It Was A Bad Day Last Week

Vincent went out walking in the rain one Wednesday afternoon. Or maybe it was raining in Vincent as he went out walking — it was hard to tell sometimes whether it was raining inside him or outside.

It must have been raining outside him today, he supposed, because all the colors were running. The red of the bricks was draining down into the gutters, the green of the leaves, the brown of the bark — the pink and violet patterned dress of the woman with the ugly hat walking on the opposite sidewalk went swirling, swirling down below the streets, out of sight. There were only outlines left, and a smudgy, inkthumb sort of gray.

Vincent glanced down and saw that his own colors were running, too.

Maybe it was actually raining inside today, instead of outside. Or maybe there wasn’t really a difference anymore. Vincent had invented the sunflowers, and he’d invented the stars, and he’d invented the hills and the fields and his bedroom; maybe it wasn’t so strange to think that he was inventing the rain.

He bumped into me at the corner of Whitfield and Ludlow, and I was surprised to see him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told him, as politely as I could. “You’re supposed to be dead. You died a long time ago.” — that was how his story had turned out.

He shrugged. “I think that was someone else,” he said, and maybe he was right.

I offered to buy him a coffee, because why not? I was already heading to get coffee, and he seemed like he needed one. “We can just sit together for a few minutes,” I said. “Just five minutes.”

Vincent sipped his coffee, black, but to him it was gray, everything was gray. “My colors are running today,” he told me with a sigh.

“I know the feeling.”

We didn’t say anything for a little bit after that. I kept an eye on the clock on the wall behind the barista, sipping away at my seconds.

Finally — “They have a few of your paintings in the museum here,” I said to Vincent. I’m not sure why I said that to him. It felt like the sort of thing he already knew, somehow. I guess it was becoming one of those silences, and I didn’t have anything else to say.

“Which ones?” he asked me, and I felt my face flush because I didn’t know the names of any of them. I could have described them to him, probably, or even tried to draw them — I’m good with shapes and images and all that, I’m just terrible with names. I glanced another glance at the clock.

“I should probably get going,” I said. My five minutes was up, more or less.

Vincent nodded and together we rose from the table. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I gave the barista a dollar and ninety-two cents as a tip so that the bill would be exactly ten dollars. “Is that Vincent van Gogh?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I thought he was dead. I thought he died a long time ago. I thought he killed himself.”

That was how his story had turned out.

“Me too,” I said. “He told me that was somebody else.”

Vincent and I were heading the same direction away from the coffee-shop, so we walked together. He held his to-go cup tight to his chest, like he was scared of all the heat seeping away, but it wasn’t really that cold out — it was still early in October, which Ohio makes warm. Back in Boston it would have been frigid already, and I hadn’t started missing that yet. I kept one hand carefully underneath my drink-carrier to keep it from tipping. It made my forearm weirdly tired.

“Are you doing anything this weekend?” I asked, about halfway down the street.

Vincent wasn’t sure. He didn’t have any big plans, at least.

“Maybe we’ll get coffee again,” I offered.

“Maybe.”

Vincent walked to the right of me, so I could see his left ear, and the funny thing about it was it was perfectly normal, perfectly intact — the left ear was the one he’d famously chopped, and maybe that meant that he wasn’t really van Gogh. “I don’t think this weekend will work for me,” he said, which was fair enough. “We should definitely meet up again, though.”

“Yeah.”

I turned off onto Whitfield but he carried on down Ludlow, and as I glanced back at him I got a peek at the right side of his head and I saw that his right ear had that bit chopped off — it was definitely the left ear that he’d done it to, you can look it up yourself, but when I saw him it was the right ear that was messed up. Life is just like that sometimes, I don’t know. We waved at each other before stepping out of sight.

He really scared me, because he didn’t seem sad enough.

I didn’t see Vincent again for a long while, and by then everything was in full swing. I almost didn’t recognize him with his mask on. It was the wrong ear that gave him away.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “How have you been?”

He shrugged that same Vincent shrug, that certain way that was only his. “I’ve been better.”

It was the easy thing to say.

“Same here.”

I spent my five minutes catching up across that same table as before. “Have you been doing any painting lately?”

“I’m always painting.”

“Can I see?”

The way his face shifted made it feel like I’d been rude by accident, but before I could apologize he was already answering. “I try not to show people,” he said. “They’d call it a comeback, and I don’t want to come back.”

