Drew Courtney

The Whole World Glows

Lighting in a gallery is very important. The impressionists said that they sought to paint not surfaces, but the light itself as it reflected off of solid objects. They wanted to capture in paint not mass but energy, glancing off water, stone, cathedrals; some absorbed, some reflected in the best tradition of high school physics textbooks around the world. And even artists who wanted to make the canvas into velvet and flesh were picky about their light. Caravaggio was an impressionist by no means whatsoever, but without light, his paintings would have been as heretical as his critics had accused.

Edgar Gloss knew this when he designed his gallery, and pestered the builders so incessantly with his demands for more and more natural light at every hour of the day (and at least the early hours of the night) that three architects left before the ground was even broken for the building. Eventually his father in law, who was then the less than silent partner in the affair, finally banned him from the phone, allowing only letters. These Edgar sent daily to the frustrated designers who tore them up without opening them or folded them into paper airplanes to send flying out the window into the brilliant sunlight their author loved so much.

It was in this manner that Edgar Gloss acquired a reputation about town as the worst man in the city to design for. It was also this behavior that pushed him to the top of Boston's art scene when the building was built and there emerged unanimous agreement that each and every demand he had made was dead-on perfect.

Mark Street Gallery, as it was urbanely dubbed, was Edgar's own personal triumph. Every detail was seen to. Every edge was sanded off. And every inch of the space was soaked in a glorious white light. The glass brick partitions in the back were luminous. Paintings seemed to glow when they were hung on the sugar white walls. The blond hardwood floor was waxed to a mirror like sheen, leading children to stumble around the room gazing at their own images and the more modest female employees of the gallery to refrain from wearing skirts cut much above the ankle.

In the first seven years, the gallery produced a steady stream of hits. Most every show turned some unknown painter from Cambridge or even Framingham into "the next big thing." Calls from Art Forum quickly changed from exciting to routine to vaguely bothersome. Edgar himself appeared on the pages more than once, always modest, attributing the success of Mark Street to talented help, a little luck, and the complete absence of harsh electric lighting. During the next three years, Edgar systematically redisplayed those few artists who had not, in his casual speech "been properly understood" their first time out. Of these, only one did not sell out his show in the first three days. He, instead, sold a screenplay, flew out to Hollywood, was nominated for an Oscar, and married a beautiful sitcom actress. All eyes were on those artists lucky enough to catch the eye of the great Edgar Gloss.

It was into this well scrubbed, well loved building, busting with many varieties of brilliance, that Jose Nobody stepped on a cloudy Thursday morning in June. The dimness of the day had not dampened anybody's mood. A photographer was due to mount his first show in a month's time and, as everyone knows, photographs turn out best when taken on overcast days.

Jose said nothing immediately. He carried a worn blue book bag, and wandered about, looking at paintings in no discernible order. Everyone assumed that he was a college student from some Boston area school, which he was not. Few people in the modern world still amble, and even fewer amble in a large city like Boston, but amble Jose did. Never pausing. He walked past paintings of all varieties, looking carefully, but never long enough to stop moving, winding around the floor.

Eventually, he stopped at a seller's desk near the back and, pausing long enough to attract her attention, inquired as to whether or not he might speak to Mr. Gloss.

"I'm sorry, he's busy today. May I ask what you'd like to speak to him about?" The woman's voice was crisp and polite. Professional, but not unkind.

"I'd rather speak to him," Jose responded.

"Well, maybe I could help you. He's really quite busy." The name plate on the desk identified her as Wendy Burke. She did not look like a Burke though. She wore thin glasses and her blond hair was cropped just below her ears. It swished past her neck when she moved quickly. "Are you looking for someone to look at your work? I can set up an appointment with someone."

"No. I'd like to speak to Mr. Gloss personally. If I can make an appointment with him, that would be fine."

"Well he's not in at the moment and . . ."

"Good morning, Wendy" said Edgar as he walked towards her desk. "Beautiful weather." In Jose's eyes appeared a hint of recognition. The rest of his face displayed nothing, but it was enough."

"Good morning, Edgar." she sighed. Jose was bad news and she could see it. "There's someone here to see you, but if you're too busy. . . ."

"Not at all," he cried "happy to have a visitor." He smiled at Jose. His teeth were very white.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," said Wendy bitterly. She looked at Jose and frowned.

"Jose," said Jose.

