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“How many do you think are crammed into this room, Max?”
“I’m not sure,” Max answered James Moultrie. “I can’t keep track of my head count. Too much movement. The room’s maximum capacity is eighty.”
“Do you think there’s that many?”
“I think it’s going to be really close if anyone else enters to see that painting.”
Max took a breath and began a new attempt at a head count. The whimpering and squirming dog in the purse he held to his side made concentrating all the more difficult. Max wondered where everyone had come from. The whimpering dog had attracted the first several viewers who meandered down the hall into that exhibition room after June Dixon rushed out in search of the lavatories. It had not taken long for a stream of people to follow into the room. Max thought all those people must have sensed that there was something unique, something special, something more than a product of a template kit waiting in that room tucked away in the rear of the gallery. The spectators must have felt something tugging at their interest to flow into that chamber.
And once in that chamber, no one appeared to make any effort to leave. Everyone simply stood and stared at the orange and red swirls; everyone squinted at the masculine and feminine forms that knotted more and more together the longer one’s eyes rested on the canvas’ oils. The room felt hot. Max wiped perspiration out of his eyebrows. But the air-conditioner sounded like it was running fine. All the cooling systems had been inspected the previous month.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Max shook his head. “I’ve never seen the templates do anything like it. Hell, even in the days before the gift shop kits, I’ve never seen any piece have this kind of impact. There’s something special about that canvas on the wall.”
James smiled. “This is going to be a good day for the gallery. A crowd like this is going to give us one hell of a door take.”
Max grinned. He would remind the board every chance he could that it had been an unexpected canvas, not a template painting, that attracted more attention than the gallery ever knew. Max wouldn’t fight too hard. He would not go as far as to demand that templates would be granted no place at all within the gallery. Max would only press the board for permission to keep one exhibition room open for canvases not based on any template, a place for the wild and unexpected pieces of painting and sculpture to be displayed. The board could afford to take the risk as long as the rest of the gallery maintained a full schedule of template showings. The board wouldn’t be able to deny the revenues a surprise crowd like the one surrounding Max and James might bring to the coffers. The board would allow a little failure, surely, if they realized taking a risk could bag such windfalls.
“You know, we used to have big days like this now and again before the templates.”
A heartbeat was all the time James needed to consider Max’s claim. “Perhaps, but you also had a lot of days when the gallery went empty.”
Max grunted. That strange painting gave Max a hope he might change the gallery’s practice, but those swirls didn’t guarantee it. The board preferred a rather flat and conservative trajectory in its earning estimates. Unlike Max, the board did not enjoy the surprise’s thrill.
“Have you learned the artist’s identity?”
“I was hoping the artist might appear in the gallery to see the painting mounted on the wall.”
“And he or she hasn’t?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“You’d think an artist would want to claim credit for a crowd like this.” James frowned. “You’d think an artist might be interested in some kind of compensation. What will you do if the artist doesn’t show?”
Max shrugged.
“You have to find him, Max. Go to the Water District if you must. The gallery would only need a few weeks with this guy’s paintings on the walls to pay a year’s worth of bills. We might be able to expand if we could get this artist to help supplement the template showings.”
Sparkle yelped. The dog’s neck craned, and the poodle managed to find enough bite upon Max’s wrist to make the curator drop the purse. Sparkle wiggled out of his confines the moment he hit the floor, and the dog sprinted out of the exhibition room. Max did his best to chase the dog into the hall, but the crowd slowed his exit. Sparkle was nowhere to be seen by the time Max politely pushed his way to the gallery’s doors.
“June Dixon is going to skin me alive.”
Max’s fortune turned more terrible as Mrs. Dixon appeared on the sidewalk leading to the gallery’s entrance, and Max’s mind raced to consider an excuse for the missing Sparkle that might limit the damage. Retreating would do him little good. Max considered an attempt to hide among those crowding the rear gallery, but he realized those in the chamber would only temporarily delay his discovery. Thus in the minute it took for Mrs. Dixon to reach those double glass doors, Max decided to stand where he was and simply do his best to suffer to the storm.
“Mrs. Dixon, I’m afraid I have bad news about Sparkle.”
“I don’t have any more time left for Sparkle.”
“Mrs. Dixon?”
