CHAPTER 1.
The brush trembled in my hand as another construction blast shook my apartment walls. Perfect. Just perfect. This was exactly what I needed while trying to finish the final painting for my upcoming exhibition - a piece that was supposed to represent ‘urban transcendence.’ Hard to transcend anything with a jackhammer drilling into your cerebral cortex.
I stepped back from the canvas, flipped my hair back over my shoulders, and tried to see past the angry slashes of color I'd added in the last hour. The painting had started as something beautiful— a towering cityscape dissolving into abstract shapes of light and shadow, the kind of large-scale work that had won me the Clapton Gallery showcase last spring. Now it looked like my frustration had been sick all over it.
"Don't expect life to be fair," echoed that self-help guru's voice in my head. That's what he'd told me three months ago, probably right after pocketing my hard-earned money for the privilege of sitting there while he spewed recycled clichés at me. The real kicker? I'd only gone to that stupid seminar because my ex, Damian, had suggested it might help with my ‘negativity.’ This coming from the guy I'd later caught kissing his ‘just a colleague’ in his office.
The irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was, six months post-Damian, doing all the things you're supposed to do after a breakup. The yoga. The journaling. The vision boards. The meditation app that kept telling me to ‘embrace the now’ while construction workers embraced their pneumatic drills next door. I'd even started that Instagram account my agent had been nagging me about, though my follower count still hovered somewhere between ‘sad’ and ‘why bother?’
I glanced at the far wall where my first successful mural still hung - a smaller version of the piece that had landed me the Anderson Building commission two years ago. Bold sweeps of color transforming a concrete jungle into something magical. That was before Damian, before the guru, before I'd started questioning every brushstroke. Back when I still believed in... well, everything.
"You're being dramatic," I muttered to myself, hearing it in my grandfather's voice. He'd been the one who'd given me my first set of real brushes, who'd used this very apartment as his art studio decades ago. "Art isn't about believing," he used to say, paint splattered on his overalls, "it's about seeing." What would he think if he could see me now, stuck between the art I wanted to create and the portraits Mom kept pushing me to paint?
The construction noise subsided for a blessed moment, and I dipped my brush back into the cerulean blue that never failed to calm me. This was why I painted - for these moments when the world melted away and there was nothing but color and possibility. Just as I touched brush to canvas, my phone vibrated on the table, the sound as jarring as nails on a chalkboard.
Mom.
Of course. She had a sixth sense for interrupting me at my most vulnerable moments. I never answered my phone while painting - it was my one sacred boundary - but the construction crew had already shattered any hope of zen. Besides, if I didn't answer, she'd just keep calling.
"Hi, Mom," I muttered, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.
"Maya! You're alive!" She made it sound like I'd been lost at sea rather than focusing on my work. "I was beginning to think you'd drowned in your paint again."
"Just working on the exhibition piece." I stared at my canvas, willing it to make sense. "You know, the one for the Wilson Gallery opening?"
"Oh, right. Those big abstract things you do." She said 'abstract' the way some people said 'tax audit.' "Actually, I have some exciting news that might help with your... situation."
I closed my eyes. In Mom-speak, 'situation' could mean anything from my career choices to my relationship status to that time I'd tried bangs in eleventh grade. "What situation would that be?"
"You remember Earl from Bingo? The one with the... well, the interesting hair situation?"
"The toupee guy?" I absently swirled my brush in water, watching the blue paint create tiny whirlpools. Just like my gallery mentor, Sharon, had taught me during my first apprenticeship. 'When in doubt, clean your brushes. Clear brushes, clear mind.'
"He's been looking for someone to paint his portrait! I told him all about you, and-"
"Mom." I set the brush down before I snapped it in half. "I don't do portraits. You know this. We've discussed this. Grandfather never pushed me to-"
"Your grandfather had a trust fund," she cut in. "And yes, he left you this apartment, but there are still bills, Maya. Real artists can paint anything. Look at that nice Mary Beth from church-"
"Mom, Mary Beth paints dogs wearing historical costumes."