"Well, please, come right in," smiled Edgar. He pushed open the door to his office. "I'm sorry it's a mess."

The office was in no way a mess. As in the rest of the gallery, the floor gleamed. There was not much on the walls, nor on the tasteful filing cabinet along the left side. As for the mess, Edgar must have been referring to the half full waste paper basket and the handful of envelopes placed neatly in the middle of the desk. What the room was full of, full to bursting, was that same beautiful light that coursed through every bit of the gallery.

Three walls were constructed mostly of glass bricks. The fourth contained two large windows. Recessed bulbs in the ceiling glowed softly. A pitcher of water sent shards of light onto the desk, refracting across the blotter and shimmering softly whenever the liquid was bumped. Even Edgar himself was luminous. He was thin and tall. His clothes were well ironed and starched. His hair had grayed enviably from dirty blond in his youth to silver in his approaching age. His face was only just now showing wrinkles from the sun, and his pale skin was not yet tanned from long hours in the office. Success had kept Edgar Gloss's body young.

Upon inspecting Jose, Edgar suddenly found it surprising that he had not seemed more conspicuous in the gallery. True to his ethnic origins, Jose's hair was dark brown and his skin a richer shade of umber. His shirt was a worn and faded black, his jeans a dark blue. Guiltily, Edgar realized he might pass Jose on the street and never remember him for a second. He decided to attribute this to dress and not genetics.

"So how can I help you today, Jose?" he asked. "Could I offer you a glass of water?"

"No, thank you." The two sat across from each other. Edgar's desk was plain and square. In fact, it was an architect's desk with a frosted top; a gift from his father in law in commemoration of his old victory. There was a pause, while Edgar waited for a further response. He received none.

"Do you have something for me to look at?"

"I'd like a job," Jose said, rather flatly for such a request.

"Oh." This was not what Edgar had expected. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help you out in that department. We're all stocked up right now. There just aren't any openings. I'd be glad to give you the names of some other places though.

"I'd like to work here." Jose remained as before. As he spoke he showed almost no emotion at all. No pleading, no disappointment, no rudeness in the least. Edgar was startled by his directness, but more curious than perturbed. "I don't need any money." The way he spoke was so clear, so effortlessly uncomplicated that it was difficult to find fault with anything he said.

"We have internships, but they're all filled at the moment too." He thought and added, "If you'd like an application I'm sure we can find a space for you come January."

"I can pay." This surprised Edgar. "With paintings." This did not. He was embarrassed that he hadn't seen it sooner. Of course he wanted to work here. This kid was simply another art student looking to receive the Mark Street Gallery's bright seal of approval. He had to give to boy credit, he'd pulled the man pretty far along in his plan. Frankly, it had almost worked.

"You see," said Edgar, assured again, "we don't display the work of our employees. If you'd like I . . . "

"It's not for display. You can't display it," the boy spat out. For the first time since entering the building, Jose displayed real, readable emotion, and it was not what had Edgar expected at all. The young man seemed terrified by the prospect. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Edgar sat and watched stunned for a moment as Jose actually glanced at the doors and windows as if expecting a sudden raid of buyers, brandishing cash and credit cards as religious zealots might brandish knives and guns.

"I, I'm not sure I understand," said Edgar.

"Here." Jose reached under his chair and pulled out his pack. From it he removed a few small paintings, mistreated and bent, and tossed them on the desk. Edgar looked down to examine them.

Light is very important in an art gallery, and to Edgar Gloss it was important in art as well. Not light in the traditional sense, light sources and shadows and face light in portraits, but light none the less. It was sparks and glimmers that Edgar looked for in new work. For years now his taste had proved impeccable again and again. No one in the world, they said, could spot new talent like Edgar Gloss. In most new work there is no light at all. Edgar saw plenty of this. Usually a spark or glimmer was all he needed to see to invite a painter to show him more, talked to her until he was sure it was there. When he found work that glowed, he signed the artist up immediately. These were the artists who always made it big. They went on to successful careers and got pleasant reviews in The New Yorker. The brighter the light, the more success an artist could expect.

The work that Jose Nobody dumped on his desk was radiant. It was full of form that Edgar did not understand, knowledge that men three times this boy's age couldn't hope to posses. But it was the color that made it magical. Saturated and bright without being gaudy, vibrant and full without being overused. Color as Edgar had never seen it before, shades his eyes had never met.

