"Do you think this is the one?" my friend asked. He was a painter, and had been looking for his perfect red- not scarlet, not crimson.
I thought hard and long without moving my lips. "I can't tell." I lied. "I'm color-blind."
I knew no one who was as sensitive as my friend. He once cried over a photo of an emaciated child near a waiting vulture. What he saw tortured his mind and moved him to burn all his black-and-white's and pour thinner on the colored ones. He gave up photography afterwards.
At the last minute, I decided to drop by his studio to see him one more time before flying somewhere oceans away, but I did not want him to see my eyes saying goodbye. It would be embarrassing. He painted my portrait before, but I was smiling. I did not want him to think what I had in mind every time I watched him in front of his easel. It was not the wet bristles of his brush or the palette of oil paints on his hand that made me smile. It was my secret he did neither suspect nor know.
"Just try," he pleaded. "You can still see colors even with closed eyes."
His begging sounded pitiful and sad. I wanted to help, but I did not know what to do. I knew nothing about counseling a guy with a broken heart. Instead, I offered to setup the stool, the easel, and the side table.
"I'm not the painter here." I tried to be humorous with my predictable giggles. "Red is not all that." It seemed he found my giggles sincere. "You can even paint a black rose without thorns." He listened. "Thorns would mean wounds, and you would need red for that."
He just glanced at me as he sat down on the screeching rattan chair, facing the sunray-lit wall where he hanged his finished floral and landscape paintings. He did not thank me for the thoughts I giggled, but I knew the look on his face, a grateful one.
Done setting up, I placed the canvas on the easel and screwed it tight. "I guess you can paint now." I prompted him that he could start whenever he was ready.
While he was busy doing his own thing in his corner, I picked up the folded pizza boxes on the floor, the crumpled hamburger wrappers on the drafting table, and the crashed cans of soda all over.
He was fixing something that temporarily took his attention from the red paint that looked too pale for the hidden artist in me.
I did not touch the empty water bottles he put aside for used oils and colored thinners. Completing my speed cleaning inside, I reached a few cobwebs with a broom, swept some spots, and took his trash out.
The screeching sound of the chair missing a few nails bothered him. He squatted, and from squatting, he sat on the floor without wiping the dust. His back slouched, and his head tilted down in earnest. He always looked like that when something interesting preoccupied him.
I continued my cleaning along the way out; I was not really his housekeeper. I just returned the favor. He took care of me one Christmas eve when I got very sick from drinking too much tequila. He did not only let me wear his shirt and pajamas, he also helped me clean up, shower, and dry myself. Not done yet, he even let me use his bed, gave me his softest pillow, and covered me with his wooly blanket. How could I forget that night when I was feverish and vomiting? He did not fondle me.
When I came back from disposing his garbage, he was still finishing something. From the blue curtained-door, I could only see his left shoulder hit by a beam coming from one of the half-opened windows. His inside-out shirt looked darker although it was faded black. He had worn the same one since we met up for lunch two days before, but he did not smell.
Curious to know what had been keeping him busy since I started tidying up around, I went near him. Beside him, I watched his hands shake while he was washing and drying the paintbrushes he soaked in a can of turpentine that diffused a smell of varnish circulating inside his cluttered studio.
I had never seen him so hopelessly resigned, defeated almost, like that before. He never told me that being alone made him tremble. It was clear to me that his trembling was that of a scared one.
Losing his muse had left him numb. He tried mixing yellow and cyan, but their red looked crimson. He tried different colors; the result was scarlet. Without trying again, he simply gave up. The drive was not there anymore. Only the memory of the woman who inspired and then left him lingered to torture. At that moment, I understood the tremor in his hands. He was afraid of not being able to paint again, the fear of a lonely painter.
I felt sorry for him. I perfectly understood the pain that might push him into gloom and isolation. He was the one who told me about the suicide, Arshile Gorky, whose impressionist works he studied and postimpressionist style he wanted to try, but had never gotten around to doing it.
I knew he was stronger than what one would think about the weaknesses of artists. He said so before, when a nasty article came out lambasting his first exhibit. He simply moved on but promised never to paint anything abstract again.
Through the window across from us, we could see the horizon dimming. I invited him for a dinner outside, thinking it was time for him to go home. His favorite restaurant was a walking distance equally between his art studio and posh apartment, and he liked their grilled chicken and fish stew.
"I'm not really hungry," he said. My friend had his own way of declining or refusing without saying "no". He was good with words too, but, unlike me, he was not a poet.
A red pack on his lap almost empty, he stared at the ceiling, made smoke rings, and counted them. He held tight the last cigarette between his fingers. His drag and puff was long almost like a deep sigh. He did not want to be bothered.
"I have to go," I said, trying to break the gloomy silence permeating the air.
He looked at me, stood up, dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, and walked me out; he was like a robot in that order, lifeless.
We hugged, and I told him, "If it's that painful, paint her with your blood, the only perfect red that exists."
He laughed, but his laughter was incomplete. It was not as loud as the one I heard the last time I told him a joke, and I did not see his perfect teeth.
"If you want your perfect red, bleed and suffer." I blurted out what I thought with honest confidence. "By the way, don't burn your studio," I said in jest.
"I know," he sheepishly bounced back and pretended he was looking for the stone ashtray he carved.
"I have to go." I left without waiting for his reaction and response. Talking to him was an effort when his mind was full.
A few yards away, I turned my back. Framed by the restraining door, he stood still with a forlorn face, feeling alone in his desolate art studio and battling his demons.
If only I could paint, I would have painted his saddest moment, the last time I saw him losing it while looking at the moonless sky of the dusky evening.
As I walked farther away, alone on the empty street, I wondered why he chose her. I wondered why he chose to suffer instead. I also wondered why he chose to let me go.