Chapter Two
Art Thief
Her talk with Bender activated an anger she had not felt before. She wakes up angry, can't locate the source immediately, then remembers. Terrence, Bender, the painting she'd left behind. The self portrait was almost done. She'd used blue undertones in the shadows to bring out her pale complexion and the black of her hair. There was no background, just her face and hair filling the small canvass to the frame. She'd tried to create a dark glow. It did not match what she saw in her head, but it came close.
Moving through her morning routine, she thinks about that painting, resting against an easel in the art school's main room. It is a small, square canvass, 18 inches on a side. She can see its precise location, about halfway down the row of easels. The irony is that she'd needed a special size canvass to capture what her inner eye saw, and Terrence had stretched this canvass for her. But that doesn't matter, it is her own thing, it belongs to her. She has put her mark on it and it cannot be taken away.
On her walk to school, her anger takes a shape. She wants her painting back and she will get it. After classes she can get to the art school, quickly slip in, grab the painting and slip out. Today is the figure drawing class. She wouldn't be alone, there would be others, witnesses. She wants what's hers. She thinks about Bender's switchblade, rejects the idea of the blade as protection. She couldn't imagine using it on another human being. But she has a can of pepper spray.
She is preoccupied during morning classes. What if it isn't there, where she left it. Surely another student had taken her place. Where would it be? In back, behind the main room where the supplies are kept? Or in the rear work space accessible only through the courtyard? It is unthinkable the painting would not be there at all. It must be there. It has to be there.
At lunch she unthinkingly eats the cafeteria burger and fries as is, not doctored with hot pepper sauce or pixie stix or peanut butter. She buses her tray, her mind on her painting. Out in the hallway, she becomes aware of someone calling her name.
"Allison! Hey, Al!" He finally has her attention. It is Bender. What could John Bender possibly want? They are in the corridor outside the caf. A few kids walk past without noticing the two of them. He looks uncharacteristically serious.
"Are you okay?" He's giving her his undivided attention. She looks at him, not understanding.
"Umm, yesterday? Are you okay now?" He means her outburst of crying.
"Yes, I'm fine," she lies. She's burning with impotent rage actually, now that she consults her inner self. But why has he done this, gone out of his way to ask her this?
His gravity retreats. He gives her a friendly slap on the back, seemingly satisfied, and walks off, leaving her confused. She thinks about this interchange as she makes her way to history class. It seems a strange thing for Bender to do, but she did sort of lose it yesterday.
This only distracts her from her anger for a little while, though. The rest of the day passes in a red haze. She hurries from her last class, throwing her books into her locker without regard for her homework assignments, leaving them all behind. Homework is irrelevant at this point. She checks her purse for her pepper spray. The label says it can shoot ten feet. So if Terrence gets anywhere near her with violent intentions, she can hit him, no problem.
She employs her bus ride to rehearse her game plan. Through the front door, straight back to the supply room, look through the painting storage racks. There are racks for the smaller paintings against the back wall. It is farther into the room than she really likes, but that is where her painting should be. There are usually about 8 or 10 paintings stored back there at a time, so it should be easy to flip through the upright paintings quickly. She doesn't know what she will do if it is not there. She'll keep her pepper spray in hand at all times, and just hope it is there.
Sooner than she expects, she is in front of the school. It is a former garage, painted a jaunty yellow and red combination, and surrounded by other refurbished warehouses, garages and lofts. She enters the front door and passes through the gallery area straight back into the garage portion of the building. Partitioned off by large canvass screens is the studio space, and yes, there is a nude model class. The students have their easels gathered in a semicircle around the male model. She walks purposefully behind them, making a beeline for the storage room. So far, no Terrence. Through the fabric hung doorway, into an area permeated with the light, piney smell of turpentine. She knows that further back, against the left wall is the entrance to the business office, a little closet of a room where accounts are kept and where Terrence is sometimes to be found. On the right are the row of sinks and a paint-spattered work counter. Straight back, pepper spray in hand, she goes directly for the raw pine painting rack. Now she is flipping through the paintings quickly. Aha, here is hers . She lifts it out with one hand, never forgetting her pepper spray, turns to leave. Turns right into Terrence, so close she stumbles. He must have been in the office. His normally urbane expression is gone from his face. His look is cold and focused, as he had looked in the courtyard, when he had his hands on her. She is more frightened than she had expected. She had forgotten that cold look, inhuman, like a snake's eyes.
Her right hand comes up, pepper spray ready, and she backs away, then begins edging towards the exit. He doesn't say anything, just approaches.
"Don't," she stutters. She holds the spray at shoulder height.
"Now Allison, you don't want to do that," he says in a pleasant voice. With those eyes. She backs into the sinks, begins sliding along them, towards the doorway. She's halfway there.
"You're so close, the spray will get you too. You don't want to use that in here, in a confined space." He's right, the instructions said to hold the spray in front of you away from your body, and spray directly ahead. She wonders if the students could hear her from this distance. This room suddenly feels huge.
"I'll tell. I'll tell my parents. I'll say what you did to me." She feels like jelly.
"I'm a well respected man in the art community," he continues in his smooth tone, "and sometimes little girls get carried away with crushes."
No! He can't do this! She wracks her brain. She must have something she can do or say. She's halfway down the sinks now, closer and closer to the studio area.
"You can't prove anything." He is smug in his certainty.
He's right, there were no windows, no other people around. She didn't say anything at the time, so why would she suddenly say something now? Who would believe her?
Bender! Bender was there, Bender saw what happened! She feels a little chink, hope is seeping through.
"You're wrong. Someone saw us. Someone was there." Closer and closer to the doorway.
She sees a slip in his expression. He is wondering now. He has probably done this with lots of girls, how would he remember that particular day?
"Someone came down from those apartments. I know him. He saw what you were doing to me."
She bumps into a shelving unit, almost there. She carefully clicks the pepper spray safety on, finally backs through the fabric shrouding the doorway. She stows the spray, turns and runs. Students look up with curiosity, but she is glad, glad to be out where other people can see her. She slides on the slippery wooden floors but keeps her feet under her. Then the concrete floor of the gallery, more traction, and out the door. And she has her painting! She is out, she has what she came for, her treasure is with her, unharmed. She looks back at the red door. He is standing there, his arms folded, watching her escape.
Luckily her painting is so small it is not awkward on the bus home. She finally mounts the steps to her family's Victorian house on Lakewood Avenue. It is not until she reaches her room upstairs that she believes it is true. She got it. It is hers again. That is one less thing he has stolen from her.
She wishes she had someone to celebrate with.