The common swear seemed to change voices as it bounced back at Tristan Fallita.
It was his voice, of course. He was alone in his gallery.
He might not be, but the simple Adults Only, Must Be 21 to Enter sign had done its job.
Curious kids no longer entered.
Tristan uttered the common swear again, this time much more quietly, but repeatedly, clipping little fucks that made his lower lip tingle as he locked the door.
He pressed a button on his phone and prepared himself to speak with Allen Kendall’s assistant.
Allen himself answered.
“You hear about Van Myren?” Tristan asked.
“I did.”
“You want his stuff?”
“Maybe…probably…yeah,” Kendall said.
“Send a truck.Have your guys pad the art in the truck, or don’t. I just want it gone before the press swoops. I’m thinking 48K for all thirteen pieces but we can negotiate later. That’s the ballpark. Just have what’s his name…Stu… and your other guys get it now. I’ll have as much of it as I can in the store room waiting.”
Allen Kendall said “I gotta see it, but no more than 41K ceiling. You read that report?”
Tristan let the air out of himself trying not to make a sound, said “43,500, and yes, I read it.”
Allen said “Maybe 43. Maybe. My guys are on the way,” and hung up.
Tristan considered brown papering the windows of the gallery. The press would show up. He would ignore the phone. But if he covered the windows of his own gallery he’d look like an accomplice. He wasn’t.
Being nudes, none of the work hung facing the street.
Tristan hadn’t tested the community standards in decades since a record store owner had to go to court over a Jane’s Addiction poster.
There was always a minister somewhere who wanted to make things difficult.
Tristan Fallita allowed himself one more loud fuck! as he lifted the first piece off the temporary display wall.
The word echoed back at him again. Again in different voices. One of them might have been a sixteen year old girl he had never met. He hoped he had never met.
Something told him he should be mourning as he rushed the painting into the storage room in the back of the gallery.
As many would follow as he could take down, probably all of them before Kendall’s crew showed up.
Silverton Van Myren had always ridden the rapids of life, predating Tristan Fallita meeting him as a freshman in college. Tristan had gotten caught in the Van Myren rapids before.
He shouldn’t be shocked about the rapids. Just the depth this time.
As artwork four and five came down, Tristan felt the anger he was carrying, but it wasn’t fully shaped.
As JB Perton, Silverton Van Myren had written and illustrated one of the most beloved and best selling middle grade books of the century, The Elves of Sundae Falls.
The book made him even wealthier than his parents, something Tristan never would have believed when he spent freshman year Christmas break at the Van Myren mansion in Connecticut.
New Years Day they spent in ER, Silverton’s stomach being pumped of drugs Tristan had never heard of.
Within five minutes of regaining consciousness, Sil was cackling like a demented lab assistant, ready to go again.
Tristan was in school on a caddie scholarship,hoping to be an art teacher. He knew he couldn’t teach anyone the skills that Sil Van Myren had with a brush, charcoal, fully stocked bar or a room full of women.
Women.
Women, Sil, you stupid bastard.
Tristan’s anger was starting to fine tune into a beam pointed straight at his old friend.
A car pulled up and braked heavily in front of the little strip mall gallery–a nice strip mall– but a strip mall nonetheless, and Tristan froze.
He wouldn’t know what to say to the press.
No comment, you dumbass.
It was just the calzone delivery kid from next door.
Tristan checked his watch. The news was going to want this. He knew it.
He pulled his phone from the desk.
JB Perton was trending on MuskSpace, not Silverton Van Myren.
Kids knew. It was an easy search.
Kids showed up to the gallery hoping that Silverton Van Myren’s art was the characters of JB Perton.
They wanted to see Caxle the Quarter Elf, and the Vangmaster, and Trud.
The art of JB Perton, Silverton’s nom de plume, was richly detailed fantasy work and kids felt like they knew the characters.
Silverton’s nudes were detailed as well, but more muted, obtuse as to race and…age.
Tristan turned with a small work titled Secondary. The woman was thin and…
He had called on his old friend to do a show there because the gallery was failing.
The pandemic, some bad shows, and then two years ago December there were whispers that some of the Alicontes they hung were counterfeits.
A friend suggested that a dealer named Allen Kendall would buy ‘em and quietly peddle them.
They had a comfy arrangement.
Still, Tristan hanging Van Myren was going to save the gallery.
A knock echoed from the back door.
Tristan jumped. It was probably the single knock of Stu, one of Kendall’s guys.
Even with some counterfeits, and an original Daniel Johnston that was in all likelihood stolen, they weren’t in this much of a hurry. Not even close.
The gallery owner walked down the small corridor leading to the back door. His phone hummed. He hoped it was Kendall. Pulling it from his pocket he didn’t recognize the number but something felt like it was TV, a paper, an art mag. Someone who wanted a quote.
The person at the door was Stu.
Stu was tall, big but not crazily muscled, and had an aura that told you that Allen Kendall probably didn’t find him in the art world.
