Panic Attack

On Wednesday night something happened that nearly ruined everything. Joh

Joh

“Sorry,” he said, “you got the wrong guy.”

He turned back toward Marissa, rolling his eyes slightly, but he had a feeling the woman wouldn’t let it go. She didn’t, saying, “Like hell you don’t, you son of a bitch. Where’s my fuckin’ money?”

He looked at her again and said, “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Actually, she was starting to look familiar, but he couldn’t place her face yet.

As he started to turn away again, she grabbed his arm and said, “You took two hundred fucking dollars from my pocketbook and, oh, yeah, some jewelry, too, but it wasn’t worth shit.”

Now he remembered. A couple of months ago he’d picked her up at a bar, Max Fish on Ludlow, not far from where they were now, and he’d stolen some cash and some jewelry that had turned out to be gold plated; waste of his goddamn time. He usually didn’t like to return to neighborhoods where he’d scored for at least six months for this very reason.

“I’m telling you, you have the wrong guy,” he said, shaking his arm loose. He noticed that Marissa was starting to look a little worried, but he couldn’t tell if it was because he was being hassled or because she was starting to believe the woman’s story.

“Give me my money back or I’m calling the fuckin’ cops,” the woman said, flipping her cell phone open.

“You’re out of your mind,” Joh

The woman followed them, shouting, “I want my money back, Frederick!”

A bouncer came over and asked what was going on. Joh

Joh

Joh

The next day, Thursday, Joh

He’d been working hard to try to make his studio apartment look like a place where an artist would live. He’d picked up some more paintings from thrift shops and, a couple of days ago, had bought four paintings of bowls of fruit from some guy on Craigslist who lived about ten blocks away. He’d done a few more of his own paintings, too, in the Jackson Pollock style, and he thought they were at least as good as that shit in the Met.

On the way over to his place he gave her some BS about how “nervous” he was about her seeing “his work.” She told him how silly he was acting and said she was sure his paintings were amazing.

In the apartment, he watched her reaction closely as she looked around. He could tell she was seriously impressed.

“Wow,” she said. “You really have a lot of range, don’t you?”

“Thanks,” he said.

“You use oils and acrylics, huh?”

He had no idea what he was talking about, but he said, “Yeah, I like to do a lot of everything. I mean, I don’t like to limit myself. I want to blow the whole thing wide open.”

Wasn’t that the line in Pollock? Eh, something like that.

Admiring the paintings he’d bought on Craigslist, Marissa said, “Do you do your portraits from real life or photographs?”

“Real life,” he said.

“Wow,” she said. “Impressive.”

She turned toward the wall where he’d hung up a couple of his own paintings and said, “So you’re into modern and abstract, too, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You see the Pollock influence, right?”

Influence. He was on a roll, all right.

“They’re very Pollockesque,” she said. “You and Pollock have a very similar controlled freedom in your styles. I love the use of gray- very Jasper Johns. I also see the homage to Picasso in your use of blue.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going for,” he said. “Johns and Picasso. Yeah, I’m so glad you noticed that.”

She continued to admire the paintings while he was thinking about how this whole art gig was so perfect for him. It was all about bullshitting, and nobody could bullshit better than Joh

When the love fest for his artwork ended, he cracked open a couple of Heinekens and sat with her on the couch.

A few minutes later, she was snuggled close, wrapping her leg over his legs, saying, “I’d love to watch you work sometime.”

“That would be great,” he said, “but nobody’s ever watched me before. I might get nervous, you know?”

“You don’t have to get nervous around me,” she said, and she put her beer on the coffee table. She kissed him, rubbing his chest with one hand, then said, “Maybe I can… help you.”

“What kind of help do you have in mind?” he asked, playing along.

“Maybe some of this,” she said, kissing his lips. “Or this.” She kissed his neck. After a while, she moved one hand over his crotch, then unsnapped his jeans and started to reach inside.

Naturally he was ready for her, but he shifted back a little and said, “I think we should wait.”

“Wait for what?” she gasped, wanting him so badly.

“Until we get to know each other better.” It was so hard to deliver these lines with a straight face. “I mean, we’ve only known each other for less than a week.”