a thirty ninth story...'the curse of avaha'

Big Jim grinned.  Annie was laughing.  Big Jim had made her laugh, and he felt good.  He hadn’t always succeeded in making pretty girls laugh in the past, but this time he was doing just great!  Big Jim cupped his tiny beer glass in his big hands and took a big swig.  Annie was looking at him, Big Jim thought, in a lecherous way – he felt a big rush of excitement.  Then Annie leaned forward across the table, knocking her wine glass over in the process, and grabbed Big Jim by the neckerchief and pulled his big face towards her.  Big Jim closed his eyes, and they kissed.

~

They were an odd couple, Big Jim and Annie, but at least in some ways the exemplar of the good ole’ cliché, opposites attract!  Big Jim was of Native Indian descent: he was over six feet six inches tall, brown skinned, dark haired, and low browed; he had huge fists, legs like tree trunks, hulking shoulders and a broad chest.  He dressed in denim – head to toe.  Annie was white and middle class: she was a little under five feet two inches tall, fair skinned, red haired, and green eyed; she had tiny, feminine hands, short but shapely legs, round shoulders and a generous bust.  She dressed in low cut blouses, pencil skirts and when she started seeing Big Jim, she started to wear high heels more often – fair enough!

In spite of his gargantuan proportions, Big Jim, was kind and gentle.  Fortunately for Big Jim he was also born with an even temper and had only been in one bar room brawl in his life (his opponent ended up with his head through the plasterboard ceiling). Annie was feisty, and sharp but she thought she saw in Big Jim qualities that for all her natural intelligence she didn’t possess, namely calm.

Sometimes, Big Jim was teased about the colour of his skin and his race.  People would say things to him like: ‘You wanna smoke Pipe of Peace?’, and were often disappointed when Big Jim said that he did.  Big Jim got a toke on a load of free joints this way! 

Or, people would raise their right hand and greet him saying, ‘How!’, and were bemused when Big Jim smiled benignly and replied with ‘And how do you do?’. 

Big Jim was steady, and someone like Annie needed stabilising.

~

Before she met Big Jim, Annie had been a loose cannon.  She was the daughter of an entrepreneur – her father made a lot of money selling farm machinery – but Annie was sure from a young age there was no chance in hell she was going to spend her life visiting agricultural shows on behalf of her father.  Her father, being a hard headed and ultimately intransigent business man couldn’t understand her attitude and sent her off to boarding school to learn respect.  Annie, however, ran away.

‘nuff said.

So Annie fled to Indianapolis where she fell in with a group of struggling artists – at the time the only two galleries of any note in Indianapolis were the Indiana State Police Museum and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum – they had no chance!

However, over the next decade Annie’s artist friends started to do rather better for themselves what with patronage from various new openings including Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis Museum of Art , Indianapolis Artsgarden, and Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.  Indeed, one of Annie’s boyfriends for a while was sculptor Robert Indiana, and Annie was in fact the inspiration for his signature piece: LOVE; Annie also dated a guy who worked at Indianapolis Zoo looking after dolphins.

~

Big Jim had been drifting from one menial job to another when he settled in Indianapolis and chanced upon Annie.  He had no idea who Robert Indiana was, nor did he care a hang for zoos or dolphins.  Up until settling in Indianapolis he had spent his whole stretch on planet earth just trying to get by, and stay out of trouble.

However, Annie bought with her the prospect of trouble. Even if Big Jim didn’t realise at first, or Annie, herself, for that matter.  Moreover, the cause of the trouble wasn’t Annie, or Big Jim, it was Robert Indiana, the famous sculptor. 

In 1964, Indiana came up with the idea of stacking the letters LO and VE on top of one another.  He painted the letters red and put them against a green and blue backdrop.  Indiana then did two things:  he stuck the image on an eight cent postage stamp, and made a series of sculptures using the same motif.  The result – international fame!  And a permanent reminder of his summer together with Annie, and what they shared. 

What they shared was of course, the sum total of LO plus VE – Love!  And this is what Annie hoped she could feel for Big Jim, she already knew she felt lust.

~

They had been dating together for two months when Annie decided to take Big Jim to the then still relatively new Indianapolis Artsgarden.  As fate would decree, there in the forecourt on loan from Israel, was Robert Indiana’s Hebrew version of his famous LOVE sculpture.  The Hebrew for love is AVAHA and consequently the sculpture meant absolutely zilch to Big Jim, but Annie recognised it straight away.  She stood motionless in front of the thing for fifteen minutes, while Big Jim loomed in the background, rubbing his big chin, trying to see what Annie was seeing through the aqueduct of seven years.

It was seven years since the summer Annie had spent with Robert Indiana.

There at the Indianapolis Artsgarden, with Big Jim, the year was 1980.

~

After they had trawled around the whole of Indianapolis Artsgarden hand in hand, Annie suggested they go

have a coffee.  ‘Me want to smoke Pipe of Peace’, Big Jim joked.  

Conveniently, the curators of the art space had put the coffee shop in the gift shop, and the museum exit through the back (whatever Banksy will tell you, this idea was not even remotely original thirty years ago).  In case you haven’t guessed already, the idea being you could sit, have an Americano, and look at affordable reproductions of the works of art you had just experienced in the gallery hanging on the gift shop wall.

Two for the price of two!

And this is exactly what was going through Big Jim’s mind at that very moment in time.  He left Annie to finish her coffee and lumbered over to peer at the art prints displayed near the checkout.  Remember, Big Jim was kind and gentle, even tempered and steady, but he wasn’t very bright, or more to the point, very fortunate (although the two are often, rightly, associated).

What did Big Jim do?  He returned not with an art print, but with a little postcard of Robert Indiana’s LO plus VE in red, on green and blue.  ‘It’s for you!’, he said with a big gesture (the only sort of gesture Big Jim was capable of), and put the little postcard in Annie’s feminine hands.

~

The aqueduct of seven years collapsed.

‘How?’, said Annie, a pained look shooting across her face.

‘How?!’, replied Big Jim, suddenly bemused, and rubbing his big chin again, 'But..' ‘How could you do this to me??!’, Annie whined.

The curse of AVAHA had struck!

‘But..I.. love you’, said Big Jim meekly, as he watched anger dawning on Annie’s features.

Annie scowled darkly.  It was the first time Big Jim had seen her scowl, and he felt his insides go gloopy. 

‘Jim’, she hissed, ‘it means nothing..it’s just four random letters of the alphabet assembled on top of each other!’

..the trouble had begun.