Alan Sincic

              With a magazine and a strip of duct tape the detective – the nice one, the one with the crisp in the collar and the delicate hands, dabs the cut on your brow with a cue-tip and rigs up a splint to cradle the break in your wrist. He stands behind you, at the ready, should you need a pat on the shoulder, a swig of water, a smoke. The other detective – the gruff one – kicks back in the corner with his feet up top a trashcan flipped, upside-down, to make a stool. With his teeth he tears the head off a packet of salted peanuts.

            You blink, with your one good eye, at the page there on the table before you, the white of the page. The sketch artist snuggles up alongside. Tilts the sketchbook to lessen the glare of the lamp. Metal the lamp. Shade the size of the eye of a cyclops.

            “That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there,” he says, not so much sympathy as admiration for the heft of it, the bob of the plummy eye in the glare of the bulb, the purply whirl of it all, like the Bella in la promenade by Chagall or that bizarro bubble in The Garden Of Earthly Delights by what’s-his-name, that looney-tune, Hieronymus Bosch.

            “So the assailant,” he says. “Let’s begin.” He draws an oval no bigger than a bread plate. “The eyes?”

            “Two.”

            He laughs. “That’s a start.” He draws the eyes. “Nose?”

            “One.”

            Shakes his head. Pencils in the barest outline of a nose. “Okay. Okay. Now -- ”

            So on it goes. It was dark you say. I didn’t get a good look at the guy, but there was this one moment, see, in the moonlight…

            He draws a moon.

            “No,” you say. “A three-quarters moon, a – what do you call it?”

            “Waxing?”

            “Waxing moon. That’s right. Waxing moon.”

            From out the pocket of his apron he fishes an eraser. He rubs away at the moon, rubs like you rub a ball of soap, whittles it down to a size.

            “What color was the sky?” he asks.

            “For some reason cobalt comes to mind. Is that a color?”

            “Cobalt blue?”

            “That sounds right.”

            He breaks out a packet of colored chalks. Hesitates. Breaks out a packet of what look like crayons. “Oil sticks,” he says. “Give it a better sheen, see?”

            Like you tap a pack of smokes to free the one, the chosen one, he serves up a stick of Zanzibar purple. He holds it up to that black eye of yours, not for you to eye it, no, but to suss out with that eye of his a hue earthy and, at the same time, skyable. The good cop angles the shade of the light to capture the exact curve of the moon on the night in question.

            “No,” says the artist. Fingers up another color. “Carbazole Violet. Yes.”

            “That’s better,” you say. In the mirror on the wall – two-way mirror you figure, like in the movies – you see the wreck of that immaculate face of yours. The bulge of the socket of the eye, the underside of the split lip – it’s a fit, you and the sky, the violet sky. A good fit.

            “Let’s get some mountains in here,” says the artist. He picks up a stick of white – titanium white – and sets to work. Mountains sound good to you. There are no mountains in Florida, and even if there were, it would be too dark to see them, but there’s just something about mountains. Whitecaps – snow on the top – is that what you call them? Whitecaps? That would just, as they, say hit the spot.

            The bad cop does not like the mountains. He says they unsettle the color palate. Too bright. And besides, he says, they’re out of scale. You want to tell the artist to make the mountains higher, but now you’re afraid to say so. You gesture with your fingers instead, a little gesture, like when you brush the dust off a cookie, a pecan sandy like your mother used to make, the powdered sugar she rolled them in, you’d get the powder everywhere, a flurry’s what it was to where you’d have to lick your fingers and slap at the lap of your jeans and, with the palm of the hand (the fingers all sticky now) brush the cuff of the sleeve of the flannel shirt, the red flannel shirt with the lasso pattern, the golden lariat round the button on the collar. Only now it’s the side of the mountain you brush.

            He makes the mountains higher. He pauses at the top of the highest mountain, the sharp at the top, the white of the spike. “Who is on the mountain?”

            “Aa-ah,” says the good cop to the artist, not in a mean way but with a lilt in his voice, like a lover tugs at the lobe of the ear to calm you back down to a canter. “I’m the one who’s asking the questions here.”

            The artist nods. Blows on the mountain to clear the blips of lint the eraser left behind. Windy. It’s windy up there.

            “Who is on the mountain?” says the good cop.

            “It’s hard to see,” you say. “It’s so far away.” You lean in. “It’s my mother. My brother. My dad. They’re on their way up the mountain. They got ropes and – what do you call them metal things the mountain climbers – ?”

            “But how far away?” Over the page the artist hovers. “The scale.”

            “Far. Way far.”

            “Tiny then.”

            You nod.

            He points to the toothpick in the mouth of the good cop. “Mind if I…?”

            The good cop wipes it on his sleeve, hands it over. The bad cop’s got a toothpick too, but he’s already chewed it to shreds. The shreds rise and fall as he chews, like a cricket out the mouth of a toad. Why the toothpick? Is it a cop thing? Is it always the cop gets the gristle?

            The artist scrapes up a touch of red off the top of a crayon and then, holding the toothpick like you hold a eyebrow liner, he helicopters down to drop it, the squiggle of red, halfway up the slope and onto the snow.

            “That would be her,” you say. How big she was when you were a boy. How firm the hand that held you, at the laundry lifted you up onto the counter above the tide of heat from out the dryer and the clatter of coins and the hum of the Washateria rotor in the white body of the box, and from out the dryer she’d gather a mountain of white, with her whole body heave it up onto the counter, top of that tiny body of yours and laugh, and roll you in the folds, and gather you and the mountain together into a ball. I gotta hug you she’d say, so’s you don’t fly away.

