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Amenities

by Greg Hischak
date 02.26.01

TRUE, ITS CLOSE PROXIMITY TO MY FIRM made it a nice apartment, but I still drove the five blocks to work. True, it had sweeping views of bay and mountain, though I quickly became indifferent to the leering presence of bay and mountain. True, my new home—an older renovated building downtown, a genuine artist's loft—was expensive, but I had the money. If asked, I would admit to some guilt about displacing the genuine artists who had lived there, but no one ever asked. I felt bad about the economics of place, but the apartment came with a washer and dryer and old world charm and sometimes a washer and dryer with old world charm speaks louder than economics. In truth, I laid out $1600 a month for an aura of bohemia coupled with a washer and dryer.

Fourteen-foot exposed brick walls, floor to ceiling windows and genuine paint-splattered hardwood floors. As a nod to its more left bank past, and to alleviate some of the bad feng shui that came with gentrification, the property management left an actual artist in each of the units.

A small artist, not established.

Early one Saturday morning I was shown an available unit by a portly shifty-eyed woman in a magenta pantsuit named Claudia. Proudly selling the unit's numerous amenities, she finally brought me into the kitchen, pointing out the disposal, the self-cleaning oven, the built-in microwave/bread maker and, curled up under the sink, stubble-chinned and corduroyed, the artist that came with the artist's loft. As soon as Claudia opened the cupboard the artist slowly unwrapped himself from around the disposal's pipemetal entrails and rolled over onto his side averting his face from the early glare of northern exposure.

"Your artist," Claudia the manager said, smiling.

"Very nice," I said, "He seems a bit sluggish, though."

"It's early"

"What's his medium?'

"Mostly figurative work in oils."

"And there's off-street parking?"

"Of course."

"I'll take it."

I moved into my genuine artist's loft with my genuine artist the following week. I made it clear to my artist that he was free to move about the apartment while I was gone, and he could help himself to whatever hummus and grapes I left in the fridge—but he could not have friends over. No collaboration. I told my artist I was planning a small dinner party soon and wanted a couple of in-progress works scattered about the place.

"I've completed a series of zinc plate etchings, actually," my artist said.

"I want oils. Unfinished oils, got it? And if I catch you doing zinc plate etchings on my couch your ass is down in the storage locker, right?"

The artist nodded.

I liked my apartment. I liked impressing guests with the industrial flavor of the secured entry lobby, the quiet urbane roar of the carpeted lift, the motion-sensor tracklighting activated when stepping inside the front door revealing sunken hardwood floors and casually arranged issues of Art in America, and squatting under a potted ficas, my artist. Laying down his oil pastels, my artist would quietly explain to my guests his work-in-progress. After a little bemused banter and our vague nods of encouragement, my artist would crawl under the sink as my guests and I continued on with chilled wine and lemon tarragon chicken.

The lawyer in the unit across the hall had a bronze caster. The next door unit came with a mono print artist. There was an attractive software consultant in 306 who frequently walked her artist outside the building.

"Organic abstractionist," she answered when I stopped once to make small talk, scratching her artist behind its ears.

"Mine is doing figurative work in oils mostly."

"How nice. Do you have a washer and dryer too?"

"Absolutely."

I returned home late one Sunday after a long weekend of stock speculation to find a 5" x 8" sheet of kraftpaper covering the kitchen floor—my artist squatting in the middle sweeping a thick gray charcoal stick from side to side across it.

"It's an atonal landscape exploring notions of place and identity," the artist explained when I asked him how he thought I was going to get to my microwave/breadmaker. It annoyed me that he was discussing his work without there being any dinner guests present.

"Save it," I said, scuffing at the corner of his work with my Gucci. "I want you under the sink."

"The monochromatic palette suggesting an emotional or moral isolation -"

"What part of Under The Sink didn't you understand?"

My artist sighed and began putting away his charcoals.

"You don't like me, do you?" he asked quietly as he pulled the cabinet shut behind him.

"You're an amenity. Of course I like you."

The software consultant in 306 had her organic abstractionist run away one morning while being walked. Ducking down an alley while she returned a video, it proved not to be an isolated incident. Shortly afterwards, the performance artist in 112 ran amuck, filling the unit with toast. The glassworker in 314 started a small fire and ruined a new set of curtains. The artist in 505 was twice caught drawing its tenants in the shower. After about three months of sporadic oils and charcoal landscapes my artist started going on the fritz as well. He stopped working and sat brooding—staring at the sprinkler valves in the ceiling for hours at a time.

"Paint something, dammit," I said.

"I can't."

"I'll let you collaborate with the jewelry artist in 211." My artist shook his head.

"I don't think so.

I left M&Ms on the coffee table which my artist finished off—but no works in-progress appeared. When guests came over my artist was surly and wouldn't discuss the impressionist show that everyone wanted him to talk about. I whacked him with a rolled up Wall Street Journal—but no art. I called Claudia the manager and complained that my artist wasn't working and she came over. Squatting under the counter with a flashlight for several minutes, Claudia finally rose, turned to me and shook her head.

"I have an installation artist I could bring down from 520."

"Nothing else in oils?"

"There's an allegorical landscapist on the first floor, but I think it's acrylics."

"I'm going to have to talk to the property managers."

"Suit yourself, but we're talking about artists here. They aren't covered in the lease."

I let Claudia leave with my artist. Standing alone near the floor to ceiling windows, I observed the play of light and shadow across the surface of the bay before closing the curtains so I could make calls without distraction. Markets were opening in Tokyo.

There was a butt of a charcoal stick sitting on my Vanity Fair. My artist's charcoal. I picked it up and examined it for a few minutes-absent-mindedly scrawling across the top of my daytimer while waiting for my call to go through. I drew a matchstick-like swingset, and on its top crossbar I drew a large black bird—a crow. When I finally set the charcoal stick down, an oily smudge was left across my index finger and thumb that would prove to be difficult to wash off.

The next week my washer and dryer crapped out on me. [ L i P ]

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