Page 2 of Portrait of A Lost Artist
NATHAN
“Slow down, you crazy child. Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while. It’s alright, you can afford to lose a day or two.” - Vienna by Billy Joel.
R ENNA HAS A FACE THAT I HAVE GOTTEN TO KNOW PERFECTLY WELL FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS.
One would think that’s the reason it’s difficult for me to look her in the eye at this moment.
She sits across from me in my living room, the one I’ve barely been in for the past twelve months.
I’ve been out and about, travelling so much with Jane Rae, that I had forgotten just how much I cherished this house.
The painting from a Uruguayan artist that I bought four years ago.
The cream couch where I sit on right now, with brown cushions that welcome the weight of my head, neck aching because of the position.
Nathan Calderwood was the brand that everyone in this room was working for.
They weren’t here for the disaster I’ve become, glaring at the orange and pink hues that dissipate through the blank curtains of my living room, as I play with the cigarette that dangles from my bottom lip.
My team was bigger before; Renna was the last one to join as my art manager.
She was the one that contacted the museums and made the grand sales to sponsors in auctions.
Venturing into the world of art, her knowledge of realism and her art degree backed us up in a career that had flourished beautifully until the accident happened.
Career halted to an end, I wish I could return to who I was, but that’s impossible.
Fame wasn’t difficult to achieve for me, however, for I was born with it from the crib.
Simon, my other manager, made sure to remind me of such.
He was with me for longer than Renna. Mom’s assumption was that it would be great for me to have a PR manager, and that’s what Simon worked with.
Normally seen in the back of my pictures, always the one organizing the event, shooting the pictures, creating the atmosphere of a nepotism child that people both loved and hated.
Jun, who is the one that settles a bottle of coffee on the table near the couch, is just my bodyguard. Though the muscles on his body enlarge him in size, they definitely don’t compare to the warmth of his persona, and how greatly he has established himself as a big brotherly figure in my life.
Renna has pushed her black hair away from her porcelain skin with an orange clip, matching the lipstick that she smeared on her mouth before she had gone out on a date last night.
God, she was so excited to meet that supposed William from a dating app, and as per usual, I ruined it with my convictions and melancholia.
She has rubbed her usual thick eyeliner off from her eyes after spending an entire midnight with me at the police station.
Out of worry, of course. Crooking her knees under her body, covered by a long white dress, she sighs.
“I need you to talk about this, Nate.” Renna says as a matter of fact.
Plainly, but with lingering worry that crashes against me.
So hard that it takes me back to the accident, when she said the same exact words.
I shake my head, mixing cigarettes with coffee when I drink from what Jun had just served me.
“We both know that’s not what anybody here wants.
” Sometimes, I wonder why Renna stays. I haven’t painted in a long while—people sitting at the edge of their seats, waiting for my next move; for me to continue with the scenery of fame I had created for myself so far from what my parents do.
Yet, it’s impossible to hunt for that inspiration that was once carved so deeply inside of me.
Before Renna could say anything else, my other manager speaks from his position, laying against one of the thick columns of my mansion.
Simon has blonde hair with speckles of salt-colored strands, wrinkles coming with age and time, barely perceptible in his fifty-something face.
He always holds a Cheshire-smile for the public, but with me, Simon becomes the personification of ‘stoic and tough’ learning.
“He’s not the one that needs to talk. I want to do the talking for once.
” Simon explains. My parents never knew just how tough Simon could get.
How he’d swat food away from my hands when I was younger, only because his beliefs relayed on looks.
How he had crafted my life to reflect what he wanted, but never asked me what I really yearned for.
“You’re out of control, Nate, and you’re taking us all with you. You can’t spend a single week without getting shitfaced and now, you’re once again in a scandal dealing with death. We had to talk to police—”
He speaks as if I wasn’t there, giving my side of the story, being held unimpeachable only because of the recordings from Miles’ household that showed that he was all alone when he tossed himself out of the window.
