Alley at Night

 It's midnight. Snowflakes are starting to fall an hour before the weather forecast predicted. I'm on the corner of Pearl street and 17th in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. With the blend of Baby Boomers and Tech Wizards this little city could be a poster-child for the great generational handoff that America is currently undergoing. 

   Before the snow flurries began to fall I painted five of six layers of a dog portrait. Tonight I am painting on a federal postbox which makes it a federal crime. It's always a tad more exhilarating for me when I paint on a postbox, knowing that the punishment if caught is more steep than usual. And I know that in the morning when people see the painting they’ll have the same thought, they’ll sense the thrill of painting it and get a little second hand rush of adrenaline. 

   I am crouched in a dark alley ten meters from the postbox. A few cars are on the streets but most Boulderites are hunkered down at home with the furnace cranked. It's been cold for months and the pavement and asphalt feels like a glacier. When the snowflakes land they stick to the asphalt and they don't melt. I peek around the corner at the postbox and it's still dry but I better hustle and finish this painting. 

   I open my black plastic briefcase where I’ve stored the evenings stencils and I exchange layer five for layer six. I put a piece of blue tape on all four sides of the stencil. My black backpack full of spray paint leans against the brick wall of the alley and I fumble through the contents until I find the three colors I will paint on the sixth and final stencil. The cans go into a sturdy manpurse... I stand tall, take a deep breath and let my thoughts fall away into total focus. In my mind it’s like I’m not really here at all and so I know that I’m ready. 

   There are no cars around and no pedestrians so I step from the alley with stencil in hand. I saunter to the postbox and wipe away the few flakes of snow that have landed on the fresh painting. I use the dogs eyes to line up this layer of the painting and when it is aligned perfectly I press the tape to the postbox and secure the stencil in place. 

   Deep breath. 

   Beige is the predominant color for this final layer of the painting. I screw the spraycap onto the beige can of spraypaint. I’ve used this stencil several times and the colors on it from previous sprays make it easy to decipher where to change color on the dogs fur. 

   I crouch with my face a few feet from the painting. There's a streetlight on the far side of the postbox but here on the sidewalk beside the streetlight I paint in shadows. I've finished with the beige and switch the cap to a can of Sahara Yellow. As a bus drives by on Pearl Street I stand and hide the spraypaint in the pocket of my peacoat. The street is covered in a dusting of soft large snowflakes and I note how this muffles the roar of the bus. 

   Behind me, to my left on 17th Street, I hear the gentle hiss of car breaks. The breath catches in my throat. I almost never get caught off guard like this. I lean nonchalantly against the postbox so that my body hides the stencil. I jam the spraypaint against the right side of my jaw, hidden under the brim of my hoodie and I pretend that it’s a cell phone. I coolly look to my left to see what kind of car is at the stoplight. 

   It's a cop car. 

   My heart falls into my stomach. 

   Did the cop see me painting? 

   Back in my school days I was a sprinter, sixty-meters was my specialty and I still think that I can outrun everything that comes my way. In reality if I run now I'll probably get roped in by 15th Street-- there's a police station a block away and this historic downtown part of Boulder swarms with the police. 

   The cop looks at me. It's a young man with a buzz cut and a clean shaven lantern job. He's staring at me. 

   I look up into the falling snow and take a deep breath. I am acting. These first 5 seconds under police observation are crucial. If I act skittish and suspicious he'll accost me. If I give him the vibe that I'm a lawful citizen in the right place at the right time, just another patriot following standard protocol, than I'm off the hook. “Hey honey”, I say, speaking loudly into the can of spraypaint like it's my phone. “I didn't want to deal with the bus tonight so I got Uber. I'm waiting for it now and I should be home soon.” 

   I pause and act like I'm listening to someone on the other end of the line. I nod and move my lips like I'm cooing concurment. “Mmm-hmm. Yep. I know.” 

   The street light turns yellow and the cop lurches forward at a slow pace. There are no other cars around so the cop takes his time turning left and even pauses in the intersection. I see his eyes in his rearview mirror and he's still watching me.  

   I step away from the postbox and look to the right down Pearl street like I am searching for my Uber and I say, “Yeah Hon, I called 5 minutes ago so it should be here at any moment.” 

