Paint it Black A short Story
She noticed him the day he walked in, reluctantly looking around the coffee shop as if expecting someone, and then stepping back outside to scan the tables on the pavement. He chose a small table with a single chair in the far corner, under the spreading leaves of the Delicious Monster. The table was normally used to stack menus and ashtrays, but she let him be. He lit a cigarette.
When she handed him an ashtray, he looked only at her hands, mumbled a curt thank you and ordered wine. He had a notepad and pen and silently sat scribbling, occasionally staring unseeingly at the endless stream of faces on the pavement. Two sparrows competed for crumbs at his feet, but he hardly noticed them.
“More wine?” she asked, allowing her eyes to glance over his neat handwriting. The short lines and distinctive spacing of words suggested poetry. On the white paper serviette he had drawn what appeared to be the sketchy outline of a street scene. “Yes, thanks” he said. Their eyes briefly met.
He must be about sixty, she guessed. “Poetry?” she said, pointing at his notebook. He nervously turned the pad over. “Yes, sort of.” He did not strike her as keen to start a conversation. “Sorry”, she said, “I didn’t wish to pry” and headed back inside.
When she looked again he was gone.
*****
He aggressively mixed the paint in his palette and applied it to the canvas with bold strokes, working furiously. Dark clouds of amber, swirling over the rough outlines of pale trees and an empty foreground. His coffee mug was cold when he took a sip.
In the background Schubert’s Death and the Maiden flowed from the speakers in the corner of his studio.
Lauren used to avoid him when he painted. She would drive away, never explaining where she was going. And he would not ask. He had lost his last job in a retrenchment. After numerous failed applications for work, he started understanding that age had caught up with him. All his qualifications and experience meant nothing when he divulged his age. Wrong age and wrong colour, Lauren used to say and he seemed to detect a note of blame in her words.
She was a successful PR consultant, fifteen years younger than he. She spent more and more time at the office, often only getting home late at night after he had eaten and withdrawn to his studio. He noticed that she had also stopped inviting him along to her functions.
It was so different with Carmen many years before. She would sit in his studio and watch him paint, a glass of wine in her hand, gently commenting as he went along. She got him to play Schubert and Mozart while painting and at exhibitions he often jokingly referred to her as his mentor in art.
But everything changed when he met Lauren.
*****
Two days later he was back. Same chair in the corner. He had removed the menus and neatly placed them on an adjacent table. A leather folder was open in front of him. He just held his pen, staring at his half empty glass. Later his eyes searched around until he caught site of her in the door. He lowered his glance when she smiled at him.
“Do you prefer this table?” She asked, “We really use it as a working surface”. “Should I move?” he asked without answering her. “No” she replied, “Please use it. Are you a writer?” He looked at her hands again. “Yes, so to speak. I also paint.”
“I know”, she said, “Street scenes. I noticed the sketch you did on the serviette the other day”. “And portraits,” he added.
She played with her apron strings while talking. His eyes followed her fingers as she twirled the strings. “Will you show me some of your poetry?” she asked and quickly added “If it’s not too personal.”
He opened the pad in his folder and turned it for her to read.
Cold winter winds
fill vacant city lots,
deserted parks,
abandoned playgrounds,
leafless trees
on empty streets.
The rain has left my dry eyes wet
yet dry.
“It’s beautiful, but sad,” she said, turning it back to him.
*****
A fresh white canvas with the charcoal outlines of a young woman’s face was on his easel. On the floor, amongst used oil rags and broken pieces of pastels, lay the torn canvas of the dark landscape; still unfinished. He completed the face outline quickly, adding large almond shaped eyes, a small mouth with a hint of a smile, suggestions of dark, curly hair, the soft rounding of a breast. He wiped the charcoal off his hands.
He met Lauren at an exhibition that she had arranged for a bank in Cape Town. She was young, attractive and witty. He was alone in his hotel for the duration of the event. Together they got drunk on champagne and spent a night of unbridled passion in his room. In the weeks that followed they saw more and more of each other. Their sex became an all encompassing drug. Finally he confessed to Carmen and asked her for a divorce. Nothing could have prepared him for her response: She said nothing. She just looked at him with her big brown eyes, turned around and walked away. No resistance. No judgement. It was all over in a matter of weeks and he never saw Carmen again.
Years later he discovered that she had given birth to a girl six months after the divorce.
