Tagging Hell's Gate

She quickly lowered herself down, edging over until she was in a good position, a foot or so away from the R. She started painting the T.

What Silla hadn't counted on was the train. She saw it long before she heard it, a headlight shining across from the Astoria side of the bridge. She felt a bolt of panic shoot up her spine, but then she looked over at the tracks and relaxed. She was far from the rails; there was no way it could hit her here.

Then she felt the vibration of the wheels hitting the bridge and her heart fell.

It was like being stuck in a blender, or being that little metal ball on the bottom of a can of spray paint. As the train rattled onto the bridge, she bounced and bobbed, shaking like a cat toy on the end of her rope. It felt like the bridge was convulsing, jumping from side to side and up and down. Her cheeks burned from the heat and light as her head snapped up and down. She tried to hold onto the can of paint, but it was hopeless. As it fell from her hand, tumbling end over end to the water below, she heard—felt—a deep voice chuckling.

"I accept your gift," it said. Then everything went black.

*

When Silla opened her eyes, the bridge was gone. So was the moon, the water, the rope, and the rest of Astoria. Everything seemed completely dark, but when she raised her hand to her face, she could see it clearly. She could also see her legs and feet, and the polished black floor below her. A few feet away, the room dissolved into shadows.

"Ah, you're awake."

It was the voice from the bridge. Silla felt like she should be scared, but she wasn't. It was deep and rumbling, but not cruel. There was a warmth to it—a humor—and she felt a soft calm slowly rolling through her body.

"I fell asleep?" she asked. "I was worried that...that..."

"Your body's safe," the voice reassured her. "Your mind is...well, safe enough. Then again, safety is overrated, don't you think?"

In spite of everything, Silla smirked, thinking of her evening's activities. The voice chuckled. "As for being asleep, well, that's harder to say. In a manner of speaking you're asleep right now. Looking at it another way, you've always been asleep. And if we look at it that way, well, then, tonight, you woke up."

"So I'm still hanging beneath the bridge? But that doesn't make sense at all. What happened to me?"

"You were knocking on Hell's Gate," the voice said. "Sometimes, we answer."

"So I'm in Hell?"

The voice chuckled again. "Let's not worry about labels."

"But you said my body is safe. So I'm not dead."

"No, you're not dead," the voice reassured her. "Although, you should really think twice before hanging off a bridge from a cheap rope. All sorts of bad things can happen."

"I knew I should have bought some carabiners," Silla admitted. "Next time."

"Yes, next time," the voice agreed. "You also might think about getting some decent climbing gear. There's an old saying, 'Kids who hang off bridges from a dollar store rope should wear bathing suits.'"

Silla smiled again. "I've never heard that one."

"Well, it's an old saying. Or a new saying from a very old soul. Either way, it's good advice."

"Thank you," Silla said. "But that still doesn't tell me why I'm here."

"We'll get to that in a moment. First, I have a question: Why do you want to be here?"

Answers leaped to Silla's mind—she didn't want to be here, she wasn't supposed to be here—but she wasn't sure they were true, or even all that important. Why was she here? Why was she on the bridge in the middle of the night? She thought about it. "I'm here because...I want to be an artist?"

"Is that a question or an answer?" It was a snarky answer, but Silla could hear the voice smiling. It reminded her of school.

"It's an answer," Silla said. "I think...I think that it's the only answer."

"Smart girl!" The voice said. "I think you're right. The next question is what you need."

"Apart from carabiners? Spray paint? Good rope?" The voice chuckled again, and Silla felt warm. "Well, I need..." Silla thought. "That's a harder one. I think I need to know why art disappears...and how to make it stay. I need to know how to be a better artist, so my paintings don't disappear, so they stay forever."

"And who do you think could answer that question for you?"

"I guess ad guys, maybe? Art gallery owners? Critics?"

The voice burst out laughing. I guess I'm funny, Silla thought. Who knew?

"Hell is full of art salesmen and critics. People who took genius and made it into money, or poured their jealousy and bitterness into pages and books." The voice paused. "But is that what you really want? Do you want to know how to sell your gift, one canvas at a time? Or how to pick apart art that you could never hope to create?"

