THE ART OF MISCHIEF

Sometimes, I wonder why I ever got into the restaurant business. Most of them fail, the work is brutal, and the hours—oh my God. Last night, we closed at twelve o’clock. Now at five in the morning, with the sky still black, I was back again, this time to meet a supplier on a tight schedule. As I pulled into the dark alley behind my place, a wedge of illumination from my headlights silhouetted a figure crouching against the wall. He looked back over his shoulder at me, stood, dropped what might’ve been a can of spray paint, and ran.

Moving faster than I had since my days at cornerback in high school 15 years ago, I pursued him, making up a lot of ground and was almost on him when I slipped and my feet flew out and I landed flat on my back. By now, he was long gone. For months, we’d been having trouble with vandalism in the neighborhood. This had been my chance to do something about it, but I’d let the tagger slip away.

Outside the Big Cheese Bar & Grille, I found AZTEK painted on my wall in bubble letters, the same tag I’d seen on buildings and underpasses all over town. But he’d also left behind a backpack containing his I.D., phone, keys, and tools. I had the bastard after all.

*

That afternoon around 5:30, I was polishing shot glasses and half-listening to a Lyle Lovett tune on NPR when the vandal himself casually strolled in. We get lots of hipster types like him around here dressed in their thrift store fashions, with paltry little chin whiskers and long lank hair shaved on the sides, so he was probably hoping to blend in during Happy Hour. Unfortunately for him, none of my regulars had shown up yet, so it was just the two of us out front—and I recognized him from his photo I.D.

Seeing me behind the dark oak bar, he stopped just inside the door and tried to bluff it out, gazing around at the white chrysanthemums on each table and the BIG CHEESE sign in the front window, fanning out like a sunrise with “Bar & Grill” lettered underneath suggesting the horizon. Eventually, he came over and took a seat on a tall chrome stool.

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“Actually, I’m looking for something.” With an ingratiating smile, he began this cock-and-bull story about a friend who’d left his backpack in here last night.

His eyes widened as I whipped the backpack out from under the bar and set it before him.

“Like this one?” 

“Yeah. I mean, I think so. Where did you find it?”

“In the alley where you left it, Enrique. Or should I say ‘Aztek?’”

With a cagey look, he said, “Since you still have it, I assume you haven’t called the cops.”

“Not yet.” I pulled out my cell phone.

“Wait. Please. I’m already in trouble with the law. If you call them, they’ll put me away.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you vandalized my property.”

He hung his head. “Sorry.”

“What trouble?”

Before he could answer, someone called out over the music, “Hey, Enrique.”

It was Gladys, a gin-drinking visual artist, who’d come in quietly and taken her usual seat in a row of booths along one wall. When he didn’t respond, she tried again, and this time, he looked up at me as if for permission.

“Go ahead and say hi to her, if you want. Don’t leave, though.” I put my phone back in my pocket and stuck the backpack under the bar.

“When did you get out?” Gladys asked the tagger.

Out of where? I wondered.

“A couple of days ago,” he said.

“Are you coming back to the gallery? There’s a meeting this Sunday.”

I assumed Gladys meant Scattershot Gallery, the co-op where she exhibits her paintings. Did this make my vandal a real artist? As several other customers filtered in, Robin, my 20-year-old Goth server, showed up.

“Hi, Brian,” she said, and immediately set to work taking an order, tearing it off her pad, and clipping it to the wheel in the window that separates the bar from the kitchen. “One goat cheese, fig, and honey melt on walnut bread.”

I beckoned to her. “Do you know that guy?”

“With Gladys? Yeah, that’s Enrique.”

“Really? I thought his name was Aztek. That’s what I caught him spray-painting on the alley wall this morning.”

“Really? It it’s still up, I want to see it.”

Even all in black, from her velvet top and fishnet hose to her hair, lips, eyeliner, and fingernail polish, she retained a kind of sweet innocence.

“Okay. I’ll be interested in your opinion as an art student.”

To my chagrin, she stopped first at Gladys’s booth and must’ve told her about the tag because Gladys joined her, and off they went, leaving me to deal with another new arrival. In three minutes, they were back.

“Well?” I asked.

“It’s kind of a pretty throw-up,” Robin said.

“Throw-up? You mean like vomit?”

“No. Why don’t you leave it?”

“Robin’s right,” Gladys said. “That tag reminds me of Banksy.”

“Banksy?”

“The famous Brit whose graffiti is considered social commentary and collected all over the world. Except maybe here in Louisville,” Gladys said.

“But this one’s not social commentary. It’s plain old self-promotion,” I said.

“I didn’t know you had issues with tagging,” Robin said.

“I don’t have issues. Look, I know it’s supposed to be cool, or Avant Garde, or whatever, but I see these trashy tags all over Bardstown Road. I’m trying to make a living here, and that’s not helping.”

“You don’t appreciate street art?” Robin asked.

“I don’t appreciate being vandalized. Now get back to work.”

“Yes, boss.” Sounding very disappointed in me, she balanced a small round cocktail tray on her shoulder and resumed her duties.

“I didn’t realize you were an expert on art,” Gladys said.

“Is graffiti art?”

She said it was.

“I call it a criminal act.”

“That sounds like something a fascist would say.”  

“And you sound like you’re encouraging damaging private property.”

“I might’ve tagged an abandoned building or two in my time,” Gladys said, with a prim smile, and returned to her booth.

I followed, trying to envision Gladys—who never slouched and was always dressed in expensive hand-embroidered clothing—skulking around in the dark armed with a can of spray paint.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“Yes, I did.”

Looking very chef-ly in her three-quarter sleeve jacket and the baker’s hat she wore to cover up her dreadlocks, Daeshanda appeared from the kitchen. “Everything okay here?”

