THE POLLOCK
New York City, 2000
Under a chilled squall, Charlie pulled the bill down on her New York Yankees cap. She didn’t like baseball, hated the city, and loathed the weather, yet there she was, soaked to the skin and shivering under the shadow of the flatiron building. The autumnal sun had failed to penetrate the gloom, bringing the day to a premature close. The bittersweet waft of steam from an underground vent fell across her face, lifting the hair on the back of her neck. Her father, Pop, called the fall the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. But that was back in Virginia; this was goddamn, frozen ass, New York City. The soup she had purchased from the café on the south side of Madison Square Park had been repurposed as a hand warmer. Losing the cardboard sleeve from the cup had proven to be a master stroke. Thankfully, some feeling was returning to the tips of her fingers.
Tourists circumnavigated a tall black man selling knock-off bags from a tarpaulin placed strategically at the junction of Broadway and East 23rd Street. Trade looked slow. Damp and slow. When the warning from a young lookout rang out, the alfresco shop was hurriedly closed down. At breakneck speed, the bags, the tarpaulin, and the seller did a disappearing act, in that order. Charlie turned from the commotion to face the solitude of the moment.
Above, in the fading light, the silver lettering on a nearby shop had turned to gunmetal gray. The dark blue cast-iron pillars framed the edges of the one beacon of light in the immediate vicinity, the Manheim Gallery of Fine Art. Crystal clear lighting fell from the gallery window out onto the wet cobbles. Despite the prevailing conditions, the gallery remained fresh and exciting. It had shown the audacity to burst forth from the bohemian enclave of Chelsea, a few blocks away. High End didn’t come close to describing the prowess and position the rive-gauche emporium held within the Manhattan arts scene. She had done it before and was doing it again. Staring. Just staring.
Inside, ice-cold LED wall lights on wire stalks cast the perfect amount of light on each and every work of art. A few pieces stood out from the crowd of canvases: a couple of Chagalls, two works from Kandinsky, and a Rothko. A fresh northerly blast forced Charlie to lift her collar and bow her head in chilled reverence.
There it is.
At the epicenter of the gallery stood the object of her interest, a painting by Jackson Pollock. She had visited and studied the piece so often that she considered it her only friend in Manhattan. As she edged across to the doorway to gain a better view, the snooty stick insect who owned the gallery cut through her line of sight. The lady lowered her aquiline nose far enough to spy Charlie over her thin rim glasses. Charlie smiled. In response, the lady stepped towards the door. At the last second, she flipped the sign on the door to Closed. The only thing on show that night was the owner’s clean set of heels.
Charlie checked her watch. Three minutes to closing time. She got the message. Not for the first time, Charlie watched the gallery lights go out, one by one. The last light, as always, held its position directly above the object of her desire, the mesmerizing Jackson Pollock. She seared the image deeper into her psyche just as the final bulb died. The show was over.
As she turned to head to the nearby Italian market, she heard the store shutters bringing down the curtain on another performance.
Home time.
Chapter 2 A Charlie Glass Thriller Series A few days later, Charlie arrived at the gallery a little over an hour before closing. The old school bell above the door rattled as she entered. The older owner could not have been less pleased to see Charlie. Although serving another elderly couple, the woman’s tut seemed to drown out the bell. Charlie took no heed. Instead, she eased through the gallery
CHAPTER 3 A Charlie Glass Thriller Series Two weeks later, Charlie still hadn’t managed to extract herself from New York. Mercifully, she had been able to shed the Yankees hat. Pop read a nearby graphic. “What’s Synchronism?” “It’s a form of abstract art that creates effects through rhythmic color forms. Why do you ask?” “This fella here.” “Thomas Hart Benton?”
This is an excerpt from Charlie’s life. It is designed to add color and context to the high-impact feature-length novels within the Charlie Glass Crime Thriller Series. This piece is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialogue, and all characters, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life locales, articles, or incidents may appear, the situations, events, and dialogues concerning those entities are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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