“AK says we have to pack these ourselves.”
Tristan nodded.
“Kind of an emergency.”
Stu stepped in and three more men got out of the truck.
“Fucking pervert,” Stu said.
“Who, me?” Tristan said.
“Probably you too,” Stu said.
Tristan shook his head.
“Did Allen tell you you have to get it on the truck first, then pack it properly?”
Stu dipped his head just slightly to acknowledge that was the case.
Realizing he didn’t quite care if the art got damaged, Tristan left the back room and walked out to grab the last of Silverton Van Myren’s artwork.
Two cameras were pointed at the gallery window.
It seemed as though one of them was live, with a woman reporting.
Tristan cut into the small restroom, shut and locked the door.
The only evidence that Silverton Van Myren was supposed to have a show here was the small marquee outside that said “Exposed” by S. Van Myren and the dates. The opening would have been Friday, with an invitation only VIP showing Thursday night.
Tristan didn’t even want to craft the cancellation email.
For the first time, Tristan realized he could see his reflection in the metal hand towel dispenser.
He told himself, out loud, it would be ok.
Then he put his head against the dispenser and silently, shakingly, tore into himself.
You selfish prick. You unprioritizing…whatever…twisted, horrible, molting snake of a human. Your gallery. Your fucking gallery. Fuck your gallery.
Silverton Van Myren gravely injured a girl drunk driving. She, according to the hospital, was 16 years old. She was in the passenger seat of Van Myren’s vintage Porsche. In typical Sil Van Myren fashion, he had talked the cops into letting him accompany the injured girl to the hospital before they took him into custody. He was, after all, JB Perton, creator of one magical children’s book. It was possible that a cop read it at ten years old and was now on the force.
He begged the EMTs, in front of the cops, to save the baby. The girl was five months pregnant.
Silverton Van Myren, to his disgrace or credit, at this point Tristan Fallitta was confused and wasn’t sure which, had not masked the fact that he claimed to be the father of the child inside the child.
Tristan Fallita tried to lift the lid of the commode, failed, and puked all over it.
Pictures of Tristan at Sil’s 44th birthday party were on his social media.
He had sometimes mourned that they weren’t closer friends, drifting apart a bit after college.Now he was glad they…is glad the word?
Tristan reached for a hand towel and the door to the restroom shook.
Twisting, Tristan said “Just,” before abandoning his sentence and opening the door.
It was Stu.
“AK said to pick up thirteen pieces of art. I counted eleven.”
Without a word, Tristan walked out to the gallery. There were puke splatters on the knees of his pants.
He ignored them.
Someone banged on the window.
He ignored them.
He lifted the last two pieces of art, not wanting to look, not wanting to see anything in the nude women he might have missed.
Sil had had numerous issues over their decades of friendship, acquaintance, whatever it was. But Tristan didn’t know…wasn’t sure…might have suspected but…
Stu walked out the back door with the last two paintings.
A reporter jammed a microphone toward Tristan’s face, mispronouncing his last name. He slammed the back door shut and locked it.
He had slept in the gallery before, and would tonight.
When he woke up, Allen Kendall had transferred 42,112 dollars into his account with a memo that read Time share in Boca Raton, with a little house icon.
Pictures of JB Perton with a young girl on his lap at a book signing, her face pixelated for anonymity, circulated the internet almost as though the girl was the one in the accident.
Based on the time frame that Tristan knew, the girl in the picture would be in her twenties now. Silverton/JB Perton would be in a lot less trouble if he had gotten her pregnant.
Tristan’s gallery was alive.
Silverton van Myren, who didn’t need the money, who never needed and would never need the money, wasn’t going to be in a place where he could come after the money for the thirteen paintings.
Tristan would do many more art shows for artists he admired.
Men and women at openings would kiss him on the cheeks,sometimes on the lips, and thank him for canceling “that monster’s show.”
He knew he didn’t cancel it.
He made it a one man show for a guy named Allen Kendall.
DNA tests confirmed that Silverton Van Myren was the father of the unborn child who did not survive the accident he caused.
JB Perton’s famous fantasy book disappeared from the shelves.
Tristan Fallita went into the restroom of his gallery and installed a matte black hand towel dispenser, so there was one less place in his life where he had to look at his own reflection.
***
Wow man, I liked that one. The layering in it was so subtle. It was just amazing. It was like peeling off the layers of an onion. The sentences were short and crisp. Taut with tension and a mutual history that slowly reveals the character of someone we never meet, and quite frankly, probably don't want to meet. Well done!
Very much illuminated as if by the light of flashbulbs/ black and white snapshot biography of an artist living two distinctly different selves. One praiseworthy the other dark, perhaps truer to himself. The dichotomy of an inspired but tortured life.
Disturbingly brilliant story, like art and humans can be. The dead friend forgiven an acknowledged sin, the subversion of young girls, but not the pain of a public charade maintained in spite of the wild imperfections of the friend he was mourning.