He married Lauren, but they soon discovered that they had little in common after the novelty of their sexual adventures had worn off. After his retrenchment she became visibly irritated with him when he wanted to share his poetry or progress with a painting with her. When she was not kept late at work, she often locked herself into her home office and spent her time working late into the night.
He was not surprised when she told him during breakfast on a Monday morning, almost as a matter of fact, that she was involved in a relationship and wanted a divorce.
*****
He came more frequently, always going to the same table in the far corner. She found herself looking out for him every day and felt disappointed when he had not arrived by late afternoon. She did not even know his name, but he strangely fascinated her. She often thought of his rough, yet sensitive hands holding the pen and his lips slightly moving, as if he were whispering to himself as he wrote.
She wondered if he would allow her to watch him paint, but the courage to ask him always evaded her. She did not even have the courage to ask his name, as if she feared the loss of the growing bond if she knew too much.
“Why did you take a picture of me?” she asked suddenly one autumn afternoon. He looked up, startled. She didn’t seem angry; at best slightly bemused, he thought. “A waiter says you took a picture of me with your cell phone last week,” she continued, avoiding his eyes as if she wanted to save him embarrassment.
He did not deny it. “I was only messing around with the phone and you caught my eye as you were crossing the street,” he said.
She pulled a chair closer and sat down. “We are very quiet today,” she said as if to change the subject. “Can I sit with you for a while?” He ordered her a glass of wine without asking what she will have. “Will you show me the picture?” She gently placed her warm hand on his arm. She looked at herself; a close-up of her face and upper body, her hair gently flowing in the wind and a smile on her face.
“Why don’t you delete it?”
Without response he took the phone and closed it again.
He never came back again. Day after day she waited, looking at the empty table in the corner. The chair was still there, seemingly out of place. She had told the waiters to leave it there.
As she stood in the door her eyes caught a torn page from a newspaper on the floor. She picked it up, silently cursing the cleaner who had dropped it there after washing the display windows. As she was about to rumple it, she saw his face on the tattered paper; younger, yet unmistakably him.
“Retired artist, Brendon Schultz, was found dead in is studio with a bullet wound to his head last night. No crime is suspected.”
“What shall we do with the table and chair in the corner, Ma’m?” the head waiter asked her a week later. “Paint it black,” she said, “just paint it black and leave it there. It’s my father’s”
When she handed him an ashtray, he looked only at her hands, mumbled a curt thank you and ordered wine. He had a notepad and pen and silently sat scribbling, occasionally staring unseeingly at the endless stream of faces on the pavement. Two sparrows competed for crumbs at his feet, but he hardly noticed them.
“More wine?” she asked, allowing her eyes to glance over his neat handwriting. The short lines and distinctive spacing of words suggested poetry. On the white paper serviette he had drawn what appeared to be the sketchy outline of a street scene. “Yes, thanks” he said. Their eyes briefly met.
He must be about sixty, she guessed. “Poetry?” she said, pointing at his notebook. He nervously turned the pad over. “Yes, sort of.” He did not strike her as keen to start a conversation. “Sorry”, she said, “I didn’t wish to pry” and headed back inside.
When she looked again he was gone.
*****
He aggressively mixed the paint in his palette and applied it to the canvas with bold strokes, working furiously. Dark clouds of amber, swirling over the rough outlines of pale trees and an empty foreground. His coffee mug was cold when he took a sip.
In the background Schubert’s Death and the Maiden flowed from the speakers in the corner of his studio.
Lauren used to avoid him when he painted. She would drive away, never explaining where she was going. And he would not ask. He had lost his last job in a retrenchment. After numerous failed applications for work, he started understanding that age had caught up with him. All his qualifications and experience meant nothing when he divulged his age. Wrong age and wrong colour, Lauren used to say and he seemed to detect a note of blame in her words.
She was a successful PR consultant, fifteen years younger than he. She spent more and more time at the office, often only getting home late at night after he had eaten and withdrawn to his studio. He noticed that she had also stopped inviting him along to her functions.
It was so different with Carmen many years before. She would sit in his studio and watch him paint, a glass of wine in her hand, gently commenting as he went along. She got him to play Schubert and Mozart while painting and at exhibitions he often jokingly referred to her as his mentor in art.
But everything changed when he met Lauren.
