Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Dylan pointed. “Look. There’s even a little green man.”
Sure enough, a green alien with bulging eyes held out a three-fingered hand, helping the people of Earth reach for the sky.
Dylan murmured, “Do you feel the power?”
Clay did. Much of the work had been spray-painted—the clouds, the sky, the grass and flowers surrounding the ladder. But the expressions on the individual faces were rendered with perfect brushstrokes.
“Could he have done this overnight?” Clay asked, not so much of Dylan, but of the universe.
“That’s what he’s famous for,” Dylan expounded. “His paintings appear overnight.” He squeezed Clay’s arm in his excitement. “Let’s find the fleur-de-lis.”
The fleur-de-lis was part of San Holo’s signature. Once they found it, they would also uncover the small initials SH that went with it. San Holo was known for making his acolytes search for the symbol. If Dylan found it now, that would be the real tell that it was one of the artist’s new pieces.
They searched every inch—the flowers, the people’s clothing and faces, the trees, the ladder, until the sun crept up the wall to banish the last of the shadows. Dylan set up the stepladder, climbing for a better look.
“I found it.” His cry echoed with joy as he pointed at the alien. “I told you this was San Holo.” Then he took his phone out of his back pocket and snapped a picture.
Once on the ground again, he pushed Clay to the ladder. “You have to see.”
Clay climbed beside the people ascending their ladder, until he was level with the alien’s bulging eyes. There it was, right in the eye, a fleur-de-lis and the initials SH.
Dylan was right on the money.
After Clay had descended, Dylan grabbed the stepladder and put it back against the side wall where the artist had left it, almost as if he didn’t want anyone else to consider climbing up.
His hazel eyes glowed with flecks of amber. “This is how a gold miner must have felt when he found a vein of gold.” He slapped his hand to his chest. “We’re the first!”
Clay had to correct him. “You’re the first. I never would’ve known.” He was so impressed, he’d forgotten the stink in the alley. Or maybe the beauty of the street art banished it.
Dylan stepped back to take another photo. “I’m putting this on my social media.” His fingers moved like lightning over his phone screen.
Since he followed Dylan’s social media, Clay heard a ping on his phone.
“You really get it, don’t you,” Dylan finally said.
Clay smiled his agreement. “Since you introduced me to San Holo’s work, I’ve been captivated. But this one…” He opened his arms to encompass the artist’s latest. “It blows everything out of the water.”
“I mean you really get us artists.” Dylan looked at Clay as if he walked on water. Which Clay knew was far from true. But Dylan went on, “That’s why you find places for all of us in your warehouse. Even though you don’t make art yourself.” He shook his shaggy head. “I really don’t get why you’re not an artist yourself, but maybe that’s because you give it all to us.”
Clay had a hundred studios in his San Francisco warehouse, with a total of five warehouses in the US and plans to expand internationally. He understood that artists spoke a different language, that their thoughts were in colors or shapes or ideas, wherever their artistic endeavors led them. He appreciated that language and knew that when inspiration sparked, there was no stopping them from jumping into it. Many went to sleep dreaming of their next artwork, or their next novel, or their next piece of music. Their ideas could not be leashed and couldn’t be slotted into someone else’s formula. That’s what his warehouses and Art Space were all about, allowing artists to dream their dreams the way they needed to be dreamed. They could post their works, their thoughts, talk about their process, whatever.
It pleased him immensely that Dylan understood how Clay felt about art and artists. The kid, not even eighteen yet, was perceptive, and that would make him one of the greats.
A fervent light gleamed in Dylan’s eyes. “If I could talk to San Holo—” He sucked in a breath, blew it out harshly. “It would be my dream to ask him even one question. He wouldn’t need to be creating art at that moment. Just to stand next to him would be the best thing that ever happened to me in my whole life.”
Clay’s heart turned over for this kid who’d lost his parents when he was only ten years old, his father into the prison system and his mother to a drug overdose. He’d bounced from one appalling foster home to another. Until a couple of years ago, when Gideon found him. Now the kid was in a decent foster home, and Clay had given him the artist’s studio to work in.