Early Sunsets over Monroeville

You begin to get to know the regulars. They show signs you know. They never flirt with me if they come here often. They never flirt with my boss anyway. I’m not saying that I’m just a better looking guy but you’d never even attempt to flirt with Bob.
There are many great attributes to Bob. My favourite is the fact that he is straight but owns a fucking gay bar in the middle of New Jersey.
Bob sidles up to me and says, “I’ll close up here now if you could tell people to get the fuck out kindly you can go home.”
I nod and walk up to two guys eating each other’s faces off, “hi. Would you kindly get the fuck out?” They pull apart and look up at me. “Uh... please?”
“Do you work here?” one says. They’re British but as far as I can tell they’re regulars.
“No he doesn’t, Phil!” the other one exclaims, his accent slurred. “He’s a fucking artist!”
“Um,” I look up but Bob is putting the vodka away, he won’t be helping me. “I am an artist… But I also work here.”
“Huh,” one of them, Phil I think, says.
“Right… My job aside you have to leave now. It’s closing time.” There are still a load if people I need to ask to leave.
“I heard this place becomes a Mormon Church group by day,” one says as they begin stumbling together out the door. Where the fuck did he hear that…
I shoo another large group of people toward the door and then another. Gradually the place emptied itself, no one wanting to be the last in the bar.
“Do you need me tomorrow?” I ask before leaving myself.
Bob nods, “yea if that’s okay. Saturdays are always busy.”
“See you then, Bob,” I wave on my way out the door. I think he grunts in return but he could have been silent.
I jog out into the cold of the night. February leaves the steps up to the apartments’ door fucking dangerous. I am the fortunate enough person to live directly above the gay bar. I stopped attempting to get girls about a year ago now. Bringing a girl home while drunk guys hit on me as I fumble with keys is not really easy. Also the whole me flirting back before trying to fuck her thing is understandably a turn off.
The hall is cold as I jog up the narrow stairs to the first door.
It’s three am but I’m too awake to sleep. I need to work on this painting anyway.
I pull the easel out from it’s discarded position by the couch. I was painting this graveyard I dreamt about a few times but the longer I leave painting it the more the memory will slip away. I dreamt about a vivid violet sky punctured by black blanches and graves. A dark mausoleum is the centre piece of the scene but I think I’m going to leave that out. In my dream that was what I was approaching and it was marked Gerard Way. Seeing your own grave is never a great sign.
I mix a vibrant blue with the violet to make the clouds and after about ten minutes I’d settled into the stride of painting again.

My alarm wakes me at ten. I know it doesn’t seem early but I had only fallen asleep at half five. Fuck it. I search under the gathered papers for the source of the sound. Dodgy alarm clock only goes off every now and again. When I find it I walk over to the window above my desk and fling it out. I smashes on the pavement but the noise doesn’t stop.
“Fucking piece of shit,” I slide the window down to numb the sound.
Coffee. Last night I dreamt about whales I think as I stir the black liquid. The bubbles take the form of a whale when I take the spoon out. I shake my head as I carry it to my work table beside the only decent window in the house. Of course you’re not seeing whales, you crazy fuck.
Whether I was seeing whales in my coffee or not, I was certainly seeing them on paper as I begin sketching. I finished the sketch before the coffee and it’s terrifying. No more drawing my dreams fucking hell. The whale is eating me as I dreamt but the fact that I only used a red and black pen makes it gory. Maybe I should go work in a horror animation studio…
I roll it up and light the page on fire. I then light a cigarette with the burning whale drawing before tossing it out into the February rain.
At about one o clock just as I’m finishing the painting, my phone rings.
“I’m coming over tonight.”
“Hi Mikey, I’m good how are you?” I say sarcastically.
“Fuck off I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Uh, why?”
“I’ll tell you then,” and he hangs up. Right. I try to pick sketches off the couch and floor to give him space to move in my flat. I sweep fag buts out of the kitchen and hide my weirdest drawings. By the time the doorbell rings I look like a mildly sane artist with a cocaine addiction. Really I’m just an insane artist who spilled talcum powder all over his flat when he was drunk because art.
“Hey Gee,” he says walking through the front door and straight into the kitchen area to make coffee.
“Hi. So, what’s up?”
“Guess what I achieved today,” he says filling the pot.
“You discovered your sexuality?”
“No.”
“You won a marathon.”
He snorts a laugh, “I cannot run a block, no.”
“You electrocuted your ex.”
“Yes but that’s beside the point,” he hands me a mug of coffee.
“You electrocuted your ex?!” I say, kinda alarmed now.
“Only a little. Anyway. I may have found you a patron.”
“A patron?”
“You know, a rich person who will buy your art.”
“I know what a fucking patron is.”
“Then why did you fucking make it a question.”
“It was a more of a “who” not “what”. So, who?”
“Mrs Iero. I was installing a fucking chandelier in this massive fucking mansion apartment up the top of this building. So she’s definitely rich. She had art in the other rooms, proper expensive looking ugly pieces. And then in the chandelier room there was a long blank wall so I told her it could do with some art. She said, “Yes I am aware”” he puts on a posh accent before sipping his coffee. “So then I said that my brother happened to be an undiscovered talented artist who would be worth millions in the future.”
I laugh into my cup at this. “I can barely afford rent as an artist. And I get most of my money from the bar!”
“Yea so now is your chance to be discovered by some lawyer woman.” He sips his coffee. “I showed her the pictures I had on my phone and she seemed interested enough to ask if you could come over and talk to her about art and stuff tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“Yea.”
We drink our coffee then before speaking again, “So want me to drop you over there tomorrow at like twelve, after they’ve been to mass. They seem to be Catholics so just don’t be a fucking asshole.”
“Better not bring those as samples then,” I laugh gesturing to the painting of a stripper enticing a devil and the one I did of the graveyard.
“Yea maybe not,” he laughs back.

Notes

HI! So this chapter is pretty short because it's kind of a pilot to see if there's any interest. I'll definitely post another one or two chapters and see how it goes. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!