Artist at the Arts Fair

Thus my booth was buzzing with bounteous, bouncing babes for a good bit. I always take my artist's license to look carefully at most people I meet, men and women, and it took very little perusal here to realize that it must have been No Bra Day for the trip to the arts festival. Better, several of these girls were clearly the sort to leave their high-beams on in traffic. I reflected that I had never really done much study of erect nipples beneath fabric, the tiny but incredibly shadows that are cast, the way the fabric stretches. I wasn't sure how I was going to engineer the chance, since this was certainly not it, but I mentally filed the concept away.

Regardless of whether they were tenting their tops or not, each was at least mildly arresting. I might have stared too long at any of them, except that they were all so attractive that my eyes kept wandering from one to the next.

As for me, standing right there beside them? I was reaching that age in life where for young girls like this, it was increasingly often that I was seen as just part of the vast background tapestry of their existence, not a human player on the stage. In another five years, all girls this age would see me as furniture, unless I did something to make them register me as a man. If I did do such a thing... we might see.

I wondered how long it would take for them to discover the back, and how they would react. As it turned out, it was the hispanic girl among their number, the robust one with the most largesse up top, who looked back first. "Bree!" she hissed, reporting in to her queen bee. "You got to see these!" She spoke in a whisper, as if I wasn't going to hear, "He gots naked pictures back here!"

I rolled my eyes and stepped out of the way of the stampede, enjoying my first view of all five backsides in their yoga pants at once. These days, it's always yoga pants.

My eyes gravitated to Bree, the leader. Not to her ass, which was spectacular, but to her hair. I really, really wanted to sketch that hair. My fingers itched to do it. Hanging four or five inches down her back in bold, natural curls, that red hair screamed for me to explore its depth of color.

Ladies, please, please stop dying your hair red. You have never in the history of ever fooled anyone who is paying attention with a red hair dye job. Even I sometimes get taken in by a really good blonde job, or a rich auburn on rare occasions, but never a red.

Red hair, real red hair like this young woman's, has at least twenty different colors and hues. Every darned strand is different, and it is a joy to try to capture, especially as lustrous a mane as this young woman possessed. I could have spent many happy hours trying to trap on paper or canvas the back of her head.

If she could wear yoga pants while I worked, that would be just fine too.

"Omigod, Bree! He has dudes back here!"

"Whoa!"

"Who is this one?" Bree herself asked almost involuntarily. I knew that she had to be looking at Patrice, a French model who had wanted me to do the piece for his website.

Among the five of them, I sold one print to a doe-eyed brunette who had not been blasting pokies through her teeshirt until she had gotten a look at Patrice. The print was of a kitten, and I had never considered it among my best work.

Another typical show-goer is the parent bringing his or her kids out for a little culture. They also seldom buy anything, usually at least in part because they want to keep their hands free to keep the touchy tots or perambulating preteens under control.

These parents often tend to have less than my favorite attitudes. A few sometimes make me sad. Sometimes they manage both, as with the slender mother who wandered in with her tall, tow-headed, ten year-old boy. She clearly didn't much like my work, but he intently decided my print bins were where he wanted to run his grubby hands. She did have the grace to look at me apologetically, but she didn't stop him, instead taking a moment's peace in the shade.

She did seem to find one piece of mine nice, at least. It depicted a small, rocky stream running through a springtime wooded glade. I like doing water, and I thought that I had really captured the sweeping, gurgling brook.

"You the artist?" she asked without looking at me. They usually don't look at me, the single parents. And she was divorced or widowed, probably the former. I observed her ring finger. It still had the indentation at its base from years of wearing wedding and engagement rings, but no tanline that you would expect if she had removed her rings for a day of singlehood. I noticed that latter phenomenon more than you would think. I wasn't the type to do anything about it. Usually.

But she had that edge of sadness that told me the ring had not gone away of her choosing. And that always made me a little sad too.

"I am. You like it?" I asked.

"You really capture the water's movement well," she shrugged.

The moment we began to speak, her son took that as an apparent sign that he was bored with a bin full of pictures of trees. He ambled away at a quick pace toward the back of my booth, and I stepped smoothly backward to block his progress before he went behind the wall.

