Fighting Dirty - Sidney Halston Page 0,42
It’s art. This is important to me, Enzo. I’ve never shared this with anyone before,” she said as she walked ahead of him and pointed to various walls. “In Miami all the walls are painted in these humongous elaborate murals, and tourists flock to see them and now the area is thriving. Look.” She pointed to the side of an old warehouse that was now camouflaged by an enormous mural. He stepped back and looked at it. “It’s street art, Enzo.”
It was a very well-done painting of a woman in a red dress doing a split in the air. Her outstretched legs spanned at least forty feet across and the woman herself was about twenty feet tall. It was enormous and so lifelike it looked as if it was popping out of the brick wall and into the dead air. He turned around, for the first time really looking at all the murals. On another wall, there were thousands of red polka dots painted on a black wall, each dot perfectly round and of identical dimensions—clearly something that had taken a lot of time and patience to do. Another entire building was covered in black and white lines, creating a psychedelic look. He kept looking, and as far as his eyes could see, there were murals and sketches and paintings. And she was right. It wasn’t graffiti—the artists who’d done this had clearly taken time and effort to make these masterpieces beautiful.
During the months he’d spent researching the area, he’d been there over a dozen times and had seen some of the art, but he’d never really seen it as art. He’d noticed people loitering and litter everywhere, and he’d concluded that the graffiti had been done by vandals and thugs with nothing else to do but destroy private property. Which is why he’d contributed an exorbitant amount of money to the Tarpon Springs police force to monitor the area and arrest all the vandals.
Now he was seeing it with different eyes. Eyes that were relaxed and at peace from three and a half days with a woman who regarded life with a carefree spirit. He saw that the area was in fact beautiful. But its beauty didn’t hide the fact that none of the businesses were viable, the sidewalks were cracked, and there were shopping carts in corners and alleyways, suggesting that homeless people were living there. Still, he could see what she meant by her comment that the art was drawing attention to the neighborhood. Some tourists were a block up the street, laughing and taking pictures against a wall that was a giant tribute to Harry Potter.
“JL, over here,” came a faint call from above.
They both looked up to see a man perched on a five-story building, like a window washer, with an array of paints. “Is that why you wanted to conquer your fear of heights?”
“Hi!” she called up to the guy above, waving. Then she turned to Enzo. “Yeah. I have this wall over here.” She pulled him to an alley and pointed to the wall of a four-story building. “I already have the sketch and everything done. I’m ready to begin, but every time I start to climb the ladder I freak and climb back down. I can have someone else do it for me, but it’s my wall, my project, and I want to be the one who does it.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Jamie Lynn…”
“I know. It’s not exactly legal and you are Mr. Law-Abiding, but I know that when people get word of what we’re doing, this shitty area of town will boom. Tourists come already. On weekends they walk around taking pictures.” She pulled him to the corner of the street and made a left. “Look, someone is already opening up a coffee shop here.”
“Can’t imagine you’re cool with another Starbucks,” he said, knowing how much of a nonconformist she was.
“No, not a Starbucks. Don’t you get it? It’s a coffee shop for the community. And maybe next there’ll be a little bookshop, a tattoo parlor, a bakery, or a community center.” She shrugged. “But we have to be careful because there are two cops who love to drive around and give us a hard time. It’s like they have it in for us. One of the guys, Leo, was already arrested once. He spent two days in jail, like he committed some horrible crime, and he’s now on probation. He hasn’t been around since then.”
His heart constricted.