... @bookishlynormal - Tumblr Blog

JOHN RICH & THE BIG PICTURE ✏️ Chapter 16 - Hearts, Wrists, and Garfield Bowls for $400, Alex

THROUGH THE HAZE of half-sleep and in the darkness of the apartment, a phone vibrated. Then the dull blips of a text message—followed by another text message—cut through the silence. A gentle breath kissed the back of John’s neck along with a sigh. His bed creaked, two feet padded softly on the hardwood, and there was a shrill crack! This was the sound of ceramic shattering against the floor. John Rich shot up in bed, his spider senses tingling. He knew, like a mother knows when their child is in danger, that there was a disturbance in his Garfield collection.

Brown bangs grazed his eyebrows, and through them, he saw the salt shaker that Tyler had given him—he exhaled—was perfectly fine. Next, he saw Shawn Hendrix, shirtless, and standing over the split remains of a broken Garfield bowl. He held his heart and leaned into the mattress.

“Euggghhf,” John moaned. God, this was it, he was dying, he was having a heart attack. Had he been storing a part of his soul in this ugly bowl? Ow! “Aw, man.”

“Shit. I’m so sorry, John,” whispered Shawn, stooping down above the broken bowl, toes curled on the studio’s rough wood floor. Shawn was in dark blue boxer-briefs, and despite the mortal pain that had inexplicably beset John, he couldn’t help but follow the feather-light coils of chest hair that trailed down across dark skin and into those briefs. He couldn’t help but trace the swell of Shawn’s quadriceps, the curve of his glutes. He didn’t want to say that Los Angeles had changed Shawn, who had always been on the athletic side, but he must have been doing shots of beets and ginger or something.

The blackout curtains brushed the window frame, and a blade of light fell on the wreckage. It was January 1st and it felt like January 1st; the light piercing the dark studio was crisp, a new year’s light. At least four Garfield alarm clocks glowed 7:37 a.m. God, John needed a triple espresso. Or a casket.

Shawn lifted up a piece in one hand, and held his phone in the other. “I was just reaching for my phone…You gotta let me replace this.”

“I don’t,” began John, “I don’t think you can.”

Shawn went Phhhfeww. John didn’t know how to explain that, no, he didn’t find the Garfield bowl online. A little British girl had crafted it with her little British hands as a summer project. After that, her father brought the awful thing all the way to the RCA building without shattering it. It was one of a kind. It was the most beautiful thing John owned. It was irreplaceable.

But instead he shrugged and said, “Ahh, you know. Pft, it’s fine.”

“Really?” asked Shawn. “You sounded like your soul left your body.”

John patted the mattress next to him. Everything was fine.

Less than six hours ago, John had nearly been ensnared in a romantic vortex by world-famous movie star and flirt Tyler Hughes. He avoided this vortex by making out with Shawn until half past midnight, dragging the both of them into Sam Brother’s upstairs bathroom, parting Shawn’s lips with his tongue, letting his suit get wrinkled, and scraping his chin against Shawn’s beard until it chaffed. When they had first run into each other at that bookstore, John had traced Shawn’s shoulders with eyes; in the cramped bathroom, he ran his palms over them. He had catalogued Shawn’s outfit, his hoodie and jeans; now he grabbed at the skin underneath. He clawed under Shawn’s sweater with still-cold hands, and when they had warmed, shoved down the back of Shawn’s jeans, clutching his ass until Shawn murmured, perhaps impressed, “Okay.”

Around one in the morning, they’d taken a cab to Manhattan, and John watched Shawn perform in a packed comedy club. He was charming and electric and smart and fucking sexy for the new year’s show, smirking like a killer as the crowd shook apart with laughter. He sketched him as Shawn leaned against a mic stand and the late-show audience fell in love.

As they made their way back to John’s apartment, he did not want to think about Tyler. His mom had been right (Tyler liked him), Hunter had been right (Tyler had a track record with co-stars), and John had been wrong—he thought he could get out of a crush alive. What a fool! He had ignored the danger of having a heart that lived in daydreams and fairy tales; reality always caught up to his gooey machinations. You silly cartoon man, he said to himself, you were chasing one of your naïve crystalline happily-ever-afters—no, no. You’re safe here with Shawn. Intimacy with zero, crushing expectations.