   The cop heads left on Pearl at a slow pace and although I can't see his rearview mirror anymore my intuition says that I'm under surveillance so I keep the charade going. 

   The cop never speeds his pace to more than a creep and he takes a quick left a block away onto 18th Street. He'll be back quickstyle, they love the loop-around trick, but only an idiot would fall for it here and now. I jam the Sahara yellow spraypaint into my manpurse and I rip the stencil from the postbox and sprint the ten-meters to the alley where my bag is hidden. I'll finish the painting later but I need to ghost out of here ASAP. I throw the manpurse into my backpack and tape the stencil to the side of my briefcase... from my shadowed vantage point I see the cop car emerge from the alley across the street. The cop is looking towards the postbox and hasn't seen me yet. My alley turns into a dead end twenty-meters behind me and the sidewalk is lit from the gray sky winter glow so if I leave the shadows the cop will see me. 

   The only car on my side of the alley is a Jeep Cherokee with high clearance. As the cop car pulls onto 17th Street I dive across the alley and slide my slender body beneath the Jeep. I put the briefcase in front of my eyes so that it hides me from the street. I peek over it like a bunkered soldier in a World War One. 

     The cop car drifts towards the stoplight on Pearl and shines his searchlight on the postbox and reveals the painting. I can barely see the painting from here but damn it looks good! The cop car hisses to a stop and the brake lights go out as he pulls the emergency brake and hustles out of his car and to the postbox. Now he knows what I was doing. Now he knows that a vandal slipped his grasp. 

   Laying here beneath this Jeep with icy water seeping into my clothes I realize that the snowflakes haven't started sticking to the sidewalk, only the asphalt. I've left no tracks for the cop to follow. Chances are that if I wait him out down here he'll be gone in minutes. 

   The cop circles the postbox and then touches my painting. He looks at the wet paint on his fingertip and then he roars with laughter. He slaps his thigh and then hunches with a hand over his mouth to muffle the outburst. He stops laughing and stands tall and regains his composure. He gives one last look in all four directions and then removes an iPhone from his pocket. He snaps a picture of the dog portrait. Evidence, tis what I surmise. He fidgets on the iPhone for a moment and as he walks back to his car I hear Google activate on his phone. In a clear baritone, annunciating every syllable, he tells Google to send this text: hey babes! I found another smile tonight! It's about time he throws a bone to us dog people. Not the best picture because it's nighttime but if you share that on Instagram you will be the first. Love you! 

   The cop gets back into his car but as he closes his car door to leave I hear him say, “Google: send image text now.” 

  . 

Winter nights

It’s minutes after 11 at night two weeks after the winter solstice. There isn't a cloud in the Sky. Here a Mile High above sea level there is very little light pollution and the stars are bright and endless. Crusty week-old snow covers the ground. The streets are snow packed and the sidewalks dotted with ice where people have walked and packed the snow beneath their boots.

I stand on the corner of Upland and Broadway in North Boulder. Across the street is Shining Mountain School, a school that I attended for 9 years as a kid. I was a volatile artistic student prone to recess roughness. In the classroom I was the student who either earned a 99% in class or a 79.8% which I'd wrangle up to an 80%.

By 9th grade I was a hellion. I thought I was the biggest shit on the block, life hadn't started to kick my ass on a regular basis yet. The 9th grade year I locked the math teacher out of the classroom by barricading the door with a pair of Oak podiums. The teacher, miss Chapman, pleaded and threatened and cajoled but when I didn't relent and she saw that the entire class was on my side she shouldered her way into that room. One of the podiums fell on a student when she powered her way in and the student was concussed. The math teacher was suspended for this rash act of violence and I didn't even get a reprimand. In 9th grade I thought that I was the biggest shit on the block but life beat it out of me pretty quickly.

The man who ran the school and was internationally recognized for his teaching saw my precocious vileness and took me under his wing. We established a friendship that only recently ended with his death. He helped me understand who I am and how to use my volatile and rebellious personality in constructive and loving ways.

On this frigid midwinter's night my mission is to paint a portrait of this teacher on a utility shed located at the edge of the school's property, along Broadway. Broadway is the busiest street in Boulder, but at this late hour and this far North of downtown the traffic flow is minimal. The spot I'm about to paint is highly visible to the street and illuminated by a nearby streetlight. Because of this I've enlisted my cousin Darby to serve as a lookout.

