This story is actually one I started writing several years ago when I first started writing WOTD stories (turns out dictionary.com totally repeats the words they use for their word of the day emails). But I like this story so much, and really when will I get another chance to put this story out there with this project? So I'm going to go ahead and rework it and then use it for today's story.
Word of the Day Tuesday, January 05, 2010
atelier
\at-l-YAY\ , noun;
1. A workshop; a studio.
He was an artist. The dark brooding type; intense like a live grenade. The wounded, bitter, wrong type of guy. The bane of every nice guy's existence.
I had a unique perspective into this strange world of art, as the window of my studio apartment looked directly into his curtainless atelier. And you thought reality television was addictive? It was a fabulous silent film where I was free to make up my own names, dialogue and rationale. He soon became the son of a fantastically wealthy family, his golden older brother being groomed to become a Senator. Early on his undiagnosed dyslexia labeled him as a "problem" child, and as he continued to spiral out of control the family decided it best to send him off with a monthly allowance in order to segregate the black sheep from the family.
He had a steady stream of tall, dangerously thin models as the subject of his work, draping, and later, bending them, over the sparse furniture. I ran into one of his models at the coffee shop on the corner one morning, and I remember asking her why she stayed with him through his bouts of depression and mania, his apathy and cruelty. She said that when you looked into his eyes you could see the passion of his art consuming him from the inside out and she wanted to be part of that magnificently brilliant funeral pyre. "How pathetic", I thought feeling nothing but pity as I watched her leave the coffee shop turning every head in the room, "that she doesn't feel that her own funeral pyre will ever be able to burn brightly enough."
On several occasions I would watch him retrieve an object left on the curb and bring it up to his room as a prop. One afternoon as he was vacantly starring off into space on his balcony I went out to the curb with an ornate table and left it on the street. I scurried back up to my room and watched, a few moments later, as he hauled the table upstairs into the set of my entertainment. I felt a giddy excitement, possibly what a novice set designer feels on opening night, or an inexperienced extra on a movie set, a small part of the show. I watched him paint that night, and felt the power of being able to manipulate others wash over me.
I stared up at my own apartment through the curtainless window, seeing the dim light from my table lamp glowing out into the darkness. I took a sip of wine and turned around to watch him light the dozens of candles all around the room. They twinkled like fireflies at dusk, and I thought to myself that they gave off a beautiful luminous light and I should look for that brand of tea lights the next time I was at the corner market.
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