He scared the fuck out of me, he really did. He said things like not coming back, sure, and he didn’t smile like the sunflowers, but he just wasn’t sad enough. He should have been sadder, I needed him to be sadder because he didn’t seem any sadder than I was and look how his story turned out.

We both pulled down our masks to sip at our coffee. He asked me how my writing was going, and maybe he was just being polite because I’d asked him about his painting, but I want to think that he was actually interested.

“I started school,” I told him. “I’m getting my Master’s — lots of stories to write and read, workshops to do.”

“That sounds nice.”

It did sound nice when I said it.

“Online classes are pretty lonely.”

Vincent nodded, eyes distant. “I can imagine.”

“I joined this drop-in drop-out kinda chatroom last week that the school counseling office was running for students who were feeling isolated by all of this, and I was the only one who showed up.”

I hoped that he’d laugh at this, because I’d decided it was something to be laughed at, that was the best shape for it. But his expression was blank. He blew at his steam and he didn’t say anything.

This time, he paid for the coffee. He handed the barista a few coins that she didn’t recognize as I threw away the napkins, but she didn’t complain because what was she supposed to say about it to someone like van Gogh? She called me over with a glance as he moved for the door.

“Wasn’t it the other ear?” she whispered to me through her mask.

“Yeah, it was definitely the left ear,” I whispered back to her through my mask. “I looked it up.”

Vincent paused just outside, waiting over his shoulder at me.

“Huh,” said the barista, and I had to agree.

“Life is just like that sometimes, I don’t know.”

As we walked together, Vincent asked me about those paintings I’d mentioned last time in the art museum here, did I remember the names?

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to be sorry.”

“I’m just bad with names, you know?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“The first one, though, I remember exactly what it looked like. It was this beautiful forest scene, and I knew even before reading the placard that it was one of yours — it was unmistakable, you know?”

“Right.”

I told him where in the museum it was, exactly where I remembered it being, and I told him what I remembered about how it looked, all the details I could pull together, and he nodded, and he nodded, and he nodded. “You should go see it,” I told him. “It’s very nicely displayed.”

“Yeah.”

I turned off onto Whitfield and he carried on down Ludlow. He invented a lovely path from where we parted all the way up into the hills where the museum was. They didn’t make him pay admission, which was nice because he was all out of money after coffee — he’d only ever sold one painting, remember, all his other paintings had been sold by other people so he was shit-broke after coffee.

The colors ran along the floor aside his feet as he shuffled from gallery to gallery, sharp greens and shivering pinks and low, humming, blues came drip-slipping down off of the canvases where other people had put them, they all came following after; it had been so long since any of them had seen someone like Vincent, there hadn’t been anyone like Vincent in longer than any of them could remember and they all went running, running on behind him to see what he would do, and they murmured to each other what will he do, what will he do? It had been so long since they’d met someone like Vincent, and it was so very exciting to see what someone like him might do in a place like this.

When Vincent reached the spot I’d told him about, he stopped, and he squinted.

“Hmmm.”

No, he definitely hadn’t painted this.

The placard said that he had, and it told a realistically dull story about how old he’d been when he painted it and what it all must have meant to him — and a few of the brushstrokes here and there definitely looked like the sort of strokes he made, he had to admit that. But no, he definitely hadn’t painted this.

Or maybe he’d just forgotten.

“Hmmm,” he said again, and he reached out with a fingertip to touch the canvas — the guard near the door moved to stop him, but then she noticed the missing bit of his right ear and realized who he was and so she paused because he was Vincent van Gogh and the placard said “Vincent van Gogh” so if he wanted to touch the painting that was pretty much his business and no one else’s, wasn’t it?

A bit of clenched-teeth yellow came drop-slopping off of the canvas, wet as the moment it had first been put there — it had been so long since someone like van Gogh had come along and it was captivated by him, and so it came slop-dripple-dropping right off onto his touching fingertip– what was he going to do, it wondered, and so did all the rest of the paint, watching from the carpet.

Vincent pulled back his finger and popped it into his mouth. He sucked on it for a moment, let himself get a really good sense for the flavor, and — no, no, he was absolutely certain now. This was not the taste of his yellow.

He turned, and he walked out of the gallery.

“It’s a beautiful painting,” the guard said as he passed. “You’re an amazing artist.”

“Thanks,” I replied.