"You often push around kids?" she asked bitchily. They are usually bitchy. Especially the sad ones. I understand. For most of them, certainly including this one, being bitchy was probably not a full-time condition. I could tell that just by looking at her. Our usual emotions leave indelible marks on our faces. Most of her life had been spent with happy expressions, though that sadness was beginning to settle in around the eyes. There was no evidence of chronic bitch face. That made her current crabbiness all the more tragic, as she was just a little bit beautiful. It wasn't that I wanted to paint her, but... you know.

I glanced meaningfully over my shoulder at the sign.

She looked up, her eyes widening in embarrassment. "Come on, Nathan," she said swiftly, and dragged the kid out of my booth. I watched her go. Mom jeans, a sweatshirt, and little to no makeup. Still... a little bit beautiful. I idly wished I could see her on a day where she was making an effort.

Not all the stereotypes I see are women, especially not women of varying degrees of hotness. There are also The Local Characters. The one I got that Saturday afternoon was a guy. He wore a flannel shirt, faded jeans, and cowboy boots. The latter were worn for comfort, not looks, as he had the jeans pulled down outside the boots. His outfit was finished off by a well-worn, but also well-loved, high-end Stetson that cost at least 800 dollars, and possibly twice that.

What announced his status as a character was his beard. Seven inches long from his chin, jet black, and groomed meticulously, with huge handlebar mustaches twirling out to the sides. His facial hair doubled the size of his head and was ridiculously magnificent.

He was in my booth for ten minute while I charmed him before I laid my sales pitch on him that he needed me to do a portrait of that beard. "Honas," I entreated, "I really want to take a shot at capturing that magnificent beast, and you really, really, really need a good portrait of it. I'll throw in the rest of your head for free," I said. He laughed. Ten minutes later, we had agreed a price, and I had scheduled an early return to town before the late spring festival in this same city, to do his sitting.

I calmly but honestly threatened his life if he let something happen to that beard before our next meeting. He laughed again and showed me his Medic-Alert bracelet which said, "In the event beard is damaged, do not resuscitate."

*

Sunday dawned once more bright and beautiful, but the weather report was again dicey, calling for a chance of afternoon showers. I would only believe that when I saw it, given how gorgeous it was, and how wrong the same weather guy had been about Friday.

Business was again brisk on this getaway day, though the idiot weather guy had seemingly kept the crowds down a little, back to the level of previous years. I still made some sales. Some good sales.

Mid-afternoon, about two and a half hours before we were to shut down the show for the year, a very slender and attractive woman walked into my booth during a lull. With a jarring start, I realized that it was the mama Karen from the day before. Today she was without the urchin Nathan, and had today put in the effort on herself that I had idly wished for before. Well done, bravo, etc.

She carried a purchase already--a print in a clear plastic bag that I instantly recognized as one by Kent Troxel, an artist I respected. But if she liked his stuff, I could see why most of mine left her cold. We had profoundly different styles.

Nonetheless, she looked around, then drifted back to the big lithograph of the stream, and stared at it intently. I knew the look well, alas. She knew she could not afford the litho, and she was not going to settle for a smaller print of the same picture. And besides, she didn't really know why she liked it so much to begin with.

Art is a funny thing. People find themselves captured by a piece, even when it is not at all the sort of thing that they think they like.

Since I wasn't going to make a sale, I contented myself with keeping my eye on the much improved version of herself that she was presenting. She had been just as beautiful the day before, it was simply more obvious today. Not that she'd be to every man's taste. She was thin, almost brittle-looking. But despite that, she had every curve you could ask for, as perfectly formed and in as exactly the right place as you could ask for, too, just very subtle in scale.

I saw in her eyes the moment she gave up on the piece, and she turned a second later to go. She paused then, and favored me with a small smile. A really nice, small smile. Mona Lisa job...

"I came back today to get this," she said, lifting Troxel's print. "And to look around at what I missed yesterday with Nathan running out of steam," she said earnestly. "I'd seen all down this stretch already, but I came back to, um, apologize for going all mama bear on you yesterday."