            The artist wipes the toothpick and reaches for the indigo blue and the veridian green. Dab. Dab. Your dad appears. Beside him your brother. How happy they seem to be climbing the mountain on such a sunny day.

            “Sunny day?” says the bad cop. “But you said it was night, buddy. Buddy-boy.”

            “But look how far away they are. Away off yonder. It’s daytime over there.”

            As the artist reaches for the Amarillo yellow, the bad cop swings his feet off the stool, cranks up out the chair, crosses round behind you. “Let’s have another look at the face,” he says. He drops that fat thumb of his onto the head, the forehead of the fella with the eyes and the nose and the mouth. “What color the eyes?”

            “Hard to say,” you say. “It was dark. And his one eye, it was – ”

            “Which eye?”

            “The left. It was all swollen. Purple. Like, you know, like shut.”

            With his thumb the artist smears the Carbazole Violet round the left eye of the perp. Will you look at that now? One stroke and he’s done!

            “What about the nose?” says the bad cop. “Looks a little vague to me.”

            “Chiaroscuro,” says the good cop. “That’s what they call it. Like the Mona Lisa.” He shifts. Shades up over the painting.

            The bad cop tightens – the face, the shoulders. He’s been around. He’s nobody’s fool. He knows the Mona, the Mona Lisa, the Mona and her ilk. Grinds away at the husk of the pick. Points at the painting. “The nose,” he says. “Thin or fat?”  

            “Hard to say,” you say. “Crooked. That’s for sure. And bloody. All bloody.”

            The artist breaks out the assortment of reds. Brick red. Berry red. Poppy rust.

            The bad cop grabs the berry red and holds it up to your lip. “Look at that,” he says to the other two. What with your face all bonfired up into a bruise, you can’t see the that he’s referring to, but you flinch when he taps it, with the eraser end of a pencil he taps it, there on the lip, the split. “The perp,” he says. “Did he have a lip like this?”

            “Like what?”

            “Don’t play dumb with me.” He taps. Taps again harder. Talk about a jolt. Kick like the kick of a horsefly.

            “Maybe,” you say. He’s the bear at the door of the tent. You don’t know what he’s hungry for but you figure, whatever it is, he’s – so long as it ain’t you – welcome to it.

            “Could be,” you say.

            The bear breaks out a pack of Luckys, lights up, fattens the air with a sigh and a billow of smoke the size of a boulder. Billow after billow. Boulder after boulder. Big. It’s a big job, this job of his, but he’s just the man to make it happen.

            Back into the box of paints, two-handed now, the artist dives. Swims down to the vivid hues, the radio-luminescent phosphors and the paramagnetic iron oxides, the Chromaflairs and the MystiChromes and the Paradis Spectrashine. The plutonium tomato and the cherry ka-boom, the lava jelly and the thermonuclear rose. Deeper and deeper he dives. Picasso you think. Van Gogh. The thrill, the stroke, the slash. Lop goes the ear!

            At last he finds the tint to match the vision.

            “Now that’s a beauty,” says the good cop as the artist puts the finishing touch on the lip, on the busted mug of the mugger. As they step back to admire the result, they bump the tin shade, set the shadows to swinging. Together you think, the three of us, we all of us swing together. If it didn’t hurt so much to smile, you would, by golly, you would smile.

            Van Gogh, they say, he never sold a painting while he was alive. You find this hard to believe. Impossible. Who in their right mind could ever turn away from – if they could afford it, if they could hold it in their hand, hang it on their wall, hearken to the roar of it -- a tornado? Swim in the surge. Tear with the teeth. Savor the taste!

            You pat the artist on the back. Poor fellow. To labor a lifetime and never a buyer appears. You would take his hand but no, that would not be the manly thing to do.

            “Such a good likeness,” you say. With your good hand you reach. Run your finger round the face of the perp. With the palm of the hand you size it up, the whole of it there, stroke the hair. What startles you is how – beneath the rubble of the flesh – childlike the features are. That such a creature could strike with such a – is fury the word? You look into his eyes, but no, the eyes do what eyes do: they gather. He watches. He’s on the lookout. The others are on the lookout as well. The bad cop straightens, hooks a thumb in his belt above the trim and the tackle the law decrees, the baton and the walkie-talkie and the keyring, the flashlight, the pepper spray, the ammo clip and the cuffs. The good cop rides up over the ridge of his knuckles with the palm of his other hand. Back and forth he goes. Trim: the fingers and the nails. Good to see. Good. Such a good cop.

            With a handkerchief the artist wipes his hands. White the handkerchief. Into the wreck of the red and the black and the purple he goes, the white and the ochre and the pigeon blue in the fold of the palm and the crescent at the base of the nail and up over the knuckle and the burl at the joint of the finger where the oil in the paint and the oil in the skin commingle and he wipes, and onto the cloth the colors catapult, and the handkerchief holds the whole of it. In the hands of God the colors coalesce.

            You’re not so quick to see what they see, but when you do, it’s okay, it’s better than okay, you feel the way a wave feels when it – in a rush to escape the shape that holds it – breaks. Hope is what you see, a homecoming here in the hand of the artist, in the itty-bitty tornado the good cop conjures with the tip of his pen, in the butt of the Lucky the bad cop crushes with the heel of his boot. In the scent of the spirit gum, hope, and in the grit up under the nail, and in the salt of the blood on the tongue, the ping of the tin of the shade, the chill of the steel on the flame of the flesh, the click of the handcuff home.