Living in Triple X

"Oh shit! Vernon!" She thought. She looked at the time on her computer, it was now 7:00pm. She had spent her time fiddling with her fashions and completely lost track of it. She took her BlackBerry and walked into the breezeway of the library. She took the matchbook from her bag and just as she was about to dial the number her BlackBerry began to vibrate. She answered it. "Hello."

"Hello. Is Holly there?"

"This is Holly."

"This is Vernon. From the cafe."

"Yes, I remember you Vernon. I'm glad you called. What's going on?"

"Well I thought that I would try to keep that date with you. Are you busy tonight?"

"No. What did you have in mind?"

"Well I know this place uptown, it's called The Transcendental Dive. It's in the basement of an old theater. I was wondering if you could meet me there and we could have dinner?"

"It sounds great. How do I get there?"

"Do you have a ride?"

"I can take a taxi."

"You should be able to give the cab driver the name of the place and he can take you there. Do you have a pen and paper? I can give you instructions."

She dug in her bag and removed a small pad and a pen and then took down the instructions. "If he can't find it, I'll just have him call you."

"Great! Just give your name to the person at the door and they'll bring you to my table. I'll be waiting."

"See you there bye."

"Bye."

Holly put her things in her bag and went to her table in the library. She turned off her computer and put it in its shoulder bag and then went back out to the breezeway and called a cab.

================================

Holly's cab pulled up in front of a large building. She looked out and could see a patio cover with the name of the club scrawled on the side. Beneath the cover were gold posts with red velvet ropes sagging between them. There were some people outside standing in several groups talking and milling about, apparently waiting to get in. She gave the cab driver his fair and thanked him. She stepped out of the cab and walked up to one of the two doormen guarding some stairs that descended into the sidewalk. "Pardon me miss, but you'll have to wait outside. The club is full right now."

"Vernon told me to tell you my name is Holly Chaffee."

"Miss Chaffee," the man said straightening up. "Please. Follow me."

The two of them went down the stairs and through a set of double doors into a dimly lit reception room. The carpet was red and there was a black marble reception desk to the side of another pair of doors. Holly could hear music and voices all blending behind the doors. It sounded like there were many people here. The doorman said something in a woman's ear standing behind the desk. As he walked back to the stairs, he said, "You're looking very fine this evening Miss Chaffee. Please have a good time and let the staff know if you need anything."

"Thank you." She said smiling, but feeling bemused.

"Please follow me Miss Chaffee," said the woman now holding a door open for her. As they entered, Holly could see that the club was huge. There were large marble columns spread throughout the magnificent room keeping the theater above supported. People were everywhere, clustered at round tables with candles, drinking and standing here and there, lined up along the bar to her left. She could see that the majority of them were drunk, but they were not a rowdy crowd. Everybody seemed to be fairly in control except for the few who tottered about leaving or returning to their tables. The general mood was merry and all the people were either smiling and listening, trying to speak in the loud hall, or laughing loudly. As the woman escorted Holly through the festive modern-day pantheon she could hear a jazz band tearing it up at the other side. When the band came into view, she could see that they were in another section of the club. There were people dancing on a sunken floor and the horn section was wailing away as the drums beat, rattled, and rang out a dizzying rhythm that only seasoned jazz musicians could keep up with. The woman now had Holly by the hand and led her to the left and past a series of large round padded booths. When they reached the one at the end there was Vernon sitting by himself, his hair combed down. He was in a dinner jacket and Holly thought that he looked very handsome. She slid into the booth and thanked the woman who escorted her.

Holly began to shout, "Wow! This place is gorgeous!" She realized that she could hear herself and lowered her voice to its regular level. "I really like it." She had noticed walking in that the people here weren't dressed in modern fashions and she felt like she fit in.

"I thought you would," he said. "I don't come in here very often, but while I was thinking of you it popped into my mind. I chose this booth because you can see and hear everything. You can see the band and you can hear the music while still holding a conversation."

