Chapter 16: Miracle drawing (16)

Behind their complaints and crude temperaments, there always was warmth toward each other. Watching from the side, even Jinho felt the warmth.

‘I want a friend like that too.’

Jinho, who had yet to feel such close friendship with someone else, felt envious of the two.

Even back in Korea, Jinho felt and lived more often among inferiority, jealousy, and envy than camaraderie.

Jinho’s hand unconsciously grabbed a beer bottle.

Slowly raising the bottle, Jinho poured the cold beer down his throat several times, and only then slowly opened his mouth to speak.

“Sure.”

“…eng?”

“Sure. You know, about what you asked. The album cover.”

Stirring the small amount of beer left in the bottle, Jinho cheerfully smiled.

“I’m lacking in many places, but if you are fine with me, I’m happy to help.”

“Are you kidding? Lacking?!”

With a much louder voice and a elated face, Max grabbed Jinho’s hands and shouted.

“You can draw that kind of pictures! I should be holding you with respect! Thank you! If the album goes big this time, it’s all thanks to you!”

*

“Cough, cough. Wow, ajussi. You had a place like this?”

“Although it’s gathered some dust because it hasn’t been used for a while… huff. Well, it’s this much. Paint buckets should be here somewhere. It’s been so long, even I’m getting confused. Careful with your feet there. The nails haven’t been hammered well, so some things are sticking out.”

When Jinho agreed to make Max’s album cover, the bartender led the two to the innermost storage in the store.

The reason they came here was simple.

Jinho’s sketch was merely at the primary stage of rough drawing, and he needed supplies to work.

When Jinho mentioned his worry about what kind of art supplies to use, the bartender led the two inside saying he had something to show him.

Max muttered as he secretly put down a empty beer bottle in a random spot.

“Coloring or whatnot, even without that, I really like Brother’s sketch.” (T/n: Going to start capitalizing ‘brother’ as ‘Brother’)

“We can’t use that. It’s not finished.”

“Max, if someone went up to you and said he liked your ad lib and you should make a song entirely out of that, would you? Of course not. You’ll reorganize the chords, set the stroke… It’s the same for drawings. Even if the sketch itself has a good sense, it’s not finished.”

“If you put it that way… Ah, just for record, if something like that happened to me, I’ll start with a song. We’ve known each other for years, do you still not know me? If you are a man, you should be jump straight in. Isn’t there an old saying, ‘think up as you go’?”

“… If you want to flunk up your album again, do as you wish. Or be quiet if you don’t.”

Quickly remembering Max’s personality, the bartender shook his head as he took off the dust covered canvas.

Instantly, a dust cloud thick enough to blackout their sights blew up and the three covered their mouths and coughed. And only after waiting for a while until the dust settled down, could the three could talk again.

Max, who was the first to recover, narrowed his eyes and talked.

“Ajussi, you need to take them off more carefully… oh?”

“Wow, what is all this?”

At the sight of supplies under the canvas, Jinho’s and Max’s faces lit up with surprise.

Savoring the two’s reaction, the bartender gleefully smiled.

“Unlike now, there were many artists living around Manhattan East Village and Soho in the past. Since I live around there, I naturally got to know a lot of them, and because they didn’t have any place to work in, I lent out the store’s storage. Although they all went their separate ways and there’s no one to use this place, they all left the supplies saying it’s too awkward to individually take away things they bought together or something.”

The bartender’s narration continued on further, but Jinho and Max didn’t seem to be listening at all.

Max was standing far away looking at the other stuffs in the storage, and Jinho was distracted checking the stuff underneath the canvas.

Jinho held up the paint closest to the front and exclaimed.

‘It’s a paint from La Crotel company…?!’

Made in France, the water paint’s brand cost wasn’t cheap according to Jinho’s knowledge. Because they used the traditional methods to create paint even today, it was obvious that the paint would be expensive. But to think such paints would be neatly organized color by color in a box!

As he calculated how much each color would cost, Jinho’s mouth fell down when he checked the other supplies.

Besides the paint, each and every one of the supplies on the floor wasn’t ordinary.

“Wow. This paint…, isn’t this the brand from Germany? It’s the brand that was discontinued. They say the brand tried to maintain too high quality pigments and collapsed… my world, this is Shmelke paint…! And all the colors are different!”

“Is that good?”

“Good? Originally the purple…, that is, the cadmium based has bad durability. But this company’s products perfectly insured against that problem…!”

“Cad… what? Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Feeling the vertigo he felt back in high school chemistry class, Max shook his head.

Because he maintained less than a thirteen year old’s level of knowledge on anything that didn’t interested him, there was no way that Max would understand what Jinho was saying.

But compared to Max, who with a perturbed look, was stepping away from Jinho, the bartender watched Jinho with interest and smiled.

And casually walking up to Jinho’s side, the bartender slowly bent down.

“What do you think of these supplies?”

“They’re all the best products. There’s not only paint, but various other supplies too. It looks like it wasn’t only painters that gathered here. These chisels too…”

“I’ll let you use all of them. You can take whatever you want.”

“Yes. If I could, that’ll be like a dream… what?!”

Jinho’s eyes turned wide open in surprise.

