PAINT

Darkness of late night filled the studio casting shadows on finished paintings leaned against the wall and empty paint tubes scattered on the floor. Eric sat up in bed, watching Jane dress, “you don’t have to leave you know.” Jane turned, “New York tomorrow my dear, I have to get ready.” 

Eric continued to watch her dress, he never tired of the view. They first met three years ago. She a writer and him a painter. They lived in apartment buildings next to each other, would sometimes dine together, talk art, share a drink and always it seemed ending in embraces of lust. Still, neither seemed to have found the steps to the next level of relationship. Even the lust had faded, buffed by the years.

He didn’t know the why of this place they were at. Sometimes he admitted to himself envy over the degree of her success. How she wrote from her soul and being always grasping the latest in cultural ways. The magazines couldn’t get enough of her words. It wasn’t that he had not found success of his own, but it was different. The promise and potential of the city he once saw had turned into a river of commissions for commercial art, knock offs really. Ones that filled the high end restaurants and offices of the city, but not his soul. Everyone wanted the paint but not the brush strokes that were really him. So he moved from commission to commission, burying his passion further along the way.

Now he also found himself at a crossroads with Jane. Suddenly, just as she opened the door to leave he ask, “What do you really think of me Jane?” She turned giving his a long look and said, “I pray for you every night.” 

Before Eric could ask why, she was out the door and gone. Eric got up slipping on a pair of jeans. He walked to the window on the other side of the studio, hoping to catch one last glimpse of her. Hard rain filled the streets. It seemed like the sky and dimness of the wet city had become one. He had heard it said that on transatlantic cruises, sometimes mid ocean on dark nights you could not tell the sky from the sea. How you felt trapped not being able to get off the ship. 

Eric paused, he was not on a ship. The city still had streets, people and places to paint. He could change.