Page 23 of Dirty Money
“Well cool,” he said with a smile. “These are my office hours and it’s usually pretty dead in here. I’m glad you came in, though. I actually have a question for you.”
“What’s up?” she asked.What kind of question could he have for her?
“Well, a spot actually opened up in a gallery show that a friend of mine is heading up this weekend. They’ve got a pretty decent amount of wall space to cover, it’s mostly other abstract work and I thought of you.”
“Really?” Aullie asked, bewildered. She definitely hadn’t expected that.
“Yeah. I know your last show was a little... disappointing,” he said, with apologetic eyes. “So, I figured maybe you’d be up to giving it another shot. Do you think you’d be able to get a group of works together by then?”
“Yeah, totally,” she nodded enthusiastically, a smile breaking across her lips. “I’ll have to get my shift covered at work, but if I can, then yeah, count me in.”
“Cool,” he said with a grin. “If you give me your number, I’ll shoot you a text with the details later tonight.
Aullie unzipped her backpack and pulled out her sketchbook and a charcoal pencil. She scrawled her phone number on a blank corner and tore it out, handing it to Gerald. She thanked him again and he went back to his office, which Aullie was grateful for. She felt a new zeal, a refreshed excitement at knowing she was getting another shot.
She squeezed tubes, mixing colors and sloshing them all over the canvas. The work she did wouldn’t matter, she thought, there was no way it would be dry in time, but as the prism-esque rainbow came to life on the scratchy white surface she recognized that her groove was back. This opportunity had been exactly what she had needed to break her out of her painter’s-block funk.
The next two hours flew by. Once she had done everything she could, Aullie washed her brushes and her hands and packed up all her equipment. Paint still stained her fingers and forearms, probably her face and neck too like usual, but she didn't really mind. It wasn't like she was trying to impress anyone.
She waved at Gerald through the window, thankful again that he had thought of her for the show. “Is it cool if I leave that canvas here to dry a little? I can come pick it up when I have class tomorrow.”
“Yeah!” he replied. “I’ll move it into your cubby later when it’s a little drier.”
“Thanks!” Aullie said as she headed out the door.
As her car was revved up and homebound, she began to seriously think about the show. It was a big deal for Aullie and she needed to make sure she was putting her best foot forward. Not only with her art but with herself.
During her first show, she’d been nervous, and given that she was naturally pretty introverted, she had hung back on the walls and hadn’t spent as much time marketing herself as she probably should have.
Her little debacle with Weston was behind her and though she resented the entire ordeal, it had opened her eyes to some self-consciousness she hadn’t recognized before.
She was aware now that she wanted to succeed. She wanted to feel worthy of a successful man so that next time she found one, her own stupid insecurities wouldn’t get in the way.
Once she was home, it was go time. Aullie poured some coffee she had made that morning into a mug with a little bit of creamer from the fridge and nuked it in the microwave. As it made its roundabout way around the microwave, she looked her walls up and down, trying to channel her inner art critic or collector.
Most of her class projects, though she was proud of them, weren’t show material. It was hard with class stuff because everyone needs to learn the basics and therefore did similar things, so none of that work would stand out.
She had finally painted the deer she had drawn, his proud neck shrouded in beautiful flowers, the light tan of his textured fur stood out against the blueish background, it was definitely one of her better originals. Hopefully, it would be totally dry in time.
But what else?
Suddenly, she no longer felt optimistic but overwhelmed. There were so many choices, plus the stacks of paintings she kept in her closet because she had no wall space. Aullie had been painting for so long, there were too many options.
Though others respected and admired her work, she could see the tinier details in each and every painting; the mistakes, the layers and layers of paint to fix them, places where colors had run together, works that hadn’t quite stayed true to her original vision. Everywhere she looked, she found flaws, flaws, flaws! Her confidence nosedived hard.
What am I doing with my life?
Aullie seemed to be having these surges of doubt more and more often, lately. She had no business being in a show, she thought, she wasn’t ready.
Would she ever be ready? Was she destined to wait tables forever?
The microwave beeped, probably for the third or fourth time since Aullie’s coffee had finished reheating and she extracted the mug just to angrily slam the little door closed.
She took a sip, the coffee wasn’t even warm anymore, but she craved some kind of buzz. Some kind of explosion of clarity to help her take the necessary steps to becoming the person she wanted, or needed, to be.
Aullie’s eyes came to rest on the painting she had done after her first night out with Weston. She had added to it after their second date, vibrant swirls of white, lavender and powder blue thrived against the fiery fuchsia background. It was a beautiful painting, she had to admit, but there was no way she could include it in the show. Some part of her wanted to hold onto it; the only reminder she had left of the man who had made her feel again. The relationship may have crashed and burned but, be that as it may, she had felt things with him she hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever.
The painting opened a sort of rabbit hole, one thought about Weston led to another and Aullie couldn’t help but feel as if she were tumbling down, down, down into the abyss of obsessive thought.