Max stopped. He was too slow to think of reaching out to grab Mrs. Dixon, and the woman strode beyond the entrance counter and into the hall leading towards the rear gallery where that strange painting of swirls and oranges captivated such a crowd. Max’s heart raced. June Dixon smelled terrible, and Max instantly recognized the scent of gasoline. How had he not noticed how Mrs. Dixon’s dress jacket and business slacks were drenched in fluid before she had entered the gallery? He didn’t know what Mrs. Dixon was thinking, but Max suspected only something terrible could account for the way Mrs. Dixon stomped down the hall, headless to the state of her wardrobe, mindless to the fumes following in her wake.
“Mrs. Dixon, is there something wrong?”
The crowd gathered in front of that strange painting parted as June Dixon entered the exhibition chamber and strode towards the glistening canvas. The odor rising from Mrs. Dixon’s clothing wrinkled noses and watered eyes. Her hands rummaged for something within her jacket’s inner pocket.
“Mrs. Dixon, maybe I could help you if you came with me to get some fresh air.”
Mrs. Dixon smiled at Max. “Oh, I will be fine here in a moment, Mr. Sievers. I only got a little of the paint on my hand is all. The soap in the lavatory wasn’t enough to wash it all away. Needed something stronger. So I just stopped by the filling station. Give me just a moment to find what I’m looking for, and everything will be just fine.”
Max saw something glimmer in Mrs. Dixon’s rising hand. “Everyone! Move away from her!”
A second was all it took for June Dixon to remove the silver lighter from her pocket. June turned and again considered the painting mounted upon the gallery wall before her fingers struck the flint and summoned spark. Gallery visitors pushed against one another to reach the hall while the orange flame momentarily danced in June’s hand. June took a breath and blew, and the breeze released from her lips fed her to the fire. Flames leapt upon June Dixon, embracing her in a swirl of oranges and reds. She did not scream as the fire fed upon her flesh and grew brighter and hotter. She stood tall, staring towards that painting while the flames embraced her, while those remaining in the exhibition chamber scrambled for escape. She had not yet collapsed by the time the gallery’s sprinkler system activated to threaten all the templates mounted upon the walls in the other rooms, to threaten the strange painting that had attracted such strange attention in the least visited exhibition chamber. June Dixon’s body collapsed upon a heap as the water struck it, and her remains steamed upon the ruined, golden carpet.
Repairs for the water and smoke damage proved costly, but Max thought the gallery fortunate as insurance vowed to cover the cost. Nor had any of the gallery’s visitors been harmed by June Dixon’s self-immolation. Max worried how the board would respond to June Dixon’s terrible suicide, but no one expressed any sentiment that the painting had
any connection with the widow’s mental breakdown, for June had lived alone for a very long time following her husband’s passing, and no one seated on that gallery’s board could say they were surprised that June Dixon would choose to go out with such flare. It made a morbid sense to them that the widow would want to die in a gallery that had housed so many of her completed templates, in the same building of the gift shop where she had purchased so many kits that had given her something for her time throughout so many years.
Only Max felt that something more than loneliness motivated June Dixon to feed herself to fire. He could hardly peek at the painting of orange and red swirls the night when he took the canvas down from the wall following Mrs. Dixon’s burning. Neither fire, water nor smoke had damaged the oils, and the picture seemed to glisten all the more brightly. Those forms centered upon the foreground no longer looked feminine and masculine; they had melted into something else, something ugly, something obscene. The frame felt hot to Max’s touch, and he threw the thickest drop cloth he could find over the swirling colors before placing the canvas in the most remote corner of the gallery’s storage basement. Perhaps the shock of witnessing the day tainted Max’s perception. Perhaps clarity would return to his eye, and it would be easy enough to carry that strange canvas up the basement steps when he again felt secure to place it upon the wall. But on that night following Mrs. Dixon’s self-immolation, the painting singed his heart with fear.
Max did not tell James Moultrie of the foreboding that curled his stomach when the board member once again asked if the curator might find the time to visit the Water District and locate the artist of the canvas that had attracted such an unexpected crowd to the gallery. Max was too unsure what made him shudder when he thought of that painting stored in that remote corner of the basement. He thought it must have been something in the paint, perhaps something regarding the canvas’ subject. Something lurked in the back of Max’s imagination that made the curator view his coming search with trepidation.
Max feared the gallery’s dependence on the templates had made those who visited the exhibitions too dependent upon neat and orderly semblances of art. Max feared, no matter all his years submerged in studying the aesthetic, that he had come to lack the courage to consider what else that mysterious artist behind that painting of orange and red swirls might have to offer.
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