulk. His pants are wrinkled with sweat from crossing his legs, and melted hair gel greases his forehead. Tonight, only the artists have dressed the part. Angela's lucky without sleeves, in the short black dress she bought for her cousin's Bat Mitzvah, which she modeled for Hennie in the morning light of her bedroom. Hennie could have come sleeveless and in shorts, but it's a tradition, dressing up. He would have worn the same khaki pants and dress shirt if his paintings were hanging in the gallery. 

He moves from the kiwi to the other paintings. Angela's secret is she doesn't sleep. She paints into the night, swims seas for just the right color, and her art glows with egg whites. Three in the morning and Hennie wakes to the garbage disposal grinding eggshells. He's found Angela in the kitchen, leaned over the countertop, fishing egg from a bowl and catching the yolk between her fingers before she slings the yellow, soppy eyes into the kitchen sink. Sometimes, he hovers in his roommate's doorway at night, watching her work. Lately, she's colored a canvas with fleshy paints. She works from memory and doesn't need a model. Angela spots a chin with stubble and captures the slight sag of skin under his left eye. She knows Hennie's face by heart. 

A mirror: Hennie finds his face on the gallery wall. Angela's exhibited him in the show, has deviled Hennie's hair with pointed curls and given him a face without a smile.  His lips, barely opened, hint a flash of teeth. Hennie knew she painted it, kept it secret, faced the canvas to the wall and draped it with a blanket, but never imagined she'd place it tonight.

“A handsome face," smiles some woman. She looks from Hennie to the painting, the painting to Hennie. Wine splashes over the rim of her cup. Guilty of the puddle on the floor, she inches to the stairs.

"I shouldn't have painted it," says Angela.

"It's fine," says Hennie.

Angela has painted more than Hennie ever will. His sketches, stuck in a notebook, will never fill a gallery. He can't even draw without a pencil snapping. Mornings, Hennie pours coffee for Angela as she stretches out on the couch in her pajamas, explaining her insomniac inspiration while Hennie stands silent, supportive.

"There's a party," says Angela. "Once the galleries close. It's down the street in the house past the stoplight. There'll be graffiti and photography, stuff the galleries won't have. I've got a painting displayed which didn't quite fit here. They said go for a theme tonight, similar paintings, similar subject."

"I'll think about it," Hennie says, wondering what he has in common with a kiwi.

Footsteps on the basement stairs; the boy from the street has found him. The kid slinks snakelike into the gallery, his tight shirt and jeans pressed onto his flesh like a second skin. The boy makes his way around, stops at each painting, and puts a hand to his chin. He stands at Hennie's portrait.  

"Promise you aren't mad?" says Angela.

"Promise," Hennie grins.

Standing at the portrait, the boy knows the painted face for Hennie's. He's the man who invited him home. Last month, Hennie told the boy he was an artist and showed off his sketches. They had a few cups of wine. The galleries closed, the streets emptied, and they stumbled to the bus stop. Hennie placed his hand on the boy's hip.

The kid throws a smile at Hennie, but he pretends not to notice.

“Seen the other galleries?" Angela says.

"You're the first. I couldn't bear to save the best for last."

“Everyone's hovering at the Kendrick show, I heard."

Angela's turnout is nothing compared with the Kendrick gallery, where a half hour wait barely gets you to the door and the crowd is thick and noxious. Angela's gallery has more class, here in the cool basement where the pipes drip sweat onto your head; the crowd is small and people have room to wander.

"All the man paints is pussy," says Hennie. "Nothing memorable in that."

"Brush up on your vocab before you become a feminist," Angela smiles. She spots Hennie's notebook. "People watching again?"

He offers the sketchpad and she thumbs the pages. The boy's in the notebook, a casual sketch from weeks ago, when he lounged on Hennie's bed. Angela doesn't notice, she never saw the boy, shut in her room and mixing colors. She hands the notebook back to Hennie and kisses his cheek. "Nice work," she says, and lets him loose from the gallery. "See you later?" Angela says, on Hennie's way up the basement stairs.

"Yeah," he says, the air warmer with every step. 

Up from the basement, out of the shabby building and into the street, he's at home again in the throng of slow-moving bodies, people hurried nowhere and pulsing toward the galleries and the old women decked in plastic rhinestones who arrange circles of cheese on plastic plates and pour drinks from endless bottles of wine. He'll stake out the galleries and see what's going on, find the worst paintings and know he can do better, if he had the initiative and his sketches could ever squirm out of his notebook and onto a canvas.

