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7
E L L A
The Big Blank was still a huge white rectangle.
I ate noodles from the Vietnamese place around the corner and stared at
it, willing a message worth the four hundred dollars in materials onto the
primer.
With Geode House done and the next project still unknown, I had time
to do my own work. This was the moment to produce something important,
something with my name on it. It was time to stop making silly little
paintings on slabs of wood I found in the garbage.
The couch smelled like Logan.
Anise, musk, and wealth.
The canvas was empty because I was. All those nights breaking into the
property, gluing tiny stones, rushing toward a big day that I hadn’t been
prepared to be such a success—it all left a hole in me. I’d thought it would
feel great, but it was awful. The work wasn’t mine anymore. I had nothing.
No one and nothing. The day would come when all those hours would be
forgotten and Geode House would fall into obscurity.
My small paintings were shit. Derivative. Boring. Message-free. I
hadn’t found a vocabulary or a technique in the hundreds I’d produced, and
I figured maybe it was the scale. Small gauge for small ideas.
Risk was inside that big canvas, and only that canvas was big enough to
fill the hole the Geode House had left.
I got to the bottom of the container, with a few curlicue beige noodles
and a half-Rorschach of brown sauce.
My water glass still smelled of mint and my tongue remembered his
kiss.