Nebraska

He woke early to stand at his easel and paint still lifes, like Cezanne's. They gave him a lot of trouble. The colors were never right. He stacked them in a closet when they were dry. At noon he left the room and walked the city streets or shopped for his evening meal. Or he would sit in the park with a stale loaf of bread and tear up pieces for the pigeons. At night he sat in the stuffed purple chair and listened to German music. Or he wore his reading glasses and slowly turned the pages of art books about Degas or Braque or Picasso.

But windows he'd closed were opened. Books he'd left open were closed. And he sat in the back of a bus and saw a runty kid on a black motorcycle changing lanes, spurting and braking in traffic. He wore goggles and big-cuffed jeans. The kid saw him staring and gave him the finger. Max read his newspaper.

Then Max saw him again at dinner in the lunchroom downstairs. Max ordered the meat loaf special, and the kid walked his machine to the curb. He sat on it, looking at a map. Every now and then he'd wipe his nose on his sleeve.

The coffee was cold. Max told the waitress and she filled a new cup.

“And give me a piece of whatever pie you've got.”

“We've got apple and banana cream.”

“Whatever's freshest.”

She brought him banana cream.

“That your boyfriend out there?”

“Where?”

He pointed.

“Never seen him before.”

“He seems to be waiting for somebody.”

“He's reading a map. Maybe he's lost.”

“Yeah. And maybe he's waiting for somebody.”

He wiped his face with a napkin and threw it down. Then he pulled up his pants and went outside.

“Hey!”

The kid was looking at the letters along the right, then the numbers across the top. He tried to put the two lines together.

“Hey, bright boy. You looking for me?”

“What?”

“Do you want me?”

He squirmed in his seat. “No.”

Max slapped the map from his hands. It fluttered, then folded in the wind and was blown against a tire.

Max grinned and took a step forward, making fists. The kid hopped off the cycle and into the street. Max put his shoe on the gas tank and pushed. The cycle crashed to the pavement. The back wheel spun free.

The old man was about to tear some wires loose when the kid spit at him. Max straightened slowly and the kid spit again. Max took a few steps back, frowning at the spot on his pant leg, stumbling off-balance, and the kid climbed over the cycle, hacking and working his cheeks. Then he spit again, and it struck Max on the cheek.

The old man backed against the building and took out his handkerchief. “Get outa here, huh? Just leave.” He slowly sank to the sidewalk and mopped his face. The kid picked up his cycle.

“That's a dirty, filthy thing to do to anybody,” Max said.

The kid started his cycle, then smiled and said, “Oh, you're gonna be easy.”

Rex poked a jar of turpentine and it smashed to smithereens on the floor. Then he went and ran his arm recklessly along the top of a chest of drawers and everything—hairbrush, scissors, aerosol cans—spilled to the floor in a racket. There was also a mug of pencils and brushes on a drawing table and he shook them out like pickup sticks. He ripped the sheets off the bed and wadded them up. And he dumped out all the drawers.

We came back at dark and saw the roomer in just his undershirt and slacks, wiping the turpentine up with a paper towel. He was big and had a white beard and he used to be good-looking, you could tell. He looked like he might've been a prizefighter or something.