The Atrocity Artist

4.

The sky is unable to decide between rain or sun. It hovers in an entirely unsatisfactory gray state and makes the day hot and thick. Haze obscures but doesn't hide the far shore. It too can't commit and never reaches the fully-fledged fog that rolled across the lawn the night before.

After the phone call, Skad did not sleep again. Fatigue rubs the center of his brain, bristling between the two lobes, an itch that caffeine and nicotine can't quite reach. He eats lunch on the small patio by the water. His egg salad sandwich is on white bread and thick with mayo, and it turns into a sloppy paste in his mouth he finds hard to get down. After he swallows, he takes a drag from the cigarette he left fuming in the ashtray.

The little black cat from the day before slinks through the shrubs and spies on him with big, yellow eyes. His first thought is the vermin needs another stone to learn it. But the emptiness and silence of the lake stir a strange whim.

He tears a dime-size piece of crust from the sandwich and holds it out. "Minou. Minou," he calls.

It's what his mother had called cats, all cats. She was raised French but you'd never guess, except when a vestige of her childhood escaped at unlikely times. As it escapes from Skad now.

The cat moves cautiously, ready to flee at the least provocation.

"Lovely woman," he tells the cat about his mother. "Too kind for this place, that's for sure. She liked you guys. Never could figure out why. Oh, don't look at me like that. It's not as though I like dogs any better. You're all parasites sponging off of people."

The cat stands a foot away from his hand.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not a monster. Stop it. You remind me of Ed."

It takes the morsel from his hand. A fang brushes his nail and the sandpaper of its tongue runs over his fingertip. He wipes his hand in a show of his disgust but rips off another piece of sandwich for his visitor.

Someone must be burning lawn waste in the distance. The smell reaches him and in an instant, it's fall.

Burning leaves is the aroma of autumn days, even in the city. The first time Ed visited him in Boston on a bright October day, the tall windows were open and it smelled just like this, although no one outside could've been setting fire to anything except for a cigarette or a joint.

He'd hoped Ed had come to celebrate with him, but all he wanted to do was scold him for abandoning the family and Angeline.

Why the hell couldn't he be happy for his older brother and appreciate his newfound success?

The apartment was a gift from his patron. What a silly thing. Patrons were from a world that no longer existed, but thankfully there existed one dumb, rich bastard who wanted to play Medici. He'd set up a competition among the students to see who deserved his time and resources. It came down to three of them. Of Skad's competition, one was a talentless shit, but the other...

"Curtis Dudley," Skad says to the cat. "What a stupid name, but man, could he paint. He had an edge too. Looking at his work was like being cut with a razor."

The cat squawked and he handed it another crumb.

"I dare say, he may have been better than me. But that's just between the two of us. He was damn good. Or at least he was back then. Curtis ended up pissing all his talent away. Between his family and driving a bus, his art got diluted. Watered right down. Can you imagine, an artist driving a city bus? That's why I've never had time for families. They make you do stupid things. Weakens you like a wound that won't close." He gave the cat more and took a last puff off his smoke. "Truth is, he was weak before he got a family."

Skad closes his eyes for a second, a blissful smile crosses his face at the memory.

"You see, there were three of us competing for the prize. Our final hurdle was an interview with old Mr. Moneybags. He wanted to measure up our character before he chose his charity case. I knew what' s-his-face didn't have a chance, but I also knew Curtis would be the obvious choice. So, I invited him out for a drink. We where chums, and it wasn't our first late night in a bar." Skad laughs. "God, he was such a lightweight. By the time the place closed, I had to carry him back to his dorm. Even tucked him into bed. As sweet as you please. Oh, we were friends alright."

He drops more of the sandwich down to his audience.

"The next morning I sat in Mr. Moneybags office saying, No sir, I don't know where Curtis could be. Yes, I thought he wanted the patronage too. Maybe he got stuck in traffic. Two hours late? You don't say? Yes, I suppose it is rude. But you know, Curtis and authority never did get along. Makes him bold on the canvas but he's insulted more than a few of our professors, you know."

As he speaks a giddy smile widens on his face until it breaks open into a cackle. "Curtis never did figure out I unplugged his alarm clock."

The wind cuts a line across the steel sheen of the lake, forming the wake of a ghost ship.

Skad hasn't thought of Curtis Dudley in decades. He last got news about him at a gallery opening on Newbury Street. Back when he still attended such things. A fellow classmate was there. At least, he claimed to have been at the Academy, but Skad didn't recognize him. He'd known Curtis though. Said he'd died five years earlier. Threw himself off a bridge after a night shift. Left his wife and a bunch of mewling brats behind without even his life insurance sinse they wouldn't pay out for such an obvious suicide.

He'd always been weak.

The cat tries to get his attention meowing and waving a paw as if it was playing with a yo-yo. The plate's empty.

Skad says, "Get lost cat."