Jacque sat at the cafe drinking one of those tiny European coffees that take hours to finish. He preferred white wine, but it was early, and knew the waiters at this cafe would peer down at him.
The river was quiet today. Which river, he could never remember. He hadn’t grown up here; only moved because rent was cheaper than it was back in Paris. Paris was a rip-off.
He sipped his coffee and left the money on the table. They knew him. He wandered off down the street.
Colors seeped out of the bricks like they usually did. As he came upon an accordion player, they also ballooned out of notes and dripped into his vision. Jacque stumbled into a crepe stand, muttering excuses as he walked along.
Oh the colors! The lady matched the windowsill--did she know that? No, she didn’t know, not at all. As the notes clambered to an apex, she matched them as well. C was such a yellow note, just as the stripe on her jacket was yellow, and the post-box behind her. If only he could freeze her on the wall, forever, and freeze the note in the air too--if only he could stop it all.
He’d love to run up to her and scream at her in ecstasy, but he’d learned that that was not the way to approach people. He would say “thank you for wearing yellow today,” and she wouldn’t understand.
Because no one ever did understand--if they had, he wouldn’t be here now, but off signing autographs and giving speeches for the glory of light. Back in art school they had the shamelessness to ask him what his favorite color was. As if an artist could have a favorite color. That was when he knew that they were charlatans. They’d sit there looking artistic, heads down, building giant paper mache dog bones and tanks out of egg cartons while the cries of art begging to be released floated through their heads, finding no hold.
Art was dying. He supposed it wasn’t just art; it seemed that everything was dying and the circles of daily life were carried out by a ghostly clean-up crew. A tourist walked past him with a camera.
“That thing. Death.” He spit on accident. The tourist recoiled. Jacque moved on.
The camera had freed the artist from reality, set him loose like a balloon took to the wind. For a while he floated high, but then the air expanded in his chest and his guts rained down on humanity. The colors were still there though. Trapped up clarinets and in guitar strings, plastered to walls and caged in reflections, the colors buzzed with no where to go.
The lady was still there too, and Jacque stared at the stripe on her bag. She held it tighter. He pointed at her. Dare he? The words came of their own accord.
“Thank you for wearing yellow today.” Her eyes were wide and shining as her fingers curled tighter and tighter on her purse. At first she had been afraid he would steal it; now she was just afraid. Because she didn’t understand, because no one ever did, and she probably had a favorite color.
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