Silla shuddered. "No...that's not it. I think...I think I want to know how to make paintings that are worth selling." She shook her head. "No, that's not right either. I want to make things...I want to make things worth remembering. I want to make things that are so worth remembering that other people will try to save them, and preserve them. Copy them and protect them."

"So you want to talk to artists, then? People who created and inspired? People who were remembered?"

Silla felt a jolt, and it felt like something slid into place. "Yes! I mean, yes, that's exactly it. I want to learn from the people who created forever things."

"Forever things. I like that. But don't you want to live forever?"

"You just told me my body is hanging from a bridge right now. Does that sound like someone who is worried about living forever?" She smiled again. "No, I want my art to live forever."

"Another right answer," the voice said. "Pass! Flying colors!"

The voice faded slowly, its last tone seeming to hang in the air, like a hum dying on the wind. Silla didn't have any feeling of changing or moving, of closing her eyes or reopening them, but she felt a hiccup shake her body and suddenly found herself in a bright, airy room.

The walls and floors were gray, the color of stone, matching the half-carved busts and statues scattered all around. There was a large table, cast off to the side and littered with tools, scraps of cloth and paper, pencils and strings, and other bits of trash and treasure. Three of the walls were covered by rows of shelves packed with paint, brushes, huge blocks of clay and piles of canvases, but the last one was filled with light. A row of windows stretched across it, most of the way from the floor to the ceiling. It pulled in Silla's eyes, revealing fields stretching to the horizon, filled with plants and farms, flowers and forests. In the distance, hawks circled in the air, and she saw a sparrow perched on the sill.

"What do you want to know?"

Silla jumped. She'd been so busy looking out the window that she hadn't seen the young man standing beside it. To be fair, he was almost completely hidden by a large easel and canvas. Only a bit of his slow-moving arm and a thin sliver of his face were visible, and his eyes were locked on the canvas.

Those eyes!

She fidgeted. "What's the best kind of rope for hanging off a bridge?"

The eyes glanced up, dismissed her, looked back to the canvas. The arm moved faster. Those eyes!

They were the eyes of a wild man. Mad and passionate. Rickey, the homeless man in the park, sometimes looked like that, when his eyes weren't clouded by drink or drug. They were rich and dark, beneath an angry brow and above a disheveled beard.

Wrong, she thought. Not like Rickey. These eyes weren't locked on an invisible horizon, weren't dueling with imaginary phantoms and dark forces. As they darted to her again, she saw that they were looking at her, not through her. Measuring. Deciding. The eyes flicked back to the painting, pleased—or at least placated—by what he saw there, and his arm stopped moving. He leaned around the painting and she saw his full face for the first time. Dark, curly hair that fell almost to his shoulders. A long, sharp nose that would have been distinguished if it weren't for the nasty curve in the middle. An old break, healed wrong.

"What's your name?" she asked softly.

Humor flashed across the eyes. "Oh, that's easy. I'm Michael." He smiled. "Is that all? Any more questions?"

"I don't know," Silla said. "The voice told me that there were people here who could teach me. Are you one of them?"

"It depends on what you want to learn."

Silla huffed her irritation. "I want to learn to make art. Well, to make art better."

He glanced back down at the painting, His arm was moving again. "I don't make art. I make motion."

"Motion? Are you a dancer?"

"No. I'm an artist."

Silla felt her face flushing. He was teasing her. "Do you make motion or art?"

"I find motion. I study it. Freeze the moment." His eyes flickered across the room. "Look at that block of marble next to you. What do you see?"

Silla glanced over. It was about six feet high, white, with a soft vein of gray running through it. "I see a block of marble," Silla said.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, but what do you see inside it?"

"Inside it?"

"Yes, inside. There's something inside the marble. The sculptor's job is to let it out. What do you see trying to get out?"

Silla looked at the marble again. It wasn't a perfect block—the sides sloped in a little, and the top wasn't quite flat—one edge was a bit higher than the rest. And then there was that vein of gray, running top to bottom, almost cutting the block in half. Looking closer, she saw that even the seemingly flat edges of the marble weren't quite perfect: inside, she could see bright spots and dark ones, flecks that glittered in the light.

"It could be a dragon, maybe? Or maybe a snake?"