They had barely made it past the second floor landing before John pulled Shawn in by the hips, uneven on the steps. They both stifled their laughter when Mrs. Tuk opened the door to investigate—and closed it again.

They kissed, gripping each other, and it was different from before, when they used to fumble around on Wil Diego’s couch after John graduated. Back then, John had been pining after Shawn for four years at Samwell and on The Bullet. Their hook-ups were dirty little secrets. They never talked about it. It was different now, and John wanted Shawn to know that it was different. He was different. He wasn't a pining sap, a kid. He was John Rich, cover artist for the New York fucking Review! A confident man who had his life completely under control! In the dark of John’s apartment, he had shoved Shawn back against his door, unzipped his jeans, unbuckled and dragged down his own trousers, and rolled their hips together until they were both panting and hard. When they were out of their street clothes and half-naked on John’s comforter, John offered, matter-of-factly, to fuck Shawn. “Like we did that one time, remember? It was humid, and the air conditioner wasn’t working in Wil’s apartment? I was sorta gassy? Wait, don’t remember that part. Anyway, would you be into that?”

This caused Shawn to question aloud why exactly John thought he had “pull.” Well, mister, John did. Because fifteen minutes later, Shawn Hendrix was swearing, moaning, and gripping John’s sheets, and learning that John—through the rigorous scientific trial and error of an anxious slut in his twenties —had gotten very good at pretending to know what he was doing in bed. It was enough to unravel Shawn. Most of the time, the guy was quiet, sexy, and assured, but he pleaded with John to “come on.” The only thing that felt better than how warm and soft Shawn felt around his cock, was the sound of Shawn swearing, maybe in disbelief, because John Rich actually knew what he was doing. They both fell asleep workshopping the stupid “Guy Doesn’t Go To Time Square Because His Brother Got Food Poisoning” joke. Shawn had almost got it to work on stage a few hours ago, but something wasn’t clicking.

Now, for the second time that January morning, Shawn’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the white rhombus of light glowing on John’s bookshelf.

“Sorry.”

“Your agent?” asked John, rolling over.

“Probably. I should check.” He patted John's ass, feather-light. “But don’t go anywhere.”

A minute later, Shawn was murmuring “yeah” and “okay” while a Charlie-Brown-teacher voice spoke a mile a minute on the other end. John scooted off his mattress, and stretched. A glimmer of light from the window fell on that damned Garfield salt shaker that Tyler had given him. Oh brother. Why hadn’t that thing fallen to the ground and broken in half? John scowled and yanked back the curtain, and a burst of white light from the new year filtered in…

…and with it, a burst of flaming orange on John’s shelves.

“I’ll talk to Val,” said Shawn, “I’ll call in a…”

In his underwear, Shawn turned, blinking into the daylight, eyes widening.

They darted from the orange shelves to the cartoon-cat poster—to John's 3XL Garfield T-Shirt. “Oh shit.” He shook his head and said into his phone, “No—sorry. It’s nothing. Uh. Actually. Can I call you back?”

Shawn hung up.

“Shit,” he repeated.

Usually, when John looked at the three shelves of Garf memorabilia his emotions ranged from (at best) delighted amusement at this sardonic cat to (at worst) unease toward the ever growing mass of orange stuff. Now a different emotion rose in him; it grabbed his lower intestines like an icy claw. He felt naked. Stupid. Sideswiped. He had mentioned to Shawn that he had stopped drinking, but he hadn’t mentioned to him that this had taken over his life. He threw up jazz hands.

“Um,” said John weakly, “ta-da?”

“It was dark so I couldn’t see...” Shawn moved back slowly, fearfully, like he was a paleontologist at a disastrous dinosaur theme park and the velociraptors had just found him in the kitchen. “Okay…you got a thing!”

“Yeah,” said John, “I have a collection. The bowl was part of it.”

“Oh, no, no! Don't apologize,” said Shawn, even though John had not apologized for anything. “I’ve got all of my sneakers in these plastic cases with LED lights in a closet? Collecting, I get it.” He pointed at John’s big Garfield shirt, and smiled weakly. “Sleeping gown!”

John looked down at the t-shirt, which hung off his lanky body and went down to his thighs. When had he even put this thing on? It was like he fell asleep in this cursed Garfield den and the shirt had enveloped his body like a Garfield chrysalis.

