Warren Adler 2007 Short Story Contest Finalists

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I first saw him on 42nd Street here in New York City.  He was a disfigured man sitting on the sidewalk selling newspapers only one block from the Empire State Building.  It was ironic for him to be there, so close the building that one time was the tallest building in the world and the iconic symbol of power, strength, and wealth of our country, the United States.  But he possessed none of these qualities.  He legs were curved so badly his knees came together and he used two tubular crutches to walk, like paralytics use that have been stricken by polio.  He had little strength to lift himself from his wooden stool upon which he sat all day.  He definitely was not blessed with wealth, and had no power to rule other people’s lives.  It was more out of pity people bought his newspapers.

I sketched fast from my vantage point across the street, filling page after page in my personal journal.  I would stretch my canvas and get the preliminary outline down with the background that evening.  I had planned to take my camera back the next day to take some pictures to recreate the color and lighting for my painting.

The next day I returned, but the dishevel man was not there.  I took some pictures and assumed that my center of interest must have been ill.  I returned day after day but he never returned.  I asked around.  No one seemed to know and fewer even cared.  I finally went to the New York Times and asked who he was.  They did not know either.  They dropped a hundred papers off at the place everyday and received cash in and envelope once a week to pay the bill.  They said they stopped delivering papers because they got a call to discontinue.

I went back to my studio and finished the painting from my sketches and my memory.  It was slow going but it was finished.  I tried to sell it but no one was interested in an old man selling newspapers.  I was young back then and proud.  I never went to art school or studied art.  I didn’t need it.  I knew I could paint, and I would prove it to the world someday by painting the most beautiful painting.  But pride and talent doesn’t pay the rent.  I moved out of my studio and stacked everything in my apartment.  One day I was desperate.  I took the painting of the disfigured man carried it down to the bus stop.  There was a man that looked like he had money.  He gave me a hundred dollars for it.  He bought it out of pity, like the people who bought the newspapers from the man on 42nd street in the painting.

That was eight years ago in the year 2000, the turn of the century, the year of the Y2K and fears of the end of civilization as we know it, and the year I sold my painting for one hundred dollars.  Two years later I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I saw my painting.  I read the write-up on it, that a business man had bought it off the street from a stranger and sold to an art dealer the next day for a thousand dollars.  The art dealer had put it up for auction a year later and received and bid from a business tycoon for eight million dollars.  The tycoon donated it to the museum, and the museum had titled it the Painting by the Unknown Painter.

That was the day I was arrested.  I tried to explain that it was my painting.  I started getting loud and I was escorted out of the building when I tried to re-enter and yelled at the patrons that I had painted the painting, I was arrested for disorderly public behavior.  I sat in jail one night and the judge, an art lover, threw it out of court.  His statement was, “I wish I had painted that picture myself.  And being enamored by a picture doesn’t constitute a crime.  I hereby throw this case out of court.  Oh, Miss, restrain yourself if and when you ever return to the museum.”

I have been back many times.  The guards all know me.  I used to tell them quietly, “You know I painted that picture.  The initials at the bottom are CCS.  Those are my initials.  My name is Cindy Charlotte Snyder.  That painting cost less than twenty dollars in materials, and set in my apartment for over a year.”  They would just smile and say, “No one knows who painted this painting.  It is a masterpiece.  Go home Cindy.”

Then one day I got a brilliant idea.  I would paint the most beautiful painting that I could paint.  It would rival any of Monet’s or Van Gogh’s paintings.  It would be a painting of nature taken from my mind, and my memory.  I would paint it and take it to the curator of the museum.  She was smart.  She would see my talent and know instantly I was the artist of the Painting by the Unknown Painter.

It worked perfectly, except she me asked me to paint on the back, “Reproduction by Cindy Snyder.”  I thought at the time, “I wonder whose painting she thinks I reproduced?  There is not another painting like this one.  It is a one of a kind.”  However, she made me an offer.  She offered me ten thousand dollars for my most beautiful painting, simply titled Nature, to hang in her office, and in addition she asked me to reproduce my own Painting by the Unknown Painter, because security and insurance was getting too costly, and they wanted to put the original in the vault.  I did it.  I had no choice; I was broke!  She made me put on the back of mine, “Reproduction by Cindy Snyder.”  She commented once that she was glad she I had me put that disclaimer on the back because even she couldn’t tell the difference between my reproduction and the original.

A few months ago she asked me to work for the museum painting the Painting by the Unknown Painter to sell in their gift store.  They sell them for $585.00 of which I get $285.00.  All the paintings I do for the museum have the words on the back, “Reproduction by Cindy Snyder.”

My most beautiful painting still hangs in the curator’s office.  I over heard her once say, “The Painting by the Unknown Painter may be the master piece, but I wouldn’t take eight million dollars for this painting.”

I stop to see the guards every time I go back to the museum.  I tell them that’s my painting and they all agree with me, and then we all have a good laugh.  Because they know it is only a reproduction hanging there.  Sadly, it will be coming down shortly.  The original was put on auction and a German financier just bought it for 80 million dollars.  He will secure delivery in two weeks.  Then this picture will go into the gift shop and be sold for $585.00. 

He was a disfigured man selling newspapers on 42nd Street in New York City at the turn of the century.