Hailey

“These areas really are up and coming. The buildings have already been outfitted with electric and plumbing, so you could move right in and get to work.”

The commercial real estate agent driving the car was talking my ear off. We were driving through upscale parts of San Diego trying to find a place where I could settle my art gallery. The buildings were beautiful white stucco with swirls and shapes. Some were painted fun, bright colors. Some were black and silver and outfitted with chrome accents. Anything to bring something hip and new to the area.

It was all beautiful, and that was the problem.

I didn’t like the vibe of the places we were visiting. It wasn’t that I had anything against being upscale. It’s just that upscale was already labeled as beautiful. There wasn’t anything I could add to the area, nothing my art would bring that was different. I wanted my art to inspire and bring beauty to the darkness.

The darkness had already been eliminated by the outsides of these beautiful little shops, which meant my art couldn’t contribute anything.

“So, what do you think? Any of these areas strike your fancy?” she asked.

“Honestly? Not really. Is there an area that’s a bit darker?” I asked.

“Darker?”

“Well, maybe not darker. But not so upscale?”

“These types of places are where you’ll gain the best foot traffic. You’re opening an art gallery, correct?” she asked.

“I am.”

“You want your pieces to sell, right? So you can pay your rent?”

I shot her a wary glance as she continued to drive me through areas I didn’t want to be in. I knew she was trying to sell me on a more expensive building, so she could get a nice cut for herself, but the only thing about to be cut was her because I was about to cut her loose.

“My art will sell anywhere. That’s the beauty of it, but I can’t bring beauty to a place that’s already beautiful.”

“Ah, you want to be the center of the beauty, not merely enhance it,” the agent said, grinning.

“No. I want to introduce beauty to a place that isn’t always labeled beautiful,” I said.

“Like the ugly duckling at the prom who takes off her glasses and woos the captain of the football team?”

“What?” I asked.

“Never mind. Let me show you one more area. I promise you’ll adore it. It’s super quaint and your artwork would do well there.”

“You’ve never seen my artwork,” I said.

“Oh, well. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Come on. I’ll show you.”

I could tell the agent was annoyed with me, and honestly, I was getting annoyed with her. Part of me felt bad because I couldn’t express what I wanted clearly enough, but it was important that I find the right place. I watched out the window, seeing the whole of San Diego pass by as we got onto the highway.

At least she was taking me to another area of the city this time.

This gallery was a lifelong dream of mine, something I’d saved up for over the years, but it wasn’t just a gallery. I wanted to help the community with it and to breathe life back into a part of the world that had been abandoned by the landscaping beauty we thrust upon other neighborhoods, like the one we were driving away from. I wanted to draw people into my shop for classes and get-togethers to paint and find therapy for their soul. I wanted to reopen that part of myself again and allow people whose beauty didn’t have a chance to add to the world to finally be heard.

Be seen.

Be appreciated.

“Expressing the soul is important when nurturing the body,” I said. “My parents didn’t believe any of that, though. They thought a practical career would be better for me if I wasn’t going to marry right out of high school.”

“Oh, honey. I could not have handled that,” the agent said as we exited the highway. “Career-oriented all the way.”

“See? So, you get it. My parents wanted me to go to med school. Well, my father did. He was a pediatrician, an excellent one. My mother, however, kept trying to set me up with all the boys in her infamous circle.”

“Yikes. No thanks,” the agent said. “If my mother chose the men I dated, I’d be married to some overly sensitive soul who poured out his emotions into music or something like that.”

“See, that sounds like a wonderful man to me,” I said, smiling.

“Your parents helping you with this endeavor?” she asked.

“Nope. I haven’t talked to them since I dropped out of the pre-med program I was in. I took some art classes at the college behind their backs, and when they found out, they forbade me to take them. Said they wouldn’t pay for my education if I didn’t stop. So, I told them they wouldn’t have to pay for an education period and dropped out.”

“I like your style,” the agent said. “That’s shit they haven’t talked to you, though.”

“It is what it is. I’m chasing a dream that makes me happy.”

“Speaking of dreams, we’re here,” she exclaimed.

I took a look at all the shops lined up in a row. All the same cookie-cutter designs, with brightly-painted doors and intricate designs fused into the building. They looked exactly like the rest of the building we’d come from, except these were a tad bit smaller.

Apparently, this real estate agent had no idea what I was looking for.

“These little shops would be perfect for your gallery. They aren’t very wide buildings, but they extend back. You could line the walls going back with your artwork and then maybe have a little concession table—”

“No. None of these will work,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside and take a peek?”

“No. They won’t work,” I said.

I heard the agent huff in frustration as she whipped the car around in the middle of the small street. Parents yelled at her as they clung to their kids, and I waved my hand and tried to apologize. This was going nowhere quickly, and all I wanted to do was go home and try again.