“It’s not a gown,” he complained, “it’s a T-shirt.”

“Sure, sure. It’s cool! Very cool, very Dickensian. A different style than usual for you like—Don Draper in the streets but Scrooge in the sheets.”

Then Shawn laughed—audibly.

It was a terrible sound, like a monotonous bird call. John wished he would stop. Shawn turned around.

“HOLY SHIT.” He jumped a foot in the air, took a step back, his bird-song laugh starting up again. He pointed. “Fuck, I am so sorry. Was that thing here all night?”

In the corner stood a large fiberglass Garfield sculpture. It was about the size of someone’s five-foot-tall girlfriend. John knew this, because when he picked it up from its previous owner, this owner said that the sculpture freaked out her five-foot-tall girlfriend. “She always forgets that it’s in the living room, so I gotta get rid of it.” The petite woman had eagerly helped dolly the thing into John’s apartment.

“Was that thing watching us?” asked Shawn.

“Watching us,” John shrugged. He threw up air quotes. “Watching ‘over’ us. Listen, Shawn…”

Shawn looked up. Down. Turned around in a circle. His eyes searched for more hidden, terrifying Garfs. With every turn, he glanced back to the three long shelves heavy with the weight of plushies and tchotchkes. Hundreds of hooded eyes stared down at him like spectators in a coliseum. He could see it in their dead white eyes—they’d kill Shawn. They’d smother him. John heard their cry for blood. John wanted to dive in between Shawn and the collection, to cover the Garfs up but also to protect his friend. Dear God, it was the bowl. They had seen what Shawn had done to one of their brethren. They wanted revenge; they wanted justice.

Shawn’s phone buzzed again. He answered immediately.

“Wow, okay.” Shawn stepped into his pants, pulled on his sweater, and collected his beanie. He turned to John. “Hey, you mind if I take this outside?”

“Go ahead!” John smiled.

As soon as the door clicked closed, John yanked the Garfield T-shirt off his body. In record time, he changed into a pair of trousers, a button down shirt and rolled up the sleeves, and pulled out a tie. Maybe not your lucky red Garfield one, Johnny boy! Not today! He found his fancy grown-up watch where he had left it while he and Shawn were making out. He rushed around his apartment, glaring at his Garfield collection, the manifestation of his juvenile obsessions. Dear God, Susan Rich was right again. She was always right! This collection was weird! It was the last thing an unsuspecting victim would see before a Garfield serial killer murdered them (lasagna asphyxiation). What was he a child?

He caught a glimpse of himself in his bathroom mirror, and did in fact see a child; bangs cascaded over his brows, softening his already soft features. He growled. John charged into the bathroom to tame his hair—and bustled right into his radiator pipe.

“Hrrrrgggfffhh!”

He thought he could smell the burning flesh on his forearms. John muffled the pain in his throat, but laughed. Because oh, yes, the pain was clarifying! He gazed at himself in the mirror. John Rich had pull?

His face was a soft oval. He had a tidy androgynous haircut. With his boyish freckles and tea-saucer ears and pink little mouth, he would have been the perfect casting for a kid in an ice cream commercial. That’s right, BOY #1 - VANILLA. “Yum,” sneered John into his mirror, but it was a yum of self-loathing. “Yum!” He combed his hair back, tousled it with product. Maybe men threw themselves at his feet the same way moths flew into lightbulbs and died.

When Shawn opened the door. John strolled back into his studio, completely calm, hands in his pockets, with a serene smile.

“Are you doing anything today?” asked John casually, cheerfully, delighted. Shawn wanted to glance at the Garfield collection, but John held his shoulders and steered him away from it. “I just made a new year’s resolution. Downsizing, dropping some of this stuff off at the Salvation Army. Haha! You in?”

“Sorry,” said Shawn. He glanced at his phone. It was a quarter ‘til 11:00 a.m. “This stupid television deal. We have a studio deadline at noon—”

“The television deal, of course,” said John. “Maybe lunch then?”

Shawn’s phone pinged.

“John, I’m so sorry. I gotta take this phone call.”

“Well, how long is it?” asked John. “We can get breakfast afterwards. There’s this barista you have to meet—”

“I’ll be on Zoom calls with the production company all day. This television stuff; it’s big, but it’s a big mess.”

