Chapter 4: Ayilah's
The next morning, I woke up to sunshine streaming in through the tall, curtain-less windows. The cross of the panes were making shadows that stretched in diagonal lurches onto the hard wood floor. Things appeared to be the same places they had been when Mason and I arrived the night before. There were only two differences I could see in the room: A quilt was draped over me, and Mason's boots and saddlebag were no longer sitting by the table and chair.
When I rolled my head over the pillows, I heard crackling, and something hard, but flexible cutting into my cheek. A piece of paper, lying on the side Mason had been on, now I had rolled over to it. The note read:
"Didn't want to wake you. Will be back to take you to campus."
I got dressed and walked down the flight of stairs to the first floor. It smelled of fresh coffee. I let the scent lead me to where it was, the kitchen. Searching the cabinets for a cup, I poured coffee from the pot, and sat at the little table that was set against a wall. I looked at my watch. It was still morning. I should have been concerned-- about getting back to campus, studying, Dylan...any number of things. Instead, all I could think of was last night. At a moment of extreme pleasure, I had cried.
Why the hell did I cry? I replayed the scene in my mind not as it was, but imagining the worst possible aspects that
could
have been a part of it: A snotty nose, puffy eyes, running mascara.
None of these actually happened. It wasn't exactly that kind of crying. And I always made a point of wearing waterproof mascara, even when I did expect to cry-- like at a chick flick I found stupid but endearing.
How embarrassing. Did I ever cry like that before? In front of someone else? During sex? Odd. What bothered me most was the feeling I had, at the very moment the tears started to fall. I felt like I had lost something that I couldn't get back, and if I couldn't get it back, I at least wanted to know what it was I'd lost. Sitting there, sipping coffee in the solitude of Mason's kitchen, I was getting angry.
He'd
made me cry.
I went back upstairs, with the cup of coffee, and looked around the studio. There were painted canvases stacked against each other on one side of the room, blank ones at another. Cans of paint were stacked in a corner, next to a metal filing cabinet. I walked over to the cabinet and pulled the middle drawer open. Inside were several tubes of pigment, along with a few small bottles of varnishes and glazes. When I pulled the drawer above it open, it contained more of the same, except there were more thinners and varnishes, and less tubes of pigment.
The top of the file cabinet was covered with old coffee cans, without their lids, so full of paint brushes that the the brushes all stood up straight rather than leaning. Their bristles were stained, but they were soft when I ran my fingers over them.
I looked over at the bed, then to the bookcase beyond it, then walked over to the bookcase. Pulling out one book, then two, my fingers flipped through them, anxiously perusing the contents. Color theory, Abstract Expressionism, Foucault. There was nothing on the titles or the contents that gave a hint to who Mason was beyond what I already knew.
I heard the front door shut. I looked at the way the sun streaked through the windows. When I looked over at the doorway, Mason was standing there, a paper sack in his hand.
"You're up," he said cheerfully, setting the bag on the table that was near the bed and the bookcase. "I brought you breakfast. I see you found the coffee," he said, pulling out the contents of the bag and setting it on the table, beginning with two small jars of jam, then placing a croissant in a napkin. "These are hot. The bakery makes them fresh every morning." He opened a jar and slathered the croissant he set it the napkin with jam, and handed it to me, all wrapped up and steaming.
"I'm not really hungry," I replied, putting the book back in its place on the shelf.
He stared at me, blankly. I stood up, my arms folded, then tried to relax them, slipping my hands in the pockets of my jeans.
He twisted his lips in an funny way, and nodded. He stood there for a moment, with the croissant held at a distance from himself in his hand, as if whether to bite into it or not was a huge decision. Then he set it down on the table, letting the jam ooze off of the pastry onto the napkin and table.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said, feeling a certain sense of satisfaction. "I just want to go. I have classes."
"You don't have classes until this afternoon. You have a couple of hours."
"I have things to do," I replied curtly.
He reordered his stance, shifting a foot forward, looking at the floor, then at me. "I thought you might want to talk about last night," he said. His eyes were a lighter brown in the sunlight. They were soft and calm. He didn't look like anyone to be feared. Yet I had a trepidation inside me that made my legs weak, and not from pleasure.
"No, I just need to go," I said, gathering the courage to walk by him, but I didn't make it all the way passed him. He grabbed my arm gently.
"This isn't what I expected from you."
That
made me angry-- the coffee must've kicked in, and, what I perceived as logic at the time, woke up.
Most of the time Mason's air of condescension seemed merely incidental, a result of him being naturally older than me, and very intelligent. But at that moment-- maybe because I felt bested in an area I'd never been before-- it felt like purposeful, patronizing behavior.
"What's
that
