Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 28-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Martin, a man without empathy, was unlikely to offer Nadine what she needed.
Martin had disappeared. In his mind he was on Denman Island, hauling blood-red theatre chairs out of a barn, his truck backed up as close as he could without knocking over a weathered fence post holding up a futility of barbed wire bent and twisting on the ground. Martin was dragging a chair across the dirt, scarring the rutted earth with immeasurable pounds of pressure per square inch as he experimented with the chair’s weight, tipping it onto its edge to reduce friction and resistance, absorbing the shock waves of the metal base as he encountered rocks and roots before getting it to the back of the truck where he’d set up skids and a rope to slide the chairs up and in where they actually looked pretty good. Maybe he should forget about taking them down island and across the strait to Vancouver to give them to the small woman in an empty white room whose importance to him ebbed and flowed. Rising with the praise and attention she offered, but quickly receding each time she crossed her arms to emit her silent condemnation of him.
