The Writer (4 page)

We stared at each other in
silence.

I guess that was part of
the problem, really. I did not feel like I had anything to say. I
knew how to write. I loved writing, but I had nothing to
say.

A deep sadness overwhelmed
me as I stared off into the distance. I watched the clouds gather
and detach themselves from each other and the night sky,
disappearing into nothingness.

Chapter 10

I looked outside my bleak
window. September was back, with all its colors and bills. Since I
had not made much money during the summer, I decided to cut back on
my courses: I would take less of them, and therefore be able to
afford to eat.

The person that had
sub-rented my apartment in July decided to stay on as a roommate.
Since we were both students, we decided to make do. He moved into
the only bedroom that the place had, and I moved onto the couch; it
was only fair since he paid most of the bills now.

I got a part-time job
again, but this time at the French Bistro where I spent most of my
time writing on napkins. It was also the easiest place to meet Joy:
Win-Win. During my evening shifts, she would come and grab a bite.
It was nice spending indirect time with her.

For her birthday, I saved
up my tips, cut back on my 2-minute noodle intake, and bought her a
few nice paintbrushes, the professional sorts. I hoped she would
like them.

I watched her unwrap her
gift slowly; saying the usual, “you shouldn’t have,” that etiquette
required. She beamed.

“Okay. Forget what I just
said! This is wonderful!” She got up, as though she had been
sitting on a very tight spring.

She ran into her Studio,
shuffling things around. All the noise eventually got me up. There
she sat, with paint buckets opened left and right, around
her.

“What are you doing?” I
asked.

“I’m trying out my
paintbrushes!”

It was my turn to laugh.
“Your party, I suppose. What are you going to make?”

“Art!” she
exclaimed.

I sat in her kitchen,
drinking cup after cup of coffee, watching her in silence, as she
produced furious amounts of canvases.

In the early hours of the
night, she finally sat down, satisfied, a glass of red in one hand,
and a paintbrush in another.

“Wonderful,” is all she
said, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. She took a long
swallow, and offered me a glass.

“No thanks. I like to keep
all my senses intact.” I explained.

“I know,” she said, “the
moment you let go of your need to Control everything, you’ll make
Great things.”

I sighed. “Not wanting to
drink doesn’t make me a Control Freak,” I said.

She opened her eyes, a
serious look crossing her face. “No, it doesn’t always, but in your
case it’s a recurrent theme.”

I went to the counter, and
got plates out. Took the cake out of the fridge and sat it in front
of her.

“Happy Birthday, Joy,” I
smiled quietly.

She smiled
back.

She got up, went through a
couple of drawers before she found what she was looking for. She
stuck in a candle and lit it.

“Happy birthday to me,”
she sang. Joy closed her eyes and made a wish, blowing the candle
out. “20 years…” she said.

I cut the cake and gave
her a slice.

“I feel sometimes like I’m
running out of time, you know?”

I sat plate in hand. “That
would explain why you’re living 100 miles an hour,” I smiled, “what
did you wish for?”

She ate her cake
quietly.

“Fame? Fortune?” I
teased.

She winced. “Not exactly.
I dream about very boring things. You’d be surprised.”

“Boring? Unless you find
the life of the rich and famous boring, I very much doubt
it.”

“I guess I didn’t use the
right word, not boring, but simple.”

“Like what?”

“I dream of a small house
by the water, with a white picket fence, in the middle of nowhere;
a big balcony where I could paint, breathing in the clear fresh
scent of nature.”

“That sounds
nice.”

“My parents decided to cut
me off for my birthday, so I’ll probably have to move out of here
next month.”

“What
happened?”

“They’ve decided I’ve
wasted enough of their money and my time. They felt that going to
New Zealand last summer, while they continued to pay for the
apartment was excessive. Now that I’m 20, they’ve decided that it’s
time I take financial charge of my life. Live in the Real world.
They think it’ll have a calming effect on me, paying bills and
whatnots.”

“I’m really sorry to hear
that. What about University, are they still going to pay for your
courses?”

“No, apparently
not…”

“What are you going to
do?”

“I have no
idea.”

“Happy
Birthday…”

“Yeah, Happy
Birthday…”

Chapter 11

“That’s the last box,” I
said.

“Great!” she exclaimed
from the kitchen.

I put it down and sat on
my bed. It was small, but it would do. Combining our financial
misery seemed to be the most logical thing to do.

It was almost a year, to
the day, since I first saw her coming out of the blizzard, and into
the bar. I could not believe how much things had changed in such a
limited amount of time.

Joy had decided to quit
University altogether, while I struggled to make us both live off
my school loan, which had now finally come through.

Living in Joy’s studio
forced her to rethink about where to store her numerous buckets and
canvases. At first, I felt quite guilty, as I saw each painting
leave the house, one by one.

I kept telling her we
should simply hang them on every single room of the house, but she
said Art pieces were like children, they needed a life of their
own, and learn to Survive in the World. She had given birth to
them, and now, she had to let them go.

The buckets, on the other
hand, ended up in the middle of the backyard, in the Common shed,
that everyone shared. Since Joy felt she did not have the inspiring
space she needed to paint inside the house, she plastic-wrapped the
entire back balcony: it was quite a sight.

