Early Sunsets over Monroeville

The canvases take up most of my main room. I have to walk in large squares to get from my easel to the kitchen. I end up cutting down on my daily intake of coffee just because I’m too lazy to walk all the way to the pot.
Not only have I had to buy special canvases for this commission but I had to get a special easel too. The two I have couldn’t accommodate this big a work. Trick of the trade: befriend the canvas guy.
Ray Toro is my big haired, local framer and canvas dude. He supplies me with all my painting materials but we also went to school together and just stayed friends. When I told him about the commission he was so excited for me he said I didn’t have to pay for the canvases until I got paid in general.
“Oh, you’re going to need a new easel aren’t you?! I’ll get you the number of this guy in the south, he’ll give you one cheap,” he grinned this at me over his mug.
“Great! Thanks!” I’d smiled.
“Will you be able to afford it? Do you want a loan? Just until you get paid because Tom will do it cheap but not that cheap.” Ray is all sunshine and helpfulness I feel like the shitty one in this friendship. I mean, he gives all the time where as I can give him nothing except weird ass drawings and comic prototypes. But still I took the loan because fuck it I need that easel.

Mikey comes over one week into the painting. I’ve only got the beginning of the red sunset painted and the lilac base of the dawn. This could be actually fucking pretty, something I’m not used to doing.
“I think I know a saying about red sunsets,” Mikey says from my couch. He’s flicking through a Women’s Weekly magazine he got from their offices across the river. He was there earlier today fixing a fuse their printers blew.
“Oh yea?” I say through my cigarette. I’m lying half out the window so as not to smoke damage the painting. “What is it?”
“Uh. Red sky at night, shepherds delight. That rhymes so that’s probably it. Look at this,” he holds up the magazine, “it says “has this girl got a bun in the oven?” She doesn’t even look a little bit pregnant. What the fuck is wrong with people, maybe she just isn’t finished running off that grape she had at Christmas.”
“Maybe,” I say, flicking the butt out the window, “Or maybe she is carrying alien babies that are going to eat the staff of Women’s Weekly when they’re born to avenge their vessel.”
“Maybe you’ve watched alien too much.”
“No such thing, brother. Now shut the fuck up I need to paint this café.” I dip the paint brush into the pre-mixed colour. All I have on this scene is the dramatic red sky with proper gold sun and dark auburn clouds. It looks fucking unrealistic but if you live in a gold trimmed mansion on top of the world what do you really care for realism

It takes me three weeks just to do the first part of the commission. The Early Sunset over Monroeville includes anonymous figures, old shops (looking a lot more polished because I know that’s what Katelyn Iero would prefer) and a dramatic skyline broken up by trees and buildings. If I can boast, even if I can’t I will, it’s pretty fucking good. My best to be honest.
That’s why after I send photos of the finished piece to Katelyn Iero I begin work on the dawn. I’m hoping the next piece to be even better.
It takes me an embarrassingly long time to mix the right shade of violet to compliment the flat lilac of the already painted sky. When I finally do I’m so sick of it that I just dash it on unevenly in the general shape of clouds. It literally looks like a storm is brewing. Maybe a purple dawn means Shepherd’s get the fuck out. It doesn’t rhyme so that’s probably not it.