Darby served as lookout for me once before. I painted on a fence a simple one-layer portrait of an old man and told Darby, “If you see a car approach holler our call-sign. Otherwise we are good to go.’

I had barely begun spraying and Darby runs up to me and stammers, “with all these cars around...man i just started a new job!... if we are caught!

I ignored him and kept spraying while he ran to escape across a sliver of open prairie behind the fence. A minute later I was finished with the painting and walking away from the scene of the crime when Darby comes thundering across the prairie and joins me on the street.

“Whew man”, Darby chortled as he caught his breath. “We could've been caught!”

And here he comes tonight, shuffling his feet down Upland Ave a few dozen meters away. I turn my back to Broadway to greet him. He is a big man, tall and plump with long muscular arms and legs. He wears a beard and has thick black eyebrows over beautiful big eyes. He is bundled in a winter coat with a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and a wool beanie pulled down to his eyelashes. I am bundled similarly, Long Johns under my blue jeans and wool socks.

Darby raises a fist and says, “What's up? It’s fucking cold!”

The temperature is twenty-seven degrees so he’s not kidding.

I say, “My man! Let’s get in and out with this and we’ll both be home quickstyle.”

He stands beside me while I tell him the plan. His part in the plan is easy, I kept it simple and safe for him. He's to stand two blocks south of the utility shed where I'll be painting and keep his eyes south on Broadway. If he sees a cop car it'll still be six or seven blocks away which affords me enough time to cover my painting with a sheet of paper that I painted the same color as the shed. When the cop car passes they won't see a thing and I'll be crouched behind the shed, ready to pop out into the light and paint again.

We set the plan, give each other a fist bump and head to our positions. My old beater of a car is parked in the shadows a block from where I'm going to paint. With all of the snow on the ground I decided to base this operation out of the trunk of my car rather than from my usual black plastic briefcase.

In the trunk of my volvo the four layers of stencils for this painting are stacked on a large used canvas. This keeps the stencil 's flat and easy to access. Beside the stencils are four small tote bags with 3 or 4 cans in each bag. Each contains the spraypaint for the colors of the four layers.

I grab layer 1 and the tote bag with the darkest colors in it. Typically I paint the darkest layers first and each layer after the first consists of lighter colors than the one before unless I bite from Van Gogh and do a final caricature layer to define and annunciate the defining features and curves. I sling the tote bag over my shoulder and cover the stencil with the large green sheet of paper that will hide the painting if any cops drive by on Broadway.

While I walk to the utility shed I see Darby at his post two blocks away. If a cop approaches Darby will shout, “Have a good night Jim.”

Jim is not my real name.

At the utility shed I hop over a mound of icy snow and turn my back to Darby and I face the canvas. Tonight I will be painting on a flat wood surface that is weather worn and painted a faded camo green. I put a few pieces of blue tape on the sheet of green paper and I place it over the spot where I’m going to paint. Then I pull the bottom tape away from the shed and stick it to the awning of the shed. This way it won't block my painting but when I unpin it from the top of the utility shed it will immediately fall back into place and hide the paining. As the war criminal ‘W’ would say, “Strategery.”

A few cars drive passed on Broadway but it's not something I’m worried about. I tape the first stencil to the shed and paint it in about a minute. While the first layer of paint dries I switch stencils and stash tote bag numero uno behind the shed and retrieve bag number two. Before I tape up layer two I look behind me at Darby. He’s still blocks away but he is walking in circles in the middle of the street and watching Instagram videos on his phone. Damn it.

I take a deep breath and return to the job at hand. Using the eyes of the portrait that I’m painting I align layer two and tape it to the shed. I start spraying rust red on the shadowy side of the portrait and suddenly Darby yells, “Bro!” There’s a hesitation and then he shouts, “I don’t know.”

The breath catches in my throat. I cover the painting with the green paper and turn to Darby but as I do a police car drives by on Broadway. The cop is speeding and on a mission that doesn’t seem to concern me. Darby is back on the sidewalk and we make eye contact. I resist an urge to bark at him and instead give him a thumbs-up. I don’t want him to lose confidence and bail on me mid-mission. He smiles and returns the thumbs-up.

