For the Love of Art

Writing this chapter was so horrible, I screamed murder when I finished. And that's why I decided to make it into a game some of you may hate me for, but otherwise, my negative interest may have led me to fling this story into a bottomless trench. I go into more detail at the end. Hayoooo!!

*****

As a child, we would fear the dark. It was hands and it was teeth. It was black nothingness waiting with a mouth stretched wide for ineluctable devourment. But mostly, it was but another puerile conjuration of the mind. Though, the thing about fears is their ability to be eluded. Fear the dark? Light a match. Fear tax garnishment? Buy a budget planner.

Somewhat-kinda fear your art instructor? Don't accept private tutor sessions with them. Because this happens.

The shuddering of the lights, the proceeding bath of darkness, it tossed us both into a motionless embrace. Mr. Ryne, he was hands and he was teeth. His fingers were mesmerized in my hair, the other hand canvassed into the fussed over blouse, imprinting at my hips, a steel force barring me down against him. Against the bite of his belt buckle, the stab of his length. The things that dragged me into perpetual stasis, straddled me atop him, my arms wrapped around his neck, lips nearing a quality intimacy with his.

The indiscernible sliver of space between us was charged with an electrical passion. A whir of emotions I struggled to place. Somewhere between cold washed desire and sweltering need. It was a trick of the darkness, grabbing hold of rationality, and whispering that anything done now, in this lightless predicament, would die here. And yet, neither of us moved to cross that fragile, trembling line of no return. No, we sat, our hearts syncopated to a thrashing percussion against one another's. It was oppressive. And I needed more of it, of him.

As suspected, one shift from me, and his hold of me strengthened. Trying to place me, to stop my hips from moving against him. I would have tried again if I didn't suddenly find myself being set down like an item.

"I should see about the lights."

My sigh of abandon was silent.

Or so I thought. He released a vicious noise of frustration, and at once his arm was around me, my chin locked between stern fingers. He tilted my head back as if that way he could make out every startled detail of me. "Don't think for a second," harsh and unhinged. "that I'm done with you."

Even as his words were of brute, frightening force, his touch was of perplexing gentleness, as though I were being held in place by nothing more than silken ribbons. "Done with me? Where are you going?" The subtle facets of the art gallery began to take form in my mind's eye as I recalled where we were, and the tutoring session that had taken a wrong turn.

"We can't well work in the dark, Miss Larson."

Not with that attitude. My fingers clenched tighter into his shirt, unwilling to let him leave. Not while I stood there, my lips tingling and yearning to rehearse our previous dance, my stomach knotted, my core strained with abandon of the rod once teased so near to it.

Before my protest bore life, one of our phones vibrated. My hand went instantly to my own, knowing how soft and easily missed it liked to be when I got notifications, though I was sure I'd silenced it. After seeing I had no new messages, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I looked to the time. "Holy crap, it's three o'clock!"

That was the thing with art, once your hands got moving and your brain lost in the concocting image or piece, time lost all meaning. Just churned on and on. Hunger was nonexistent. Your bladder was set to pause. And God help anyone who attempted to snatch you from it all. Then again, I was learning that being in Mr. Ryne's company alone crushed my sense of time. Crushed my sense in general.

"Hello?" Mr. Ryne responded.

It took me a moment to realize he was on the phone, causing me to reluctantly release him. The space should have given me air and a moment to chew over the pass transgression, but instead, there presided the strangest sense of loss. I've had past flings before, awkward kisses after even more awkward dates, boyfriends that should have remained friends, been-there-done-that one night stands, but none of them educed the rearing prongs of possessiveness. That was what I felt just then as I folded my arms over my ribcage, a possessive need to bring him back into my arms, fear and all.

"No, I'm perfectly capable of locating and reseting my breakers." Silence, then he sucked his teeth in annoyance. "There's no need to—do

not

send anyone to my residence."

I shrank back from the frost-tipped tone, pitying whatever poor technician had been forced to contact him over a power shortage. Then I wondered what warranted such vehemence of having someone come check on the lights. If it'd been me, I'd probably have had to call

them

to come fix it, seeing as I knew close to nothing about what a breaker even was.