He chuckled. "I usually see angels and saints, but why not?" His eyes flicked to her. Measuring. "Show me what you see."

"See how the top arches over that way?" Silla asked. "Almost like it's stretching toward the ceiling. And that line of gray, it's almost like a stripe down the dragon's spine. And those spots, like scales buried in the stone."

He looked at the block. Weighing her words. Squinting. "I can see it. Well done! Now all we have to do is let it out."

"How do you do that?"

He waved a careless hand at the marble. "Well, now that we've seen the dragon, we just have to cut away everything that isn't the dragon. What's left will be him."

"But I can't do that," Silla said. "I'm not a sculptor. I paint."

"Paint? Stone? You're thinking like an artist."

"But I am an artist. Aren't you?"

"We've already been through that." He flashed another smile. "It's not about whether we paint or sculpt or draw or make little scrawls on the wall of a cave. It's not about the medium—it's about the motion. If you find the motion, everything else falls into place."

"I still don't understand."

"Wait a second," he said as he put down his brush and walked to one of the stacks of canvases leaning against the wall. He flipped through a few, then pulled one out and turned it around so it faced her. "Look at this painting. What do you see?"

It was an old painting, familiar. She'd seen it in an art book somewhere. "It's a guy with a beard and a naked guy pointing at each other."

"Look closer."

Silla rolled her eyes, but then she peered at it. The lazy way the naked man was lying back, his arm resting on his knee, barely stretched out. On the other side, the bearded man strained to touch the naked man's finger. One side was laziness and disinterest. The other side was hope and eagerness. She knew this painting: the lazy man was Adam, the bearded man was God. But, looking at it this way, she saw that Adam didn't seem all that interested in God. God, on the other hand, was desperate to touch Adam. What did that mean?

"I think I see."

"Good. Now sculpt."

Time moved and Silla moved with it. Carving the dragon with Michael. Watching as the coils of muscle revealed themselves when they cut the marble away. Listening to him talk about motion and life, frozen in marble and paint, canvas and concrete.

There were other rooms and other teachers. Andy, in an airy studio, filled with milk-thin light that seeped from windows that looked out on a park that reminded her of Union Square. Vinnie, in a smaller, cramped room bathed in golden light reflecting off fields of hay. Frie, in a studio painted with bright primary colors and lit by a searing summer sun that burned and nurtured and reminded Silla of the beach. Henri. Diego. Matti. Always a room, a scene. A hawk and a sparrow. All the same. All different.

There were lessons from each of them, passed on as they worked side-by-side:

Vinnie: "Look at the eyes. The hands. The shoulders. That's where we keep our humanity."

Andy: "Art is everywhere. Put it on the right pedestal, give it the right presentation, and you can show people the art that surrounds them."

Frie: "The air around us isn't empty. It's full of connection, magic, relationships. Don't paint empty space. Paint the places that are filled with the invisible."

Vinnie: "If you wait for the perfect brush stroke, it may never come. Paint a good brush stroke. Then paint another one. Faster and faster. Catch the moment before it passes. The art isn't in painting it perfectly—it's in capturing it while it's still alive."

Andy: "If you do it right, it looks random, but it isn't. Everything has a purpose and a balance. If you see it, they'll see it."

Henri: "Don't wait for the right subject. Paint the subject in front of your eyes."

Sometimes the advice overlapped and sometimes it contradicted, but standing beside each of them, painting or sculpting, she saw the world, felt it take shape through her fingers. With Andy, a bag of Takis became a living world of flavor and fire, barely contained in a thin plastic skin. With Vinnie, she captured the weathered hands and tired eyes of the guy who drove the Q32 bus. Somehow, she wasn't surprised that, together, they could remember every detail.

She and Frie painted her father, caught in a web of work and family, with rich, bloody veins connecting him to his job, her, his dead wife, his living (and sometimes annoying) parents. The veins were invisible in real life, but in the painting, they were strong and vibrant, filled with love, anger, desire, resentment. Long, ropy strands snaking through the past and present, across the city and even through death, connecting them all.

