[cont.]
The next day she received an email from the gallery:
To: Undisclosed Recipients
This is to inform you that due to changes in the gallery philosophy and programing the group exhibition at our gallery that you were planned to be included in will not be scheduled as perviously planned. The gallery will not longer feature any of your solo exhibits. Works remaining in our gallery should be picked up within 30 days or it will be discarded.
We wish you the best of success in all of your current and future endevors.
Who wrote this? she thought. When did he start using the royal “we” to describe himself? What a turd. Didn’t he even read it before sending it out? He thought he was too good to need to proof his material? Pathetic. And what a coward to drop her from the gallery with a group email and not to tell her personally. Where was her baseball bat when she needed it? Stop, take a deep breath. Don’t burn bridges, she told herself, don’t call and cuss him out. Calm down before retrieving the work he’s still got. Don’t endanger the work. Her favorite one of the series was still with him.
Lori sat down on the paint splattered chair which had originally been bright green and picked up the bottle of bourbon. The glass was at her feet.
“Fuck him,” she said to the paintings, which she thought were better than the last batch. “Fuck him,” and she drank straight from the bottle.
About a quarter of the way down the bottle, her phone rang. It was a silly melody and always made her smile. Hondo was calling.
“Hey Hondo. What’s up?”
“Have you checked your emails?”
“Yeah. Pink slip. Did he dump you too?”
“Uh huh.” He sounded completely wasted.
“Fuck him.”
“Yeah.”
When she woke up the next morning after spending the night partying with some other artists in the building, she felt abnormally awful, like she had been wrapped in gauze and partially cooked. Lori was not one to indulge in self pity for more than an evening. She stood in the shower with her mouth open, letting the hot water remove the sludge from around her teeth, emptying herself of anger and focusing on the next step.
The next step was to drive over to Melrose and have a chat with Odessa who had always expressed admiration for her work. Odessa’s gallery was in an odd location, away from the other gallery clusters, yet her openings were always packed and red dots indicating sales were always there.
Odessa came out of the back room to greet her with a big smile and a bigger hug and before she could say anything, Odessa told her, “I hear your old gallery is showing puppy paintings. Congratulations on escaping just in time.” Lori had decided against trashing Tut too much. No sense in doing that in front of another gallery owner. But she had to admit it was such fun to join Odessa in laughing at him, to hear her predict he’d be showing sentimental paintings of comfy little houses nestled in the moonlit snow by the end of the year.
As Lori made all the polite gestures to leave, Odessa stopped her and asked for a studio visit – “when you have a new body of work to show.” Lori left pleased. It might not end up in an offer for an exhibit, but she appreciated the kind words, the show of support. Odessa, after all, was known for her impeccable eye while Tut – well, that was past now, wasn’t it? No need to say anything more about him.
When she called Hondo from the gallery parking lot, he didn’t answer. He was always misplacing his phone. What the hell, she thought, she’d pop over to Venice Beach to cheer him up. It was the wrong day, the wrong time to “pop over.” Traffic was backed up on the 101 and then the 405 was nothing more than a parking lot, as usual. At least the surface streets will be passable, she hoped. Ninety-five minutes later as she turned off Lincoln down the little street where he lived, she saw an ambulance. Damn, she thought, he’s done it again. This time he really has to go into rehab.
……………………..
Return on Friday for the next chapters of Just Like Suicide.