The thing about late March is that you assume the weather will be nicer but it isn’t. I slip in puddles of icy water as Mikey and I try and walk the paintings out of my cramped apartment and into the van he borrowed from work to get it framed. I slip on the bottom step landing on my ass and the half of the painting I was carrying comes crashing into my stomach, barely missing my balls.
“Ow fuck!” I cry. Suddenly the weight is lifted off me. The angel seems to be wearing all black, just like me.
“Are you okay?” my saviour says, a dark knight against the bright grey of the clouds.
“Yea, ow, shit fuck, yea,” I mumble as I pull myself from the ground. The guy now holding my half of the paining is a regular of the bar, Dan. “Here I can take it now, thanks though,” I say picking up the bottom of the canvas.
“It’s cool, do you mind if I, uh, see?” the British accent just seems so off in the middle of Jersey.
“Uh yea, here,” I say and Dan runs around behind me to have a look. He gasps and says “fucking hell,” in a little gasp.
“Dan’s your biggest fan,” another British voice says, this one belonging to Phil.
“He’d also happen to be my only fan then,” I laugh. “I’m sorry but I’ve got to get these to the framers before noon, I’ll see you tomorrow if you’re in the bar?”
“Yup, yes,” Dan says smiling before him and Phil walk awkwardly into the bar. I can’t believe I have a fan that’s not my grandmother.
We get the other painting in and drive slowly to Ray’s. “All I’m saying is if you got that lime green frame you’d seriously fuck up their system,” Mikey says as we carry the Late Dawn into the shop.
“But then I wouldn’t get paid, bro. And if I don’t get paid how am I going to afford all that vodka we’re planning on,” I say very seriously. A woman turns around in shock and lays a protective hand on her kids’ shoulders. Looks like the type of mom who would drive a Chrysler minivan and complain to the manager of a restaurant if she saw a gay couple. They were looking at anniversary silver photo frames but their attention now lies on the fat gay artist entering the room.
“Hi Gerard!” Ray says from behind the frame covered front desk. “Put that on in the back room you know where.”
I can all but hear the mother scowl as I shuffle into the framing room. When we come back in with the second painting she’s tapping a silver frame and asking if he has any in actual gold. In the safety of the closet Mikey and I burst out laughing, “In gold? What the fuck!”
“I don’t know exactly, but a frame that size would need a shit ton of actual gold.”
“Couldn’t she just get a kid to make a macaroni one?”
When we re-emerge the woman is gone and Ray is rubbing his brow. “She wants a pure gold frame…”
“Is she stupid?” I ask standing opposite him.
“I told her to go to a guild with that sort of order. Why couldn’t she just buy the silver like any other logical human being?”
“Some people are dumb.”
“Yup.”

I’m so nervous to deliver the paintings the next day. I’ve worked on them a while and now I get to hand them to this rich woman and yea… It’s terrifying really.
Mikey stands with me in the elevator, helping to hold to the dawn scene upright.
We shuffle it awkwardly onto the landing and I hold it while Mikey rings the doorbell.
“Gerard! Oh how exciting bring it in!” Katelyn gushes when I wave at her from behind the gold frame. I had to gold trim the painting for her.
“The other one is in the van in the car park,” I explain as we lean the painting against the wall. In my room this painting looked massive, but here it’s dwarfed by the endless gold trimmed cream.
“Yes, yes, go get it!” she smiles, clasping her hands in front of her chest like she’s about to burst into prayer out of delight…
“I think she likes it,” I whisper to Mikey in the elevator. He claps slowly.
We stand in the elevator with the sunset scene with a middle aged woman in a ball gown giving us weird looks. I have an unbelievable urge to give her weird looks back but that probably wouldn’t have been well received.
A hand juts in stopping the doors closing. Now bang free, I recognise the small guy as Frank. “Mrs Carter,” he says nodding to the overdressed woman.
“Frank.”
The rest of the elevator is awkwardly silent. Frank makes an “oh” noise when we get out at his level. “You’re the artist my wife hired, right?” he says.
“Yup… Yes.” Mikey and I awkwardly carry in the painting as he holds open his front door for us.
We line up the painting with the other one and Katelyn Iero all but passes out. “Oh, my. Oh Frank, darling look!”
“They’re really amazing,” Frank says walking up next to his wife.
“I’ll hang them up for you?” I offer. Katelyn nods, tears coming to her eyes. Mikey and I drill in the nails and lift the paintings on to them. The paintings set each other off beautifully and make the room look less of a creamy hell.
“Oh I love them,” Katelyn says again once they’re hung. “I have your money in here one sec, will cash do?”
My eyes light up, “Indeed it will!” Katelyn clacks off on her heels toward what I assume is the bedroom. Frank smiles at me and awkwardly rocks back on his heels. How is he a lawyer with a scorpion tattoo on his neck…?
Katelyn returns with massive piles of cash, banded into bundles of an unimaginable large amount of money. Oh god and it’s all mine. Oh. “I think we should invite the artist to the party Saturday, Katelyn. We are after all celebrating his paintings,” Frank smiles.
Katelyn’s eyes widen as if to tell Frank to shut the fuck up. “I suppose we should,” she says before pursing her lips. “We are having a cocktail party Saturday. You may come.”
“Okay cool,” I say. I think I will come and drink those cocktails that’ll probably cost more than my apartment.

Notes

Hello :3 here is another chapter :)) sorry, i need to get Frank in more xD don't fret he will be in like all the next chapter and yea... Thanks for reading! Let me know whatcha think and i'll try get the next chapter up quick :*