the same time each weekend I take the reserved plaques off a particular set of paintings. they’re for Em, a regular who comes to my booth each week. I don’t know her real name but I call her that because of the humming noise she makes while she observes.
I know she’ll never buy them. but that’s why I make sure nobody else does.
she used to talk with me when she first came here, over four years ago. now she just smiles as she enters, takes the metal folding chair from behind the bookshelf, and sets it in her usual spot. she arranges the paintings so she can leaf through them one by one. and then she starts emming.
when the pollen of my little lot catches the curios, when expression stretches its petals, it too starts to hum. that’s when the raccoons and the fleas and the opossums begin to talk, when the albums pull out their own metal chair to dance and brood and bicker. it’s when the paintings Em studies start to refract and fold in the light—when she becomes the painted object observing the painter.
and in my portal booth, it’s where she can talk with Frank. where she becomes JYM, the model who sat cooking in frank’s observation for four decades. where the portrait becomes their aging interaction, where she turns into the streetlights, the staircases. where her poster skin curls and peels, cooking in the heat of his study.
when she eventually leaves, I walk back over to hang the reserved plaques back on. and I can always smell fresh paint.
