About A Couple of Artists
Post 480:
Artistic Decline: A Novel
The Opening Chapter
Chapter One: The Angel and the Caveman
Ben Billings pulled back the Sunday Dallas Morning News with a snap. He was seated at the breakfast table and had a perfect line of sight to the front door. A quick look at the Rolex adorning his tanned wrist gave him added ammunition. Scattering inky pages to the floor, he stood and leaned forward. “You have some nerve, woman. Maybe you should just move in with the guy!”
“What time is it?” she asked, sliding down the thick mahogany door as it thumped shut. Her enormous handbag was close enough to enlist into pillow service. She buried her sunglass-covered face in the cavernous opening, dreaming of a way to burrow out a little corner space inside. It’s like a small city in here, she thought.
He was in the foyer now. “That’s all you have to say? It’s as if you don’t even care about my feelings. Don’t do this to me, Tabby.”
“Are you done?” she mumbled, rolling off the purse and onto the carpet, flat, limbs sprawled out.
“Ah,” he crooned. “You’re like a person that makes a snow angel. Wouldn’t that be something—if you were the sort of person with a heart that made snow angels?”
She answered with a middle finger from one of her wings. “Had enough fun, Benji? Are you wearing shorts? Hairy legs, man. So frigging hairy.”
Ben was looming, arms akimbo. She held out her other wing for him to help her up, but he remained in place. “Take it back.”
“What? The thing about your legs? Can’t. It’s like living with a caveman. The caveman. The super hairy one that scares all the other cavemen away. Because of all the hair.”
Her jabs were causing his shins to itch, but he fought the sensation, finally grabbing her outstretched hand. As he pulled her slender body vertical, her forehead came to rest on his shoulder. “Be gentle, Benji Bear.”
“Benji Bear,” he whispered into her tousled blonde hair. “That’s insulting on several levels. Me and dogs everywhere, shocked and aghast.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, drooling onto his favorite summer brunch shirt.
“Long one, huh?” he asked, thinking about changing shirts. “Did you—”
“It was a job. You don’t get to ask about the nuts and bolts.”
“Nuts and bolts? Seriously, Tabitha. You’re giving Benji Bear an upset stomach with these reckless descriptors. He may have to vomit.”
“Speaking of that,” she said, slinging the capacious handbag over her shoulder, leaving half the contents strewn on the floor. “I’ve got good news.”
He watched her struggle up the stairs in the previous night’s heels with a hand cupped over her mouth. “Vomit is good news?” he asked. “I guess under the right circumstances...”
She stopped at the landing, gathering enough of herself. “Golf club.”
“I know—we’re going to be late.” He tapped the face of his watch twice for added impact. “Their brunch is good enough to make me say brunch without a huge amount of ironic contempt.”
Tabitha tried to expand on her statement, but the feeling of impending sickness drove her to the half-bath near the top of the stairs.
Ben looked again at his shirt and hummed a song to drown out the sound of the retching. It sounded violent enough to initiate a bubble of concern in his soul parts. He brushed it aside. “Can’t get too caught up in your role, Tabby,” he whispered, strolling back to kitchen for another cup of coffee. By the sound of things, it was going to be a bit. “Can’t get too caught up,” he repeated, trying to remember who bequeathed that particular wisdom nugget.
Picking up the sports page to read about the latest travails of the Cowboys, he felt vibrating in his shorts from an incoming call. Reading the screen, he let out a tension-filled breath. “Hey, darling,” he whispered, looking up at the ceiling. “One second,” he said, pulling his head away from the phone to listen for Tabby. Awesome. Still puking. “What’s going on, Bryce?” Ben asked, walking hurriedly to the kitchen backdoor.
“Baby. I want you to come over so bad. The thought of you turns me on.”
Stepping out into the cool fall air, Ben went a little weak in his hairy knees. Bryce Creighton was in her mid-twenties and hot as hell. She was from old Texas money, finishing up her law degree at SMU just a few miles down the road. That way she’d have a CV good enough to justify decent placement in her family’s corporation. Serving a year as a corporate functionary would just about do “the trick.” She’d meet a smart man from their business or one of an equal caliber. The smart man would be attractive and dutiful. “One who walks the path.” He’d work out in the mornings and have tepid sex with her once a month after the first year of marriage. She’d of course quit her job as the kids came. Probably a boy and girl, with stupid names like Bristol or Bree or Birch or whatever bullshit was in fashion. This was the story of her life. She recited it almost line for line each time they met. Ben found it tedious and self-indulgent, but the girl was smart enough to know the life-traps and smart enough to know she was too cowardly to avoid them. Mostly, she was hot. Ben met her at a little concert in some pretentious bar on Greenville—a section of town for rich kids in their twenties and forty-five year old sad sacks with long graying beards.