It happens in a flash of plaid; a man bolts past Hennie, bumps him with a sweaty arm, and knocks his notebook into the street. "Watch it!" Hennie would yell, but his sketches are scattered on the pavement and the guy is too far gone, disappeared in the gallery crowd. Kneeling on the ground, cursing, he collects the loose pages into his notebook. No one stops to help, and he crams away a footprint-stained sketch of his cocker spaniel before anyone can see. He should have cursed the man instead of the pavement, grabbed him by his plaid-covered shoulder and given him… given him a piece of his mind. The man bumped Hennie and threw a glance over his shoulder to show a face handsome and unapologetic. Their arms had touched and their sweat mingled, both of them stopped for the entirety of a second as Hennie's sketches fluttered to the ground like dead leaves.

He finds solace in an empty upstairs gallery. Hennie, on a bench in the middle of the room, handles his sketches like artifacts, folding delicate creases in the center of each page and easing them into his notebook pocket. He had to get away from the street and the people.  The upstairs gallery is empty and hot. Heat rises and despite an open window, the gallery cages the air. The gallery is a desert, and the paintings on the wall set the scene. Intricate murals of sand, cacti, rocks, and lizards stretch across the walls, the same paintings which have persisted through two month's worth of shows. No wonder the gallery is empty.

Hennie pulls out his pencil. He wouldn't have tossed his only one. The lead is dull from jostling inside his pocket, but it sketches fine. It's the man in the street his pencil remembers, and his hand works fast before the memory fades. He recalls the man's smirk, and the plaid. But he erases the smirk, once the face is drawn. The feature doesn't fit. Hennie leaves the sketch for a moment to flip through the pages of his notebook and find the face of the boy. The drawing is unfinished; the boy didn't stay long enough for Hennie to sketch past the navel. 

Drowsy, hot, and sweating on the bench, Hennie's tired. Pencil gripped in his palm, he's elsewhere, rising from his notebook, out past the gallery and the desert paintings fixed to the walls, higher than the hot air goes, up to the clouds where the weather's cool and the precipitation wets his cheek. He's alone up here. Angela's down below, in her underworld basement gallery where Hennie's old fuck, his almost-fuck, stares at his portrait. But he's beyond all that. Up high, he sees past the tops of buildings, to the river and the bridge and the land beyond the waterfront breeze. He's gone, asleep, his notebook open at the sketch of the boy.

***

“Who's that beautiful boy you've drawn?"

The voice wakes Hennie. The boy's caught him dozing on the bench. The kid's on the bench with him, far enough away to be a stranger, but his face matches the one in the notebook. Hennie snaps to and throws his arm over the page.

"Hey," says Hennie.

"Hey back."

"Haven't seen you for awhile."

"Not since last month."

"You look good," says Hennie, and he remembers what he likes about the boy, his thin arms and the hint of muscle below his sleeve. On his bed, fumbling, he gripped the kid's arm tight as an apple. 

"Looked everywhere for you today."

"Yeah?"

"Saw the picture of you in that girl's gallery. It's good. Looked just like you."

"She's a good artist."

"You have a good face."

"Thanks," Hennie smiles.

"And you draw well," says the boy. "The sketch of me, can I see it?"

Hennie takes his arm off the page and looks at the sketch. The boy poses on the outline of a mattress, leaned against the headboard. His hands, if Hennie had drawn them, would've been folded in his lap.

"It's not done," says Hennie, and he closes the notebook.

“You didn't finish?"

"You scuttled away like a crab."

"You tried to fuck me."

"So? Never been fucked before?"

"It's not that," says the boy. "We'd been drinking."

"You were eager."

"I was drunk."           

They're both sweating. The evening sun throws tired light onto the gallery walls. In the paintings, towering formations of rock seem different in the evening light, more like the real life spectacle. Sun sets on the desert and there'd be little surprise if a tumbleweed rolled across the room.

"I just wanted to talk," says the boy.

"Let's get a drink then."

"Can't. Not old enough."

"How old?"

The boy hesitates. "Seventeen."

Seventeen, almost ten years ago for Hennie, when he sent his sketches to schools cross-country and spent spring nights in bars where he traded cigarettes for drinks, when he woke up without a hint of hangover in the morning and checked the mailbox outside his parent's home only to find thin slips of rejection folded into plain envelopes. A time when he forgot his art and let the unpainted canvases in the corner of his room collect dust while he kept his sketches to himself, those furious drawings of his past, of squares and rectangles and cityscapes crumbling, long before he found his art again, influenced by some show or another, and began to draw people, starting where he left off, intrigued by men and women and friends and boys, but never inspired like Angela, whose canvases fill with colors while his sit empty and white. "I'll find us some wine," he says.

***

"Cheers," says the boy, once Hennie hands him a paper cup. He smacks his lips like the girl in the grape juice commercial. The kid's quick. Hennie's barely taken a sip and the boy's drained half his wine.

