Black and white, they're so blank but when you look at them you see your life. See what piece of crap it is and see how blissful it is. The two colors together balance the human mind and heart.

“It's so simple, a white canvas has become art?” a woman in her late forties stood in front my art piece, her scrutinizing voice bounces off the walls of the warehouse, “Pathetic really.” Her sigh of disappointment was louder in my ears than her English accented voice.

“Excuse me ma'am,” I tapped lightly on her shoulder. She scuffled away from me. Are my fingers poison? “Your eye must not be that great. This is not simply a white canvas.”

“It looks like a white canvas, and my eye is not bad!” I seemed to have hit her weakness?

“Look closely please,” I nudged her closer to the canvas,” do you see the dots?”

“Black dots? They're so small. Why would someone do that?”

“The painter wanted to show life in this painting.”

“Shouldn't that be shown with colors? This painter is so bland.”

I giggled at her remark. “Not quite ma'am. Life is black and white, we as humans, add color.”

“I don't get it.” She stared into my eyes. A child getting an ice cream from her wise grandmother.

“Everything in the world is a 'yes' or a 'no'. But we cannot accept that things are so simple from stubbornness. So we explain, lie, avoid, add color to make things more complicated then they are.” People around us eavesdropped on the explanation. A sigh escaped their lips. “Do you get it?”

She timidly nodded and snapped back into the grouchy 47 year-old and moved onto the other pictures.

I lingered at the photo, it brought pictures in my mind. All from the back of my mind of fantasies, displayed in the dotted canvas. How they sparkle the mind and touch the skin.

The smell of cheap buffet food swirled in the room, going through one's nose and into another's. I picked at the food. Popping black olives into my mouth resisting to put them on my fingers. Sipped some punch but stopped once I tasted pineapple with a slight taste of banana. What kind of punch has banana?

“Excuse me,” I turned around to see a man that was around his early 20's or so, “can you help me with understanding a painting? You know, like you did with that one lady.”

“I can try, I guess,” Don't be awkward, don't be awkward!!! Sounded in my head. We turned a corner to a different section of the display. It was for the darker paintings. “Which one is it?”

He pointed to the painting set in the middle, it was our highlighted dark painting, “That one.”

The painting was simple in a way, but also something that would be hard to copy. A circle was painted in the middle, the exterior was a slightly-dark purple black. The interior was random lines of black, purple, dark-purple, dark-blue, and yellow.

I pondered for a moment, but the thought came quickly to the meaning of the painting, “The painter sees the world as something very dark, but not completely from the almost black but slightly purple exterior,” I pointed the the exterior of the painting, “He tries to keep some sort of...not really happiness, but, saneness maybe? Which is why the colors on the inside are different colors that are dark but still have some color.”

“What about the yellow?” he said, “it's kinda unexpected.”

“The yellow is because...he knows that the world isn't dark and the yellow shows the happiness he has left. The one thing to notice about it is that the yellow is the most shown color in the circle,” teaching is something I can't get into, and this is hard enough. Whenever I teach someone something I get the feeling I have an arrogant look on my face, “Which means that he has the courage to be happy even when everything else is crap.”

“I see,” his 'I see' didn't sound like he was satisfied. He wanted to say something else and I could tell.

“Well, I have to get back to the other part of the gallery, warehouse... whatever you would call this place.” Damn, I did it. I turned my back to him and stomped off, depressed.

“Good night everyone! Thank you for coming!” I sent my thanks to the leaving participants of the gallery showing as they left to go into their dream-ish homes and sleep on their beds that suck them into their softness, “Have a safe trip home!”

I assisted with the janitors in cleaning out the buffet table. We all put the half-eaten things in the large black garbage bags and the fresh things in our stomachs. “Jem,” a janitor stuffing mini-sandwiches in a bag called me, “you can go. You've worked hard enough today so go home.”

“Okay,” I gave my trash bag to the janitor next to me and wiped my forehead, “I wanna take another look around the place.”

The quiet was disturbing, I could only look at the floor. Paintings of people seemed to watch me and move slowly. “I swear I didn't see him come out,” I mumbled to myself, “Is he still here...?”

The pictures were darker and my heart beat faster. Fear is an annoying emotion.

“Ah, he is here,” he sat in front of the painting I spoke about to him before. It must have been enchanting to him, even though the painting isn't totally fascinating. It's unique in a way but not enough to stare at it. In my opinion no painting is interesting enough to stare at it for at least 3 hours.

“Is it that special?” I smirked as I walked over to the bench he was sitting on.

He didn't appear too surprised to see me come looking for him, “Special?” he laughed, “I wouldn't say special.”

“Then what is it that makes it so special as to look at it for so long?”

He clasped his hands together and twirled his thumbs, “I dunno. It just feels different. Not a normal painting. You ever experience that?”

“Yeah with one painting in this gallery.”

“Which one? The one you were explaining to that lady?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” He looked at my face.

“It's honest and blunt.”

“Are you honest and blunt?”

“Nope. I'm too considerate to be honest and blunt.”

“That's kinda sad.” he smirked at his remark.

I shrugged and laughed. I cleared my throat to sound like an official, “Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Why?” he whined a bit.

“The gallery is closing so we all need to leave.” My tongue mocked him.

“Hmph,” he puckered his bottom lip into a pout, “Do I have too?”

“Puppy eyes, pouty lips, and fluttering eyelashes don't work on me. I'm immune.”

He whimpered but deliberately left. As he walked into the night streets and turned right at the corner, I sighed. I'm not sure if the sigh was a content sigh or a disappointed sigh. I was happy I could talk to a guy with out making a fool of myself. When I do though, I do it in a cute way. Tee hee. But I was disappointed that I didn't get his number or flirt well enough. I walked in the opposite direction of him and found my car and went home.

“Why do I have to be here so early!!!” my voice echoed in the empty gallery. I grabbed a duster from the supply closet and begun to dust the paintings.

In the middle of the task I heard a knocking on the clear glass doors. My head poked out from the plain white wall. And there he was. The man from the night before, that I still don't know the name of. I took hold of the door handle and pulled back. The glass shined on the white floor.