The first painting came true on a Tuesday. The red bicycle struck the fish stall at 11:17, two minutes after I had walked down to the corner to see whether it would.
Nobody was hurt. The rider stood up with a mackerel in his hood. The fishmonger made him pay for the mackerel, then gave him a bag to carry it home. I had painted the bag, too: white paper, blue ink, a handle made from twisted string.
I went back to my studio and turned the canvas to the wall. It was a small street scene I had made for the gallery window. I had painted the bicycle bent against the stall without knowing why. I thought it made the corner look lively. Now I wanted the corner to be quiet for a while.
Len, who owned the gallery, found me staring at the back of the frame.
“That’s the best thing you’ve painted all month,” he said.
“It knocked over fish.”
“Art should do something.”
He put it in the window before I could argue. By Friday three people had come in to ask for their own tomorrow. A woman wanted to know whether the florist would deliver on time. A man wanted a picture of his boat after the weekend race. I said I did not control what I saw. Len said that was exactly what made it interesting.
The florist painting showed a silver ladder in the middle of the shop. The woman took it as a sign of a successful delivery. The delivery was late; the ladder appeared because the florist had to fix a ceiling light. The boat painting showed an empty mooring. The owner assumed his boat would sink and refused to race. His brother borrowed it and sailed it to another dock. Both buyers told their friends I was astonishing. Neither asked for a refund.
I took more commissions. I could choose the place and the date. I could not choose what happened there. My studio rent was due, and paintings of empty moorings cost the same in paint as paintings of boats. Len made a new card for the window: A VIEW OF TOMORROW. The word a was small enough to require good eyesight.
Nila saw it when she came to collect the shoes I had left with her for repair. Her workshop stood halfway down the block, between the bakery and an office that had been vacant for years. She could repair a heel while telling you precisely why the city buses ran late, and she was usually right about both.
“You’re selling weather reports for people,” she said.
“I don’t promise anything.”
“The card does.”
I told her about the florist’s ladder and the boat. She looked at the canvases in the window, then at the people stopping to study them.
“They don’t know those stories,” she said. “They see pictures in a shop that charges money.”
I said I would ask Len to change the card. I did ask. He changed A VIEW OF TOMORROW to TOMORROW, AS SEEN BY ETTA. My name grew larger. The small a disappeared entirely.
The commission that mattered came from Mr. Pell. He owned the vacant office beside Nila’s shop and wanted to buy the whole row. He asked for a painting of the block four weeks from now. He did not say that he had already spoken to Nila’s landlord. I learned that later.
I painted the block from across the street. The bakery windows glowed. Mr. Pell’s office still had its old brown paper over the glass. Nila’s workshop was dark, with a TO LET notice on the door. In the window sat a pair of yellow boots, one upright, one fallen on its side. I had never seen the boots before. I painted them because they belonged in the scene as clearly as the crack in the pavement.
Len sold the canvas that afternoon. Mr. Pell paid twice my usual price. When I heard why, I went to Nila’s shop and found her pulling a broken zipper through a clamp.
“He showed my landlord your picture,” she said. “Now the landlord thinks I’ll leave. Pell has offered more for the unit.”
“That’s not what the picture means.”
“What does it mean?”
“It might happen.”
“Well, people are helping.” She put down the zipper. “Two customers asked when I’m closing. One came for shoes she’d left here, though I hadn’t finished them. She said she didn’t want to lose them in the move.”
I wanted to tell her it was just a painting. I had seen the fish on the rider’s hood. I knew why she would not want to hear that.
“I didn’t know he was trying to buy the row,” I said.
“You knew you were selling it to him.”
She was right. I had asked no questions because the price was good. I offered to return my fee. Nila said she did not need me to pay her for my conscience. She needed people to leave shoes for repair, and she needed her landlord to hear that she intended to stay.
I went back to the studio and painted the same view again. I expected the dark shop. This time Nila’s door was open. Three people waited outside, holding shoes. In the window the yellow boots were gone. A person in a paint-stained coat wore them while bending over a book of repair tickets. The coat was mine.
I could not make both paintings into one future. I had not been able to choose either image. I carried the second canvas to Len.
“Hang this next to the first,” I said. “Tell people what the work does.”
He studied it. “Pell bought the first one. He gets the window display for a week.”
“He bought a painting, not the next month.”
“He bought what you let him think he bought.”
I hated how often people became accurate when I wanted them to be kind. Len said I could buy back the display right for what Pell had paid. He knew I could not afford it. I went home, took the rent money out of its envelope, and returned to the gallery. It paid most of the price. I gave Len the little bicycle painting for the rest. He put it under his desk and did not look pleased.
Pell kept his canvas. He could hang it wherever he liked. I put the second one in Nila’s window beside a photograph of the first. Under both, I wrote: These are two things that might happen. Neither is a promise. Nila is open today.
People came to look. Most did not have shoes. They pointed at the yellow boots and at the notice in Pell’s picture, trying to work out which scene I believed. Nila told them the price of a new sole if they asked, and told them to stop blocking the door if they didn’t. On Saturday a woman brought three pairs of children’s shoes. On Monday the man with the boat brought a torn sea bag. Nila took it because she liked a challenge and because his cash was as good as anyone’s.
The landlord did not become generous. He agreed to three more months at the old rent while he considered Pell’s offer. Nila showed me the letter. She had crossed out while he considered and written three months to find leverage in the margin.
I spent those months at the repair counter on Wednesday afternoons, writing names on paper tickets. I still painted. Len still sold some of my work, but the card in his window now said POSSIBLE SCENES in letters large enough for Nila to read from across the street. Some customers found that disappointing. One woman said she wanted her money back before she had even paid it.
The yellow boots turned up near the end of the second month. A customer had left them in Nila’s shop so long ago that both of them had forgotten who owned them. The soles were good, the leather stiff. Nila put them in front of me and asked whether I wanted to try them on.
“Do they fit?” I asked.
“That’s what trying them on is for.”
They did. I wore them home in the rain, carrying my old shoes under one arm. At the corner, a cyclist slowed to avoid a fish crate and gave me an accusing look, as if I had arranged the traffic. I hadn’t painted him. I stepped out of his way and kept walking.
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