I quickly finish painting the second layer. I grab my tote bags and stencils and walk briskly to my car to stash the used materials and snag the last two stencil layers and the concomitant tote bags. All the while I keep my head on the swivel and my eyes open for a reemergence of the popo.

Back at the utility shed I look at Derby and he's tossing snowballs across Broadway, aimed at a stop sign. I clap my hands and he looks at me and drops his snowball. We nod at one another, the show’s back on. I finish painting layers three and four without any mishaps. A dozen cars passed while I painted. For the cars that rattled and backfired I just kept painting. When a smooth purring engine approached I'd step away from the painting and pretend to be talking with someone on a cell phone that I didn't even have in my hand. I wouldn't cover the painting though.

The painting finished, I walk through the crusty snow to the sidewalk en route to stash the supplies in my car. Darby is back in the middle of the street, but now he's jawing with a homeless man who's walking along Broadway headed to the shelter. I can't understand what's being said but their body language says it all. The homeless man gesticulates violently, tosses his head back to the stars and slams forward onto his knees to slap the icy blacktop. Darby speaks calmly, shrugs and then walks towards me and away from the dude. Darby and I make eye contact and share a grin.

I run to my car to stash the supplies and then run back to the painting to arrive the same moment as Darby. We embrace but before we speak a word the homeless man accosts us. He's on the far side of Broadway and headed North to the homeless shelter but he's taking his time. He shouts, “You love trump, all you people do!”

I chuckle and Darby rolls his eyes and shouts, “Go away! You're drunk and your brain is cold. Keep walking.”

The homeless man shouts, “trump made my beer!” He keeps walking North, his need for warmth has trumped his need for conflict. As he walks away he repeatedly shouts, “trump made my beer! Trump made my beer!”

Darby shouts, “Fuck trump!’

I cringe at all of this commotion; this wasn't how I'd planned for this to go but of all the plans of mice and men..

As the homeless man's shouts fade to gray Darby and I study the painting. He says, “I like it.”

I ask, “What do you like?”

He shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don't know. I like it though”, and we share a laugh. There are a few small mistakes in how I blended the colors of the face but on the whole the piece is ready to go ‘live’.

Darby asks, “Are you going to sign it?”

“Nah”, I say. “I don't sign tribute pieces like this.” I wave at the portrait of my teacher and say, “It's all about him.”

Darby purses his lips, squints his large eyes and gives a nod of understanding. He says, “Good job bro.” He raises his eyebrows up beneath his beanie and says, “But it's still fucking cold out here.”

Darby is gone, walking briskly down Upland to the rental home that he shares with his wife Bianca and his brother Newt.

I stand in the snow and admire the painting. The moments after I finish a painting are some of the best moments in life. Pride swells in my heart and I dally with it. Tomorrow morning the kids at Shining Mountain School will see this painting and a murmur will overtake the hallways and then throughout the day small cliques will wander to the edge of the school grounds to inspect it. The daughter of the teacher whose portrait I painted is an art teacher at the school. On a rumor and a hope she will meander to the utility shed. She sees the portrait and smiles and a tear comes to her eye.

OK. I shelve my pride and tune down my imagination and come back to the Here and Now. My feet are numb from standing in snow for the last half hour. My thermal insulated boots are built for this type of weather but when the tundra is frozen solid and covered in crusty snow even lined boots eventually fail. While I painted I didn't wear a glove on my left hand-- my painting hand-- and now the hand is red and numb from the cold. It's time to leave.

I retrieve the green sheet of paper from the ground and hop across the snow to the sidewalk and head towards my car.

What a great moment, I tell myself.

Breaking rules and helping people to smile all at once. Man, what a champ. Back pat.

Reality shift.

Behind my car is parked a police cruiser. Its headlights are turned off but its orange parking lights are on. Inside the car is the eerie insentiant bluelight glow cast by the laptop built into the cars consoles. I can't see into the car clearly enough to spot the officers but I know they're inside if they're not already at my car.