"And she makes six figures doing it! When was the last time you went out? Met someone? Had a life outside those fumes you're always breathing?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a tension headache building. Through the window, I could see the construction site next door, steel beams reaching toward the sky like accusing fingers. They'd been building this luxury condo complex for months, slowly erasing the gritty character of our once-artistic neighborhood. Just last week, my favorite coffee shop - the one where I'd sketched my first mural concept - had been replaced by a chain store.
"I have a life," I said, though the words sounded hollow even to me. "I have the exhibition coming up. Sharon thinks it could lead to more commission work-"
"Enough to live on, sure," she interrupted, her voice taking on that particular tone that could trigger guilt in grown adults at fifty paces. "But what about enough to actually live? To travel? To give me grandchildren before I'm too old to enjoy them?"
There it was. The real agenda.
"Look, Mom, I've got to go. The light's perfect right now and-"
"Just think about Earl, okay? He's really excited about the idea. You could make some extra cash. Maybe buy yourself something nice. Or," she added with forced casualness, "you could join me at church this Sunday. That new young pastor is very handsome-"
"Yeah, yeah. Love you, Mom. Bye." I hung up before she could start planning my wedding to the handsome pastor. Throwing my phone onto the table, I stared at my half-finished canvas. The colors that had flowed so naturally an hour ago now seemed forced, contrived.
I thought about my grandfather's old photos, the ones Mom had tucked away in the closet because they were "too bohemian" - him with his artist friends in this very studio, paint-splattered and laughing. He'd turned down commercial work too, stuck to his vision even when it meant eating ramen for dinner. But he'd also had my grandmother's teacher's salary to fall back on.
The construction noise started up again, louder this time. I pressed my palms against my temples, feeling the vibrations in my bones. The luxury condos next door were just another sign of the city's "revitalization" - a fancy word for pricing artists like me out of our own neighborhoods. Sharon had already relocated her gallery to the suburbs, and three other artists in my building had moved in the past year.
I wasn't going to cave. Not to Earl, not to the changing neighborhood, not to Mom's well-meaning but suffocating concern. I'd rather eat ramen forever than turn into someone who painted portraits for bingo buddies. I glanced at my half-finished piece, trying to recapture what I'd been seeing when I started it. There was something there, something important about preservation and progress, about holding onto your vision in a world intent on renovating it out of existence.
The sound that came next wasn't the usual construction noise. It was different - a sharp, metallic screech that set my teeth on edge. I had just enough time to think that it sounded wrong before my world exploded in glass and dust. The window beside me shattered into a thousand pieces, and I froze, brush still in hand, as my brain struggled to process what I was seeing.
There, jutting through my studio wall like some post-modern art installation, was the massive metal arm of a crane. An actual crane. Through my actual wall. Grandfather's wall. As the dust settled, I had the hysterical thought that maybe this was the universe's way of telling me it was time for a renovation after all.
Then I noticed the ruined canvas beneath the debris - the centerpiece for my exhibition, now sporting a very unintentional mixed media addition of brick dust and broken dreams. Something hot and fierce erupted in my chest, burning away the shock. That painting had been everything - my statement piece, my chance at a major commission, my proof to everyone (especially my mother) that I could make it on my own terms.
"No, no, NO!" I stormed toward the wreckage, my hands shaking as I tried to assess the damage. Six months of work. Gone. The delicate gradients of color I'd layered so carefully were now buried under a coating of concrete dust and shattered glass. The canvas itself was torn where a chunk of drywall had punched through it, leaving a jagged hole right through the center of my urban dreamscape.
The construction noise next door had stopped. Of course it had stopped - half their equipment was in my studio.
The universe, it turned out, wasn't content with just being unfair. No, it had to be an outright bully, taking everything I'd worked for and literally smashing it to pieces. Well, someone was going to pay for this. And it wasn't going to be me.
