Commissioned [completed]

Chapter 1 - A Message from the Clergy

[Message from the clergy]

Dear ______

I am writing regarding a one-on-one portrait our clergy would like to commission. I am attaching a calendar. Would these dates suit you?

In his name,

Sister Imperator

Ahoy!

Sister Imperator, thank you for your interest in my work. I have attached a pricing sheet. If pricing is okay with you, then we talk about dates.

-_______

[Message from the clergy]

Dear ______

We have seen your work, and we want you regardless of cost. Do any of these dates suffice?

In his name,

Sister Imperator

Thank you for getting back to me so promptly, Sister.

I recently had my schedule cleared, actually. Any of those dates should suffice. Depending on size, I will need two to four separate sessions with the model, rounding up to about 10 hours for a small piece going upwards of 18 hours in person for bigger. It's all in my pricing guide.

If it is interstate, I will need lodging. It is my personal preference that I do not stay with you in your home, of course. And finally, I would like half up front and half once the painting is completed.

If these conditions meet your expectations, I have attached my contract.

-_______

[Message from the clergy]

Dear _____

We look forward to meeting you at the Mountview Cathedral next week.

In his name,

Sister Imperator

***

Fuck. It was a drive. It was a whole long ass drive with hours to contemplate just how many red flags you ignored in taking the job. It's not like you had a choice; you need the pay. You didn't want to admit it, but you also needed to get out of state.

'Sister Imperator' had been weirdly pushy and lightning quick to respond—you had to hard ignore the alarm bells ringing. It was difficult, almost as if your right ear had developed tinnitus as some physical manifestation of alarm. There was a low tuning-fork hum reading over each email.

You thought you might scare the sister off with your prices; most people saw your work online and how effortless it seems in your time-lapse videos and happily told you to go to hell after seeing your prices. Making those videos look effortless took a lot of time, practice, student loans and editing. Then there were the travel expenses. People just don't do sit-in portraiture anymore. And for a good reason, you would have to be a little insane to pick it up.

Most people had you paint from photos, which was fine and a staple for your income. But meeting a person and painting them, knowing a facade of them, and there are many facades to a person—just hit differently. And the job came with such an eccentric clientele; you'd painted a man who wanted to pose in a suit made of squirrels, a woman and her five Pekingese all in matching attire. Once, your commission was gifted to an old person to be painted amongst the forest they had saved. They had wanted to be seen as a fairy. It was beautiful. That all seemed so far away now.

You glanced at a sticker pasted in the window of the gas station. It was going to be one of those kinds of towns. It read, 'they will rise again.' Crucifix and all. You adjusted the enamel pronouns pin on your lapel. Both the sticker and your pin said 'they'; maybe these people would be open-minded kind of rise again.