"It's lovely," she said holding her arms out with her fingers spread apart. "May I?"

He didn't know what she was asking but he said, "Sure."

She shoved her fingers into his hair and he could feel them on his scalp. She pushed her hands around on his head and then pulled them away. "Whooo! I love your hair. I really like it now, after you have washed it."

"Thanks," he said laughing. "Are you hungry? Would you like something to drink?"

"I could have something to eat."

Vernon scanned outside their booth and waved a woman over. When she arrived, Holly noticed that she was dressed as a cigarette girl. She had on a pink frilly outfit with a short wide skirt. She bent over their booth and said, "What can I do for you master Vernon?"

Vernon blushed. "Can you send a waitress over soon as you can?"

"I can do that." She stood up and gave Vernon a two fingered salute and walked away from the table.

"I see. You don't come here very often."

"Yeah. It's not like that."

"I was just kidding. What's on the menu?"

"What would you like? There's beef, seafood, Italian, French, Oriental, this place has it all. The Wine list is extensive and they can make every drink invented, including your own."

"I won't be drinking tonight. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. I was kind of hoping we could stop by my place for a nightcap if that's all right with you."

"That's great. Do you live near by?"

The waitress arrived and took their order."

When she left Vernon said that he lived close and then started asking the regular fair. Where Holly was from, where she lived, what she did for a living, and what kinds of things she liked. He thought that she seemed very elusive during their conversation, especially when he tried to find out where she lived. She said she was staying here on business and that was all she could say. She owned her own company and was very interested in the fashion and time periods of people's clothes, along with the music and the motif of the club itself. He told her that it was generally a late forties style jazz club and that they occasionally had events representing other eras such as the twenties and thirties. He said on rare occasions they would have a fifties night, but since that was the era of Rock and Roll it only happened on off nights and the crowd was completely different. She was very intelligent and answered his questions with uncommon knowledge and asked him a variety of questions that he wasn't used to. When she found out about his art, he tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. He talked about going to college and getting his Masters degree in Art. He said that he minored in literature, but just barely. When she quizzed him on literature he found he had either forgotten most of it or hadn't been paying attention to his professors.

The two of them had very different meals. He had Steak with green beans and red potatoes. She had baked salmon with pasta. He had never seen the dish that she ordered. When she offered him a piece, he took it. It was very good and he proposed to order it next time. They both ate slowly as they talked between bites. When they had finished eating, she scooted up next to him and took out her BlackBerry and showed him some of her fashions.

"These are beautiful, you make these yourself?"

"I design them, but I don't cut the material and sew them together. I contract other people to do that stuff. I started out making my own outfits and as I accumulated information and contacts it was a long process for me to get from that point to where I am now."

He flipped through the photos on the tiny screen and was impressed. He wished that the screen were bigger. He looked at his watch. "It's getting late. Did you want to stop by my place or skip it. We can do something tomorrow if you like."

"No. I want to see where you live. Then I will have to go."

They both got up and started to walk out. Holly noticed that Vernon had not left any money on the table and had not even bothered to wait for the check. They walked through the club arm in arm and when they were outside he asked how she arrived. She told him by cab. "Aaaah," he exclaimed and then told her to wait with the doorman while he went in and called a cab to take them to his place. He came back out soon and when the cab arrived she climbed in first and scooted to the middle so she could be near him. He had gone back in she thought. Surely he must have paid or there would have been a scene.

To Holly's surprise the cab took them to the industrial park where her motel was. The cap stopped in front of a large three story building that looked vacant except for the light on over the front steps and the light coming through the barred windows in the front doors. The two of them stepped out of the cab. Vernon ducked his head back into the car and asked the cabbie something. Then he waved the cab off and took Holly's arm and they ascended the concrete steps and went through two large doors into a foyer where there was a wrought iron gate blocking the elevator. Vernon had a key for the gate, opened it and pushed it aside. The two stepped into the elevator and Vernon pressed the button to the third floor.

