Watercolor

Flash Fiction

An obsession with angles led to drawing and painting.

The origin of the obsession predated his memory. It existed, part of him, even–sometimes especially–as he darted between vehicles as a bike messenger.

Darius Metz delivered flowers as well.

Mostly to funeral homes, sometimes to the chronically ill. On a few occasions, the recipients were one and the same, only the venues different.

He kept the delivery jobs well after his art began to pay the bills, not knowing what else to do, not believing he could sustain himself as an artist.

Even staring at himself in a mirror, his eyes could not convince his mind his good fortune with pencil and brush would last.

It was on a delivery when he saw the first chokes of smoke come from the windows of the  Douglass School

Helpless, he pulled his pad from his backpack and sketched the scene.

The decay.

The historic marker.

The firefighters charging into the long-vacant building.

The sketch sold for more than he had made in a decade of deliveries.

Older pieces began to be resold by collectors, former lovers, strangers who had purchased his work at small festivals.

Darius watched silently as an art website debated the value of a work in which his signature had been distorted by water damage. 

He recognized the work, the subject, the era…and the owner.

Darius got on his bike and rode. He passed the sewage treatment plant, the football stadium, the ruins of the Douglass school.

Darius ran red lights without braking, as though he carried deliveries.

He came back home and carried his bike up three flights of stairs, and pulled his door open as though his own residence may have been on fire.

Manically unzipping portfolios and totes, he found the era he was looking for.

Old work, previously unwanted, ignored, unseen.

He bent and let sweat drip from his hair onto his signature, skewing the angle of the debate in the favor of those who had believed in him first.

***

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Jimmy