He hung up, a brief glow of the phone revealing stressed, knitted brows, lips twisted down, perturbed. "Wait here. I'll just be a second."

"The breaker?" I asked knowingly.

He scoffed. "Damn power company looks for any excuse to send someone then tack on a piddling bill that they think goes unnoticed. I'm tempted to add them to my growing blocked list."

Not sure which left me more muddled, his use of the word 'piddle' or that he confided the fact he had a blocked list. Then again, I supposed everyone had their own personal list of spam numbers. This was but one more thing that left Mr. Ryne all too human and . . . faulty. Imperfect.

"I should call Becky."

"Don't sound so broken up about it," he remarked and I heard the smile in his voice.

"I-I'm not. It's just that I'd love for the lesson to continue."

I regretted the words as soon as I said them.

"Oh?"

My arms tightened around my stomach, cheeks burning. "My sketch, I mean."

"Obviously," he murmured, voice closer than before. "It's only a bit past 3. Once I get the power going, you're more than welcome to . . . finish what you started."

"What I started?" I asked, stunned.

He'd

kissed

me.

Or was he determined to turn the tables should I have any regrets? Not that I did, for that matter.

"The sketch," he clarified, and again I heard that fine polished smile.

I almost momentarily adopted his bad habit and said 'Obviously', but decided to drop it. It seemed anything I said would only be sharpened and turned against me.

I let him go, leaving me in the wake of what had just happened. That had been me, settled in my instructor's lap, living for the moment he lost control and gave me an excuse to follow. Standing here, I released a heavy breath to banish the feel of him, but the memory had gotten comfortable beneath my skin.

Lonely. That had to be it. I was lonely, and the touch of a man—any man—left me winded and pining for the next high. Wasn't that how humans worked? Longing for any warm body, any like mind, any excuse to set aside the responsibility of one's own heart into the hands of another?

Actually, what the hell was I doing? I was supposed to be calling Becky, not stringing together life lessons and pathetic woes of the heart. Grunting Mr. Ryne from existence, I went to my call log and pressed redial. The call failed instantly.

No signal. Of. Course. Even the perfect art gallery was susceptible to merciless lower level dead zones. I swiped to my utilities and flipped on my flash. A nimbus path brightened before me, the phone's flashlight illuminating the workspace where my hybrid vorticism shade art sat with debateable perfect lines and before it, the seen-it-all chair where I'd happily straddled Mr. Ryne. I turned away from that quick, carefully heading the opposite direction while monitoring the phone's signal bars.

Four steps and I was out of the dead zone, a fickle 'G' appearing in the right hand corner. I had no doubt Becky had left a slew of texts and enough voice messages to take up that small receptacle of storage space my phone had left after my nightly app downloads. Another step and I was moving into 'E' territory, two bars rising mercifully.

I gazed around to make sure I wasn't stepping on any priceless merchandise, of which I was sure Mr. Ryne would deem easily replaceable. Standing atop white tarp, my phone light illuminated a line of paint cans, dual shaders, a closet door half ajar with a world of what looked to be recyclables and more used tarp hanging out with no order whatsoever. Leaning against the door was a row of canvases, their image facing away from me, their backs marred with passing fingerprints and mishaps. All in all, it looked as though the man strongly abhorred organization.

But my search and judgement ended when I noted I had only one message from Becky. I opened it—hoping maybe her date with Brandon would be extended and she'd be running late—then sighed when I read it. It was part 2 of a 3 part message, and the only thing it divulged was a vague

'..and then it was over, but after the third time...'

What was I supposed to make of that?

No part of me bothered. Instead, I called her, careful to stay in place as I put her on speaker to continue utilizing the flashlight.

She answered on the first ring. "Grace! I thought you'd gotten to third base—wait, did you?"

I almost corrected her by saying 'second base', but then I remembered I shouldn't have even been on the field. To her, this was strictly a tutoring session. Isn't that what I had claimed so passionately before? As usual, I guided her back to the reason for the call. "No base. I was calling because I received maybe a third of that message you sent me."

"No base? I feel like you're doing that thing, where you say whatever shuts me up the quickest."

