“Another thing I love about Avenue D: all barbecue all the time!” Serge inhaled deeply. “I love the smell of oil paint and babybacks in the morning.”
“Some of them are coming over.”
“Perfect.” Serge lifted his canvas off the hood of the Javelin. “Just in time for our first sale.”
An older man with white hair approached on the sidewalk. “You guys painters?”
“Painting consumes my entire existence!” said Serge. “Ever since I discovered the Highwaymen.”
“Oh yeah,” said the old man. “I met Newton. Gibson, too. Both great guys. How do you know about them?”
“I studied under the Highwaymen.”
The old man’s brow furrowed. “You studied under the Highwaymen.”
“Yes, except it was years later and they didn’t know about it. I’m always making up stuff like that. It’s my life’s motto: If you’re not willing to invent cool-sounding bullshit about yourself, don’t expect others to. Are you with me? Do we have a communication?”
Others from the barbecue hut joined the old man, forming a semicircle around the Javelin. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure,” said the old man. “These guys say they’re some kind of painters.”
Serge winked at Coleman, then faced the onlookers. “See you all have a keen eye for art.” He turned his canvas toward them. “I call it Eddie’s Place, Redux. Who wants to make the first bid?”
“But it’s just a blob.”
Serge reached his arm around and tapped the middle of the canvas. “There’s a stick man.”
The old man pointed at Coleman’s canvas. “What’s that Y with a black triangle in the fork?”
“A twat.”
One mile away, Agent Mahoney was out of coffee. He looked at the front entrance. The museum’s ten o’clock opening had come and gone. How could his hunch about Serge have been wrong? He looked back down, turning pages of the book in his lap. Spanish moss, cypress swamp, hibiscus, rotted fishing pier, another hibiscus, a pastel green building. Mahoney slapped the book. Eddie’s Place! Of course!
Mahoney tossed a chewed toothpick out the window, and a Crown Vic with blackwall tires squealed out of the parking lot.
The agent raced a dozen blocks, past Miracle Ribs, Soul Fighters for Jesus, a youth outreach center with murals, the Fried Rice Hut, a combination bail bond-private eye office, and the Buffalo Soldier Caribbean Restaurant. It skidded to a stop in front of the Reno Motel. A stunned crowd stared at the street, which appeared to have been the site where two armies had waged a fierce paintball battle.
Agent Mahoney jumped out, flashing a badge and a photo. “Anyone seen this mug?”
“That crazy son of a gun?” said the old man. “He was just here. None of us will ever forget him.”
“How so?”
“We were laughing at his butt-ugly painting when he said it was just his warm-up exercise and that he was now going to paint the most fantastic piece of art anyone had ever seen. Then he got out a new canvas and went completely apeshit! We thought he was having a seizure.”
Mahoney pointed at the canvas in the old man’s hands. “Don’t tell me you actually bought a painting from him.”
“No, the other guy.” He turned his canvas around. “Excellent primitive erotica.”
“See which way they went?”
The old man pointed south. “Look for the guy driving with a canvas around his neck.”
www.sergeastorms.com
Serge’s Blog. Star date 937.473.
Today’s topic is traveling with Coleman. Just substitute that one friend we all have whose level of partying can create its own weather system. But Coleman and I have an understanding. I do my travel thing, and he does his. I’m on a fact-finding mission; he’s on the Booza-palooza Tour. But he never nags, no matter how many photos I take of historic markers. The perfect traveling companion. Not like Story, who’s put me on a two-picture limit, which I grudgingly accept because travel is the art of compromise. But then she demands that Coleman stop throwing up out the passenger window. Now she’s messing with a decade of tradition. Against that benchmark, Coleman’s a treat. Plus he’s value conscious. Once we had to fly somewhere and he checked half a pizza through in his luggage. The downside is motel room damage, which could quickly add up to thousands on the guy’s credit card we’re using.
Today’s Tip #1: Fixing Coleman’s damage. Last week I left him unsupervised, and when I returned, the mini bar was empty and he’d locked himself in the bathroom, screaming about pygmies. By the time I jimmied the door open, he was unconscious in the tub with the snapped-off towel rod across his chest. Solution: Wet squares of toilet paper and wrap them around the anchor-bolts of the ripped-out rod holder. Then, gently push the complete assembly back into the wall. And if you don’t breathe hard, it should stay put until after checkout, when the maid knocks it loose hanging new towels, and hopefully she’s undocumented and pushes it back in herself.
