so-infusing the story with a moment of contemplation before movement, which he has snap-frozen on canvas, recommences.
Each fiction stands alone as an entity unto itself. There is no formula to each’s construction. All I know for certain is that the canvases I have chosen as my launching pad into this suite of very-human narratives trace an arc through an America of the interwar and Second World War years, and where the last story connects this thread to the present – extending the then to now, the there to here. Throughout, however, their coherence, or otherwise, is provided as much by the fluency of Hopper’s canvases as the fluidity of my writerly imagination. The stories may differ in length, in perspective, in style, but ever with the possibility for a reader to return to the respective canvas, Hopper’s frozen moment readily available on the Internet, as a point of personal reflection.
Just as a viewer of this great artist’s works is invited to imaginative musings both within and beyond the borders of the canvas, so too I invite the reader – to imagine, muse, develop alternative narratives to the ones presented herein, or extend the existing stories in this collection. For anything is possible in a world respectful of creative expression.
I have lain bare my works of passage in relation to Hopper’s canvases. I now invite you to explore your own.
Lady Luck Blues
(inspired by Hopper’s Eleven AM, 1926, in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution)
His spit traced a path down the side of my head. A warm, wet slug coursing its mucous trail through my hair, sniffing around for the next green-leafed target. It would need a good wash later, to get all that slug spit out. I knew I needed to remind myself of the chore. I seemed to forget so many things these days.
I didn’t want to try moving just yet. Nothing really hurt so bad that it made me think it was broken – just an ongoing dull ache down my right side, and my arm (from what I could see, prone as I was) squashed between my head and the tiles. Oh, and my head wedged against the radiator, producing a dull ache all its own.
I could still see his disgust. Clear as the cratered face of the moon on a cloudless night, it was. Hey – accidents happen! A girl can trip down a flight of stairs as she runs after an ex-lover, begging him to come back. But he seemed to read more into it. ‘You goddamned whore,’ he’d said. ‘Cover yerself up.’ Spat. And was gone.
I guess it was time to see that hoodoo woman.
I was in luck. No one else was around on the staircase when it happened. After the morning rush, before the midday scramble. Just me. And before that, him.
I’d gotten up late, see. Well, what? What did I have to get up early for? No job, no life. Wasn’t into any of that flapper ‘be there and be seen’ scene. The hair, the hats, the waif-like bones slip-sliding with ease into waif-like clothes. No. I was full-bodied, full-haired. And up until a coupla weeks back, Ronnie had seemed to like that. Said he liked holding tight to what he was fucking without thinking it’d snap in two.
And yeah, I liked it as well. He’d come in with his moonshine after a Yankees game up in the Bronx and start telling me all about the homers Babe Ruth’d hit, while we got mellower and mellower. And then he’d pull his chair close, closer to mine. And then with his hand. Oh. Nice. Big hands. I liked them big. Big and good at grabbing, fingering, holding, caressing. Man, I liked those hands – how they’d tease, tickle, wander all over till I’d be fair moaning right there at the table. Take me. Take me to bed.
Every night, every day the same. I’d be fair shivering all over and then some. Till one day he left me in bed and said he wouldn’t be back. That was hard, that was right hard. Guess I just didn’t want to get up in the mornings no more. And now, here at the bottom of a flight of stairs. But I’d better try and move, before Mrs Murphy comes snooping around.
OK. So it’s slow and it hurts, but nothing’s broken. There’s just this ache. Yes, Ronnie, I’m covering myself up now (I mean, what time did I have to do anything except throw on an old house frock when he fair bolted out the door? Of course it’s gonna go all skew-if when you fall down the stairs. Ain’t that logical? Men. What to make of their silly talk? Just what?).
Now, take it easy, slow back up the stairs and into the apartment. Maybe a coffee’ll set me to rights. Or maybe another gin (well, it says gin on the label but all this bathtub moonshine is pretty much the same – just nice to have a choice between labels sometimes). A spell in the armchair by the window, that’s what I need.
You know, I’d just been sitting there – earlier, by the window. Waiting till that heavy groggy wake-up sort of feeling passed. Just sitting and looking out at the things I could see. Till the sun’d come in and eclipse the rooftops opposite. Around 11ish each day it was.
