“No, that is the great fallacy—the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
I lay still so his words could reverberate through the room. His eloquence needed all the space it could get.
“That’s deep, deep shit, darling,” I mumble from under the covers. Only my feet are visible.
“No, it’s Hemingway.”
I sit bolt upright. “You cheat.”
“All artists steal,” he says matter-of-factly, wrapping a towel around his waist. “It’s a cycle of ideas, revised slightly at every turn, until Point A and Point Z are two completely different things.”
“Well, that’s not fair, because then nothing would be original.”
For a few moments, the room is unnervingly silent, except for the riprap of his toothbrush.
He spits.
“Nothing ever is.”
*****
For dinner, we have a mouthwatering feast of stale bread, black coffee, and three cubes of cheese. “So what’s the plan?” I ask, stretching my shirt over my knees. “We’re pushing our luck just staying here two nights.”
“My aunt would have showed up by now,” he replies distractedly. “Don’t know what’s taking her so long.” He picks up a piece of cheese, pulls up my chin with his thumb, and feeds me.
“Either that’s good cheese gone bad, or cheese that’s so bad, it’s actually good.”
He laughs, and I’m glad, because his eyes turn up so perfectly whenever he does.
“We’ve been cooped up for days,” I continue. “Not that I mind. But don’t you think it’s time we looked for a new hiding place?”
“No, yeah.” I’m puzzled by his response. “First thing tomorrow morning. I know a guy.”
In the afternoons, he is gone, working double shifts at the soup kitchen to support our meager lifestyle—starving artists in every sense of the word. Today I feel like painting a mural, so I spread out a loose canvas, almost covering the entirety of the floor. I line up my paint. It’s then that the mice begin to crawl out. When I’m not in the mood to talk to myself, their little squeaks alleviate the silence.
Most of the time, I hardly ever do the work.
There are, roughly, twenty of them today. Twenty little mice scurry over the canvas, submerging themselves in can after can of acrylic paint. Rolling horsehair brushes back and forth so the color drips off of them. Transforming their footprints into endless lines, curves, and shadows. At first, all I can see is a swarm, their gray bodies convulsing in a clump over the canvas, until they break away, revealing a work of art unlike anything I have ever seen.
He doesn’t know. That since I was born, they have followed me silently, taking their place at my bedside. That on that fateful day we met at the gallery, the work I hung up was theirs, not mine. And that my abstract paintings, critically acclaimed by independent artists the city over, are really just a jumble of tail swings and head smudges by an incubi of viral plague.
He doesn’t know, and I don’t have the courage to tell him.