John considered asking “did my Garfield obsession freak you out?” He wanted to show Shawn that people had bigger collections than he did, to prove that he wasn’t so bad, but his heart wouldn’t be in it. For there was no such thing as a Garfield collection that was too big.

“Well,” said John. “Nice hanging out.”

Shawn smiled too. “Yeah.”

Shawn put a hand on John’s hip and kissed him, soft. It was stupid that it gave John butterflies. It was stupid that a college crush could do this to him.

“You’re something else, John Rich,” murmured Shawn, tapping John’s chin with his knuckle.

“I know,” said John, “that’s the problem.”

Shawn laughed silently, squeezed John’s hip, and soon he was out the door. There was the sound of Shawn’s footsteps on the stairs, then a long pause. John held his breath. He heard a muffled, “hello?” and more footsteps. The creaking of the front door. The disappearing conversation. All of it fading into the bustle of the West Village.

John sighed in his empty apartment.

He picked up the Garfield bowl, broken in two pieces, and put it back on the shelf with the rest of his junk. It made a tiny clink.

Comment. looooove seeing this sweet side of Tyler! he’s alot more comfortable when he’s not answering questions to promo a movie.

Comment. Loved the interview, but @NewYork Review, how dare you use Catarina for clout in promoting your new series but not invite her to the Guggenheim Social. Shame. Edit: THANK YOU FOR FINALLY INVITING CATARINA!!!! QUEEN

Comment. are you kidding me Tyler Hughes & the cover sessions guy Replies. 14 comments.

By the time Hunter set her laptop down on the kitchen counters in The Review’s office that Monday, the view count for the first episode of The Big Picture crossed one and a half million. Because outside of the star power of Tyler Hughes, it was a really good interview. Danielle left in that long raw clip of Tyler defending Catarina, and John’s candid monologue about loving a certain cartoon cat. In fact, it was such a good interview that Hunter and Yohel had to pause every three seconds to analyze it, huddled over her laptop, pointing and arguing like they were mission control at NASA navigating the moon landing.

Later, in an empty meeting room, John clicked a link on his phone and watched a viral clip of the cold open. The first episode of The Big Picture was doing numbers, but this cold open clip was everywhere. On his phone screen, Tyler and John leaned over Tyler’s yellow legal pad, bantering, smiling, touching—every titillating electric moment of the viral Cover Sessions interview came out in bursts thanks to Danielle’s editing. A thumb under John’s lapel. A hand on Tyler’s back. A smile across John’s face, boyish and giddy and wide. John Rich looked like he was on his goddamn honeymoon. John stared at all of it, a prisoner of his past affections. He frowned, pocketed his phone, and returned to practice sketches for today’s cover.

Drawing the cover of The New York Review, often his only solace when his love life imploded, was also not going great. In the middle of January, he finally met his apparent usurper Arielle Su. It was terrible. Because John instantly liked her. He had wanted to hold a petty grudge, but when she sat down in the office chair at the art meeting, she shrugged off a huge neon-red, knee-length puffer jacket. When she took off her beanie, she revealed a chic silver buzzcut. When she asked questions, she cut off Geoffrey with sharp, insightful inquiries. She jotted down all of her notes with a tiny, plastic, carrot-shaped pen. John gazed at her, charmed, fascinated, completely jealous.

“This is probably old hat to you, but assignments! I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with that director duo.” They chatted on the way to the elevators. John couldn’t help it: he asked about her studio, her collage process, her painting style. She answered with all the chill of a surfer who just loved a good wave. “And dude, I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes in high school. We should get coffee sometime!”

God dammit! He’d love to get coffee with her!

February rolled around, and winter turned Manhattan into a slab of icy concrete. With interviews of Catarina Harlow and Jules the Barista in the can, the last guest on The Big Picture would be Alex Fleming, the Australian painter with whom Tyler was obsessed. John couldn’t find anything about him online, other than a few cryptic interviews and blurry, pixelized self-portraits—the guy was a mystery.

Alex Feming’s studio was in Bushwick, behind a coffee shop the size of a closet, where John stopped to get a latte the morning of the shoot. As the espresso machine whirred, his phone buzzed.