"Slow down," says Hennie.

They're outside the Kendrick gallery. Pink clouds fade from the sky and the streets begin to empty. Lights switch off in the second floor gallery windows as the crowd scatters. Down the street, in a sea of restaurant tables, a jazz quintet works up a storm. For hours, the gallery noise kept them hushed. Now, a saxophone pierces the air and the double bass makes ripples of the heat.

The boy points to the gallery front. "We should go in before they close," he says.

"But it's the Kendrick show."

"You saw him last month." The boy crushes an empty cup under his foot. "Remember the crowd? It's practically empty now."

"OK," says Hennie, "but I won't like it."

Hennie's quick to grab the boy's arm and pull him into the Kendrick gallery; he dislikes this art, and stepping across the threshold is like pulling off a band-aid. The cold air jabs like a blade and Hennie holds the boy close. "Should've brought a jacket," he says, and together they circle the gallery. 

"That one," says the boy.

"Pussy," says Hennie, "just like all the others."

“The difference is in the legs. They're crossed. He's never painted a cross-legged one before."

Hennie rests his chin on the boy's shoulder. "Snazzy," he says.

“You're making fun."

"That's what you do in a funhouse," Hennie says, shouldering the boy along if he stops at a painting. It doesn't take them five minutes to circle the gallery. They're the last people to leave. Behind them, an anxious gallery worker locks the door.

"Why do you like him so much?" Hennie asks.

"Kendrick?" says the boy. "I don't know. You say 'nothing but pussy,' but you're wrong, it's more than that, despite what people say. Maybe it's because he sticks with it. It might be a phase of his, painting women like that, but he's working towards something. I don't know what."

But Hennie's not paying attention, the wine's working on him, splashing around his empty stomach as he leads the boy to a bench. Under the light of a streetlamp he thumbs a line down the boy's inner arm. He'd kiss the boy, bring him into his arms, but a last remnant of the gallery crowd works its way past.

"See that man," says Hennie, grabbing the boy's hand. "The one in plaid?"

"The cute one?"

"He bumped me in the street. Spilt my sketches everywhere."

The man in plaid walks hand in hand with a girl. They laugh, and he reaches down to whisper into her ear. Earlier, he may have been running to her. Under the streetlight with the boy, Hennie's far from angry. Anyone might have bumped him. 

"I saved them though." Hennie opens the notebook and flips to the sketch of the boy. "See, clean and shiny."

The boy reaches for the notebook, but Hennie pulls it away. Carefully, he separates the page from the notebook spiral. After folding a crease in the middle of the sketch, he dangles it over the boy's head. The boy reaches for it, his fingers touch the page, but Hennie yanks it from the air. The drawing disappears back into his sketchbook. "Come out with me tonight and it's yours," he says.

The boy smiles. "After I eat," he says. "My friends are down at the restaurant."

Hennie points to the house down the way, sitting lonely on the street corner. "See that house?" says Hennie. "I'll be there. Come find me when you're done."

Before the kid pulls himself out of the bench, Hennie kisses the back of his hand. The boy has a nice walk. Hennie's hypnotized by the sway of the boy's hips as he moves toward the jazz music. The sax blares and electric notes sound from a keyboard as the low, threatening hum of bass swallows the boy.

***

Hennie could twirl around a streetlamp, but there are none in the block past the galleries, where the street devolves into gravel, patchy grass, and the ghostly remains of what used to be houses. The only house for miles, the shack past the stoplight is lit and thumping. Hennie thought he lost the gallery crowd, but here are people boozing on the porch steps, listening to music, and tilting beers down their throats. The faces in the house are unfamiliar, most of the people are split into small groups, and the paintings on the walls go unnoticed. Angela's nowhere in sight. 

Hennie taps a girl on the back. "Do you know an Angela?" he asks, and she shrugs her shoulders. "She's one of the artists," he shouts, over the music. 

"Honey," she laughs, "we're all artists."

She's probably on her way, or finishing up some task at the gallery. In the house, everybody seems to know each other, but Hennie's left out. There's an open bottle of wine in the kitchen, an ivory tower in a cemetery of beer cans, and he pushes the bottle to the back of the countertop. Hopefully no one will notice, and there will be enough left for the boy. A suspiciously stained couch, out of place in the middle of the linoleum, sits empty, but Hennie opts for a seat at the kitchen table. Though an occasional person comes through and picks at the wasteland of empty potato chip bags, Hennie's alone. He clears a space on the table for his notebook and flips to his favorite sketch. He unfolds the picture of the boy and smoothes out the crease. The pencil in his pocket is still sharp enough to finish the task. Hennie sketches out the missing features: the hands folded over the boy's groin, then the soft and barely noticeable hair on his thighs. The legs are crossed, like the Kendrick painting, though Hennie had the idea first.

