Musemuggers
Title: Teatro No. 5
Author: keppiehed
Word Count: 904
Prompt: this picture: Teatro No. 5
A/N: Written for musemuggers, Challenge #502, Option #4. The previous challenge was #498, Option #2, the picture.
Teatro No. 5 is located on Water St., in between a coin-laundry and a Chinese takeout. It isn’t actually a theater at all, nor is it Italian. It is a used bookstore run by an unwashed college dropout, but it took Alex a full year to figure it out, since there are no signs to indicate that it sells reading material (or anything else, for that matter). An image of St. Francis graces the front of the building in a faded fake fresco-at least, Alex has long assumed it is St. Francis, given the multitude of grateful-looking fauna surrounding the man-but some wayward youths have added their own artistry to the saint with neon gusto and now it is hard identify a visage or even that it is a fresco at all.
In spite of its disappointing misnomer, Alex has long been intrigued with the architecture of the building. There is something about the way it squats between its neighbors that bespeaks if not of elegance than of a certain disaffectation for the otherwise squalid surroundings. The city is not noted for its beauty-flowers in crannied walls be damned-so Alex feels something of a kinship every time he has chanced to walk by Water Street and see something worth looking at that isn’t all broken bottles or used condoms in the gutter. His eye is drawn to the texture of lime in the exterior, the way that the bold art deco lettering proclaims itself a theater with no other explanation. The air of mystery that the pseudo-theater exudes clashes with the regular puffs of steam from the laundry next door, and Alex finds excuses to wander that direction after school, even if it is the long way home. He likes to watch the way the light glances off the soffits; they are a little less crooked or perhaps they hold more character than the Chinese place, with its line of customers vying for General Tsao’s and Moo Goo Gai Pan. Teatro No. 5 sits silent and exotic, beckoning him to wonder what sort of shows it offers in the dark recesses of the interior stages.
Of course, by the time Alex has become a serious artist, he already knows that Teatro No. 5 is just a shoddy second-run bookstore, but he still likes the place. He’d been going by there almost every day of the week for two years by then, and sometimes just to get out of the house on Sundays when his dad is home, too. He’d wedge himself in the alleyway across the street or even climb up the rusted fire escape on that place over on Fifth where he could see the Teatro from a better angle, when the sun is right overhead. He’d sketch with intent, then. He must have drawn the Teatro a hundred times by now, from sweeping pictures of the entire exterior to thumbnails of the ornate doorknobs or the way the one beam on the left narrows near the rooftop.
There was a time, not even that long ago, when Alex liked to draw all sorts of things. He would see the reflection of the moon in an oil-slick puddle or the lace-dark fingers of rust that limn the edges of car doors might catch his interest. It seems that he always comes back to Teatro No. 5, though, and now he doesn’t want to look at anything else. He holds the growing stack of sketches in his hands and lets them scatter in the breeze. There are more at home under his bed. She always sends them back in an envelope marked ‘return to sender’. She never even looks at them. He can tell because the seal is unbroken. He keeps them all in a shoebox because they have her writing.
Alex thinks back to the last time he saw her, a memory so careworn it might have been threadbare at the edges. Even though he’d been young, he’d had an eye for loveliness, and his mother was the most beautiful thing he could ever remember seeing. She was prettier than the other women, prettier than other moms, prettier even than the women he saw on TV he was allowed to watch at night. Sometimes during these times when she is gone for too long, he imagines that she is an actress. He imagines her embraced by the lights of the stage, the slightly motheaten red curtains sheltering her from the applause of her over-ardent audience. Nothing is beyond her talent. She has important things to do if she can’t come home. She is out dazzling the world in Teatros No. 1-4. It is his bad luck that Teatro No. 5 went bust and she had to travel to farther venues to seek her fortune. Alex comes back every day to the Teatro and sketches a different angle until he knows it to be true.
True.
True.
A drop of rain smudges the line between the foundations of his sketch. Alex should go home; it is getting dark, and a storm is no place for an artist, even a minor one, but he grips his pencil tighter and starts work on the rise of the wall. He ignores the wind from the north and settles in to frame the exterior in long slashes on the blank page, over and over again until he doesn’t feel anymore.
