Bone Chilling Cold

I never understood the phrase "bone chilling cold" until the winter I went with no heat. Sometimes it felt warmer to step outside than to curl up alone in my empty apartment. Boy, oh, boy, my joints would get stiff under my layers of blankets and I couldn't feel anything but occasional pain in my perpetually numb fingers and toes. The winter crept by, and cold clung to the walls. I was lonely all by myself in that one room studio, but I didn't have many other places to go.

I signed up for night shifts at the restaurant and stayed at the library from the moment it opened until I had to go to work. Waiting tables during a recession doesn't exactly line your pockets well, and electricity was one of the only things I could cut back. I practically survived on scraps and leftovers from the restaurant. My mattress was the only furniture I owned, and I sold off half my clothes to a second hand shop at some point in December. It was something of a whim, but I felt compelled to do it.

I took the meager $70 that seven shirts, three pairs of pants, four dresses, a jacket and three pairs of shoes got me, and I walked into an art store. I had a vision and all I needed was paint and a canvas large enough to hold it.

I understood the cold.

With the paint hung from my arm in a plastic bag, I awkwardly carried the wide canvas the twelve blocks back to my apartment. Back at home I laid the canvas on the floor and squirted the paint into my palm. I hardly felt the cold liquid hit my icy hand. My fingers knew where to direct the colors on the canvas. Pale purples and brooding blues mingled together as shocking whites threw unblending lines into the blurry mass. The thin white line became a frozen body atop the unfeeling cold palette of purple and blue.

The whole work was finished in about three hours. I sat back after bending over the canvas and guiding the paint with my frozen fingers. My hands were covered in paint and I felt so dirty and ashamed. I remember thinking I could never face my mother again if she knew what I had done with the money from my clothing.

The finished canvas was now a source of shame. I couldn't bear to look at it. Once the paint had finished drying, I hung it up in my window behind the drapes, facing outward. It functioned as another layer between me and the cold, but I couldn't help thinking I was secretly beckoning the cold into my apartment.

It wasn't until the middle of March that an art dealer came pounding on my door. It was a wonder I was home late that afternoon, but the restaurant had given me the day off by some fluke, and I had already spent a number of hours at the library. My apartment was a last resort.

His name was Zosima. He asked me how much the painting in the window was. I stared back blankly; I hadn't even invited him inside, and, thinking he had the wrong apartment, I began to close the door and tell him I didn't know what he was talking about. He stuck his hand out to stop me from closing the door.

"Please," he said so politely, "I must have it."

Somehow he slipped into my apartment as I closed the door in bewilderment. I remember trying to convince myself it was a bad idea to have a strange man in my apartment with the door closed.

"What's your name?" He asked me gently.

I didn't know if I should reply, but I answered, "Abbie," as I watched him deftly pull his checkbook out of his thick black overcoat. A pen immediately followed and he told me he needed the painting as he filled out a check.

"Will this do?" He asked me once he extended the check to me. I took it and looked at the check made out to "Abby." It was for five thousand dollars; I could turn on the heat.

"Is this for real?" I asked, looking up at him.

"Absolutely. May I see it?"

I pointed to the drapes that covered the canvas and he briskly walked to the place and uncovered his treasure. He turned it towards himself and gazed at it lovingly. Abruptly he turned back to me and demanded, "Do you have any more like it?"

"I only made the one," I replied dumbly.

"His eyes widened, but I had no idea what was going through his mind. His eyes scanned across the painting and after a moment he asked, "Did you sign it?"

"No."

"Where's your paint? You must sign it."

Embarrassed, I walked to my kitchen area and opened a cupboard that was empty except for my leftover paint. I squirted some on an old bill laying out on my countertop and dipped the cap of a pen into the white blob.

"Set it down," I instructed the man, and he immediately obeyed.

I kneeled down to the bottom right hand corner and scrawled, "Abbie Smith."

The man watched my every move. As I stood up he darted to where I had set the check down and ripped it up. I felt my heart sink and the cold crash in with a new vigor; I was chilled to the bone. The sight of the check had given me the first hope of heat in my apartment in over five months. He didn't let me linger in despair for very long, however; in a matter of seconds I was holding a new check in my hands made out to Abbie Smith for six thousand dollars.

"Can you make me another?"

The cold I felt in between the checks was long enough to freeze a second vision in my mind. I nodded in response to his question. "But I can't promise more than one."

"That's alright. I'll take them one at a time."

He smiled before carefully picking the painting up off the floor and walking to the door. I watched him lovingly balance the wide canvas in one hand as he opened the door and closed it as he left. I looked at the check in my cold hand when I was left alone; a pride of lions on the African plains looked back at me through the print on the check.