Now back sitting here again. Thinking. About how it led up to this moment, and then the what-next, what this what-next would be.
See, just last week I’d been in Mr Frankel’s drugstore down there on the corner. I’d gone in to ask if he had something to help me sleep. Something that wouldn’t hit so hard as the gin each new morning. And while he was out the back having a rummage around, I did a bit of browsing, as you do when you’re waiting, and came across the Lucky Heart shelf. There was this box called reconciliation powder – a man and woman pictured in a steamy embrace. Well, stands to reason I should notice a box like that.
Mr Frankel came back out just about then. He never said a word. But I’ve been going to him for everything from bellyache to ingrown toenails over the years, so why not tell him the sorry tale of Ronnie? He was honest – I do trust that man – and he said: ‘Well, you could try this reconciliation remedy (they’re actually crystal salts for putting in the laundry or washing the floor) but I’m not so convinced it works without going to see a real conjure woman first. Normally I sell these hoodoo products to customers of Mattie Flint. She came up from New Orleans some months back and got herself a room above a speakeasy over on 4th. She tells the people what they need and how to use it and then they come in here for their supplies.’
I could understand his caution, but well, that didn’t worry me none. I’d buy the reconciliation crystals and see if they’d work. It couldn’t do no harm.
I washed the floor. My, it smelt nice. And then did the laundry. Ronnie had been gone a week. Unless he had a magic supply of clean clothes someplace, he’d have to be back at some stage. According to the directions on the pack, once he started wearing his freshly laundered clothes – hey presto! – he’d remember he loved me and all would be fine and dandy again.
But Mr Frankel’s sleeping draft wasn’t real effective. I still had to wash it down with gin each night.
Like a miracle, it was, him showing up here this morning. Hadn’t seen him down in the street, or stepping up to the apartment block. Like magic it was. And me not expecting him. But oh, how I squealed and threw myself at his arms.
He never looked at me, no. Just mumbled about getting his clothes and being gone. ‘It’s over, sugar. You know that.’ That’s what he told me.
But still I purred while he packed, and kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed. ‘Just one last time?’ I traced my fingers over a near shoulder as he folded clothes carefully into a carpetbag. Rubbed my bush against his hip, the bedclothes reeking of reconciliation. ‘Please?’ I licked at his ear.
‘No!’ He turned away and made for the door.
Oh God, I thought. Not yet, not yet. It’s all too quick. Grabbing that house dress, trying to get my arms into the sleeves, all the while running after him. ‘Ronnie, Ronnie don’t go. Not yet!’ I called.
He was down the steps before I was out the door. But he kept going, down the next flight of stairs, and that’s when it happened. The tumble. The landing. The spit.
My guts have gone all queasy. Time for another gin.
It took a few days before I wanted to tackle those stairs again. The stiffness was gone but the bruises were still coming out. A huge one on my knee – blue-black as night and bumpy as a
patched quilt. Another, wide and green, smirked from my hip. Head? Couldn’t see the damage but it sure felt like a nest of eggs up there.
I dressed carefully, pulled my hair back in a tight braid, a warm broad-brimmed hat covered my ears. The good coat, my walking shoes. Coming toward nightfall, it was. I didn’t want folks seeing who was going down the alley where them speakeasy boys loitered. Or that I was headed for the staircase beside the moonshine entrance. Up to Miss Flint on the second floor.
There was no sign out front but I’d checked the address with Mr Frankel. ‘Now don’t you be scared none,’ he’d said. ‘She’s a good woman with a heart of gold, even if some of her methods seem a bit … unusual for us white folks.’
I knocked. She called: ‘Enter.’
I was in, into another world. There was darkness and light. Colour and jewels. Candles and scents. A fug which seeped through curtains and woodwork and into my pores. I was powerful, I was alive. I fair floated in that fug. There, in the presence of a priestess and the largess of her larder. Take this Ronnie, I gloated. You’ve got no chance against the spells of Mattie Flint.
‘He ain’t hit you none?’ she asked, eyes of black pearl hooking straight into my heart. ‘He gave no reason?’ Again, a shake of the head was