Dangling from the bracket of Mr. Ryne's workspace were a white pair of earphones, their cords caught and waiting for an audio shortage. Shaking my head, I began to untangle them as best I could with one hand. "Would you accept if I said I'll tell you when we get back to the dorms?"

"That could take forever!"

I grimaced as the phone suffered the blare of her impatience. "Well, we're about finished up here anyway, so whenever you're . . ."

The ending to my sentence wilted into spiraling, chaotic silence.

I was never a fast learner. I maintained a B average in high school by the grace of God alone—and a load of tutor sessions. My 11th grade Calculus teacher thought I had ADHD for the longest and recommended I see a specialist for confirmation. But my counselor soon found it wasn't my focus that was the problem, so much as it was my comprehension. They could explain things ten times over in ten different ways and my brain just refused to put together the pieces.

The same was happening now as I stared at what Mr. Ryne had been working on.

"I will be over there, painting a masterpiece."

The words drifted through my mind, sand across midnight Sahara floors. I remembered Mr. Ryne saying them to me, just before we started the tutoring session. At the time, I had been under the false assumption he was constructing something easy on the hands, less complex, maybe even a random flex of expressionism.

What stared back at me was not even close. It was a portrait of me. But somehow, the girl looking back, I didn't know her. The way she looked at me . . . her eyes were too dark, too hungry. Her lower lip was trapped between two rows of white teeth. A coy, suggestive nibble. Her curls hardly diverged from my own, as they dripped down the svelte cream of easy cheekbones, black ribbons beside honey. The image was a claw between monochrome and melted black wax. It was clear to see, the primary method of grisaille, but the girl's face began to taper and melt into black runnings down the canvas, where he'd exercised the use of 3-dimensional effect. The lines began to curve and spike at one point near the canvas' borders. I'd have thought little of it, if it weren't for the oddest impression I got the longer I stared. Because I'd have sworn those lines were beginning to look like barbed wire.

"Again. Do it again."

There came the memory of his lips at my ear, my hand handling him through his pants. His shattered breaths, the way he'd leaned into me, voice like clanging knives as he said,

"Barbed wire."

Then, I'd thought he meant it in figurative association with my hair, but now, I wasn't sure at all.

Somewhere in the drowning pound of my heart, I was supposed to be flattered. Me. He'd painted a portrait of me! Considered me a masterpiece! I should have been head over heels. Instead, there was only the incessant itch in my hand, a compulsion tugging me back, to the right. There. The row of canvases, turned and leaning away from me, faceless. Graciously offering me the opportunity not to crouch down as I was doing now, kindly encouraging me not to grip the border of the first canvas and pull back. These things I could have not done, I was helpless but to.

What I saw was a portrait like any other, filled with subtle but impressive usage of somber shades. An art classroom with minute details in the gradient strokes of a wide brush, feathered and honed with a smaller, more diligent tool to capture the autumn tier trees. Vibrant red paint materialized the cardinal who'd missed the memo for migration as it ruffled up its nest, housing white eggs speckled with mottled blue and red. What set the image aside was the girl sitting at one of the easels, the small, awestruck smile she wore as she admired the bird and its unhatched offspring. I remembered that day. It was the day Mr. Ryne had called me out to answer a question and I couldn't because my eyes and mind had been trained on the bird.

He'd seen it then, had known what distracted me that day. It was why he had picked me to answer the question to begin with. The anxiety of before renewed tenfold. My tongue was stuck to the palate of my mouth in pure trepidation as my throat began a slow burn, as though the cardinal had chosen it to pick apart for nesting.

The portraits all followed the same theme. The delicate moments unaware. Moments of the past Fall semester where I was not worried sick with entering Mr. Ryne's class. There was a portrait of me, head down in the graphic design room, sleeping away before class began while other students were proactive. There was another where I sat outside on a bright, sunny day, cross-legged on a bench, reading. Another, in the library, focusing deeply on a sketch. And then another, and another, and another, until I was crouched with cottonmouth nausea and shaking hands. Some innate perversion compelled me to keep going. The last one, me smiling up at the observer, dark eyes impossibly bright. The portrait had details as intricate as the first, starting with the calendar that marked the first day of Mr. Ryne's class.

