There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(7)

The dogs make me happy because they’re happy. They’ve got their tongues out, scenting the peppery eucalyptus in the air. I breathe it in too, closing my eyes so I can taste it in my lungs.

I’m thinking about the piece I’m working on in Joanna’s studio, wondering if I can finish it before I’m kicked out of her space. It’s too big to move easily. If I could get it into the New Voices show, that would be something . . .

Something pretty fucking unlikely.

God, I wish I could sell something.

Erin sold a painting for eight hundred dollars last month. Covered almost all her rent. What a dream that would be.

I think about the showcase a few weeks back. Alastor Shaw won a ten-thousand-dollar prize. Now that’s a fucking dream. I could practically live a year off that.

I wasn’t there when they announced the winner—I had to leave early to hit my third job, bartending at Zam Zam.

I had seen Shaw standing by his piece—a technicolor painting that practically seared the eyeballs. Erin whispered to me that she was going to go talk to him.

“He’s so fucking hot,” she murmured. “Look at that body . . .”

I thought he looked like he should be rowing crew for Yale in 1952. He had that square-jawed, sun-kissed, excessively healthy look, with just a dash of misogyny. Handsome, sure, but not my type.

While I liked his piece, I thought Cole Blackwell should have won. His sculpture had a pale, haunting quality that captivated me, floating in space like a wraith.

Everybody knows about Blackwell and Shaw’s rivalry. The art mags love writing up every little tiff between them. Both young, loaded, and fucking everything that moves, all while trying to top each other with increasingly outrageous artwork—it’s a columnist’s wet dream.

I’ve never actually seen Blackwell. Erin says he’s moody and standoffish. Sometimes he skips his own shows.

We might cross paths tonight—supposedly he’s showing at Oasis. Erin is dragging me along because she did indeed chat up Shaw at the last event, and she’s hoping tonight will turn into something a whole lot steamier.

She’ll have to get in line. As far as I can tell, taking a ride on Alastor Shaw is about as “exclusive” as his endless runs of “limited edition” prints.





Once I’ve dropped the dogs off back at their respective houses, I hurry over to Joanna’s studio in Eureka Valley. There I spend the next six hours deeply immersed in my collage.

I haven’t decided what medium I’ll work in consistently. Sometimes I paint, and sometimes I craft objects that require immense concentration and an insane number of hours. This is not at all a profitable way to make art—you cannot spend two hundred hours on a tiny, beaded teacup that no one wants to buy. But I’m addicted to the sensation of minute, repetitive, and even torturous activity.

Occasionally I take photographs on an ancient Pentacon. I would not consider that my best work. I use the camera only when I want to capture a moment in time, something that actually happened.

Not knowing what sort of artist I’ll be makes me feel unformed and amateurish. As if I’m a child playing dress-up; my paint-spattered overalls become cosplay.

Other times I think how I’ve poured every spare cent I ever had into raw materials, and how almost all the free hours of my life have been spent on art, and then I think if that doesn’t make me an artist, then nothing does.

In those moments I experience a burning righteousness that makes me hate people like Cole Blackwell despite never having met him, because he’s always been rich and probably has never sacrificed a day in his life.

The Blackwells are an old San Francisco family. His ancestors probably made their money on the gold fields, or more likely, selling something to those hapless miners. That’s always where the real profit lies.

Once I’ve been working long enough, I no longer think about Blackwell, or anybody else. I don’t think about the fact that I’m about to lose this cramped but highly useful space, and that I don’t have enough shifts lined up to make my next rent payment.

All those buzzing thoughts melt away like wet candy floss, and all the other sensory inputs that prick and poke at me likewise disappear. I don’t hear the humming of the halogen lights or the irregular rushing of traffic outside the window. I’m no longer bothered by the slice of sunshine that cuts across the room, overheating the back of my arm.

I listen to music on my headphones while sinking into the pod.

The pod is a state of perfect concentration.

It’s my nirvana, my state of meditative bliss.

Nothing can bother me there. Nothing can upset me.

In the pod, I’m my truest self. Alone. Utterly at peace.

I’m so deeply immersed that I don’t notice that I’m extremely late to meet Erin until she calls my phone for the third or fourth time.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I say, by way of greeting.

“I left without you,” she informs me. “You should get over here. Cole Blackwell made this gorgeous gold sculpture, everybody’s freaking the fuck out, it sold for a boatload of cash before the show was even over.”

I check my watch.

I’ve missed most of the show—but if I hurry, I could still make it for half an hour at least. Shows never end on time. The organizers get as tipsy as everybody else, sometimes staying for hours afterward, talking and polishing off the drinks.