He would have offered Jose Nobody, (as he later introduced himself) anything. Jobs, property, money, a one man show, his daughter's hand in marriage, anything. All that the young man would accept however, was a custodial job at the gallery and, upon lengthy questioning that received mostly monosyllabic responses, room and board in a local building, and all the paint supplies Jose Nobody could ever need. In return, Edgar received the paintings from the bag, but only with the firm oath that neither they nor any of their potential younger siblings would ever be publicly displayed.

Jose proved to be a quick study with a mop and an expert custodian for the gallery. He arrived at work five minutes early every evening, always wearing the same dark clothing which clashed harshly with the whiteness of the walls. He waxed the shiny floors. He emptied the trash. He scrubbed the toilet on his hands and knees patiently, cleaning every night from floor to ceiling, from the windows facing out to the street to the windows looking out of Edgar's white office.

The office had undergone something of a transformation since Jose's arrival. First, Edgar carefully framed one of the paintings his new employee had brought. The frame was thin and gold, unspectacular. Next, he framed another, larger one. Then another. When he filled the only wall actually capable of holding a nail, he resorted to a sticky blue gum he bought down the street at the convenience store. He neatly tacked the paintings, sans frames, to the glass brick walls around the room. When he had finished, he waited patiently for a few days, then inquired as to whether Jose had found the opportunity to finish any more.

The next morning he found a new stack of work waiting on his desk dumped as carelessly as the first load. He quickly looked through the delivery. Then examined it again more carefully. Any doubt he might have had as to Jose's talent was quickly put to rest. If anything, the quality of these paintings these paintings was more staggering than the before. He felt his spine pull tightly together as he looked through a third time. He spread the paintings out on his desk and leaned over them. Individually they were spectacular, but as a whole they were almost unbearable. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and inhaled deeply. He was dimly aware that he had not been this moved when his daughter was born, and he felt a little ashamed.

He tacked what paintings he could fit onto the walls of the office and sat back for just a moment before opening the door and stepping out into the gallery. He looked around at the open walls and felt cold. The colors that had engulfed his office were overpowering and he hadn't realized how accustomed to them he had grown. The light of the main room was shocking and he thought for a moment to ask whether they had run out of full spectrum light bulbs and been forced to use the harsh florescents sold at the hardware store on the next block.

Wendy sat at her desk, talking crisply into the phone while typing furiously on the computer. She wore a beige pantsuit that he knew was her lucky outfit for big spenders. She wore it because she thought it looked sufficiently high class to mingle with the wealthy patrons she was chatting with, but Edgar noticed for the first time how pale it made her skin look. Pasty and unhealthy. Her blond hair looked stripped of any natural pigment. Processed and damaged and raw.

He looked around for a moment and forgot why he had come out here. He had an important phone call to make. He looked at Wendy for another moment, and turned back into his office.

It was with this bewildering delivery that a new routine was set at Mark Street Gallery. During the day, Edgar went about his business in his newly redecorated office. The gallery continued to do brisk business and still almost every show was a success. Art Forum called again and wrote another story on Edgar, anointing him "the greatest art dealer in the world." Included in the story was a brief mention of his refusal to allow the interviewer into his office and the wavy blocks that could be seen attached to the far side of the glass brick wall. Edgar's own personal stash and just maybe "the next big thing."

Every night, just after the gallery closed, Jose Nobody arrived to work. For a while Edgar stayed for a few extra minutes every night to make small talk, but Jose's reluctance quickly discouraged him. The boy wasn't sullen, just quiet. Occasionally he would mention a need for some new art supplies, paint and brushes and pallet knives and canvas. Edgar would always have them the next night. Whenever he could, he bought Jose the most expensive brands on the market, but Jose began to request materials by name, almost always tending for cheap brushes and putty quality paint. At least, thought Edgar, his canvasses are stretched properly now.

Jose would work alone all night. He didn't seem to use the radio Edgar left for him, but he did appear to keep an eye on what was new on the walls. Sometimes Jose would leave some new works in the back office for Edgar to find in the morning, but most nights were less exciting. Jose would clean methodically, starting at the back of the space and moving slowly towards the front. He washed the windows with blue fluid in a bottle and paper towels. The liquid he moped the floor with was yellow. He pulled the little white trash bags out of the cans and collected them all in one large black one that he threw in the green dumpster out back. Then he replaced the bags with clean ones. He always did the bathroom last, so if he had some extra time he would spend a while scrubbing the grout with an old toothbrush he found in the cabinet under the sink. Sometimes Edgar, late at work to finish odd jobs or avoid his wife, could hear soft humming, but he did not recognize the tune.