I nodded and smiled. "It's okay. Mama bears make sure the world gets to keep going around ten years from now." She seemed truly apologetic, and I was sufficiently well-inclined toward her to let myself go on sheepishly, "It was nothing compared to a few ticking offs I've gotten when I let the kids get back there."

She barked a laugh, sparing the barest glare toward the wall and the sign again. Awkwardly, she turned to head back out to enjoy her day on her own.

Just before she moved, I heard light taps on the roof of my tent. By the time she had turned, they had turned to pitter-pats, and I felt a fresh, cool breeze out of nowhere. My heart sank, and my head went on alert. I scanned around to make sure everything was under cover. By the time she reached the front of my tent, the pitter-pats, had become occasional pitter-plops. She took just one step outside, starting to look up absently, and the utter deluge that had been displacing all the air that formed the breeze as it collapsed out of the clouds at ten thousand feet, struck the ground.

She yelped and leapt back under the dubious shelter of my tent, already half-soaked all over. "Yikes!" she almost screamed. Yes, she actually literally said, 'Yikes'.

"Holy cow," I exclaimed for my own part, and rushed near the front of my tent, checking to see how much rain was coming in. The blue sky overhead that had clouded up a little as the day progressed, had now become a rich, dark charcoal... no, graphite. You could still see a little blue sky on the horizon, but that was disappeared as I watched.

She fumbled in her purse for her phone as I moved a piece to two away from the open front. She looked at the Samsung and swore delicately. "Good grief," she added. I looked at her, and she wordlessly turned the radar map on the phone toward me. The entire screen was suddenly dark green and yellow. Mostly yellow. I saw she had it zoomed out pretty far. This was an enormous rain system that was not going away any time soon.

We looked at each other, the magnitude of this rain sinking in.

I smiled crookedly. "Well, at least you are dry. And you are welcome to stay here as long as you like."

She snorted, but thanked me genuinely.

I stepped to near the open front of my tent. I could not even see Kylie's booth across the wide street anymore. I did not remember her being in her booth right before the rain hit, either. She had a habit of flitting around to neighboring booths, but I had not seen her in mine all day, which was unusual.

Was she in Walt's?

Great. With as long as this rain was going to last, he'd have her re-enacting the potter's wheel scene from Ghost by the time it was done. I knew I didn't like that guy.

I applied a much deserved dope-slap to my internal skull. If Kylie wanted to make out with Walt in a completely open tent in the middle of a rain storm from which a refugee could pop at any moment, then I would laugh heartily when I heard about it later.

Speaking of which, the initial gust of wind was gone, but the breeze was freshening, and mist was penetrating in from the front of my tent. "I hope you don't mind, but I need to drop the front covering down to protect my things," I said, already moving to drop the drape over the front of my tent and block the monotonously thundering rain.

The light in my booth dimmed with the canvas's collapse, but not so much as to be creepy.

The woman waved idly. "I'm not claustrophobic, if that is what concerned you. And I'd be churlish to complain when your tent is keeping me dry.

I reflected that we had both lied when we said she was dry. That mere second in the initial deluge had done a number on her. Her ash brown hair, with the barest hint of natural blonde highlights, had been up in a messy, five-second bun the day before, but was now pulled back in a long pony-tail that still looked great when wet. The mom jeans of the day before were replaced today with tight, well-fitted denim that showed off her extraordinarily slender build, and its subtle, feline curves.

But her soft, light, sky blue blouse was soaked, and because of that, the very particular kind of bra she wore was quite apparent. Plain and unadorned, it was the sort of bra that a woman puts on with no intention that it will be seen and especially not removed by anyone but herself. That said, it was also the sort of bra a woman wears to provide the best silhouette she has to offer. And it was a fine silhouette. That bra clearly covered everything, but had no padding or pushup functions to act as false advertising. She was dressed for herself, to feel good about herself today.

I politely did not indulge my artist's prerogative to stare. Much.