She installed her easel on
the balcony, shoveled the left over snow out of the way, and
painted. Watching her in her boots, coat, tuque and gloves, with
bared fingers to better grip the paintbrush, was remarkable and
amusing all at the same time.

She spent hour after hour,
day and night, out on that balcony. She said she did not feel the
cold, the Fire of her Art keeping her warm.

I would not be able to
tell you how many colds she caught that winter, but when spring
finally made its way to Montreal, the plastic wrap came
down.

Every time I came home
from work or University, the number of people in the house always
shocked me. One day, as I turned the key, a huge dog barked at
me.

“I live here, dog.” I said
to the mutt. It remained unimpressed, barking some more.

“Listen,” I told it, “let
me in or else…”

The dog stared. I stared
back. “Ah well,” I told it, “that’s all I’ve got.”

The dog got out of the
way.

“Joy?” I started, “whose
dog is…”

I did not get to finish
that thought, as too many new ones jumped out of my head all at
once.

“What on earth is going
on?” I exclaimed.

Joy was standing in the
middle of the kitchen completely nude.

That in itself would not
have bothered me, except for the fact that three different
individuals seemed to also be staring at her.

“Why are you naked?”
seemed to be the first necessary question, and really all I could
come up with at this point.

“Sorry about the dog,”
said a girl, sitting on the right side of the kitchen, with what
appeared to be Joy’s easel.

“Why are you naked?” I
asked again, ignoring the dog sniffing at my socks.

“Well?” I
insisted.

They all laughed. Heat
rose to my face, and I started to sweat. Honestly, I could not
really make out anything outside Joy – standing on a box, about two
feet from the ground, holding a branch of lilac.

“Are you posing for them?”
I asked.

“No,” she said, “I’m just
standing here naked, holding these flowers, in front of these
people, just to irritate you. Is it working?”

Laughter exploded again,
but this time, I joined in. I still felt annoyed, and embarrassed,
as though I was standing there myself. The absurdity of the moment
held in it some humor, and so I laughed.

“My turn,” said a person
that had been standing in a corner of the room.

It was my cue to
leave.

Chapter 12

“I can’t believe you did
that…” I said, once all our interesting visitors had
left.

“Did what?” she answered,
opening the balcony door to let in some air.

“Get naked like that in
front of a bunch of strangers…”

“You sound annoyed.” She
said.

“No, I just think it’s a
little odd… that you’d want to do that.”

“There’s nothing odd about
being a model for artists. The body is a natural thing.”

“Do you have any more
clichés to share with me or can we have a real conversation here?”
I asked.

“There’s no reason to be
jealous.”

“Now, you’re just being
ridiculous.”

She laughed and
snorted.

“If you say so…,” she
said.

“I just wonder if there
wouldn’t be something more productive for you to do, than stand
around naked all day.”

She shook her head, and
exhaled loudly.

“I pay pretty much all the
bills, juggle work and school, while you have hounds marking their
territory all over the place here.”

“It was just one dog,
Ben…”

“I’m talking about the
so-called artists.”

She grinned. The amusement
she took out of my repartees made it hard to get a good fight out
of her, but not impossible.

“When are you going to get
over this whole Artist thing, and just get a job? Go back to
school! Do something…”

“Okay, now you sound just
like my parents” she had finally stopped laughing.

“Maybe they’re right…
Maybe you need to take life a little more seriously! Maybe you need
to take responsibility seriously… You can’t just spend your whole
life posing naked for a bunch of strangers!”

“If you want us to
actually be together, why don’t you just do something about
it?”

I stared at her in
disbelief.

“This has nothing to do
with my feelings for you… This has everything to do with common
sense! Who goes around showing themselves off in the middle of the
day, while their boyfriend’s out at work?”

“Are you asking me to be
your girlfriend?” she asked.

“Maybe” I managed to say,
heat creeping up my face.

She laughed.

“Well…?” I pressed
on.

“We’ve been dating for
over a year and we’re living together. Why do you think I put up
with you, Ben? I love you too.”

She leaned in, and kissed
me softly for the very first time.

Chapter 13

Joy smiled. Her eyes
sparkled in the sunlight. She was happy to get part of her studio
back, now that I moved into her room. My desk and her easel
cohabitated peacefully in the small space, ready for what awaited
them: innumerable sleepless nights.

Since I had opened up
about my feelings towards her, in my very awkward way, Joy had
ceased to prance around the house naked – well, not in front of
strangers anyway. This, to me, was a big improvement.

Summer had arrived again,
and I was off. At this rate, I would graduate University by the age
of 30. I kept my thoughts positive, realizing that I was
nonetheless moving forward, and not collecting too many debts along
the way as I did so.

Surprisingly, Joy was also
now bringing some money in. Her parents had shown remorse for her
quitting school and decided to finance her education again – though
not her living arrangements.

At 20, they decided, she
needed to learn from her mistakes, build on them, to find her own
life’s direction. They feared that if she kept avoiding
responsibility, whether bills or schooling, she would never amount
to anything. After meeting me, they felt that I was a good
influence on their daughter, and seemed to appreciate me, which was
a lot more than what my parents could say about her.

Mom and dad still held the
belief that since she had entered my life I had changed for the
worse: my hair appeared longer, and I had a funny smell to
me.