Chapter 14: Melting

Gospel Grimes stood in tears in front of her mermaid picture.

Beside the door to THE Magic LANTERN, other hands had been busy on the brick. Someone hand sprayed black rectangles over the mermaids’ breasts. Another hand using bubblegum-pink spray paint had added a personal tag and a challenge to other taggers. And the media had faded; Gospel’s spray work remained pristine, but the heavily saturated aquamarines and indigos she had rolled on seemed to be fading into the brick.

Behind her a high, wavering—yet so extraordinarily collected—voice said: “Would you like me to give you a hug just now?”

Gospel turned and looked over her shoulder.

Rev. Bea stood there, hands stacked on top of a short broom handle; she seemed to have been sweeping the stoop of THE Magic LANTERN.

“Oh … ” said Gospel. The old woman did look so strange.

“It’s all right,” Rev. Bea said. “I do understand about boundaries. But your beautiful painting. I’m sure you could make it again. Or something better. Much better! Don’t you imagine?”
Gospel snuffled. “It would need not to run.”

Rev. Bea nodded.

“I’d need to study more about preparing brick to, to receive the media.”

Rev. Bea went back to sweeping. “Well, you are more than welcome to prepare our brick any old way you’d like to. Miss Susan and I—that’s the proprietress here—we like to see some beauty on our building.”

“Beauty,” whispered Gospel. She hadn’t thought about that.

If anything, she’d hoped to offend. At least to shock. Make em stare.

Beauty…

Only she had seen it, she’d thought.

Chin on her shoulder, she stared at Rev. Bea. All in rusty black, with some kind of crazy pink stockings and an ill-fitting letterman’s jacket, the old woman looked like nothing so much as a homeless lady sweeping for a cup of coffee.

Gospel sat down, back to the ruined painting, and cried a little more.

Then she took out her cracked phone and begin to Google ways to treat exterior brick to receive permanent artwork.