We made idle conversation, keeping our voices raised unusually high to be heard by each other. A puma could had slowly killed a goose out in the middle of the street and I doubt we would have heard it over the din of rain impacting the roof of the tent. Mostly we spoke about the extraordinary weather, as people do. The sole real content we shared was that her name was Ellen, and that Ellen had always liked the name Robert.

"I hope your son isn't at the pool or anything today," I observed. "He will be unhappy if so."

"He was supposed to be with his father all this weekend, but the..." she choked herself off before whatever fruity expletive came forth, "my ex called it off at the last minute yesterday morning, blowing up my plans. I had no one to look after Nathan. Today my sister was available to take him for bit so I could come back and wander here while I could look at the art, instead of worrying about him. And yes, they were going to the pool, so his weekend is shot too," came the unexpectedly detailed, frustrated data dump.

I kept my mouth shut and tried to exude sympathy. Exactly how to exude emotions effectively is beyond my conscious knowledge, so I did not know if I succeeded. But when someone is obviously hurting, one needs to try.

She flipped her fingers through a few prints in a bin, but gave it up almost instantly. Looking around in frustration, her eyes lighted on the back of my tent, recognizing the sign. "I suppose I should probably go check out what is so bad you were willing to push around a ten year-old to keep him from seeing it," she grumbled, and moved back.

I followed her instinctively. "I didn't..." I started to protest, but she waved me off with a weary, apologetic smile. I just followed her a couple of feet back to give her plenty of room as she stepped behind the wall and came to a sudden, stock-still, silent stop.

Even in the darker than usual condition, I reflected with pride that the colors and tones of my work sprang from the canvases. I do good work.

"Well, I see your point," she said, without looking back at me. "But they are all gorgeous." She stared again, taking them all in. Finally she pointed at the lower front portrait. "Is that really Patrice? He's a dead ringer if not."

My eyebrows shot up. "It is! No one in America seems to have ever seen him... yet. Do you get over to France often?"

She laughed darkly. "Oh yes, darling. We single divorcees with office jobs and little boys do often jet off to Paris!" She shook her head. "My sister in-law and my brother live in Brussels. Daniella and I share pictures all the time. Usually it is just memes, but the occasional really delicious man does make their way into the conversation."

Again she paused. Her shoulders slumped. "But these are all gorgeous," she said, sounding defeated.

"Oh yes," I agreed. "But there are many gorgeous people," I added, taking half a step forward to add weight to my implied inclusion of her in that category. Because I did think she was gorgeous, even before the rain plastered her blouse to her small, exactingly crafted breasts.

She clearly was not buying my hesitant sales job, and suddenly she retreated. I wasn't ready for it, and she nearly collided with me before I could jerk back out of her space. We brushed together for a millisecond before I could move.

"Sorry," she said, almost sullenly as she stepped back once more into the space with the nudes, refusing to look at me. "I understand what you are politely trying to say," she went on, "and thank you. But I've had it made quite clear to me how lacking I am in the sex appeal department." She fiddled with the empty ring finger on her left hand.

Words were not going to be helpful, so I settled for a quiet contradictory grunt and stood still. I was in no position to brighten this complete stranger's day, so I just stood quietly by, feeling ashamed at how much I was enjoying the view of her tight, tiny, grabbable ass in those perfectly-fitted jeans.

"And it is not like he is any prize himself," she declared into the silence. "Witness his behavior this weekend... and lots of other weekends when he is supposed to have the custody he fought so nastily for."

I just kept quiet. Clearly she needed a really good vent, here in the privacy of the thunderous rain, with only what she probably was seeing as this strange, high-end pornographer to hear her. No one likes to be interrupted during a good rant.

And vent she did, detailing at length the shortcomings of one Nate, Sr., Human Pestilence. But her eyes kept roaming the pictures around her. Surprisingly, she mostly looked at the female figures, not Patrice or his nearly as attractive partner in crime above him.

She ran out of complaints about her ex remarkably swiftly, not because she ran out of material, she just was very concise yet comprehensive in her remarks. It seemed like a very well-rehearsed and performed oration, and I wondered if I was the first to ever actually hear it in its entirety out loud.