Prettyboy

14: Old Sap

The New York City light breeze blew and I felt a sense of liberation sweep over me like a tidal wave.

"Things are beginning to look up, Frank. Things are really looking up for you now," Robert mumbled, standing there, still immersed in rereading a letter from Stable Gallery with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. I wanted to point out how he was beginning to resemble an elder right then.

"Uh-huh," I uttered as I focused on the evening sun that brought back memories of the inexplicable summer I had had.

"Blasé, my friend. You're doing it again." He recommenced the reading of the letter and looked as blown away by it as before, whispering to himself little hints of rejoicing. "I mean, you're going from Weston Gallery, to Pace, to Stable Gallery! You were on this week's Saturday Evening Post. This is going to be phenomenal. You can only go up from here, Frank, I'm telling you."

The sun was beginning to sink, sowing the seeds of a remarkable purple in the horizon. My tongue was getting ready to let my thoughts slip away; "I don't see how I can't go down. I will forever be free to cause trials and tribulations. It's my prerogative to go down."

"Well, you're a pessimist, so I shouldn't have expected anything more from you." Robert chuckled in a hearty way. "Even if things go downhill. It can only augur well, as it will bring even more attention to you and, consequently, all this. Your work is going to be displayed no matter what. Now, don't sigh like that."

"Why me?" I phrased in a way that hid indeed a double entendre. "Why not Andy Warhol?" That did not hide a double entendre. Why me, indeed, and not any other superficial artist. 

Robert eyed me and his eyebrows snapped together at my innocent comment that expressed a mere doubt I had had. He straightened up and with a defensive voice said, "Because Andy Warhol is emulating you, you ignorant melancholic. You would know that, had you picked up the phone in August. What were you doing, in the first place? Lana was commuting all the summer, she said you were to your folks. But I thought you told me your folks were off road tripping!"

"One of my most valuable, recreational assets is solitude."

He didn't commentate on that. Instead, he ignored me and produced a magazine from his case and handed it over to me, open at a page he'd marked by folding the top corner of it. "Take a look at this Marilyn Diptych—may she rest in peace—and tell me. Tell me: doesn't that bear semblance to something else you've seen?"

I took some time to look at it; then, once I was done, I lit a cigarette and continued to inspect it for as long as I deemed it would take to deplete Robert's frayed patience. I concluded, "Acrylic, isn't it?"

"Yes, Frank, yes—but that is not my point!"

I knew exactly what his point was, but I carried on trifling with him. "Nice use of silk-screening, too."

"Only that is exactly what you implemented on your last three works," he said as he couldn't hold himself back anymore. "And he got a solo exhibition on that and a few damn soup cans!"

"I don't claim to own the technique of screen printing. And also, I'm going to stop you there—I liked the soup cans."

"It's not art, Frank."

"Everything can be art. What, and my latest work was artistically aware?" He argued that, yes, they most definitely were, but I could hardly believe that—Robert was only vouching for me, without a warrant to do so. My latest work had been using the same method of silk-screening as well, but my art in its core had taken an utterly political twist. 

Never mind my art, though, he asked me, "What did you do with the invitations for your exhibition I gave you in June? Did you distribute them?"

"I sent two to my friend Ray and his wife, one to Lana but I doubt she'll turn up. And two to her son. I didn't know what to do with the other two you gave me."