The slot machine in John’s brain lined up three Tyler Hughes heads, but John couldn’t scoop up the gold coins that tumbled out. Their texts had slowed since the new year. Tyler was busy with some Jacob Raw post-production, and John was attempting to fall out of love. This meant no more yes-and-ing Tyler’s jokes, no more texting Tyler as they fell asleep, no more teasing. He would keep things professional. John sighed and looked at the texts.

Tyler: Phenomenal studio up here. AMAZING.

Tyler: You’re going to love this johnno

Tyler: Danielle nearly slipped getting to the studio, and told me to tell you because you’re a klutz?

Tyler: and apparently only respond to my texts?

Tyler: :D I’m honored

Tyler: well get up here, there’s a massive pyramid of paint cans!

…John would keep things professional. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t smile. John hid it behind a sip from his latte. God. Tyler fucking Hughes. Golden boy inspired by humanity. Honest weirdo who used emojis. Genuine man who thought everything was amazing…

…Serial flirt who was ruining John’s fucking life. He typed back.

me: I’m a klutz and you send good memes.

me: Where is this place?

The alleyway behind the coffee shop was empty save for iced-over weeds, a ripped-open garbage bag, and piles of empty spray paint cans. A voice came from above. Danielle stood out on a fire escape landing, and that thing could not have been up to code. She looked especially exhausted, black ponytail pulled tauter than ever.

“We’re on the third floor,” she called down. “Check your damn email, John!”

“Third floor…” murmured John, he looked at the rattling death trap in front of him, “…you guys climbed up this fire escape?”

“Yes, get up here.”

The peeling and rusted black staircase snaked up to the third floor. John took as many stinging sips of his latte as he could before abandoning the thing on the ground. He set one foot on the narrow metal stairs, climbed another step, and another, until he was at the second floor. The J train screeched a block over, and, peering through the grating, he realized that he did not have the goddamn constitution for this. The fire escape swayed and vertigo twisted the ground underneath him. If John fell here, he'd break something and have a terrible time on the way down. He gripped the railing, and kept marching up as the alley wind snaked around his ankles.

When he finally reached the third floor and found studio 7B, he found a forest of chaos. The floor was sticky with drizzled vines of acrylic paint, and covered in a lawn of empty spray paint cans. Last year’s calendar hung over a graffitied desk and stacks of art books sprouted around the studio like tree stumps. Canvases were everywhere. Amongst the debris, Danielle had set up an easel, a box light, and three stools in the center of the room, and perched on one stool was Tyler Hughes.

“There he is.”

Like a dust storm engulfing a defenseless corn farm in 1936, Tyler wrapped John into a massive, overwhelming hug. For a moment, John was frozen, brain forgetting strategy and body feeling the firmness of Tyler’s arms. How the hell did Tyler’s entire body feel like it was smiling at him—into him? Tyler laughed, squeezing him, lifting him clean off of his toes. He stepped back, beaming, running his hands up and down John’s arms, already chattering about a dozen things, and John smiled back, dreamily, taking him all in. Tyler rubbed his shoulders, ready to tuck his thumbs under John’s lapels for a massage—and John ducked.

“Cat is convinced it was you who got her the invite to the Guggenheim So—what are you doing?”

“Urmh” said John, straightening up. He backed into stool and it toppled over, clattering like a church bell. John set it straight. “Uh. I’m sunburned.”

Tyler frowned, hands frozen mid-air. “Really? In January?”

“Well, no, actually, it’s more of a rash.” John’s face crumpled and he nodded, shuddering. “A terrible rash. Like so much texture and oozing. I sent a picture to Hunter and she thought it was cookie dough.”

“Oh no! Your whole shoulder area? Are you—”

“—don’t.” John sidestepped him, lifting up his briefcase like a shield, this time knocking over an empty can of paint. “Don’t touch me. It. No one should touch the rash. We all must take necessary precautions around the rash. We don’t know if it spreads. It could take all of you down in minutes.”

Danielle frowned over at him from the second camera tripod. “Jesus, John. How did you get a rash?”

“I got this homemade Garfield scarf from Esty? I think they used an off-market fungal dying process, to make it, you know—orange. Anyway. The Big Picture?”