I ditch the sheet of green paper in the snow beside the sidewalk and maintain my pace. Play it cool. It ain't my car, I tell myself. I am just out for a brisk midnight stroll after a hard evening of work. I tell myself that--at this moment I convince myself of that. When I convinced myself like this, when I force myself to briefly imagine my own lie into truth and start feeling the weariness from just getting off of an imagined job in a sweaty hot tar-filled garage, I swear it's like reality shifts and anyone around reads the body language of the lie and the demeanor of my cognitive dissonance and they subconsciously accept the lie too.

Whatever it is, when I enter this method-actor trance the police never hassle me.

As I approach the cars there are no cops standing at my car. I walk steadily passed the cop car and the ice on the sidewalk crunches extra loud to add a soundtrack to my tension. There are a pair of cops sitting in the car, both men with cropped brown hair and clean shaven jaws. They simultaneously look at me and I give them a nod and then let my gaze linger on them for a moment.

My gaze says: mother fuckers.

I keep my pace to a stroll. At a stoplight on Broadway and Yarmouth I cross the street at a crosswalk. Everything is above the belt and legal here folks, nothing more to see. I walk on Yarmouth and away from the police and I don't look back.

Well shit.

My wallet and cellphone are hidden beneath the driver seat of my car so taking a bus home or calling Uber are out of the question. My feet are already numb and the wind has started to blow down from the Rocky Mountains. I quicken my pace to keep the blood pounding in my temples. I could follow Darby and crash on his couch for the night, but no, not with the stencil's in my trunk and a wallet and phone under the seat. Too many ways for things to go wrong if I leave my car overnight and into the morning. I'm going to circle the block and peek around a corner at my car to see if the cops are gone.

I whisper, “The cops are after the homeless guy, this ain't about moi”. But I don't believe myself.

It takes 5 minutes to circle the block and I'm on the corner of Upland and Broadway, back where this all started. I creep through the shadows of somebody's snow packed lawn and crawl behind a copse of lilac bushes. Unless the cops are wearing night-vision goggles they can't see me. Unfortunately they're still parked behind my car with their orange parking lights turned on. I scuttle from the snow packed yard back onto Upland Ave. It's time for another plan.

I walk along Upland and away from Broadway. My breath is a constant cloud trailing my head as I huff forward.

All potential plans crumble under the scrutiny of construction and I come to the conclusion that my only plan is to stay warm until the police are gone. I walk aimlessly through the neighborhood though I know this area as well as anyone. I arrive at Crestview Elementary and the outdoor basketball court is shoveled and dry. There's a deflated soccer ball in the bushes at the edge of the school and I retrieve the ball and jog across the snow packed football field to the basketball court.

The hoops are only 9 feet tall, I've been dunking on them for a decade, mostly at night when Darby and I come here to drink a beer or have a puff and some bro time.

I warm up with a few straight on dunks, launching with both feet, until I pant and feel the blood rushing through my veins. Then I move onto the finesse dunks, the Tomahawks and reverse jams and pumps. After a few attempts I even nail a 360 dunk. I never formally played basketball but I've always loved to dunk.

After 20 minutes of dunking the basketball I'm sweating. I remove my scarf and unbutton the top of my coat. My legs are tired, I can't dunk forever and there's bound to be a new development at my car. I leave the ball on the blacktop and hurry along Upland Ave headed towards Broadway.

At the corner of Upland and Broadway I begin to shiver. The sweat has gone cold, what a miserable condition to be in. I creep across the shadowy lawn and crouch behind the lilac bushes. The cop car is still parked behind my car.

I groan. I mutter, “A damn donut feast in there.”

I can't be outside in this frigid weather for much longer so I start to walk towards Darby’s house. He has camping supplies in his garage. I figure I'll unwrap his sleeping bag and curl up in it for an hour or so to maintain my body heat and then retrieve my car. Tonight this is what it takes to get the job done.

I hear the distant hum of a well maintained engine on Broadway and I look back to see a police car drive passed Upland. It's impossible to discern if it's the same cop car that was parked behind my car-- all cop cars look alike, clones of urban combat-- but I'm willing to bet that it is.

I jog to Broadway and my old beater of a car is parked alone. I jog towards my car and 50 meters away I break into a sprint. I want to gtf out of here ASAP.

There is no police ticket on my car, no sign that they opened my trunk and saw the art supplies. My phone and wallet are under my driver side seat where I left them. Maybe the cops really were just having a donut feast.