When she and Michael finished the dragon, they painted a pair of high school boys bumping fists, their arms extended in a casual touch that felt like an intimate act of creation. With Vinnie's help, she moved on to the sky above Astoria Park, little fluttering brushstrokes that showed the explosion of energy flowing down the Triborough bridge and swirling into the air above Hell Gate. Frie showed her how to capture the coiled life bursting out of a flower and the vibrant energy barely contained behind the gray faces on the subway.

There were others: Gus, showing her heaven and hell through little pencil sketches of her street. Remy, helping her capture the excited faces of her neighbors watching fireworks in Astoria Park—the barest hints of vibrant life emerging through the dark of the park at night. Henri, working with outlandish colors to show the exploding emotions of ordinary people in a way that reminded her of comic books. Diego, painting formal portraits but showing little bits of vulgar humanity seeping through the edges.

And always the advice:

"A little lighter, amor. It's a dance, not a dirge."

"Stop. Don't force it. Feel it."

"Don't drag your shirt sleeve through the paint."

Working alongside them, she wondered if art was forever in this place, if this was where it always lived, bright and new, even after death. None of the artists wanted to talk about it, but she kept dropping hints, asking questions as they painted their new subjects: a famous pop star on the way down. A man walking his dog. A bottle of Jarritos against an explosive salmon background.

One day, Matti answered her question. They were painting the kids in the park—a bare-chested boy strutting through the playground, his shirt wrapped around his head. "The problem is, you're thinking of art as a finished product," he said, his brush flicking at one of the leaves in the background. "Like it's something separate from you, something you leave behind."

"Isn't it?" Silla asked, her own brush catching a glint of white in the mulch around a tree. "Isn't a painting a part of you that you walk away from? You know, once you finish it?"

"No, the art is something inside you. The painting is what's left after it travels down your fingers and off your brush." He glanced down at her and saw that her brow was furrowed. "Let me explain. The art is something that needs to come out. When you're young, you're figuring out how to make it. Learning technique, color, perspective." His brush flicked again and he smiled at her. "Then, when you learn that, the art comes out. Sometimes a pour, sometimes a trickle."

"I get that, but..."

"But when you get older, the trickle dries up. Your eyes start to go. Your fingers don't do what you want." He smiled. "You need to take naps. You try to find ways around it. When you can't hold a brush, you hold scissors. When you can't paint a line, you glue pieces of paper to the canvas. Somehow, you still get the art out. Until, one day, you die."

"And the art's left behind, right?"

"No, it's still there. You think the art dies when your body dies?" He snorted. "No, the art's still there. Still hungry. Still not finished. Maybe you find a room like this one. And maybe you hold a brush, like this one." His eyes glittered. "Maybe, you find someone to paint with."

"So you still make art?"

"Yes, but who sees it? And who's in it? Things change slowly here. No new subjects. No new audiences. We make art that doesn't show the world changing and is never seen by a changing world. It's frozen."

"But it's forever, right?"

"Stop thinking about forever! It's not the forever that matters, child. It's the seeing and the creating. Capturing a moment in a changing world. Changing a moment in a world that won't be captured. That's the important thing. Paintings in a gallery? Pah!" He flicked a hand at their canvas. "No, they don't change, but they also don't see anything new. They don't capture the world. They become mousepads or scarves, things to be sold and stored away. Covered in dust..."

Silla looked at him. Looked at the painting. Astoria Park. "I think I see."

The lessons continued, but not forever. There was no voice proclaiming the end of class, no eighth period bell, no final exam, but Silla knew when it was time, and when the hiccup came, she wasn't surprised. She found herself hanging in a rope sling, gently swaying in the breeze above Hell Gate, dangling in front of a half-finished letter.

Might as well fill in the T...

When she was done, she pulled herself up and packed her bag. She'd be back.

At the base of the bridge, she saw the stockbroker. Not bad. Not as good as the sparrow, but not bad. She painted it over, filling the color with black, leaving it for the archeologists.

Then she started again. It was Jerry. His face, lifted up to the sunshine. One hand shading his eyes, the other reaching through the painting. Soft hands, ragged fingernails. Flares of color around him, through him.

She painted.

There were things in the background. You couldn't see the strings that connected them to Jerry, but they were there:

A family eating birthday cake in the park.

Some kids playing frisbee, Jerry's little poodle trying to get in the game.

Boys swaggering through the park, drinking in the sunshine.