"What? No elevator man?" Holly quipped.

"No, no. It's just me out here."

"This place looks old enough. Are you renovating it? Is this elevator safe?"

"It's an old building, but it's in good shape. It's been inspected."

The elevator stopped and Vernon slid another wrought iron gate to the side. The two of them stepped into a gloomy hallway and walked to a door at the end of a hall. Vernon unlocked it with another key and pushed it open. Holly was expecting a creek, but it opened quietly and a dim glow came from the room. The two of them walked in. Vernon closed the door behind them. There were a few torchiere lamps in the far corners of the immense room. Light refracted from the corners into the dim expanse.

From what Holly could see it appeared Vernon had the entire top floor to himself. There were dark shapes, easels with canvases lined along the walls. In the center of the room there appeared to be a sectional sofa with a coffee table. "Are there any more lights in here?"

"Yes," said Vernon, not too sure of himself.

Holly heard him walk across a wood floor into a dark area and then a row of lights came on over a bar with a kitchen behind it. The kitchen area was to the right of the living area. Seeing more clearly now, Holly could make out the overstuffed sectional and recliner with square black coffee table in front of a giant TV. The coffee table appeared to be glass. There was a load bearing wall behind the television, it divided the center of the room.

"Have a seat," said Vernon, and waved his hands at the stools in front of the bar. Holly walked over and sat down. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Do you have hot cocoa?"

"Sure, but it's the water kind."

"That's fine."

Vernon made two cups and placed one in front of Holly. "So this is where you work?"

"Yep. I work and live here. It's my vaulted island in the midst of suburbia."

Holly sipped her cocoa and looked around. "Can I see your paintings?"

Vernon sipped his. He was buying himself time to come up with a smart remark for not showing them to her, but his mind was a blank. If this woman was serious this was the only way he was going to find out, better now than to get involved and have her run out later. He walked back over by the door and flicked a switch. The entire floor lit up.

Holly looked around. It was overwhelming, so many paintings, cans, squeezed up tubes, pallets, brushes, covers on the floor covered with splotches of paint, a seemingly endless variety of distractions that drew her eyes from one place to another. She wondered where to start. She stood up and walked across the huge room, her heels echoing on the hard wood. She stopped in front of a painting and began looking at it. The painting was five feet high and three feet across with a black background. What struck her were the colors and the subject matter. It was morbid, but drew her interest in a way that raised her curiosity like nothing she had ever seen. She could see the light change in the painting when Vernon stood behind her. "What happened to her?" She said.

"She was beaten up by her pimp. I found her in the park crying on a bench and took her to the hospital. They did a rape kit on her and the police took her in for questioning. I gave her my card and said that I would pay her to pose for me. She couldn't believe I asked her to pose for a painting all beat up. I told her to show up the next day and I would pay her enough to rent a place for a month. I didn't ask her to pose nude, but after I got started and she seen I was serious, she didn't have any problem with it. She said that the pictures they took at the hospital made her more uncomfortable than doing this."

"She's beautiful."

"I thought so too."

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know. I painted it six months ago."

Holly walked to the next one and looked at it for long time. "What happened to this woman?"

"I don't know. I just saw her in an alley, back against a dumpster with an empty bottle in her hand. You can only see the side of her face looking away. She wasn't that pretty when I saw her. I had to paint from memory. I left the sores off of her face and just made it a little dirty."

"Your colors are so dark. How do you get so much variety out of a few dark colors?"

"It took me a long time. When you get bright light on them they look darker. I think I spend more time mixing the colors sometimes than I do actually putting brush to canvas."

Holly turned around and could see two large paintings on the wall behind her. They were bigger than all the rest. They looked greater than ten feet square. She walked across the entire floor and looked up at them. She had a large smile on her face. She looked at Vernon. I can see why you might be reluctant to show these to people. You weren't involved in these orgies were you?"

