NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Artie Bliemisch, dressed in black sweats, sits alone at a table outside the Cavendish Pie Shop. Her striped train conductor’s cap is pushed back on her head and bunches her thick curly hair, flaring out around the bottom like an herb flowering from its pot. She looks up from her newspaper as I cast a brief shadow while passing in front of her to go in. A Danish and two muffins remain untouched on a plate by a tall paper coffee cup. She speaks through her blue paper mask.
“Fred; carry out, or staying?”
“Staying, we can ‘social distance’ out here, okay?”
She gets up, pulls another chair over to her table, and throws some folded newspaper on the seat, shiny-wet from the last shower.
Mrs. Rutherford is behind the counter trying to explain the contactless payment system to a tall customer. So tall he is bent nearly double concentrating on his phone screen shining up from the countertop where Mrs. Rutherford can see it. She looks like a Schnauzer. The dog’s face is printed on fabric protecting her from Covid 19.
“Maria, can you explain this?”
Maria del Sarto, with a red mask covering her from chin to cheek, steps over to help with the confusion.
“Can you just do it for me?”
“Sure.”
“She picks up the phone in pale blue-tint latex grasp.”
“Ah, you have to give me your password.”
“I don’t have one.”
“What?”
“Well, I don’t know. My wife uses that thing.”
“I can’t do this without it.”
Mrs. Rutherford opens the cash drawer.
“Sir, I’ll make an exception for you. You got cash?”
“Absolutely! Here.”
“He puts four dollars on the counter and some change.”
Maria picks up the money and puts it in the open drawer.
“Thank you, sir.”
He puts another dollar in the tip jar.
Mrs. Rutherford waves to him as he turns from the counter to go out.
“Maria, you better wipe the counter and put on fresh gloves.”
“The box is empty.”
“Okay, just a minute.”
Mrs. Rutherford prepares a small pot of tea.
“That’s Darjeeling, right?”
“Yes, when did you start serving tea in pots?”
“My distributer got us going last month. Check the screen.”
The advertising video screen, high on the wall, shows a demonstration with two scoops of loose tea, spooned into a warmed pale blue porcelain pot. I opt for the stone wear mug advertised as FREE, with premium teas, for regular customers.
“We still have bags if you want.”
“No, no, tea is better loose and from a pot.”
“I turned the sound off on that thing. If I have to hear that loop one more time, I’ll smash the damn screen! Excuse me, Fred.”
She steps back behind the door to the bakery for a moment and returns with a box of gloves.
“Besides it is too distracting for my customers.”
She taps the tea water, just off the boil, from a large stainless-steel thermostatic tank.
“I’ll probably hear all about it when the Rep. comes in.”
“Most grateful!”
“No milk or sugar, just the way you like it, Fred.”
She hands me a small oval wooden tray with my new mug and teapot.
“You better sit beside me, so I don’t breathe on you when I unmask to eat.”
“Thanks, Artie.”
“You’re going to have to take your mask off too, I guess. I mean we can’t eat or drink through these things.”
“No, that innovation is yet to come.”
“We are all breathing in lots of microfibers with these things, you know.”
“That’s why I avoid cloth masks made with synthetics.”
She takes her’s off and looks for a label.
“Nothing to say what this is.”
“Does it feel sweaty?”
“No, it absorbs pretty well.”
“Maybe it is cotton, then.”
She repositions her mask.
“Did you know they are finding microplastics in the Arctic, and deserts?”
“Yup, everywhere the wind blows.”
“Synthetic polymers, it’s our new atmosphere.”
Artie sips her coffee.
“Got my BMI down where it is supposed to be.”
She picks up the Danish.
“Now I am going to boost it back up with these!”
Artie pulls down her mask to enjoy the full pleasure of an apricot Danish.
“Where have you been for the last year or so?”
“I got away to Maine before the plague.”
“Where, in Maine?”
“A broken-down old Victorian on the coast, South of Portland.”
“Did you Winter up there?”
“Ended up that way. Invited for a month and spent a year!”
“What about your studio?”
“Sad story, got kicked out of my place back here.”
She gestures behind her back, where her studio used to be in rooms above the bakery.
“Put everything in storage.”
“Come to think of it, I was wondering about you when Jake Trip bought the building.”
“Yeah, Jake wants to develop it.”
“So, what is back there now?”
“Nothing, as far I can see.”
“How long have you been back?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“And?”
“Well, Steve put me on to a friend of theirs’s with a big outbuilding in their back yard. Looks like I can rent that.”
“Can you live there?”
She finishes the Danish.
“No, I am couch surfing until my next show. Hope I can sell enough drawings to get by.”
“How did it go up North? Well, first of all, why did you leave?”
“Oh, God!”