“Fine. We’re discussing art,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard you. Everybody in the place did.”

I looked around. Customers were staring at me.

“You know, Enrique is insanely talented. His glass and 3-D art is some of the most beautiful work I’ve ever seen,” Gladys said.

I glanced at the smug little son of a bitch, who shrugged as if to say Can I help it they find me adorable?

Oh, you’re going to help it, I thought. You’re going to help it a lot.

“I think Enrique contributes to the cultural milieu of our city,” Gladys went on. “What good is a city that looks like politicians want it to but reflects nothing about the people?”

“Cultural milieu my ass. Let’s see what you say when Aztek tags your front door.”

“You white people crazy,” Daeshanda said, abandoning her role as peacemaker. “I like those murals painted by school children on expressway walls, but somebody spray paint my house I bust a cap on they ass.”

As the place went silent, Daeshanda shoved one dread back up under her hat and wrote down today’s specials on the sawhorse chalk board: Taleggio with apricot-caper puree and braised short ribs on raisin bread. Homemade chicken and noodle soup.

Her handwriting was messy, cursive and print jumbled together, big letters and small, and never in a straight line, yet somehow easy enough to decipher.

“Can I have a sandwich?” Aztek asked.

“Hell no,” I said. “Shut up and come with me.”

As I led him into the kitchen, I felt like high-fiving Daeshanda for her loyalty, if that’s what it was, and not pure ornery-ness. I realized I could lose more than paint over this. Besides possibly alienating other customers, I had to take into account Gladys and her artist friends. They might boycott the Big Cheese over this. Robin seemed in sympathy with this tagger, as well. This needed to be settled.

“Could you excuse us for a minute, Daeshanda?”

“I could, if you don’t mind me burning down the restaurant.”

I noticed multiple cheese sandwiches bubbling on the griddle. “Never mind then.”

I turned to the tagger. “If I turn you in, do you know what you’re facing?”

“Ninety days in jail, and a fine of $250. Give me a break, will you? I just got out on bond for the same offense.”

“And the first thing you do is rush out and vandalize another business. Why?”

“Look, Brian—can I call you Brian?”

“No, Aztek.”

“Okay, I understand you’re upset about being tagged, but what about protecting art and political dissent?”

“What about protecting my property?”

“Is that all you care about—property? What about that billboard across the street?”

He was referring to a giant pizza sign. “That’s okay because it was done by a corporation?”

“I don’t like it, either, but at least it’s paid for, and more importantly, not on my property.”

“Only rich corporations have rights, huh?” he said. “I used to paint in abandoned buildings where no one would see, but the point of tagging is to get your art out.”

“It’s illegal, a Class B misdemeanor called malicious mischief.” I knew because I’d discussed it with a customer who was also a lawyer.

“Of course it is,” Aztek said. “By its very nature, this type of art is done without permission. Graffiti wouldn't be graffiti if it was legal. The beauty of graffiti is that someone is going out and risking their freedom for art.”

“Bad risk.” I couldn’t understand it. “Isn’t being in a gallery enough for you?”

The tagger’s shoulders sagged. “I can’t earn a living making glass sculptures. After I graduated from art school, I lost access to a furnace and the other equipment I need.”

“Do what other artists do. Get a day job.”

“I have a day job, and a night job,” he said, glancing at the billboard, “delivering pizzas. But I can’t live off that, pay my student loans, and still afford to create art.”

The mutt seemed lonely, desperate. I was starting to feel sorry for him. Maybe if I could make this more personal, he’d understand how his tag could cost me some major bucks.

“Would it be okay with you if some other street artist came along and spray painted your car with street art? Painted it everywhere—doors, hood, trunk, back and side windows, windshield—so you couldn’t even drive it?”

I waited.

“If I clean it off, will you let me go?” Aztek asked.

Would I? “I don’t know.”

Hearing a grunt, I swiveled to look at Deashanda as she flipped sandwiches and lined them up like rows of sliders. Her cocked eye seemed to say Don’t be such a heartless bastard, boss.

“The paint I use is water soluble. If removed soon enough, you can’t tell it was ever there,” Aztek said.

“Come outside with me.”

The Aztek tag was right in the middle of the wall. Even if he wire-brushed and power-washed the bricks, some of the tag would still ghost through. Slapping some paint over the spot would leave an ugly reminder, too. The only way was to re-paint the entire wall, two coats.

I explained this to him. “And you have to start now.”

I thought he might keep arguing, but he didn’t.

“What were you going to do with all this stuff?”

I dropped his backpack at his feet.

In it was an Exacto knife, a roll of vinyl, and stencil cutouts of flowers and vines. Beneath that, several odd photographs. One of a mass of real hanging vines which became someone’s hair when a face was added. Another with a vertical pipe serving as the trunk of an elephant, once one was drawn in. And one with a madly grinning Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Pointing to an imperfection at the bottom of the wall, Aztek said, “I was going to beautify that crack by glorifying it, rather than covering it up, but you stopped me before I could finish.”

The crack was an ugly scar that I’d been meaning to fix. I couldn’t help wondering how it might’ve turned out if I’d let him complete his plan to cover it with paint.

“I envisioned green vines and cascading red roses climbing the fissure, an explosion of tropical colors transforming this space where nothing could grow without permission into a wildly lush Eden. Even jagged and rough, it could be transformed into something strikingly original,” Aztek said.

I led him around to the storage shed where I’d stored some leftover cans of paint and rollers.

“Do it,” I said.

“How much will you pay me?”

“Don’t press your luck.”

Aztek nodded and got to work.

© 2025 Rick Neumayer

“The Art of Mischief” will appear in the forthcoming THREE FOGGY MORNINGS: Stories by Rick Neumayer. If you like this one, I’d love to hear from you.