Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement

for nights. In daylight he looks for his shadow and crawls up inside it.
    Jean-Michel stands at her doorstep. Suzanne says, “No, no, no, you can’t come back.” He is disheveled. One of the soles of his shoes flaps open and she can see his toes. He is unshaven. He brings no belongings with him. He does not expect her to take him in. Like all stray animals, he knows he will not be taken in.
    I always took him in. I’d convince myself that I wouldn’t but then he’d appear with the resigned look of someone accustomed to being turned away—a boy without a friend.
    When I’d take him back, which was happening all the time, I’d make dinner for him and run out and buy a really good bottle of wine, even if it took away half of my rent money. I loved to spoil him and he always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.
    I would light a candle and sit him at the table. He would look at the bottle of wine for a long time.
    On one of these occasions we sat together quietly and I did not know what to say to him since this had happened so many times now. We felt a bit like strangers and I made some idle chitchat and asked if his paintings were selling well. He said that he was making tons of money now. Jean drew himself up straight and said, “I am famous just like I told you I would be.”
    We talked for some time of how he had always painted and how as a child he had dreamed of being a cartoonist. “The only thing that has ever interested me,” he said, “is a blank page.”
    That time, for the first time, he also talked about his childhood. He told me how he had always been in trouble and had gone to so many different schools. He also told me about the time he had gone to live in Puerto Rico with his father, when he was eight and after his parents were divorced.
    I guess he was lost without his mother. His mother had taken him to art museums and used to paint with him in the afternoons with both of them lying on the floor on their stomachs. She used to paste his drawings up around the house. The loss of his mother had left him with a great sadness. Even though she was now close by at the institution she was far away from him in his mind.
    The next morning I gave him an apple to take with him as he was leaving. He said good-bye to me and then five minutes later he came back to the apartment and said good-bye to me again.
    “You are my best friend,” he said. It was so sad. That is something children say in kindergarten.

THE VENUS XEROXES
    Jean-Michel draws Venus and writes “VENUS” on dozens of pieces of paper. He xeroxes the papers, tears them up and hands them out to friends and strangers on the street. This is how he symbolically announces his breakup with Suzanne. He also pastes these Venuses on some of his paintings.
    One night Suzanne goes out to the Roxy and finds Jean-Michel with Madonna. Suzanne throws herself at Madonna and starts pulling her hair, scratching and punching her.
    “You are with my boyfriend!” Suzanne says.
    Jean-Michel just laughs and laughs.
    Later he tells Suzanne, “Well, you beat her up just like a Puerto Rican girl.”
    Later he paints
A Panel of Experts.
In this painting Suzanne “Venus” and Madonna are two stick figures having a catfight. On the collage he crosses out the word “Madonna.”
    “Why did you do that?” Suzanne asks.
    “Because you won, Venus,” Jean-Michel says.
    Jean took me to a party at Julian Schnabel’s house. Jean got all dressed up but he would not let me get dressed up. Jean made me wear his long-sleeve overalls that had paint all over them. I was embarrassed. All the other women were all dressed up and looking very beautiful.
    Jean laughed at Schnabel’s work. He thought it was a joke. He envied how Schnabel was, how powerful and rich he was. He had no respect for his work but he did respect how Schnabel could propel himself to such a position in the art world. Jean was very conscious and fascinated with people who