“I can finally block them out. Not all the time, but for the first time in my life, the dead aren’t everywhere I look. I can block out their memories and their pictures and their desires. I’ve gotten so much better at it. And I feel in control for the first time in my life,” I had said.
“But?”
“But it’s harder for me to paint. With the channel closed, my mind closed off like that, I can’t paint. See, when I pull down the wall, I turn off all the colors, I wash them away. And I need color to paint. I want to paint. I need to paint, Tag. I don’t know what to do. It’s a double-edged sword.”
“So control it. Use it. When it’s hot I turn on the air conditioner. When it’s cold I turn it off. Can’t it be like that? Let the colors in when you’re painting. Turn it off when you’re not.” Tag shrugged as if it was the easiest thing in the world. It made me laugh. Maybe I could experiment.
“Yeah. Okay. But if I start painting pictures of things I shouldn’t, and I get arrested for murder or robbery or some guy comes and hunts me down because I painted a picture of his dead wife having sex with someone else, I’ll let you bail me out of jail . . . or the psych ward.”
“Well, can’t say we haven’t done it before, right? Violence and art. It’s a winning combination.” Tag laughed, but I could see his wheels turning. Before long, we had jobs everywhere.
I painted a mural in Brussels, a chapel door in a little French hamlet, a portrait in Vienna, several still life paintings in Spain, and just for old time’s sake, a barn in Amsterdam. They weren’t all successes. We got run out of a few places, but most of the time, Tag would find someone who spoke English to interpret for me, I would paint, and people would marvel. And then they would tell their friends.
I ended up working my way through Europe, getting paid to create art by opening myself up to something that I’d always considered a curse. And even more importantly, for me, I got to see all the art I’d always dreamed of seeing. I loved filling my head with pictures, pictures that didn’t have anything to do with me or with death. Until one day I realized that life imitates death, especially in artwork. The art of the past is all about death—the artists die and their art remains, a testament to the living and the dead. The realization was a powerful one. I didn’t feel nearly as alone, or nearly as odd. I even wondered at times, gazing at something truly awe-inspiring, if all artists didn’t commune with spirits.
We spent four years traveling and Tag and I split my earnings. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him. His charisma and comfort in every situation made people trust us. If it had been just me, painting pictures about the dead, I have no doubt I would have single-handedly brought back the inquisition and been burned at the stake as a witch, or been sent to a lunatic asylum. Images of Bedlam had danced through my mind more than once when we’d spent three months in England.
Tag’s charisma drew people in, but his attention span needed honing. And Tag wasn’t big on honing in on anything except the next job, the next gig, the next dollar. When we’d come back to the states we’d continued on just like we’d done in Europe, hitting big city after big city, painting for one wealthy benefactor after another. Tag had been a rich kid all his life, a rich Texan—which was a little different from a rich New Yorker—but a rich kid all the same, and he was comfortable everywhere, while I was comfortable nowhere. But to his credit, he made me as comfortable as I was ever going to be, and with his help, I became a rich kid too. We’d spent another year seeing state after state, landmark after landmark, grieving loved one after grieving loved one, until one day we decided it was time to let people come to us.
Tag was tired of playing manager to Moses Wright, and had his own dreams of blood and glory (literally), and I was tired of perpetual homelessness. I’d been a drifter all my life, and I found I was ready for something else. We’d landed in Salt Lake City, back where it had all begun, and for some reason it had felt right to stick around. I’d come back as a favor to Dr. Andelin, who had kept tabs on me and Tag as we’d trotted the globe and managed to stay alive and mostly out of trouble. I had agreed to paint a mural at Montlake, something hopeful and soothing that they could point to and say, “See? A crack baby painted this, and you can too!”
Noah Andelin was so happy to see us, and his genuine pleasure at our success, and our friendship, along with his gentle concern about our well-being, led to dinner and drinks later in the week, and it had been Dr. Andelin who had pointed us toward the warehouse apartments, thinking maybe it was something we would be interested in.
I’d worried about Tag staying put, because Tag needed to move like I needed to paint, and traveling for years had met each of our needs, keeping us both sane. But Tag rented the floor below mine, and instead of an art studio, he turned his open space into a gym and got involved with the local fight scene—mixed martial arts, boxing, wrestling. He did it all, and the activity kept him clean and focused. Before long he was talking about bouts, a fighter’s clothing line called Tag Team, and collecting sponsors to open a new facility for local fighters to train to compete in the UFC. While I painted he pounded, while I raised the waters he raised the roof, and we settled into our respective floors and kept the monsters at bay. It was the closest we’d come to finding ourselves, and we were both learning how to deal.
And now, alone in my own bed, in my own space, with my own things and my own life, I had been awakened by Batman at the end of my bed, and I was irritated by the little trespasser. I turned over and concentrated on the water, on pulling it down on top of me so the boy, my little visitor, would go. I’d obviously picked up the straggler at the hospital today. Shaking hands and signing autographs and trying to paint while a crowd assembled around me was my least favorite kind of job.