Besides the mysterious melodies, Jose revealed little else about himself. In the end, the only thing Edgar knew was that the boy's name was Jose ("Nobody" quickly turned out to be a pseudonym) and that the paintings he made were well worth being left in the dark for. Wendy never grew to like him, and began to lock her pens and pencils along with her most precious knickknacks in her desk every evening when she left work. The other employees hardly noticed him at all, and just knew that a quiet new janitor meant they would never again have to clean out the mini-fridge in the back. For Edgar though, Jose's presence was both magical and comfortable. He liked that he was no longer the only golden child in the place, even if he was the only one who knew it.

This arrangement went on for a little over a year. Every few weeks, Edgar would receive more paintings and spend the day with a package of blue tack rearranging the walls of his office. Jose kept cleaning and Edgar kept the overflow work neatly organized in a new cabinet he bought especially for that purpose. The pictures on the walls bloomed like flowers and fell like leaves, keeping pace with the seasons outside, changing and moving with the passage of time.

It was only after twelve whole months, four whole seasons, that Edgar started to have second thoughts about the arrangement. It was not that he grew tired of Jose's work. If anything he became more and more enamored with it. It still shocked and moved him, sent him back to art history textbooks to try to find words to describe it, made everything else cold by comparison. The rethinking of the original agreement started one morning at breakfast. He was busy telling his wife about a problem with an artist whose doctor had prescribed bed rest after she had been diagnosed (following weeks of unusual illness) as pregnant with twins. Despite the joy of the occasion, the news had created a whole in the calendar and a headache for the gallery.

"Well why don't you display some of those paintings in your office?" asked Meredith. "They're very nice. I'm sure you've got enough."

Edgar was a man of his word and dismissed the suggestion outright. Instead he signed up a Colombian painter whose self-portraits in watercolor had caught his eye a few weeks back. But ideas planted are often hard to kill and this one was no exception. It was only a week before he started to think about it seriously, two weeks before he convinced himself Jose would be glad for an opportunity to show, three before he started to make plans on his laptop computer, and four before he stayed late at work one night, waiting for Jose with a manila folder full of papers. The boy walked in, as was his custom, a few minutes ahead of schedule. He set down his bag by a wall and headed back for his paper towels and syrupy blue window cleaner.

"Jose," called Edgar leaning out of his office, "may I speak with you for a moment?" Jose looked up for a second and then headed back towards the office door. Edgar ran around his desk so his he could be waiting in his chair. He was more agitated than he wanted to be and didn't quite understand why. Jose arrived in the door. The year had not changed him much. He still walked with the combination of self-assuredness and humility that made him so remarkably unremarkable.

"Please, sit down," said Edgar. Jose sat. There was a silence. Edgar had planned for days as to how this meeting was to go, but suddenly realized he had no idea what to say. "Jose. I was recently . . . Well, you see I've been . . . Thinking . . . And, well. Here." He gave up and pushed a paper across the table. Jose picked it up, looked at it and read.

"The Mark Street Gallery introduces Jose Nobody in his first one man show" the page displayed. Underneath was a picture of one of Jose's earlier paintings, reduced to fit and saturated with lovely color.

"I've been thinking about your work, and I think that it's time that you showed it," said Edgar. "I know that we originally said that it wouldn't be on public display, but I think whatever you're worried about shouldn't be a problem." There was a long pause. Edgar continued. "It's still up to you of course but I don't think that there should, at this point be anything holding you back. I know, I promise, that this show will be a huge success." He stopped. There was silence again. He watched and waited and watched. He had expected that maybe Jose would be scared, he even thought he might be angry. But he did not expect him to cry.

As Edgar watched, Jose began to slouch, and then to curl, and then to crumple completely, pulling his knees up towards his face and looking straight at Edgar. Tears ran over his eyelids. Edgar had the distinct feeling that he had just stabbed his mother. He didn't know what to do, so he did nothing for a moment. Then he gave Jose a clean white handkerchief and thought about perhaps patting him on the back. But he couldn't stand up.

"We don't need to do it if you don't want to, Jose," he mumbled.

