I knew this guy, right, an artist. I knew of him actually. We weren’t friends.
Bolton Cole. He lived over on Honey Street in a tiny cottage. Really tiny—not even six hundred square feet. Was he a good artist? A lot of people liked his work, and since he wouldn’t do commissions, his prices just climbed and climbed in the local market until someone outside the local market got wind of it and decided he needed to expand his horizons.
Gallery owner from Philadelphia came down to Frinton to talk to Cole. It was practically unheard of at the time—maybe it’s still unheard of. I don’t know that much about art dealers or galleries or what the art market is like. The gallery owner asked if he wanted to do a small show. In Philly, of course. Cole said No. The woman told Cole that people were very interested in his work, that there were people prepared to buy anything she hung in her gallery, that she could probably sell as many pieces as he wanted to show.
He said, Then don’t hang it—tell them to come down here and put the money in my hand, that’s the only way I do business. That woman didn’t like his answer, and she just turned around and left, didn’t even stay a whole day. She was too old for him to want to screw, so he just said, Hasta la vista, and went back to whatever he was doing when she showed up.
Cole didn’t give a shit. He made as much money as he needed. The cottage was left to him when his landlord died, some old lady retired from New York or New Hampshire or someplace, maybe Connecticut. She took a shine to him, and he did things for her—little jobs around her house, trips to the grocery store, the pharmacy. After she died, her friends in the neighborhood brought Cole food, sometimes cleaned up around his place, planted flowers. They all had a soft spot for him.
He sold enough stuff locally to keep the lights on, to buy paints and stretchers and canvas, enough to keep his bar tab paid. No wife, no kids. Nobody knew if he had any family at all. He dated a few girls around town, all young—college kids who moved on after a year or so. It was a bit of a scandal then, because he was closer to fifty than forty, and these girls were in their early 20s. But mostly, nobody paid attention. He was an artist, he lived in the oldest part of an old town. And he was a he. And they were shes. There were dozens of guys just like him in Frinton, men who traded in their wives for newer models every ten or fifteen years. It wasn’t anything to see an old guy with a woman young enough to be his daughter. Sometimes the woman was younger than his children.
The way I met Bolton Cole was, every day he came into this coffee shop my sister and brother-in-law own. Scruffy. The guy looked like a hobo, but with good teeth. And crabby? Those poor kids at the counter. They had a whole thing they had to ask everyone–size, roast, yada yada—and he’d cut them off before they ever got started. I want a cup of coffee, just a cup of black coffee. Don’t ask me what else I want because I don’t want anything else, just a cup of black coffee, he’d say.
So one day, I went over to the booth where he usually sat, and said, Don’t give those kids a hard time, they’re just doing their job. And he said, What’re you, the union steward? I’m trying to make their job easier–what’s easier than just wanting a goddamn cup of black coffee?
I just told him to forget it, but asked him to not be so mean.
You think I’m being mean? I bet the assholes that own this place make a fortune, but I wonder what the people behind the counter get paid slaving away all day pouring coffee and steaming milk, putting up with jerks like me? I’ve got a feeling their paycheck at the end of the week is meaner than I’ll ever be.
I couldn’t argue with that. I knew my sister wouldn’t even consider paying more than the least amount she could get away with, and my brother-in-law was notorious for saying that the minimum wage was unconstitutional and should be abolished. I don’t agree with either one of them, and I’d like to hope I wouldn’t feel the same way if I did own a business. But who knows?
After that he’d nod at me if I happened to be at the coffee shop when he came in. No hard feelings, it seemed like. Then one day he came in carrying a frame, asked the girl at the counter that morning to ask if he could hang it up. She said she’d have to ask her boss—my sister—and he said fine, took it with him to his booth. I walked over and said Hi, asked him what was in the frame.
He told me it was a painting he did of the workers behind the counter. He wanted to hang it there, and if it sold for the price on it—something like $5,000—he wanted the money to be split between the baristas. I didn’t know who he was, or that he basically set his own prices and never worried if he’d sell his work or not.
When my sister came out from the storeroom, she had a fit. A good fit. She was beside herself, falling all over the place about the painting, and the fact he wanted to donate it. When Cole explained what he wanted her to do with his donation, she balked. Why couldn’t she just leave it hanging up? He said that’d be fine, if she wanted to pay him five grand for it. She didn’t. He said, Okay, and left with the painting. I never saw him in the coffee shop again. About a year later I heard he was dead.