“Sweetheart, I think I’m going to be a little tied up today. Really close to finishing the modifications to my boat.”
“My big strong adventurer. Does that mean the funding came in?”
“Adventurer,” he answered, applying just enough self-deprecation to sound charming to a landlocked future lawyer. “The funding—still trying to tie the last bit down.”
“You think it’d be easier.”
“Yeah,” he said, plopping down in a squishy deck chair, already tired of the ruse. The night they met he could tell by her jewelry and her clothes that she came from money, so he decided to go with a story about sailing solo around the world to raise cash and awareness for some disease or another. Win her heart. Win some cash from her trust fund.
Win.
“People just don’t care about Leishmaniasis like they used to.”
“I thought it was Crohn’s?”
“Of course it’s Crohn’s,” he said, eyes wide and palm tapping his head. “That was a test. You passed. Such a great listener.”
“So are—”
“Hey, they’re telling me I’ve got to go. Something about a gaff or a bilge. Talk later, babe.”
Ben ended the call during her goodbye and deleted it from his call history. No need, really. Just good practice.
“This damn thing sticks.” Tabby’s voice was muffled as she tried to push the backdoor open.
“Give it a good shoulder!”
She finally plunged out onto the patio of their smallish backyard. “Can’t you fix that?”
He fired off a look scornful enough not to be taken seriously. “Looking better already,” he said. She really did. Tabitha was nothing if not resilient. Most attractive women her age would’ve given themselves over to two or three marriages or two or three plastic surgeries. Not her. She still had her dreams.
“Thank you, Ben.”
“Got all the puke out?”
“Yeah. And now I don’t have to purge on purpose.”
“It’s a capital start to the day. Every time I think you’ve finally done yourself in, you shine back up like a new penny.”
“You’re too kind,” she added, throwing out a playful hand his way.
“Really. Like an easy to clean ashtray.”
“I’m going to let that last one go because I’m in a good mood.”
“Brunch?” Ben asked.
“No. I mean yes—but no. What I was saying earlier. The good news. I think we found the big one.”
“That guy from last night? You’ve been working on him for weeks. He’s got a few million liquid at best.”
“Not him. Someone he’s working with. Or for. Something like that.”
“You got a name?”
“Dina Santorelli.”
Ben took a sip of coffee, trying not to react. “The Dina Santorelli.”
“Yes, Benji. The one you’re thinking of.”
“She’s like in the top fifty richest people in the world.”
“Number thirty. And getting richer all the time.”
“It’s too dangerous. Even if this mope you’ve been stringing along has the premium information, the profile is huge. We’d be targets the rest of our lives.”
Tabitha looked at Ben as he sank into his lumpy seat. He was tapping the cell phone through the fabric of his shorts. “You talk to the college girl today?”
“No. Maybe.”
“You old sailor you.”
“At least my play is realistic.”
Tabby leaned forward and began speaking with her fists clenched up by her chin. “Yes, it could be dangerous. But our walkaway money isn’t going to come from some Lupus scam.”
“Leishmaniasis.”
“God. Just hearing you say that made me sad. Think about it. You write up the playbook. We put on an epic performance. We’ll be in the Mediterranean in a few months, living our dreams.”
She was putting on a good show, and her nothing ventured nothing gained point had merit. Still. “Pulling a job on someone like this—we could die.”
“What are doing here?” she said, looking around at the dormant grass and the untended bushes.
“Dying slowly.”
“See? Your wit is coming back already.”
Ben Billings was no stranger to moments like this. Someone coming at him, explaining how things were going to be better from now on. Dreams. Glory.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, watching him puzzle through.
“I’m thinking about step one. What is it?”
“The golf club.”
“Brunch?”
“No. The golf—just put on some pants. We’ll talk in the car.”
“Did you use Listerine? Because that was some serious yacking.”
“Get moving, Cro-Magnon.”
