FICTION
Concerning the Work of Dark Red Paw
/ Ed Park
10.28.06
Concerning the Work of Dark Red Paw
from the novel The Dizzies
by Ed Park (illustrations also by the author)
A week before the engagement notice appeared, I took my beloved, Mercy Pang, to a party at Dora Travertine, the gallery where I worked as both assistant and janitor. Some months I was more the latter than the former. It was not where I wanted to be at that stage of my life, but these things don’t change overnight, I reminded myself. I was even beginning to think that these things sometimes never changed at all.
That Friday was the opening-night fiesta for the career retrospective of Dark Red Paw, the Native American artist. Lately he had given off a light stench of demimonde scandal—his ex, a sculptress named Ida McNut, had told an interviewer that DRP’s heritage was not even remotely American Indian, but largely Portuguese, diluted with a little Russian. People showed up, curious whether Paw would take the high road, or else get very drunk and start throwing hors-d’oeuvres, which he’d done at Ida’s “Six Chromatic Nudes” show two months prior. A flung glass of wine had marred a polystyrene obelisk entitled Strife II but surprisingly the stain had increased its value. That was the year everyone wanted to get their hands on someone else’s grief.
I filled Mercy in on the scuttlebutt. She had never seen any Dark Red Paw, perhaps understandable, as his star had been in decline for years. I still believed he was capable of interesting work. I had thought that if I ever went to graduate school—one of myriad vapory plans at this stage of my life—I might study him. I might write the definitive monograph on Dark Red Paw. Sure. Anything was possible. I might also become president of the United States and a professional wrestler and get voted World’s Handsomest Man.
from the novel The Dizzies
by Ed Park (illustrations also by the author)
A week before the engagement notice appeared, I took my beloved, Mercy Pang, to a party at Dora Travertine, the gallery where I worked as both assistant and janitor. Some months I was more the latter than the former. It was not where I wanted to be at that stage of my life, but these things don’t change overnight, I reminded myself. I was even beginning to think that these things sometimes never changed at all.
That Friday was the opening-night fiesta for the career retrospective of Dark Red Paw, the Native American artist. Lately he had given off a light stench of demimonde scandal—his ex, a sculptress named Ida McNut, had told an interviewer that DRP’s heritage was not even remotely American Indian, but largely Portuguese, diluted with a little Russian. People showed up, curious whether Paw would take the high road, or else get very drunk and start throwing hors-d’oeuvres, which he’d done at Ida’s “Six Chromatic Nudes” show two months prior. A flung glass of wine had marred a polystyrene obelisk entitled Strife II but surprisingly the stain had increased its value. That was the year everyone wanted to get their hands on someone else’s grief.
I filled Mercy in on the scuttlebutt. She had never seen any Dark Red Paw, perhaps understandable, as his star had been in decline for years. I still believed he was capable of interesting work. I had thought that if I ever went to graduate school—one of myriad vapory plans at this stage of my life—I might study him. I might write the definitive monograph on Dark Red Paw. Sure. Anything was possible. I might also become president of the United States and a professional wrestler and get voted World’s Handsomest Man.