*****
Two days later he was back. Same chair in the corner. He had removed the menus and neatly placed them on an adjacent table. A leather folder was open in front of him. He just held his pen, staring at his half empty glass. Later his eyes searched around until he caught site of her in the door. He lowered his glance when she smiled at him.
“Do you prefer this table?” She asked, “We really use it as a working surface”. “Should I move?” he asked without answering her. “No” she replied, “Please use it. Are you a writer?” He looked at her hands again. “Yes, so to speak. I also paint.”
“I know”, she said, “Street scenes. I noticed the sketch you did on the serviette the other day”. “And portraits,” he added.
She played with her apron strings while talking. His eyes followed her fingers as she twirled the strings. “Will you show me some of your poetry?” she asked and quickly added “If it’s not too personal.”
He opened the pad in his folder and turned it for her to read.
Cold winter winds
fill vacant city lots,
deserted parks,
abandoned playgrounds,
leafless trees
on empty streets.
The rain has left my dry eyes wet
yet dry.
“It’s beautiful, but sad,” she said, turning it back to him.
*****
A fresh white canvas with the charcoal outlines of a young woman’s face was on his easel. On the floor, amongst used oil rags and broken pieces of pastels, lay the torn canvas of the dark landscape; still unfinished. He completed the face outline quickly, adding large almond shaped eyes, a small mouth with a hint of a smile, suggestions of dark, curly hair, the soft rounding of a breast. He wiped the charcoal off his hands.
He met Lauren at an exhibition that she had arranged for a bank in Cape Town. She was young, attractive and witty. He was alone in his hotel for the duration of the event. Together they got drunk on champagne and spent a night of unbridled passion in his room. In the weeks that followed they saw more and more of each other. Their sex became an all encompassing drug. Finally he confessed to Carmen and asked her for a divorce. Nothing could have prepared him for her response: She said nothing. She just looked at him with her big brown eyes, turned around and walked away. No resistance. No judgement. It was all over in a matter of weeks and he never saw Carmen again.
Years later he discovered that she had given birth to a girl six months after the divorce.
He married Lauren, but they soon discovered that they had little in common after the novelty of their sexual adventures had worn off. After his retrenchment she became visibly irritated with him when he wanted to share his poetry or progress with a painting with her. When she was not kept late at work, she often locked herself into her home office and spent her time working late into the night.
He was not surprised when she told him during breakfast on a Monday morning, almost as a matter of fact, that she was involved in a relationship and wanted a divorce.
*****
He came more frequently, always going to the same table in the far corner. She found herself looking out for him every day and felt disappointed when he had not arrived by late afternoon. She did not even know his name, but he strangely fascinated her. She often thought of his rough, yet sensitive hands holding the pen and his lips slightly moving, as if he were whispering to himself as he wrote.
She wondered if he would allow her to watch him paint, but the courage to ask him always evaded her. She did not even have the courage to ask his name, as if she feared the loss of the growing bond if she knew too much.
“Why did you take a picture of me?” she asked suddenly one autumn afternoon. He looked up, startled. She didn’t seem angry; at best slightly bemused, he thought. “A waiter says you took a picture of me with your cell phone last week,” she continued, avoiding his eyes as if she wanted to save him embarrassment.
He did not deny it. “I was only messing around with the phone and you caught my eye as you were crossing the street,” he said.
She pulled a chair closer and sat down. “We are very quiet today,” she said as if to change the subject. “Can I sit with you for a while?” He ordered her a glass of wine without asking what she will have. “Will you show me the picture?” She gently placed her warm hand on his arm. She looked at herself; a close-up of her face and upper body, her hair gently flowing in the wind and a smile on her face.
“Why don’t you delete it?”
Without response he took the phone and closed it again.
He never came back again. Day after day she waited, looking at the empty table in the corner. The chair was still there, seemingly out of place. She had told the waiters to leave it there.
As she stood in the door her eyes caught a torn page from a newspaper on the floor. She picked it up, silently cursing the cleaner who had dropped it there after washing the display windows. As she was about to rumple it, she saw his face on the tattered paper; younger, yet unmistakably him.
“Retired artist, Brendon Schultz, was found dead in is studio with a bullet wound to his head last night. No crime is suspected.”
“What shall we do with the table and chair in the corner, Ma’m?” the head waiter asked her a week later. “Paint it black,” she said, “just paint it black and leave it there. It’s my father’s”