The day after she met with Red, one of Black’s shop assistants called Ela and asked her to come out to meet to Black.  This summoning felt like a power move and Ela didn’t care for it.  Ela’s agreement with Blue covered her mortgage but her cosmetics smuggling paid for everything else.  Ela resigned herself to meeting with him, it was better than working a regular job.

 “So why did you want to see me?  You don't need to be resupplied already.”  Ela asked when she was in his office that afternoon.

“No.”  Black confirmed.  “I’m alright on that front for now.  There’s something else I want you to do for me.  Do you know bell curves?”

“Sure, line graphs that have the shape of bells.  Shows a big swell of… whatever in the middle, for example income, and tapering out at either end.”

“Right, but less well known is the reverse bell curve, where you have two peaks and a trough in the middle.  It’s my personal observation that the prices on art seem to follow a reverse bell curve.  You have a lot of prints that are available cheap and then original pieces of art which tend to be fabulously expensive.  In the middle there’s just a bit of crap, small pieces by mediocre artists.”

Ela didn’t really agree with Black, as far as she could tell there was art available at almost every imaginable price.  She supposed he meant that the art he wanted was at prices he didn’t wish to pay.  However she decided to humor him to see where he was going with this.  “I see, you may have a point there.”

“I do, don’t I?”  Black agreed with her agreeing with him.  “So I thought to myself, what’s the best way to get a decent piece of art without paying through the nose for it?  And it eventually came to me—I need to buy directly from a young undiscovered artist.”

There was silence for a moment before Ela responded “Oh, you mean me?”

“Yes, well, I don’t personally know any other young undiscovered artist, do you?”

“No I don’t.”  Ela lied.  Many of her old classmates were artists.

    “And you do more than signs, don’t you?”

“Yes I do.  You should have told me that you wanted to buy a painting before, I could have brought some out with me today.”

“Do you have any pieces that are as big as a door?” Black asked.

“Er, no I don’t.” Ela conceded.

“Then your existing works wouldn’t do.  That’s what I want.”

Ela blinked “But what do you want the painting to be?”

Black looked at her as though she’d asked him a very strange question.  “That’s not important.  Paint what you like as long as it’s big.”

Ela squinted at Black; he seemed to be an unapologetic philistine when it came to art.  He wanted a big original painting to hang on his wall, but he didn’t care what it was as long as he didn’t have to pay too much for it.  “Do you know what happens when you tell a creative person that they can do whatever they want?”

“What?”

“Nothing happens.  We are overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities.  You need to give me some boundaries to work in.”

Black gave a little sigh, as though Ela was putting a terrible burden on him with this request.  “What are my options then?”

“Let’s see… I could do a portrait.  You’re the obvious choice for the subject though I could do someone else if you like.”

Black thought this over for a minute.  “Part of me likes the idea, but other people might say that having a giant painting of myself would make me an egomaniac.”  Correctly Ela thought silently.  “And I don’t really want a painting of someone else on my wall.”

“I could do a still life.  Could be interesting since you rarely see a great big still life painting.”

Black's brows furrowed. “What’s a still life?”

“A painting of a bowl of fruit or a glass of wine, that sort of thing.”

“No, no, that doesn’t sound interesting at all.  That sounds rather boring.”

“How about a landscape painting then?”

“Well that might be nice, though it’s a bit cliché.”

“Could be a city landscape.  Could be the street your shop is on.”

“No, then we're back to making me look like an egomaniac.”

Ela was starting to get annoyed.  For someone who didn’t care what their painting was, he was dismissing broad swathes of possibilities.  “Do you have an idea of what you would like then?”

“It should have action.”  Black said without hesitation.  “There should be something happening in the painting.  Not just a static picture of some fruit or a mountain.”

“Action.  I can do that.”  Ela stood; she didn’t really want to plan any further than that at the moment.  “I’ll go then and start sketching ideas.  Before I do though, we must agree on my fee for the painting.  I think the standard rate for me doing a job would be fair.”

Black took a moment to process this.  “You mean the same as you would get for bringing back cosmetics?  You’ve never sold a painting before, you can’t ask that much.”

“Alright then, go back to the galleries and see if you can find a painting as big as a door for less.”

Black squinted.  “Fine.  It better be good.  I don’t want people to think I bought art from a shopping mall.”