Tyler nodded, but gave John a look that he’d never seen before. It was confusion with little flecks of disappointment—a pout. It made John want to throw himself off the fire escape. Nevertheless, he stood fast, and Tyler gestured to the studio around them. “Well…welcome to the studio of Alex Fleming. How does it rank in terms of artsiest studios you’ve ever been in?”

“It’s…” said John, looking around.

It was not the artsiest studio by a long shot. Senior year of college, he had shared a studio space that was a biohazard. (Two words: mold art.) The problem with this space was Alex Fleming’s art wasn’t “artsy” at all. Canvases were everywhere, and a large one lay balanced between two sawhorses. It was just like the painting John had seen back in Tyler’s apartment—like if the worst frat bro you’d ever met decided he wanted to do Andy Warhol. The piece showed a dozen repeated images of a man shouting into podcasting equipment, layered over pink spray paint. The microphone was a penis. John hated it. It was the fine art equivalent of those Calvin and Hobbes decals. You know the ones? Where Calvin is mischievously peeing? People put them on their giant trucks? Yeah, those. It left a queasy feeling in his stomach as he questioned Tyler’s taste.

“It’s something,” John concluded. “Where’s our guy?”

Danielle sighed at her phone. “On his way. This Fleming guy is…uinque. He told us to set up if we beat him here because his studio is never locked.”

“Never locks his studio, doesn’t have a website,” said Tyler, cheery nature restored. He found this chaos intriguing. “I had to get his email from a friend of a friend of the guy I bought the paintings off of. He was cagey about this whole interview, but I’m not above begging. I’ve discovered that artists always want to open up, but it’s a trust thing.” He winked. “It’s like getting a cat to like you, you know?”

“Right,” muttered John, popping open his briefcase, pulling out drawing paper, and feeling like this was all about to go south, “you can lure most artists out from under a couch with deli meat.”

“Dali meat,” said Tyler.

John suavely covered up a yelp of laughter with a cough.

Usually, John was in awe of Tyler’s ability to make people like him, but it was irksome now, this self-assuredness, this need to get people on his side. Was this why the guy was an actor? He needed people to fall in love with him or he couldn’t sleep at night? Tyler’s way of going about this was off, the art was off, this space was off. Nothing about this interview felt right.

Right on cue, there was a clatter at the door, and leaning in was Alex Fleming.

“Hi.”

Danielle gasped and toppled a tripod. She picked it up, slowly looking from Tyler and John to Alex—and back to John. And then back to Alex. And then back to John again. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“Oh. Hi,” she said, “are you…Alex?”

“Yes,” he said, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Alex removed a small canvas from his backpack. “You’re in my studio, aren’t you? Whoops. Shouldn’t smoke in here.”

He put out his cigarette in an ashtray right outside the door. Alex Fleming was a tall white guy with messy brown hair. A baggy black skateboarding T-shirt hung off his skinny body, and black tracksuit bottoms were tucked into his socks. John immediately clocked the guy as loaded, because his simple outfit was entirely designer, and he carried himself like every oblivious trust fund baby he had known in college. That’s how he was able to make a living in New York City hawking gaudy paintings. Alex Fleming was just rich.

But the strangest thing was that Fleming reminded John of someone, but he couldn’t place who. It was like looking at someone he was related to, and maybe they were, distantly. When the British were starving John’s great great grandfather’s family during the potato famine, one of the brothers must have hopped on a ship to go to America, and the other went down under. Fleming also had big ears and blue eyes and—as he walked closer through the piles of spray paint cans—John saw that he also had freckles. Same height, similar weight, but the number one difference…was his thick, push-broom mustache.

John tiled his head. Huh.

Alex stalked right past Tyler and Tyler’s extended hand, and went over to investigate the camera set up. “I’m guessing you’re Tyler.”

“No, I’m Danielle Allen, the producer,” she said, shaking Alex’s hand, “that’s Tyler Hughes.”

“Oh! You’re Tyler,” said Alex. Another thing John noticed was that Alex’s Australian accent sounded strange. Like it was using more vowels than necessary. The artist shook Tyler’s hand. “The guy who annoyed the shit out of me, emailing me twice a day. Who owns a painting? Movie producer? Or something? Or a lumberjack. Why are you so big?”