Entering The Catacombs of Paris

Nikolai is the last to come down the rusty rebar ladder. He turns to me and says, “Well now it is the four of us.” He wipes slimy hands on my hoodie so I wipe my hand on his jacket and he shies away. 

   Etienne is gone, he went to a hospital in the back of an ambulance. Nikolai and Viktor were issued citations for going into the Catacombs and as far as the cops were concerned Guute Mao was a passerby doing a good deed by stopping to help. I spent the last forty-five minutes wandering in the underground silence of the Waiting Room of the Catacombs. 

   Viktor says, “Let's get into the catacombs” and everyone agrees. Nikolai leads us along a cement tunnel and the walls are covered in electrical wires and rebars and tags too. The floor is a white powdery clay and occasionally there are shallow pools that we must walk through. The water stains our shoes white. After five-hundred meters of this Nikolai stops abruptly. A spattering of French is spoken and Guate Mao turns to me with a twinkle in his eyes and says, “We are here”. 

   The hallway is dark save for our headlamps but to me the spot doesn't look any different than the rest of the hallway. Victor pulls a rock from the wall and drops it but I don't hear it land.  Viktor says, “It will be a wet adventure tonight!” 

    Viktor stoops and then crawls head-first into a hole at the bottom of the wall. The hole is barely larger than his shoulders and I wonder if I’ll fit. Guate Mao turns to me and says, “I have never gone to the Catacobms this way but I have heard about it. We will crawl on our bellies like snakes.” 

   Guate Mao squeezes through the hole, feet-first and his head disappears with a grin. Nikolai tells me, “Now you go. If I go first you will be chicken-shit and wander away and get lost for years.” 

  I blow him off and get onto my knees. The ground is damp and cold but the white dust feels like Greek Island beach sand at midnight. I slide into the hole feet-first, my backpack clutched in my left hand and my stencil case in the right. My shoulders barely fit through the hole; once inside I’m sandwiched between two colossal pieces of cement with about twenty-four inches of space between them. Everyone is slithering on their bellies but I’m on my back. I torque my neck and can see Guate Mao’s head as he rocks his body back and forth to scoot in the direction that Viktor has gone. I scoot after them but as Nikolai enters the tunnel I notice that the space between the slabs is getting tighter. Guate Mao says, “Bro! This is crazy, it is getting small in here. Can you make it?” 

  My chest scrapes the roof so that dust showers onto my face; my back is sleek with Catacombs mud but I seem to have hit some sort of geyser that pushes me downwards more quickly. I answer, “I’m in the water now and it seems to make me fit better.” After a few meters the roof backs off a few inches and I start sliding towards a hole along the far wall. I see Guate Mao’s face in the hole and he shines his headlamp towards me so that I can see the floor—a veil of water rushing over white mud—so I slide myself to him and squeeze through the hole.  

  Nikolai pops through the hole like champagne cork popping off and shouts, “Voila!” 

  Guate Mao wipes the mud from my back while I clean off our stencil cases and make sure that no water breached the casing. 

   The air is crisp and stale and nary the whiff of a breeze rustles it. We are in a round room with a high ceiling; the stone walls are covered in ornate carvings and graffiti and some offerings to the dead, lodged into the eye sockets of skulls carved into the wall. Viktor looks at me and says, “Welcome to the Catacombs SMiLE.” 

   I give a single stern nod of appreciation and Nikolai shouts, “We are not here to mourn the dead...but to celebrate them! And Paris has some of the best dead people on the planet.” 

   Viktor shouts, “Jim Morrsion! Mallarme! Oscar Wilde!” 

    Nikolai pulls a bottle of whiskey out of his backpack and they all commence French verbal calisthenics while the bottle makes its way around the circle. Guate Mao rolls a quick spliff and sparks it up so here we are, the four of us sitting on a limestone bench carved into the wall and getting wasted five-feet from our entrance into the Catacombs.  

   Viktor straps a BOSE speaker to his backpack and bluetooths some tunes from his phone; the air in this crypt finally moves as the music pulses. We stand, gather ourselves and set off on our journey into the heart of the Catacombs to paint in the room where the French Resistance in WWII was organized.