Chapter Five
Julian Reynolds decided, once again, to pack in his dreams. Just give up his online art gallery and get a real job. None of it had panned out the way he envisioned. Instead of making a living by selling his inexpensive giclee prints—reproductions of his watercolor paintings, matted, mounted and shrink-wrapped in several standard frame sizes—he found that he was barely scrapping by. Over the past two years he had moved boxes and piles of prints around the small, one bedroom apartment more than actually moving individual pieces out the door. The last time he sold and shipped a print was over three months ago. It was of a waterfall in Jamaica, Vermont, and it went to a friend of his mother. Thirty-nine years old and his parents had paid the rent for the last seven months.
It was 12:30 p.m. and Julian, still shaky from drinking the night before, walked around the crowded living room that also served as an office and storage space. He bumped into a stack of open boxes and knocked a pile of prints to the floor—autumn colors surrounding a maple syrup shack.
“How many of these fucking things did I have made?” Julian’s stomach tightened with impending sickness as he bent over to pick up the prints. He paused to let the feeling pass, then collected the pictures and, standing up slowly, placed them back in their box. His stomach wrestled with the morning, but he reminded himself, “It will pass.”
Sitting on the couch, he tried to focus on the day. He had missed Tom Hubbard’s funeral, and probably the graveside ceremony, but maybe there was still time to make the memorial reception at the Hubbard’s old house. On the floor lay a plastic half-gallon bottle of vodka. Picking the bottle up and holding his breath, he took a long drink. With chest muscles tightening and he waited. Once sure the vodka would stay down, he pushed a hand through his oily hair. “Should I shower? Do I have the time?” He looked around at the wasteland of cardboard boxes and piles of prints and then glanced over to the computer.
The maintenance of his website suffered. Every time he went online to check for sales or inquiries he ended up on porn sites and masturbating instead. The screen had turned into a twenty-one-inch sexual trigger. Lately, he found himself completely enamored by she-male sites. One page in particular featured three women with perfect breasts and long dicks and kept him busy fantasizing for hours on end. When he refrained from masturbating or had a brief respite from drinking, Julian would sit at the computer, smoke cigarettes and review the shambles of his life—divorce, an inability to make a living, debt. All of it amounted to failure.
“No, I’ll wash and go.”
In the shower he looked down at his protruded liver and hated himself. “Shit, I look like hell.” The hot water and perfumed soap stung his dry skin.
After, Julian stood naked in the middle of his living, office and storage room wondering what to wear. By then his morning drink had begun to kick in and the alcohol momentarily transformed his self-image. “No, I’ll be alright,” he thought aloud. “After all, I’m a fucking Artist. I have my own online gallery … a fucking art gallery. Shit, some would even say I’m successful; I’m not a pathetic 9-to-5er. I do what I want, when I want …”
Suddenly proud, hands on hips, like the hero of a battle, he surveyed the mess: half-eaten sandwiches; empty, plastic half-gallon bottles; and dangerously full ashtrays that intermingled with the boxes and piles of prints.
The answering machine’s red message light winked from under an ashtray. The previous morning he had shut off the phone’s ringer and turned the contraption’s volume down after a collection agent called with threats. Upon hanging up on the pesky woman, he drank some until slipping into oblivion. Now, the next day, feeling more courageous, he moved a print—an old mill building covered with snow—out of the way of the “play message” button and, turning the volume up, heard his mother’s distinct Southern accent. “You must know by now, well, I would think you’d know, that your old high school friend, Tom Hubbard, was killed in action in Iraq. We didn’t even know he was over there. Did you tell us? Anyway, I’m so sorry to hear. I hope you are okay. Call us, Julian. We love you.”
Julian turned the volume down again. “Fucking mother, how’d she know? What was it, broadcast in Florida?”
He took another long drink from the bottle, almost finishing it.
Leaning over, touching the computer keyboard, the monitor’s black screen sprang from hibernation and filled with the image of a person, half-man and half-woman, legs spread apart, crotch bulging and lips wanting. He paused and then clicked to his home page to check the clock. “I gotta get outta here.”
But the image of the man-woman lingered in his thoughts. Clicking back, the she-male once again filled the screen. A tingling sensation flickered around the tip of his penis. Shame washed over him as he realized it was the same picture he had ogled over three days earlier when Melanie, Tom’s cousin, had called to share the bad news. He was half-drunk when answering her call at 8:30 in the morning. His pants were around his ankles, his penis erect in hand. Then he proceeded to flirt while she tried to inform him of Tom’s death.
“What are you wearing?” He had emphasized his soft Southern accent that he knew she liked.
Although Melanie had not discouraged his manor, she stopped short of encouraging him. She simply listened to the flirtatious comments and then told him about the funeral arrangements and memorial reception.
After their conversation, after hanging up the phone, he actually stopped to think about Tom. He hoped that Tom had died quickly. Making a rare entry into his empty calendar book to note the time of the funeral, he then returned to satisfying himself without giving Melanie or Tom another thought. Until now.
Ashamed of his behavior that morning when she had called, Julian sighed; Melanie would be there today, at Tom’s memorial reception