“I workout,” said Tyler, grinning? Blushing? John stared in disbelief. This guy hadn’t heard of Tyler Hughes? And Tyler seemed charmed by this man’s insanity? He felt this interview was going to go badly, but in typical John Rich fashion, it was going badly in terrific and whimsical ways. “Great to meet you, Alex. I’m a huge, huge fan of your work. Always great to discover Aussie artists. Oh! This is John Rich, he’s the cover artist for The New York Review. He’ll be drawing you today.”

John shook his hand. “You never lock your studio? What if someone steals all of your paintings?”

Alex froze, suddenly alarmed. “People do that?”

“In New York City?” asked John. “Yes.”

“I never thought about that,” said Alex. “That would be terrible. What do you do with your art?”

“…lock my door?” John offered.

Alex nodded slowly like John was explaining international banking.

“You had an assistant that I emailed?” said Danielle from behind the camera, flipping through a clipboard. “He confirmed that you got the info about the interview.”

“Oh, I didn’t get the info,” said Alex, “because I don’t have an assistant.”

“But someone responded,” said Danielle. “With a thumbs up.”

“Oh well! That was me. But I respond so that things don’t pile up in the inbox.”

Danielle made a strangled sound.

“Hey, so,” said Tyler, seeing the blood vessel popping in Danielle’s forehead and clapping his hands together, “let’s get started so we can get out of your hair, shall we?”

While Alex Fleming went to unload his backpack, team Big Picture huddled together, heads together.

“Unique was an understatement,” hissed John, “this guy has no clue what’s going on!”

“Right?” whispered Tyler in awe, “he seems lost in his art.”

“Oh my God, forget about any of that that. You guys seriously didn’t notice?” Danielle looked from Tyler to John. They shook their heads. She waved her hands. “He looks exactly like John! He looks like John, but if John had a fake mustache!”

“I don’t really see it,” said Tyler and John at the same time.

“No, no, no, wait, I can see it,” said Tyler quietly, “in the ears.”

“We can’t interview this guy,” continued John in hushed tones. He looked over his shoulder to where Alex Fleming was lighting a cigarette before absentmindedly remembering he couldn’t smoke in his own studio. “He looks like he barely has a clue what year it is, let alone what this interview should be about.”

“You don’t want to interview him?” Tyler asked. He seemed shocked that they weren’t totally aligned on this guy.

“Not particularly,” said John.

“Well, suck it up, because we have to get this episode edited by next week. The sooner you draw this guy, the sooner we can get out of here.” Danielle hit the record buttons on both cameras and shuddered. “Hurry up. I’m weirded out.”

The interview that proceeded was…weird. Not only had this Alex Fleming character never heard of Tyler Hughes or the billion-dollar Case Raw franchise, he was very cagey about where he was from in Australia. Like, Tyler couldn’t pin down his accent. His answers were spacey and vague, his art process completely random, and he seemed increasingly suspicious of Tyler’s curiosity.

The worst part was that Tyler loved this. He found Fleming’s aloofness and increasing irritability charming—elbowing John like, “can you believe this guy? How much of an asshole he is? How much of an artist he is?” When Tyler asked why Alex had stacked a bunch of semi-open paint buckets like a pyramid near the window, Alex explained that he had simply gotten bored. Tyler beamed. John’s pencil tip broke twice from how hard he was pushed into the Bristol board. Great, Tyler Hughes had found another person to win over—Another weird genius he had to impress. Another victim. By the time John was inking the piece, Alex Fleming had yawned twice, and asked how long the interview was supposed to last. John filled in the bushy mustache and capped his pen and was done. He nodded at the portrait.

This guy looked nothing like him.

Fleming walked around to John’s shoulder and looked down at the finished portrait. Danielle trained the camera on the both of them and Fleming whistled.

“Really dig your style,” said Alex. “Sorry, this place is so fucking dark. Can I take this to the window?” He gestured for the picture. “May I?”

John handed it to him. Even if Alex Fleming made a shallow critique of his work, it wasn’t like this interview could get any worse.

“There we go, we can see it better in the light…”

Then things got worse. It all happened in slow motion. Alex Fleming strolled across his studio, transfixed like Narcissus by the ink drawing in his hands, and when he reached the window, promptly stepped on an overturned can of spray paint. Before he knew it, his legs went out from under him. Before he could find balance, his arms wind-milled in the air. Before God could save him, he went flailing into the pyramid of paint cans, which toppled over him and the drawing with a loud, colorful, and goopy crash! Danielle, Tyler, and John watched wincing.

