Jeremy the Artistic Businessman

[original_lavi]

And now I'm actually going to post something more than a hundred words!

If only it was written more recently than a year ago.

Nevertheless.  I like them and want them here.

Jeremy the Artistic Businessman

 Jeremy stood by the window of his break room, holding the Starbucks coffee his administrative assistant had brought him.  It was his lunch break, he had a free hour ahead of him, but no desire to actually eat during it.  Instead, he doubted he would move from where he was, occasionally sipping his coffee and watching the activities on the street below him.

This was the second week of an art festival.  Touring amateur artists lined the sidewalks in intervals insisted upon by the city officials, their paintings and sketchings propped on easels low and high, even strung along some sort of rope stretched between two poles.  Their respective creators sauntered back and forth in front of them, exhorting passersby most dramatically, as Jeremy could see from five floors up.  When there was a lapse of any potential customers, the artists drew together in groups to talk to each other. 

Behind Jeremy was his office, currently occupied with all the details of the upcoming semiannual audit project that he oversaw as vice president of fiscal affairs.  In one way, he shouldn’t be taking this break if he was only going to spend it staring out the window; the project had to be submitted to their creditors and partners on Friday.  But it was his break, and he had the ready excuse of having the right to spend it whatever way he liked, as long as it revitalized him for the rest of the day. And funnily enough, when he watched the distant figures of the artists below going through the motions of endeavoring to sell their work – succeeding, usually, only one in ten times – the pressure and stress of the project seemed very far away and unimportant. 

Jeremy swirled his coffee cup absentmindedly and leaned against the window, his other hand pushed in his suit pants pocket.  The pocket was satin-lined, as befitted a suit that cost as much as this one did.  It was worth its money in a more important way than its satin pockets, though – every day he wore it, it never failed to give him some measure of confidence in everything he did in his office and in meeting people.  In the suit he was a businessman, there was no question about it in his mind or anyone else’s that he passed on the sidewalk and in the building.  It was a certain identity, at least, which seemed to be what most people were having trouble finding these days.  So it didn’t really matter if it were the identity that made him the happiest or not.  It certainly wasn’t like it made him unhappy.  Far from it.  It stood for security and authority and both regular and large paychecks. 

He wondered if those artists down there got anything like the same sense of assurance.  Some had the stereotypical loose, baggy pants and oversized open overshirts – one or two even had berets.  The rest seemed to be dressed more naturally – Jeremy couldn’t tell what the T-shirts sponsored from where he was.  He supposed he could walk down now and visit them, examine the makers equally with their products, but the idea did not seem like a good one.  He had a feeling it would be awkward, somehow – he in his suit and with his coffee, facing those street artists.  Though they wouldn’t be condescending or unfriendly – never to someone who looked capable of buying a good quantity of their wares.  But all right, if it must be admitted, it was Jeremy who would feel uncomfortable.

As a freshman in high school Jeremy had drawn a black-and-white picture of a tree reflected in a puddle of snow, with footprints around it, which won the state art competition and then placed fourth in nationals.  He had been his art teacher’s protégé, his privileged favorite from whom Jeremy got calls when sick and missing a day of school, and on weekends when the teacher – a Mr. Rodak – was thinking of visiting a new exhibit in the art museum and wanted Jeremy to come along.  By his junior year he had, by Mr. Rodak’s insistence and assistance, a college portfolio entirely completed and several applications sent off to worthy art institutes.  But then for Jeremy’s senior year Mr. Rodak had to move back across the country to be with his ailing mother, and during this year Jeremy had a most serious lecture with his father about preparing for a solid, secure career.  The lecture was an eloquent one, and never threatened to not financially support him if he went to art school; and that perhaps was why it was so deeply persuasive for Jeremy.  He applied to a state university prestigious for its business program, and there he was accepted, although with fewer scholarships, and graduated. 

That was almost fifteen years ago.  Jeremy had married a most beautiful woman that he had met in college and with whom he was unquestionably in love, more than anyone in his life, and he was successful now.  And happy.  Every morning he shaved, put on his suit, combed his hair, and felt the perfect confidence of who he was settle over him from head to foot.  Jeremy had never been given to pointless, unnecessary musing on what might have been, and so it was only at strange times like these, when he stood in his break room and watched the street artists sitting idly on the sidewalk below, that Jeremy remembered his portfolio and Mr. Rodak, and knew without exactly knowing why that if he were to ever encounter him again today, he would employ any means necessary to convince his former teacher that he was not the same person as his old high school protégé. 

He had used to tell himself, when he first entered business school, that it didn’t matter that much; he could keep drawing to make himself happy and for his family and friends, and it was all right if he couldn’t improve his skill the way he would have in art school – it could never have amounted to as much as his business degree would.  By junior year, however, he no longer had time or inspiration to draw anything, even doodles in his most boring classes.  Only once after that, near the end of his senior year, did he make an attempt when a tour from one of the art schools to which he could have gone swept through his city.  He saw it with some friends, and then went home, pulled out all the dusty supplies his old friends still occasionally gave him, and got halfway through a piece when he realized in horror how inferior it was to what he used to do years ago.  It was more than just horror in what he felt, too; it disturbed him in a very deep level he didn’t want to name or think about.  He quickly burned the half-finished work, and the next day donated all his remaining art supplies to a nearby high school. 

But yes, that was a long time ago, very distant to him now in his suit and break room on the fifth floor. 

The coffee in his cup had gone cold, and his break was nearly over.  Jeremy straightened, moving off the window and tossing the cup into a low trash bin, and turned to go back to work where there was nothing more artistic or colorful than pie charts done by programs in Microsoft Word.  By the time he would leave that night, all the street artists would be gone.  

What I particularly like, re-reading now: The second half of the fourth paragraph, as it gets into identities and things.  And my aversion from too many literally romantic issues.