"No, no, I couldn't do that. There's a Goth club and an S&M club that let me stand in and paint their get-togethers. They have a lot of fun, but sometimes I get a little creeped out. I usually have a few drinks while I'm doing these. It's much more difficult for me to mix the colors in low light and get something life like in the short amount of time that I am there. These are a real challenge. They are my big sellers. These two are on hold right now until the buyers find a place to put them. I don't know where these people hang these pictures. I'm sure it's someplace their parents don't go."

"You're sure?"

"I think so. I like to think there's a little good in everybody."

Holly turned to her right and walked until she could see something that looked out of place. "Who painted this?"

"I did. It's for my father."

"What a beautiful woman on the swing and a handsome man behind her. Are they your parents?"

"Yeah. That was when I was young and they were still in love. I usually do something like this once a month for my dad. His friends and clients buy them. I don't pay any attention to where they go."

"Why do you like such dark subjects?"

"I think there is beauty in the things that I see. I like painting people who have nothing to hide. I find it strange how people can live with these things going on around them and then behave like nothing is going on. It's like most people live in denial. They sit in their homes or their offices or the lunchroom at work or the sports bar with their friends and joke about all the things that happen that they're too afraid to face. They fit in. They have a steady income, they're comfortable and insulated from the random elements of the world. All the people who are outside of the comfort zone are somehow not human because they didn't follow the pattern. Something happened in their lives that left them out in the open without any reason to forgive or forget. Maybe they just give up and they don't know how to handle beauty. I find them and paint them before it is all gone. I think that there is more truth in the majority of paintings that I create than there is in the lies most people live." Vernon put his hand out and touched his mother. He ran his finger lightly along the paint and felt the texture.

Behind him, he could hear Holly pass. She stood in front of a large bulletin board looking at various sketches in primitive styles. Some were in crayon and others were with pencil or what looked like tempera paints applied with brushes or fingers. She started giggling. Vernon walked beside her and looked where she was directing her gaze. "Oh yes," he said. "That was done by one of my more observant students." He had a smile on his face. The picture was in crayon. It was a giraffe with two huge teats hanging to the ground. Printed beneath it in jagged green letters was "Momy Jraff."

"Your students," she said smiling at him.

"Yes, I help out at the learning disabilities center. Children with downs syndrome and other problems. I go there every two weeks and teach art. I had to get permission from this young lady to take this picture. I wanted to get it out before it was lost by some discriminant member of the staff. Here's another by a boy." The picture had three male figures on it. One had a penis hanging down, the next was sticking straight out, and the other's penis was standing up. "This kid didn't know what was going on with his self, but was quite interested in what was happening. It took some professional supervision to help the kid out. I took the picture, again, to save it from the trash. The kid asked me how he could make it move, like in cartoons. When I asked him if he seen any cartoons like that he said no and asked me why. The brilliance in these children is their honesty. its incredible how as adults we learn to suppress so much and then when we're confronted with these things we have to struggle within ourselves to help the innocent understand."

Holly took Vernon's hand and led him back to the kitchen bar. She sat down and tasted her cocoa, it was cold. She licked the foam from her upper lip and set the cup down. "Can I call you tomorrow?"

"If you don't call me, I'll call you."

They laughed. Holly stood back up and took her purse. Vernon walked with her to the elevator. He went with her outside. He called a cab on his cell phone. "Yes," Holly overheard him talking. He asked for a certain numbered cab. "Yes, that's one. We'll be waiting."

When the cab pulled up to the curb, Holly recognized it. It was the one that dropped them off. "Don't worry about paying the driver," said Vernon. "It's all taken care of."

"Thank you," she said. She put her arms gently behind his back and the two of them kissed. She took his bottom lip between her own lips, a brief moment at first then longer a second time. When they pulled apart there was a comfortable silence as eyes met.