The bartender reflected in Jinho’s brown eyes faced Jinho and lightly smiled.

“Max is like a kid of mine. You’re going to help someone like him, so I should do what I can.”

“But, ajussi. I don’t know if I can use these supplies well, and using them without permission…”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s been abandoned for a long time anyhow. Everyone probably forgot about these by now. And I’m not giving them to you for free, so don’t be so stressed about it.”

The bartender dusted off his knees and stood up.

The smile on his face deepened.

“After you finish Max’s album cover, let’s say you draw the store’s sign once when you get the chance. What do you think? Want to do it? The artists that stayed in this storage back then also paid me back that way instead of cash.”

“Ajussi…”

“It’s much more simpler that way. It’ll be more profitable that way too.”

Before Jinho could say anything more, the bartender extended his hand toward Jinho.

“I’ll be counting on you to make a good work.”

*

Early Saturday morning, Jinho sat in the Union Square.

Sipping the coffee with its brand printed on its own cup in his right hand, Jinho turned his head back and forth until he saw Max coming toward him, and waved.

“You came earlier than I expected. You said you liked to sleep in, so I thought you’ll be late.”

“Nah, Brother is taking out his time for me. I can’t be late.”

“It’s not free, you know?”

When Jinho playfully said so, Max cheerfully laughed and slapped Jinho’s back.

“Hehe, of course. Just wait ‘till I go big. I won’t ever forget Brother’s help.”

“I recorded what you just said. Don’t go back on your words later.”

“I know, I know. Anyhow, that’s that. Where did you want to go to meet so early? I’m really fine with using that sketch from before as the cover.”

“That won’t do. It doesn’t show off Mr. Max enough to use for the cover. I’m thinking of using that for the inside cover instead.”

“Inside cover?”

Max repeated Jinho’s words as he tilted his head. At the same time, Max took Jinho’s coffee naturally as if it was his, and took a sip.

Watching Max marvel saying how expensive coffees are different as expected, Jinho slightly smiled.

“Yes. At least for the album’s cover, Mr. Max is the main character, right? Then I should draw a picture that would make the main character shine.”

“Oh, to make me stand out, I like that. So where’re we going? If it’s somewhere I’ll shine, we need to at least go to the Carnegie Hall. Or maybe Rockefeller Center? Juilliard is too hard, so I don’t really…”

As Max continued to talk with sparkling eyes, Jinho said the place he’d already thought of.

“If it’s Mr. Max, it’s definitely that place.”

*

Kiwwwwwww!

The sound of guitar filled the space as Max’s hand brushed down the guitar’s neck, and Max’s vocal soon followed.

Simultaneously, his fingers strummed through the numerous frets on the guitar’s fingerboard, and high and low melodies of the guitar flowed through the soundhole and met Max’s deep voice to produce a unique vibe. (t/n: guitar parts diagram)

The song Max was playing, titled ‘Steamroller’, was one of the many that would be in his album.

It was a song named after the machine that pressed down on asphalt using steam.

The song, which held a message of becoming tougher even if the world pressed down, told the story of Max’s arduous past.

As the song flowed past the somber intro, the vibes built up bit by bit until the song reached the climax and Max’s screaming high notes rained down. Completely absolved in his singing, Max sang through his past self to present himself within the three minutes.

Within the three minute song, Max have placed his entire life of twenty nine years.

Max ended the song with a light brush down the guitar’s neck, and took a sharp breath.

With that, sound of applause reverberated.

Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap!

“Nice! That was awesome!”

“Thanks, Brother.”

Max looked at Jinho, the owner of the applause, and waved at him.

With the train platform as his stage, Max sang and performed his guitar. But the only one who paid any attention to him was Jinho.

All the people moving through the platform with quick strides glanced at Max, but nothing more than more. Some even looked down at him, and everyone saw him as a mere vagrant shamelessly singing when everyone’s busy working.

Perhaps thirsty, Max gulped water down his throat and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat flowing down his cheek.

“Huu, so did you get that ‘feeling’ yet?

“Ah, no. It’s a bit regrettable, since I can’t simply draw only what’s seen into a picture.”

“…can’t draw only what’s seen?”

“Hmm, please think of it as my stubbornness. Anyhow, good work again.

It’s been three hours since they began riding the subway and performing on various platforms.

At first, Max sang once at the Union Square, then the 34th Street where the Penn Station was, and after that it was at the Times Square platform in 42nd street. This time, Max sang at the Grand Central Terminal.

Although Max performed in every famous subway stations in Midtown Manhattan, Jinho still couldn’t finish his sketch.

‘There’s passion, but… something’s missing.’

Jinho could plenty feel the heat that is Max’s identity. No, he could feel it excessively.

But the song Max sang just now wasn’t simply made up of heat.

Within it, there were his sincere feelings, pain, and in the end his hope for the future.

The thought that finishing the sketch with only the heat is lacking kept floating around Jinho’s head.

‘I need to draw beyond what’s seen. Although others only glanced at Max’s outer appearance, I need to draw a cover that could express Mr. Max’s inner identity enough to catch those people’s eyes.’

< Miracle Drawing! 16. > End