Eventually, Jose got up and asked for the night off. Edgar granted it quickly. He watched Jose walk out the door slowly, shoulders low, feet dragging. From the front he had looked pathetic. From behind he simply looked too tired to move. Edgar though about emptying the garbage, but couldn't focus on anything. He felt incredibly guilty and couldn't understand exactly why. He locked up the gallery and went home.

Scientists have calculated precisely the speed of light. They have not however, been of much help on the more important question of the speed of time. Light can bend and weave among the gravitational forces of planets with measurable results. Time too can bend. It can sweep and swirl into pretty little eddies like water. Events floating in time rarely arrive on schedule, as it seems they should, but float in only with approximation of the rigor that would be so desirable, tripped and splattered by the rocks of the chronological streambed. Time is not at all like light.

It was in a particularly slow current that Edgar Gloss was caught for the next three days. Every day he got a tremendous amount of work done, but seemed distant from his usual concerns within the gallery. Wendy remarked that he might be sick enough to take a day off, but Edgar was prescient enough to stay at the gallery, aware that if he went home without any focus, time might stop completely.

For three days, Edgar worked the phones, cleaned out his desk and files, opened accounts, closed deals, and worked through lunch. Every day as the sun set and the light finally filtered out of the gallery, he waited for Jose to arrive, but when the shadows had crossed the scuffed floor and stained the walls gray, Edgar sat alone. He didn't turn his desk lamp on, but sat in the dark and looked at the paintings on his office walls.

Edgar wanted to see Jose to apologize, to pretend nothing had happened, but the resolve he displayed in his professional life hid a deep seated fear of personal confrontation, so he sat in his dark office, alone, feeling stupid instead. After the third day, he decided that perhaps Jose had the flue, and as his boss, the polite thing to do was to call. Unfortunately, the gallery had no phone number recorded for Jose Nobody. He thought that perhaps Wendy might, but her Rolodex was locked in her desk along with her Eiffel tower paperweight and a picture of her handsome fiancée. He thought briefly of calling her, but didn't want to drag her back downtown to fish the number out, so twenty minutes later he was in his car, driving south to the address he sent the rent checks to, feeling a little sheepish. He pulled over and bought chicken noodle soup at a small organic grocery store even thought he couldn't remember if a fever was to be fed or starved.

The building he pulled up in front of was not in the best of neighborhoods. He parked under a streetlight and climbed out of the car, can of soup in his hand. The cement sidewalk he stood on was cracked and mismatched. The asphalt street wasn't much better. He saw a little graffiti and tried to read it. He couldn't, but decided it must be a name. Good use of color though. In front of him stood the building he wanted. It was made of red brick and in its day must have been a beauty. Edgar's eyes glanced over the designs beneath the window ledges. He thought he made out some birds, but couldn't be sure. He walked up the concrete stoop and was trying to read the names on the buzzers when he heard a voice.

"Are you hear to see Jose?" He looked around for a moment, and then focused on a girl, maybe ten years old, squatting down in the shadow beneath the stairs.

"Yes," he said. "Does he live here?"

"Yeah. He said you'd come. He lives on four. The door's open. And tell him I'm angry at him."

"Why?" Edgar asked.

"He said he would teach me to draw, but he stopped just when I was getting good." Edgar watched as she produced a worn piece of paper in her hand. "My mom says it's the most beautiful thing she ever saw." She unfolded and showed it to him. It too was a bird. He looked up at the stone carvings above him. They were definitely the same. He looked at the girl's picture again and it glowed, rough, but for a ten year old, remarkable. He wanted to look closer but she closed it up again and shoved it in her pocket. Her hands were very dirty.

"Tell him that I hate him, but if he teaches me more he can be my friend again," the girl insisted. "He can be my friend, but only if he teaches me to draw. Or plays hopscotch. I don't care."

"I'll . . . I'll tell him that," Edgar said. He watched the girl disappear into the darkness and could dimly hear her singing softly to herself, expressively, like any child her age. He turned and entered the building. When he reached the fourth floor he found an open door and looked in.

What he saw was less an apartment than a warehouse. Stacked against the walls and on the floor were dozens of canvasses. They were thrown about haphazardly; here leaning against the wall, there face down on the floor. Some were torn from what must have been exceptionally harsh treatment. A few looked new. He saw one that was still wet. He looked at those that faced in his general direction and was amazed. The quality was everything he had come to expect, but the variety was more. He saw landscapes and still lives, always with that fantastic color, spilling off the canvas, violent and urgent and somehow refined.

