The Van Gogh Sunrise

I had been bitten by something during the night – I never got a clear look at exactly what – so I was especially motivated to get the hell out of my crummy apartment and go over to the luxury skyscraper where the Rock King was rooming during his performances at Madison Square Garden. I had my foot in the door because the woman who advised him on new songs had enjoyed one of my songwriting efforts. I had waited a long time for this opportunity.

The building itself was daunting – one apartment wide and sixty stories tall. It was like living in a pencil balanced on its eraser. I cleared myself with the Rock King’s security detail. I was told to go right into his suite, but that it was “morning,” and I might have to be patient. (It was getting on three in the afternoon, but I was in no position to argue.) It will come as no surprise to you that the room was filled with the Rock King’s signature African marigolds – every single one of them four feet high and nearly half a foot across their brilliant red-gold blooms. Each of the blossoms exploded like a pompom.

Their color was so dazzling it was hard to see anything else in the room. But I was acutely aware that a gift basket of delicious-looking delicacies had been delivered to the Rock King, decorated with its own fringe of gigantic marigolds, of course. I hadn’t eaten in more than a day. The saliva gathered in my mouth as I stared at the gift basket. A grand piano waited in a raised section of the room for me to thump out my number. I told myself it would be difficult to sing properly with my mouth watering. But I couldn’t justify myself digging into the gift basket without asking anyone’s permission.

An endless half hour went by before I finally dialed up the Rock King’s security detail. “Look, what are the protocols here?” I asked. “Would anyone mind if I dug into a gift basket while I wait?”

“What gift basket?” The security team wanted to know. They didn’t seem to have any record of anything like that being delivered to the Rock King’s suite. They told me not to touch it; not to go anywhere near it. A moment later, someone with a wire in his ear arrived in the living room. He took a quick glance at the basket.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he told me. “Get out of here right now.”

“But –”

“Get out. We’ll be in touch.”

I signed out of the floor and rode the shining elevator back down to the ground floor in silence. The man in the lobby had been told to pass the message to me not to leave the building.

The lobby was as clean as an operating room, and as devoid of snacks. I passed the time by writing a song in my head. It was about a woman who, in each verse, kept telling her date he would have to wait for her. Two men in what looked like reinforced space suits came pounding in the front door of the building and were waved right up in the elevator by the man in the lobby. Each wore a thick helmet protecting his head, face, and neck. After a long delay, a member of the Rock King’s security staff came down to talk to me.

“We owe you,” he said. “It was a bomb. A booby trap. The food was wired. The marigolds were wired.” It had been an assassination attempt against the Rock King. The security guard said the Rock King was very grateful and would be sure to be in touch with me soon.

It was fully three more weeks before I heard from anyone. I received a large package in the mail from the Rock King, containing a living African marigold. The note read, “Aren’t they wonderful? It’s like I wake up every morning in the middle of a Van Gogh sunrise.” It didn’t say anything else. It was delivered right to my crummy apartment – certainly the first time that building had gotten a delivery from the luxury skyscraper. I remembered how his tower had glowed in the summer afternoon sunlight as I walked away from it.

A little over a month later, he was dead of an overdose.