"You never let go of that thing, do you?" says Angela. She stands in the entry of the kitchen, purse slung over her shoulder. She makes her way to the table and leans over Hennie.

"Hope you don't mind," says Hennie, pointing to the sketch. "I invited a guest."

"He's cute."

"I might just fuck him."

“Good news," Angela grins, "my portrait of you sold."

"Think of it," says Hennie, "me hanging over a mantle."

"Look what I've got," says Angela, and she pulls a sandwich bag from her purse. There's a joint inside the bag, rolled tight and perfect by her artist hands. "Let's go outside," she says. "We'll celebrate."

Leaned against the side of the house, they smoke in the dark. Hennie keeps a lookout to the sidewalk and the street, waiting for the boy.

Angela takes a drag. "You're jumpy tonight."

"Anxious," says Hennie.

"I'm glad to be out of that basement," says Angela. "I sold three paintings tonight. Next show I have, they're moving me upstairs."

"That's great." Angela's just full of good news tonight.

He looks to the street again. A truck idles past the house, but still no boy.

"Come see my painting," says Angela, "your last stop on the gallery hop."

Hennie hands her the joint and she stubs it out on the side of the house. The ash leaves a dot of soot on the brick. Back in the house, Angela guides him through the crowded rooms. She stops at the paintings she likes, and points out the artist. "This guy's a crack head," she says, standing at a graffiti arabesque. The paint spells out a word, or a phrase, sprayed out in bright metallic colors, but Hennie can't concentrate enough to read it in the party noise; there's an awful buzzing in his head. The boy will be here soon.

“Here it is," says Angela. "Or, here you are."

It's Hennie again, stuck on a canvas. She's painted a second portrait. Last time, the resemblance was absolute, the painting a mirror. This canvas has a different cut, and stretches longer than the last. Hennie's caught in the lengthy rectangle, but his face takes up only half the canvas. Angela's given him antlers. They sprout from his hair like trees and split off into jagged points. The left antler is spotted with blood, as if he'd gouged another deer. He's a stag and the face matches, cold and still, the flesh coarse with stubble, showing a creature territorial and aggressive.

Ain't it beautiful," says a girl, sneaking up beside them.

Good, yes. Beautiful, no. What's she done to him, turning him into an animal? When Hennie sketches, boys are just boys. She couldn't have left it at that. He's an artist, not a subject. She could've painting him sketching, not some piece-of-shit fantasy with antlers breaking through his skull. His head pounds faster.

The girl won't leave them alone. "This your boyfriend?" she asks.

"Roommate," says Angela. "My boyfriend is a paintbrush."

Forget about fucking, Hennie wants to draw. Last month, he posed the kid against his headboard. "Stay still," said Hennie, as he sketched with a drunken hand, drawing the boy's arms as they reached past the stomach and the shallow canyon of his navel. There, he stopped. "Unfold your hands," said Hennie, and the boy took his hands off his body.  Hennie kneeled on the bed, kissed the boy, and propped up the kid's leg. The boy pulled away. His bare feet touched the hardwood and he struggled into his pants. Hennie's muse ran away.

But tonight's different. He'll pose the boy and trace his gentle features, leave him with his groin covered. After, they'll hold each other in the tousled blankets. He'll need nothing else.

Hennie leans to Angela's ear. "I'll be back," he says, and leaves her to discuss the painting with the girl. Angela motions to the antlers with a sweeping gesture, the girl smiling, and Hennie parts through the crowd.

Outside, the air is cool. Without the sun the humidity's lifted. A breeze from the river sweeps into the city, weaving air through buildings and onto the gallery street. It's like night in the desert, when all the creatures crawl out from the rocks and sand for a bit of fresh air. Hennie, on the sidewalk, stares down the street. The boy, where is the boy? The restaurant's long closed, the jazz band packed up, and the gallery fronts empty. Nothing moves in the dark street. A stoplight changes from yellow to red to green, but no cars pass. Finally, someone walks down the sidewalk, out from the dark. Hennie grips his sketchbook to his chest. His head stops pounding. The person walking toward him might not be the boy, but he won't know until the stoplight reveals their face. A shadow bounces along the street. The stoplight stains the concrete with light and the figure illuminates red, then green. A wonderful color, thinks Hennie, to paint a portrait.

Jeremy Garrett is a fresh graduate of the University of Louisville. Before jumping into graduate school, he hopes to work on a mess of new stories and catch up on his reading.  Currently, he works a funny job handling extended warranties at a call center. He has been published in The Susquehanna Review.

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com