Art

Art was sleeping. The light from the street light outside is sneaking into the dark room between the roman shade and the unpainted window frame. No shadows are cast but if you are in such a room and awake long enough your eyes will adjust to the dark and the starkness of the room becomes evident. A worn out single bed sits beneath and slightly to the right of the window in which the light from outside penetrates. The room has only this one window. Against the bare wall to the right of the bed is an old wooden dresser with a mirrorless mirror frame. A bolo tie with a headless three legged horse and gold chain hangs from a screw head that holds the mirror frame without a mirror in position. Against the wall to the left of the bed under the window is a small Coleman ice chest piled with several days of worn clothes but not enough worth a trip to the Laundromat on the corner. Just one foot from the foot of the bed but far enough to the left so it swings fully open is the door to the hall on the fourth floor. The toilet and shower are down the hall to the left on the right. In the bed is Art. Sound asleep, snoring and sweating.

“For Art’s sake, please keep your voice down. He’d spent ten hours picking bricks today and he has to be at the Labor Ready office by 5:30 in the morning,” the voice in Art’s head said with a slight French accent. The accent was clearly fake and the woman attached to the voice is merely a dream. Art dreams so vividly and so prolifically, even when awake he’s not sure he is.
Sirens wail outside. Wendy and Brian are talking on the stoop. Brian is going to the quick shop for a pack of smokes. It’s after midnight and this part of the city never really is quiet.

“Art, you should put the vegetables on the grill. They’re going to take at least ten minutes to roast,” she said without an accent. “I have some teriyaki sauce for the chicken, so don’t use any spices. Do you want another beer?” The woman is blonde with an attractive body. The blue denim shorts cover half the shapely thighs of her long legs. She’s not wearing shoes. The light blue bikini top has pink and yellow flowers. Her long hair hangs in a pony tail to a few inches above the top of her shorts. She is standing by the grill with a long handled tongs but her face is not revealed. As she turns the chicken legs she asks Art if he wants another beer. “Did I ask you that already?”

Outside on the stoop Wendy is sitting waiting for Brian to return from the Quick Shop. A car with an exhaust that sounds like a leaf blower drives by with indistinguishable music thumping. A dog down the street starts barking. Several more cars drive by.
The sun is warm and the beer is cold. The silly terns chase the waves and are chased by the waves but what are they doing? Are they looking for something to eat or are they playing in the surf like the kids under the watchful eye of mom as it peeks above the romance paperback novel. The sun is hot and beer is cold and the clouds are like white clouds in the blue sky. Lazily lounging in the low slung rainbow striped canvas beach chair with the fingers of his left hand fingering the warm sand in the hot sun, Art watches the kids and terns and clouds and reaches for his cold beer which is just far enough away the he has to lean several inches toward his right so that his right shoulder almost touches the teak frame of the beach chair. “Art, please keep an eye on the children while I go to the bath house. I’ll get you another beer from the cooler when I get back,” said the tall slender blonde woman who was sitting on a camouflage poncho liner reading of an improbable romance several feet in front of Art nearly at the highest point the surf reaches. The kids are playing in the surf a little north of where Art and the woman are sitting and know not to go into the water above their knees. The terns play with the surf a little to the south. The woman rises to go to the bath house a few meters behind where they sit and her full beauty is reveled in her almost too small black string bikini.

Outside, Wendy is still waiting for Brian. A car dives past and its horn toots. Wendy waves. The dog is still barking down the street. Another siren can be heard in the distance. It is unseasonably hot for June. Several doors down three teenage boys come outside from another apartment building. One has a basketball and starts dribbling. The sound of the ball on the hard sidewalk echoes through the mostly empty street lined on both sides by three- and four-story townhouses. Most have been converted into apartments, but there are still a few that are single family dwellings. The Quick shop is two blocks east and one block south. The street on which the Quick shop is located is a state highway. The sounds of cars stopping, pulling out and driving through the intersection of the two streets can be heard even two blocks away.

“Can I have a sip of your beer,” a woman’s voice innocently asks, “if you have any left?” Art pulls her tight against him on the thick, itchy wool blanket spread on the desolate beach a few feet from the edge of the surf. It’s late on a moonless night, but bright from the clearness of the star studded night sky. Up and down the beach at a distance camp fires flicker, and just above the sound of the gently lapping surf a guitar can be heard. Art puts his arms around the woman and with his left hand artfully unties the knot holding the top string of her bikini around her neck. The top drops to reveal her full round white breasts that shine in the star light. Art gently cups her left breast with his right hand and they begin to passionately kiss. The woman slides her left hand between her belly and Art, who is twisted slightly on top, and down his trunks. She grasps his firming penis and gently pulls it from being wedged between the inside of his right thigh and the top of her right leg. Teasingly she plays with the head of Art’s penis as it swells in length, girth and rigidity. Following a long wet tongue kiss, the woman begins to slowly slide her body down the length of Art’s and maneuvers herself between his legs. As she continues to slowly work her way lower her breasts rub against Art’s bare stomach. She moans softly as her erect nipples are tickled by the pack of dense hair surrounding Art’s navel. Art gets onto his knees to straddle the woman as she sticks her tongue into Art’s navel while trying to slide his swim trunks down. The trunks won’t budge because Art’s legs are spread to wide so he can straddle the woman and his turgid penis is stuck in the elastic waistband.

Art rolls over onto his stomach and wakes, for just a moment, because his erection makes sleeping in that position uncomfortable. He rolls onto his right side and pulls the pillow over his head to block the little light shining through the window between the curtain and the window frame. The light enters the room in such an angle that it illuminates a portion of the bed. Art’s arm is clearly visible about two inches above and two inches below his elbow. The banner and talons part of the tattoo of an eagle holding a banner emblazoned with Sempre Fi is just visible in the light but the words are not legible nor is the red color of the banner.

Outside Wendy is starting to wonder where Brian is but not really. It’s not unusual for Brian to say he is just going to be gone for a few minutes and doesn’t return for hours, or even days sometimes. Brian hasn’t worked in months and Wendy is the only one bringing in any income. But Brian helps spend it. Wendy can’t sleep because she worked until 2:30 this morning. She normally doesn’t work until closing but the other waitress called off so Wendy agreed to work late. Although she knows that Brian will spend whatever extra money she makes. 

“Arty farty, Arty farty. Big fat Art, smells like a fart,” the kids circling above are all shouting and laughing. Art can’t seem to get up. Like an overturned turtle, the weight of the backpack coupled with Art’s sheer size, Art is immobilized; physically and with fear. He hates being teased but that’s inevitable given that he weighs 160 pounds at nine years of age. Art lays there in his old frayed sweatpants, cheap imitation basketball shoes, and food stained green and blue striped tee-shirt. He cries, motionless, and says nothing. He is thinking “One day. One day I’ll show them. One day I’ll be a great scientist, or a general, or the governor. Then I’ll get them.” After about five minutes the bratty kids tire of watching the fat kid cry and move on. As they walk down the pavement, some are still singing, “Arty farty, Arty farty.”