What he focused the most on, though, were the portraits. He recognized Wendy, terrible and beautiful, unkind and afraid, holding her desk set like a child and emoting such loneliness and love. He saw the little girl, mischievous and alive, holding a bird, holding a drawing of a bird, brown eyes glinting straight ahead. He saw people he did not recognize sitting, staring at hair care products or sitting and holding hands. Some of the work would have been pornographic if it weren't so good. Some of it he didn't understand at all.

But there was nothing that confused him as much as his own face staring back at him. The painting was full of color, yes, but it was also full of light. He stared into his own face and didn't know what to say. He wore white, and stood in the gallery. It glowed. Around him were the paintings from his office, as beautiful reproduced here as they were in life. He stared out, sad and brave, but he was not alone. Standing next to him, dark hand in light, small and childlike as the girl, was Jose.

He looked for a long while into his own aging face. He wasn't sure how long it was before he noticed Jose himself, in the flesh, asleep in a corner on a small mattress. The realization shocked him back to life and he realized where he was. The room smelled like pot and booze and was a mess. Trash was everywhere. Empty paint tubes and empty bottles lying together like angry lovers on the floor, dripping and messy and stained. He took another step and then stopped.

"Jose," he whispered.

No response, he tried again louder.

"Jose." Louder still, "Jose."

The boy rolled over and stared up. Then closed his eyes again for a moment and sat up.

"Jose, I . . . I brought you this." He held out the can of soup uncertainly in his hands, suddenly ashamed of his crassness and idiocy. Jose didn't seem drunk or stoned despite the state of the apartment. Jose took the can and held it in his hands and stared at it. Edgar wanted desperately to know what he saw. He waited a moment and said, "There's a little girl downstairs who says she wants to take more drawing lessons from you. Or play hopscotch." He pointed to her portrait. "What's her name?"

"Maria." He paused. "She's my friend."

"She seems very nice." Edgar looked at Jose. "Are you OK?" he asked. "We got worried." Jose said nothing. "I'm sorry that I tried to get you to display your work, and I promise I won't ever ask you to again. I just want to know if you're OK."

"I didn't think you'd ask me to do it." Jose spoke slowly and quietly, as if he wasn't used to it and needed to feel out each syllable as it rolled out of his mouth. His dark brown hair stood out at bizarre angles where he had slept on it. "I knew that everyone else would, but I thought maybe not you."

"Why?" Edgar asked, a little scared. "Why did you come to me? All I do is show work. Why wouldn't I show yours?"

Jose seemed embarrassed, but plunged ahead. His eyes were dull, but he was the most animated that Edgar had ever seen. "I thought you wouldn't need to, like everyone else does. I thought maybe you had enough art without me, that you could make enough artists without making me. I thought you wouldn't want my help." Jose's lip quivered slightly. He kept talking though. His words had built up and now they were coming out faster, like water pouring from a spring. "I thought that if there was anyone in the whole world who wouldn't make me show my pictures to everyone it would be you. I don't want to be a painter. Everyone keeps making me be one." Now Jose's eyes gleamed. They were moist and vital.

"I'm sorry," said Edgar. "You don't ever have to paint ever again. You can just work for us without painting at all."

"But I can't stop," Jose coughed. "I don't want to paint any more. I don't want to need me but I look around and the whole world glows and I can't stop and I hate it I hate it I hate it but I can't stop." He was collapsing now. The canvasses in the room were like towers and walls. The space was so filled with color and light that Edgar could barely breath. It choked him. He could feel himself suffocating in glorious, glorious splendor he could not understand. He looked and saw thousands of canvasses packed in so tight there was no room for the two of them. The room grew tighter and tighter as millions of paintings crammed together, snapping and tearing under their own weight.

"I'm sorry," said Edgar.

"I thought you could help me," the boy whispered.

Edgar crouched low and touched Jose's shoulder and knew he could not help him at all, but sat in the room with him anyway, sealed in by paintings and color and dirty air. The walls grew thicker and colors bolder. Paint sealed the cracks around the windows, vibrant and cruel and ugly. Paint was smeared on the floor. Paint wet on the ceiling, dripping and raining from the sky. They sat together for a while, without speaking, soaking in the light of the beautiful, glowing world.