I had lived through every word the police officers had said, while both grieving for a friend—though not as close as one would have imagined—and also battling with my own thoughts.
“I don’t think that’s fair to him.” Renna gives her input, always butting heads with Simon. I can’t help but keep my eyes closed, and they must think I’m falling asleep because of this.
“Here you come with your fucking licentiousness. Renna, the adults here are talking—”
She’s thirty-seven. Celebrated it with me and Jun’s family—including his daughter, who had worn Renna’s shoes—over a month ago. I think that’s the only party I’ve gone to in the last few years in which I can recall everything that happened.
“Nate needs help. We have hidden the obvious here, trying to mend his relationship with the public with his own fake union with Jane Rae, putting him in front of cameras, trying to prove that he’s fine, but he hasn’t been fine in a while.
” Renna speaks out the truth in quick mannerisms, allowing me to open my eyes just when I hear Simon scoff.
“His relationship with Jane is what has saved him.” Simon explains. “The public doesn’t see how much of a drunkard he has become just because of the moves that I have done.”
“You won’t have anybody to represent here on if we don’t offer him the help he needs—”
“Oh, my fucking God. What do you do in this equation, Renna?” Simon asks, looking down at my other manager.
He flares his nostrils, squaring his shoulders in his always-suit-clad body before he shakes his head.
“You haven’t gotten him to paint. I’m making him thrive off of what we have left.
If he has no talent, then we still have his fame.
It’s why he’s still someone to the public eye. ”
I know Renna should look for other clients.
She is living off what I had already made, thankfully, but it’s only a matter of time that she’s dragged down with my dying art career.
Help needed, I run away from it. My lack of request, combined with its never being offered, is the reason.
Whenever the thoughts in my head get too loud, I grab the nearest bottle I have and get away with whatever person dares call themselves my friend.
Sometimes, it’s Jane Rae and her expensive friends, who talk shit about everyone through sips of whiskey and take pictures of us so Jane can post them on her Instagram account.
Though, anyone with enough knowledge to call themselves human would notice that I haven’t been okay for a while. Not since the accident happened, losing myself alongside her.
For the longest while, I had thought of what would happen to me.
What I would become, or what waited for me at the end of the line.
I thought that the pain I felt would lose itself with the more bottles I poured in my body, that not knowing where I was would also make the misconceptions of me disappear.
None of that happened, and I realized when I got out of the police station and there were cameras waiting for me. Flashing. Stripping me.
Ridding me of my title as a person.
“I don’t need help.” I mutter, sitting up and downing the rest of my coffee that had turned lukewarm during the conversation. The blonde man smiles at me, as if enchanted by my words, but I shake my head. “I need to get away.”
“Excuse me?” Simon asks, trailing behind me as I stumble up the stairs and go to the nearest computer. I think I left my laptop in my room. “Nate, I’m talking to you. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Anywhere but here. Los Angeles is drowning the insignificant life left in me.” The doors open at my entrance once I jot down the code on the screen next to it.
I go past the beige couches that I have around a TV screen, getting to the king-sized bed with white sheets on top of it before opening my laptop and sitting comfortably.
Simon shakes his head. “You can’t do that. Jane’s big modelling event is coming up, and we have planned the entirety of November for you. You can’t miss that—”
Renna enters the room with quickened steps, widening her eyes upon seeing me.
I had never acted like this with Simon, following his every word.
She’d always make fun of me because of it.
After all, the first words my mom told me at the mere age of eleven were ‘you’ll listen and do everything Simon tells you, alright? ’.
It’s time for me to change that.
I lurk through the computer, searching on Google for ‘cheap and homely travelling spots’.
Travelled the places everyone wished for and jotted down on their diaries; I have, but I am tired of what I have always known.
What I need is something different. To wake up to the scent of petrichor, and brew my coffee for the sake of it.
Burn the first pile of rice that I make, and laugh about it just because I can.