“My God, man,” started Tyler, pulling the artist from the wreckage.

“We got that all on tape,” breathed Danielle. “Dear God.”

“This happens more than you think,” said Alex, as Tyler hauled him up. He was drenched in paint and—John squinted—was his mustache slightly askew? “Oh, mate, sorry about your piece.” He tilted his head at the Bristol board, which was streaked in green and yellow paint. He hummed. “Well actually, somewhat improved it don’t you think?”

An empty bucket of paint rolled up to John’s shiny brown Oxfords.

“Yeah.” John jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go.”

It’s not that John stormed out of the studio—he’d simply grabbed his briefcase and departed abruptly. He did not own any of the portraits that he drew for The New York Review, but it was admittedly annoying to see one destroyed—and that Tyler, again, was somehow involved. He pretended not to hear Tyler shouting after him.

“Wait, John! Would you wait? Hey—” Tyler caught him by the arm just as John stepped out on the windy fire escape. “Can we please talk before you just leave?”

“Sure,” snapped John, plastering on a smile, “do you want to talk about how terrible that guy was, or to explain why you wanted to interview him in the first place? Or should we debrief on how that was pretty much a waste of all our time?”

“No,” said Tyler, “I want to talk about what’s going on. Co-producer to co-producer. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“No,” countered Tyler, “you barely said a word during the interview. You sped right through that portrait. You’ve got this sudden and concerning rash that I’m only just hearing about. It’s fungal. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” repeated John, taking a step down the fire escape, “I’m absolutely fine. The paint fumes in that studio were slightly disorienting, so I had to get out—”

“Then are we okay?” Tyler put a hand on the rail and it shook the fire escape. “I haven’t properly heard from you since the holidays, and back there. Something’s off. I feel like I’ve done something wrong. Have I pissed you off somehow?”

John shook his head. “It’s fine.”

“No, John, I know you by now. Why can’t you just say what you’re actually feeling for once?”

“You know me,” John said flatly, mostly to himself. “Okay, so you probably know that I thought that guy was a hack, and super weird. And hated us being there, and one hundred percent hated you. Why did we waste our time on that, man? And honest question—why do you have to try so fucking hard to win everyone over?”

It was too much, and John could tell all of it landed right on Tyler’s heart. John watched him blink, hurt, as frustration turned to understanding. John opened his mouth to take it back, but Tyler spoke first:

“You think I try to win people over?”

“—that came out wrong,” said John, over him. He waved a hand. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. You don’t—you don’t do anything, but be kind. It’s just that guys like that—some artists aren’t worth your time.” John sighed. “Just because they’re quirky, and hard to understand, and impossible to get a hold of, and assholes, you don’t have to—” John stopped himself. “Listen, we’re good. This is something we’ll laugh about, later, I’m sure. I’m sorry I was acting weird, but everything between us is copacetic, okay? I’ll see you around.”

Tyler looked like he wanted to speak, but did not—or could not. Professional, John reminded himself, and descended the fire escape, bravely, gripping his briefcase, like he wasn’t afraid of slipping and falling to his death. When John’s feet were planted firmly on the cold concrete, he hurried, kept his gaze on the horizon, rushing forward—and nearly stepped on an empty spray paint can. He looked down at it, and chuckled in relief.

Then he slid on a banana peel from the trash.

His briefcase went flying, he fell backwards, and when he landed, it was on his wrist, and with an audible crack. ✏️

=

previous chapter < start > next chapter ("The Guggenheim Social")

=

✏️ Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading this latest chapter of John Rich & The Big Picture—yes, that was John in a mustache. Like, if this were a TV show, it would be the same actor who played John, but wearing a fake mustache and doing an awful Australian accent. This novel had a world-famous TikTok dog as an integral part of the meet-cute it's weird.

At this point, how do we feel about John? Do YOU like John?

I feel like this doesn't read like a romcom because I have a B-plot (John's job) that has little to do with the #rom, and I really love chapters like this where were get to indulge in the #com. What do you think? Is this a romcom to you?

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

...