53

A new day. A new life continues.

“Lookie,” Belle said as she came into the apartment.

I’d been painting on my new sparrow picture. 

“Lookie, lookie,” she said as she put two boxes on the kitchen table.

“Hi,” I answered.

“This one is yours,” she pointed to one of the boxes.  They were identical.

“Thanks,” I said.  Better be thankful I always knew.  Always be thankful for Bellex’s presents, especially Belle’s.  Sometimes multiple times in one day.

She came over and grabbed my arm, squeezing it against her, pulling me away from the canvas.

“See!  Yours is bigger cuz you have big hands, and mine is a little tablet cuz I know best.”  Both boxes looked the same.

“Hey,” I interrupted.  “What happened to that painting I was working on last week?  The wind mill thing?”  I was planning on looking at the painting that morning but it wasn’t on the easel where I’d left it the other day.  I opened the box and pulled out a new laptop.  I needed one ever since the crazies from the yellow bus had trashed our apartment in New Orleans.  We left the “Big Easy”, as Bellex called it, and had been traveling the coast ever since.

“Konitchiwa,” Bellex bowed to me.  “Konitchiwa,” she said again.  She came over to look again at the new painting.  “I like this one too,” she stood next to me and then hugged me from behind.  I knew that something was up.  She didn’t say anything about the missing canvas.

Konitchiwa?  I didn’t know how to spell the word.  Probably Japanese I thought to myself. 

“Would you like some to this tea I found at the market?”  It had Japanese script on the box.  Tea?  I usually drank coffee.  But what the hell!

“Sure, what happened to the painting?”

“I sold it to Mr. Kiyama.”  Her back was to me but I could see her smile from the sideways view.  “A lot of money to us, just a little to him.”

“Oh!”  I said.  Money was always a good thing.

“It was a good thing that you signed it last week,” she added.  She gave me a cup of tea.  It was unusual.  Kind of thick and black.  Pretty good.

“I don’t remember signing it,” I took another sip.  Better.

“Oh yeah,” she said, “right in the left corner.  You added a new flourish I thought that you should have been signing all along.”

Flourish?  Oh well. Bellex always took care of money and things to buy.  I’d always just traveled along and lived from day to day before I met her last year.  We both claimed to be 16 but I had my doubts about her age.  Again, oh well!

“Don’t you remember?” she continued.  “You were tired of signing everything in that dark blue color and decided to sign the sparrow one with a nice green.  I thought that it was a nice touch.”

Green?  Oh well, I supposed I should have thought of using green before now.  I should probably use a pink or yellow next.  I’ll wait and see what I decide.

The finished charm painting.

 The other charm painting.

The missing sparrow painting.