With a different agent this time.

We crept along the narrow street and slammed on our brakes as a man ran across the road. He was chasing after a ball his son had thrown out into the road, and I couldn’t help fixating on his arm. It was sleeved with a bunch of colorful tattoos, and I noticed the agent gawking at his arm just like I was.

“I love me a nice tattoo,” she said.

“I do, too. I love the idea of tattoos as art. I’ve seen online where some people take infamous paintings and have brilliant tattoo artists do renditions of it on their skin. Someone online posted a picture of Van Gogh’s Starry Night that has been tattooed on their back. The entire thing! Can you believe it?”

“I’m a simple gal,” the agent said. “Give me a nice black-outlined skull-and-crossbones. Maybe a tribal tattoo right in the dip of the bicep. Oh baby, come to mama.”

I giggled at her as we continued down the road. I envied people who could settle on a tattoo to get. Over the years, I’d had over twenty different colors of hair, all ranging between different styles and lengths. I couldn’t keep a specific hair color for more than a couple of months. How in the world would I settle on one tattoo I’d keep the same for the rest of my life?

So, I stuck to admiring the tattoos of others.

We stopped at a few more places the agent tried to sell me on, and I’d finally given up. I told her to take me back, and we’d try this again some other time. She was secretly irate, angry that I’d kept her out all afternoon without so much as going into a building so she could try to secure a sale. But I wasn’t joking about this purchase. I’d dreamed about this for too long to settle because someone was upset with me for being too much of an inconvenience.

I was used to being an inconvenience, so the joke was on them.

But, as we drove through a silent part of town that barely skirted the ocean, I spotted something that drew my eye. It was an old run-down shop. It had massive windows in the front, peering into an expansive area that was covered with dust and cobwebs. I reached over and squeezed my agent’s arm, telling her to pull over so I could take a look at it.

The look she gave me was nothing short of horror, but all I did was take the wheel myself and pull the car over.

The place didn’t even look like it was for sale but more like it was abandoned. It had an awning jutting out from the side like a gas station might have, except it didn’t have any gas pumps. There were two garage doors that closed off one side of the building, a front door that swung open and dumped into what looked to be a nineteen-hundred-square-foot open building, and there was even a small door off to the side that housed a toilet and a sink.

It didn’t have any running water, but I fell in love with it the moment I made it to the center of the room.

“All right, thanks,” my agent murmured.

“I want it,” I said.

“Well, I’m glad you asked all the pertinent questions,” she said sarcastically. “The place is for sale and for a very cheap price, mostly because the owner wants it off his plate. The taxes are eating him alive. But I need to warn you, most businesses in this area, minus that diner across the way, have gone out of business within the first year.”

“I love the retro diner across the road,” I said, smiling.

“The owner’s only asking for nineteen thousand, but it’ll take triple that to get it up and running, especially with the city building codes being updated so recently,” she said.

“Well, my budget was seventy thousand if I was buying, so I’m still in budget,” I said.

“The area’s run-down. You’re not going to get a lot of foot traffic here.”

“And that’s where we disagree,” I said.

“No. Really. No one comes to this end of town to do anything recreational. They all just drive by.”

“But people do drive by, and that’s the point. I could get them to stop,” I said, grinning. “This is the beauty within the darkness.”

“You are an odd one, aren’t you?”

I was no longer paying attention to my agent. I was slowly walking around and envisioning what the place would look like once I was done. I’d set up the checkout station in the back. I didn’t want people coming in and thinking they had to automatically purchase something. I wanted them to come in and enjoy the beauty of the place and then buy something if they felt compelled to.

The space was large enough to host parties. Painting parties for people who simply needed to release their inner artist. Kids could rent the space for birthdays and adults rehabilitating themselves and seeking something different could come in and paint. I could sell canvases and brushes and colors for cheap. I could make art accessible to the masses again.

I could open my heart to rehabilitating people who needed it, people who craved an outlet other than the demons they were struggling with.

I saw the onyx floor and the cream-colored walls. I saw the paintings hanging with their names alongside them. I saw the little shop in the corner, easily blocked off when a gallery was going on. I saw the folding tables and chairs I could stash away that I’d use for the classes and parties.

I saw everything I’d ever worked for come alive underneath all the dust and cobwebs that floated around my head. I saw a way to pay back those I owed, those whose souls were poured out into their art.

I had finally found a way to keep their spirits alive, a place for them to rest and bring beauty to a world they tried so hard to love.

“I’ll take it,” I said, whispering.

“Then I’ll have the paperwork drawn up and brought to us,” my agent said.

I could hear the relief in her voice as she dialed a number on her phone, but I felt the relief in my bones as I closed my eyes and allowed the salted ocean water wind to blow through the broken windows.

I found it, you guys. I finally found it.