Artie peels the paper off the side of her blueberry muffin. Two sparrows advance in short hops along the freshly painted black railing separating us from the parking lot.
“I took off because working with dust was giving me bronchitis and I didn’t think the idea was getting anywhere.”
“Oh right! I remember. You were into a Jungian thing and associations with dust, time, and memory.”
“Doesn’t sound bad the way you put it!”
“Yes, I found it interesting.”
“Thanks, Fred. Anyway, it’s all about drawing now, thick wax-charcoal sticks, on paper.”
She breaks off and spills some crumbly muffin, and the sparrows fly around behind our chairs, ready to feed.
“What size?”
“About three by six feet, and bigger.”
“Where did you find paper that size?”
First muffin gone, she starts the second muffin, a lemon and cranberry swelling above its paper confines, and spilling over the top, with paper now baked in.
“You can get it, at a price but I bought Pacon’s rolls, thirty-six inches by a hundred feet. Then taped the thirty sixes to get seventy-two-inch widths.”
“That simplifies your material requirements!”
Lark Bunlush, walks over under her wide-brimmed straw hat. She wears a kerchief bandit style, across her face. A gust pulls at her hat, lifting the right side. Hailstones bounce across the pavement as she steps under the awning. The sparrows fly off sounding their excited notes.
“Well look who’s here!”
“Is this a hold-up?”
“No, I didn’t bring my ‘shooten’ irons.”
Lark leans against the window facing us sideways, showing off her cowboy boots. Maria opens the door.
“You guys can come in if you sit six feet apart.”
Lark turns to look at her.
“Maria, I thought you worked at the gift shop.”
“I did, until Ostrich closed, then Mrs. Rutherford needed help. So here I am.”
Maria lets go of the door and rushes back behind the counter as Mrs. Rutherford calls. Lark lets the door close, leaning on the handle.
“That girl is gaining weight.”
“So would I, working in here!”
“Are you coming in, Artie?”
“Are you staying for coffee, Lark?”
“Ahh, maybe but, Artie are you back for good, or what?”
“Yeah, I have to get moved into a new studio.”
“Painting? Like, what kind of art?”
“It’s all charcoal crayon. I mean, like getting more out of less!”
“You mean drawing?”
“Right. Have you been out West or just shopping?”
“Yeah, we went out to New Mexico to visit Max’s cousin and Max helped build a storefront on their house.”
A cold gust blows hail on us through the morning sunlight. Lark opens the door and holds it for us. We pick up our things and follow, spacing our-selves across two dragon tables in the empty shop. Lark doesn’t order anything or sit down but steers the conversation holding on to the right and left finials of a chair back.
“Okay Artie, I am not through yet. What are you drawing?”
“Lines, mainly.”
The gusts and hail blow over and a sunbeam casts shadows across the room.
“What do you mean?
“I mean lines. Long and short, fat and thin, straight and crooked, and so on.”
“So, you’re not drawing anything, like, no subject?”
“I have an abstract subject. There are no lines in nature.”
Lark takes her hat off and hangs it from her neck by the ties.
“Wait a minute, what about that shadow there?”
She points to the shadow cast by a chair leg.
“Think about perception. I mean, look hard. What do you really see?
“Colors and shadows and lines.”
“Fred, you’re looking at edges. The edge between the shadow and sunlight on the ground.”
“You mean edges aren’t lines?”
“No edges can be rendered with lines.”
“So, what if I do a line drawing of you?”
“Well Lark, you are basically drawing my name.”
“No, you are there, not your name.”
Artie scrunches up the paper once containing her cranberry-lemon muffin.
“Look again, do you see me?”
“Sure do!”
“Okay Lark and what you call, ‘Artie’, is a pattern of light isn’t it?”
“Sure, but can I draw a line around it and across it, and so on.”
“No, you draw more of what you know than what you see.”
“Oh.”
“Well, I am working with lines. Not what they can represent but what they are.”
“You mean you are just making black lines on six by six pieces of paper?”
“Right, that’s part of it.”
“What is the rest?”
“Paper and perception.”
“Lark has put her hat back on and walks slowly towards the door.
“I’ve got a march to organize.”
“Where?”
She pauses with the door handle in hand.
“In Old Town.”
“You mean you’re going to get yourself arrested?”
“Artie, that’s one of the hazards of social action.”
“Yeah, but suppose it turns into a riot?”
“That’s a matter of perception too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fred, riots justify police action and demonstrations don’t.”
“Yes, both are happening though.”
“Right but depending on their ideology people refer to one or the other.”
The tall man is standing by his blue Honda Element. He loads a couple of signs through the back hatch and waves to Lark.
“There’s my ride.”
Lark, waves back and goes out.
