Sheila Martinez's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Sheila Martinez wanted to paint something that would fill a wall. Instead, she painted a postcard. Her apartment left no room for anything larger. The single window faced a brick wall, so the light died by noon. She taped another sketch to the fridge, the only free surface left. It showed desert palms heavy with coconuts, their shells bright as glass filled with water. She had imagined it huge, a canvas tall as a door, hanging in Urnstone's finest gallery. For now it stayed four inches wide. Her rabbit thumped the floor near her feet. Benito was white and soft and always underfoot when she tried to think. She scratched his ears and stared at the sketch. "A solo show," she said to him. "They don't give those to people who paint postcards." The sketch was good. That was the problem. Every ambitious idea she had stayed trapped at this tiny size. She had the hand. She had the eye. She had no space and no light. A gallery would never see the real work because the real work could not exist here. She pulled out her phone and scrolled housing listings she could not afford. Most were worse than this. Then one caught her eye. A single-story bungalow, cheap, far from the center. The photos showed a low roof and a front porch. The last photo stopped her cold. A back room, wide and empty, with tall windows on two walls. Sunlight poured across a bare wood floor. She read the listing three times. The rent was almost her whole budget. No savings would be left. If a single month went badly, she would be out. But the room was large enough for a canvas tall as a door. The light lasted all day. She called the number before she could talk herself out of it. The landlord met her that afternoon. He warned her about the yard. "Place has been empty a while," he said. "Critters got comfortable." She barely heard him. She walked straight to the back room. The light hit her face. She saw her palm painting already hanging there, enormous and alive. She signed the lease on the porch steps. She moved what little she owned in one trip. Benito explored the empty rooms while she set her easel in the sunlit back room. For the first time, she could step back ten feet from her work. She stretched a canvas as tall as the door and leaned it against the wall. Her hands shook with excitement. Then something rustled in the corner, behind a stack of her boxes. She turned. A lizard crawled into the light, longer than her forearm, its skin green and spotted. She blinked. It had three heads. Three pairs of eyes fixed on her. Benito froze. Sheila had her studio. She also had a tenant who had lived here first.