Javier Melancholy and the Artist

The second installment of the Javier Melancholy series of short stories.

Javier Melancholy & The Artist

By Drake Tillman

         Well, I couldn't open my goddamned publishing house, turns out
funerals are expensive. I gave Harold the funeral he deserved (close
enough anyway, I did what I could) and squashed the idea for the
publishing house I didn't deserve, not yet anyway.

         Ah, the Artist. How did I meet the Artist? Well, I was in the
grocery store and I walked up to the counter with my bag of coffee
and some vegetables and the clerk said "Hi, how're you?" with
an ironic disdain to it, to which I replied, "Good, how are you?"
and she didn't respond and I don't fucking understand why people
ask you if they don't want you to ask the same thing back. If she's
saying it because she has to, she might as well keep it to her
fucking self, I'd rather her say nothing than say something and not
mean the shit. "Goddammit! This isn't a fucking interrogation,
don't ask me something and expect me not to ask you, we're on
equal levels in this society you snobby bitch!" is what I wanted to
say but before I could the person in line behind me said, "I'm
well, thank you for asking." -The Artist.

         His name is Nathan, Right? ...Yes, that's right, I think. I
don't know his last name, it's not really important anyway. Last
names are like the easy out for people that don't want much trouble
naming their kids. If you have an uncommon enough last name you can
name your kid John and people will know he's not the same as the
other kid named John with the other weird last name but then you see
people named John Smith and you wonder if they know how much their
parents didn't care enough to name them something interesting.

My condolences John Smith.

         So I went back to the Artist's apartment that night and as you
could imagine it also served as his studio, paint everywhere, trash
everywhere, dirty coffee mugs, ash trays full of cigarette butts, but
that's what you can get away with when you're an artist, (no, not
just smoking cigarettes like an arrogant fool). That was the least of
his problems. I knew he was shooting up. He couldn't make it much
more obvious, coming out of his room wearing a long sleeve shirt with
a wet spot in the elbow crease too fresh to tell it was blood and
pupils dilated bigger than the entire iris of his eye, but you
should've seen his paintings.

         They were majestic. Tasteful, beautiful, real, they were truly
art, not the shit that passes for art these days.

         We'd been friends ever since we met in the grocery store that
night. His exhibition is in two days and I can't wait to see how
well it does, I know it'll be a hit and god knows I've told
everyone in the whole motherfucking city about it, handing out
flyers, calling galleries pretending to be some fucking hoity-toity
art critic and that they "need to see this show".

         I swear to god I see the same fucking cop sitting in his car and
drinking coffee every day in front of the Artist's studio. That son
of a bitch has nothing better to do but that and I'm just
unfathomably happy that my fucking tax dollars are paying him to
drink that fucking coffee and eat those fucking donuts. Stereotypical
fucker.

         At the Artist's showing I saw this girl he tried to set me up
with a month or so earlier, she was a nice girl, beautiful, not too
overly confident about her intelligence, but if she ever had a
conversation with someone, they both knew it was there. And she was
in a band, which I find extremely magnetic. I say "magnetic"
because when you say "attractive" people don't think of the
actual meaning of that word which is synonymic with magnetic, they
automatically go to "he wants to fuck her because she's in a
band" inside their heads, that's not what I mean by it, but it
does make me want to get closer to her, more on a personal level than
physical, but you know what I mean, it's just nature telling me
that I should pursue her to mate, so really I guess I do just want to
fuck her because she's in a band. Despite or considering all those
things, according to the Artist I was "an asshole for not taking
her out on a date." But he assured me I was still a good friend. So
I suppose I still have our friendship to hold onto.

         I just don't have the time or drive to deal with a girlfriend
right now or worse, more than a girlfriend, should it turn into that.
People think I'm crazy for thinking ahead that much. Fuck those
people. Friends set friends up to see them get into serious
relationships, I don't want that, stop pushing it you assholes,
what is this a never-ending trip to the nail salon with my
grandmother? Jesus Christ all-fucking-mighty! "Oh just take it
slow." "Just see how it goes." "Get to know her, you don't
even know her very well yet, maybe you'll like each other and hit
it off."

Exactly. Maybe we will like each other and I'll still not be in
the place to move forward with the relationship so what's the
goddamned point in taking the first fucking step when you know you
don't want to take the last one? That's like taking the stairs
when the room you're going to is on the 1^st floor,
il-fucking-logical. If I was really an asshole I'd go out with her,
love her, have sex with her, move in with her, get her pregnant,
marry her, buy a house with her, sleep with her sister or best
friend, get a divorce and live the rest of my life in a far different
misery than what I'm looking for. I'll take being called an
asshole than that fucking shit. If you really stop and think about
it, I'm a goddamned saint.

         The Artist had a phenomenal show. He sold all of his paintings
but one and I can't say I'm not completely jealous of him that I
can't sell a single goddamned story and he just annihilated the
expectations of every art dealer in New York. He's a genius, I
couldn't compete with that anyway.

         The girl I told you about played a show with her band as sort of
an after party for the Artist and his successful exhibition. I was
jealous of the guy she talked to at the bar all night. What the hell
is wrong with me?

         The next day I went over to the Artist's apartment. He saw me
coming from the window and I know because he buzzed me in right when
I got to the front door while I was still talking on the phone. We
sat and had a conversation when someone knocked at his door. He
opened it and the cops busted in with a dog and everything yelling
and screaming for us to get down. They sorted everything out and
found out that I was who called them and that the Artist had his
heroin stashed under his mattress. The Artist needed rehab and he
certainly had the money for it now and the cop that sat across the
street eating donuts and drinking coffee finally did something with
my goddamned tax dollars.

         

         I had a large package waiting for me about a week after the
Artist was arrested and I carried it upstairs while I listened to my
voicemail. The package was the unsold painting from the exhibition
sent from the Artist.

         That girl that's in the band left me a message about what I did
"to" the Artist, her last sentence was all I really heard and
exactly what the small card on the package read; "You're a good
friend but you're still an asshole."
I'm still an asshole.

2014 Drake Tillman