Sometimes he thinks he will come here forever.
Author: keppiehed
Word Count: 904
Prompt: this picture: Teatro No. 5
A/N: Written for musemuggers, Challenge #502, Option #4. The previous challenge was #498, Option #2, the picture.
Teatro No. 5 is located on Water St., in between a coin-laundry and a Chinese takeout. It isn’t actually a theater at all, nor is it Italian. It is a used bookstore run by an unwashed college dropout, but it took Alex a full year to figure it out, since there are no signs to indicate that it sells reading material (or anything else, for that matter). An image of St. Francis graces the front of the building in a faded fake fresco-at least, Alex has long assumed it is St. Francis, given the multitude of grateful-looking fauna surrounding the man-but some wayward youths have added their own artistry to the saint with neon gusto and now it is hard identify a visage or even that it is a fresco at all.
In spite of its disappointing misnomer, Alex has long been intrigued with the architecture of the building. There is something about the way it squats between its neighbors that bespeaks if not of elegance than of a certain disaffectation for the otherwise squalid surroundings. The city is not noted for its beauty-flowers in crannied walls be damned-so Alex feels something of a kinship every time he has chanced to walk by Water Street and see something worth looking at that isn’t all broken bottles or used condoms in the gutter. His eye is drawn to the texture of lime in the exterior, the way that the bold art deco lettering proclaims itself a theater with no other explanation. The air of mystery that the pseudo-theater exudes clashes with the regular puffs of steam from the laundry next door, and Alex finds excuses to wander that direction after school, even if it is the long way home. He likes to watch the way the light glances off the soffits; they are a little less crooked or perhaps they hold more character than the Chinese place, with its line of customers vying for General Tsao’s and Moo Goo Gai Pan. Teatro No. 5 sits silent and exotic, beckoning him to wonder what sort of shows it offers in the dark recesses of the interior stages.
Of course, by the time Alex has become a serious artist, he already knows that Teatro No. 5 is just a shoddy second-run bookstore, but he still likes the place. He’d been going by there almost every day of the week for two years by then, and sometimes just to get out of the house on Sundays when his dad is home, too. He’d wedge himself in the alleyway across the street or even climb up the rusted fire escape on that place over on Fifth where he could see the Teatro from a better angle, when the sun is right overhead. He’d sketch with intent, then. He must have drawn the Teatro a hundred times by now, from sweeping pictures of the entire exterior to thumbnails of the ornate doorknobs or the way the one beam on the left narrows near the rooftop.
There was a time, not even that long ago, when Alex liked to draw all sorts of things. He would see the reflection of the moon in an oil-slick puddle or the lace-dark fingers of rust that limn the edges of car doors might catch his interest. It seems that he always comes back to Teatro No. 5, though, and now he doesn’t want to look at anything else. He holds the growing stack of sketches in his hands and lets them scatter in the breeze. There are more at home under his bed. She always sends them back in an envelope marked ‘return to sender’. She never even looks at them. He can tell because the seal is unbroken. He keeps them all in a shoebox because they have her writing.
Alex thinks back to the last time he saw her, a memory so careworn it might have been threadbare at the edges. Even though he’d been young, he’d had an eye for loveliness, and his mother was the most beautiful thing he could ever remember seeing. She was prettier than the other women, prettier than other moms, prettier even than the women he saw on TV he was allowed to watch at night. Sometimes during these times when she is gone for too long, he imagines that she is an actress. He imagines her embraced by the lights of the stage, the slightly motheaten red curtains sheltering her from the applause of her over-ardent audience. Nothing is beyond her talent. She has important things to do if she can’t come home. She is out dazzling the world in Teatros No. 1-4. It is his bad luck that Teatro No. 5 went bust and she had to travel to farther venues to seek her fortune. Alex comes back every day to the Teatro and sketches a different angle until he knows it to be true.
True.
True.
A drop of rain smudges the line between the foundations of his sketch. Alex should go home; it is getting dark, and a storm is no place for an artist, even a minor one, but he grips his pencil tighter and starts work on the rise of the wall. He ignores the wind from the north and settles in to frame the exterior in long slashes on the blank page, over and over again until he doesn’t feel anymore.
Sometimes he thinks he will come here forever.