That did it. I collapsed back, having dropped the phone face up, plummeting me into a darkness that seemed all too fitting. I may have sat and stared numbly for an hour had Becky's voice not sang out. "Hellooo? Grace. Did you hear me?"

My head swayed, heavy. I was going to be sick. I needed water. I needed to escape to the comfort of my room and spend the rest of my break obsessing over what I had just seen.

"I'm hanging up—"

I grabbed the phone urgently. "Wait, wait! Becky, no. I'm here. I'm here." And I didn't want to be.

"Well, God, say something, would you?"

I grew quiet again, trying to catch my breath. When I trusted myself not to stutter a million times, I asked carefully, "What was it you said?"

She sighed, rightfully upset. "I said, my text was saying I tried to call you earlier, but you didn't answer. We were supposed to try to beat the storm. But you never called and, well, have you

looked

outside?"

No. . . . No, she could not be saying what I thought she was saying.

"They stopped all the buses, too. They're running the plows, but it's going to be whiteout conditions until midnight and even my snow tires can't handle Satan's polar twin."

I clamored to my feet, gripping the phone as if I'd just discovered a journal detailing all the intricate ways he'd like to make papier-mâché of my skin. When really, this wasn't

that

bad, right? I had to be overreacting. All in my head. Unnecessary panic. He was an artist. There was nothing unsettling about my being the muse. It wasn't as though I'd discovered a trove of nudes.

"Think he'll be kind enough to let you stay there a while? I don't know when the roads will be safe," Becky was saying.

I was still caught up in practicing my breathing, counseling myself. Though no matter how much I tried to rule my fears with logic, that same previous disturbia insisted on creeping back to me. Crippling my sense.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. "I have no idea."

I turned away from the portrait, the flashlight landing on another painting hanging lopsided on the hinges of a supply cabinet. There was mild relief when I saw the content. It was just a lonely, well-kept cabin in the middle of a wheat field. A very serene painting. At the bottom were initials. 'C.L.'.

"You should start by asking him," she prompted, ignorant to my current circumstance. If it could be called that. I had to be overreacting, I recited to myself yet again.

Why then was it, the instant I heard Mr. Ryne's voice coming down the hall to the gallery, I hastily scrambled to return everything to its previous state before dashing to my work station like the devil was at my heels?

I killed the flashlight and noticed the call had dropped. A necessary sacrifice.

"I'm going to have to power up the generator," he said as he came into the gallery. He pointed the beam of a flashlight directly at me, causing me to squint.

Did he notice I was out of breath? Rattled? Had I missed anything? I struggled not to avert my eyes as that light came closer. Artist. Muse. Nothing strange about it at all.

I jumped when he took my wrist.

If he noticed, he said nothing about it. "Come on. No telling how long it'll take. I started the fireplace. You can wait there."

His hold was firm, strong. No different than it usually was, but with what I'd just seen, the hold felt more like a snare. I recognized the sense of entrapment as the same anxiety felt when entering his classroom. I was moving back to square one, the kiss we'd shared dying back in the gallery he led me away from.

Mr. Ryne had said something and was looking back at me now.

Some people, when shaken and feeling much like a deer in the headlights, their tongues become loquacious. Streams and streams of words, meaningful and meaningless alike, come spilling out. Not me. I get stuck in whatever's weighing on me, and I play it on loop. The portraits were ingrained in my memory, and my mind was reluctant to acknowledge anything other than the pure vulnerability of those moments.

I blinked up at him. "Huh?" But the moment I said it, I blanked once again. I'd been right in what I said before. We were strangers. This man, I knew nothing of him. Why did it take a basement of obsessive portraits to hammer that home?

The closer we drew to the staircase, the more daylight lit the way. Mr. Ryne flicked the flashlight off, and even the small gesture, caused me to swallow hard and evaluate it as though it were just the beginning of a series of minor gesticulations leading to a grand horror.

I ascended the steps at a pace to match his. I even wore—or tried to wear—a face that betrayed nothing but deep thought, maybe a small reading of fervor for the heated kiss we'd shared.

It didn't matter. Mr. Ryne wasn't paying much attention to me anyway. He had chosen his most familiar scowl, only it wasn't aimed towards me, but something about the power. May as well have been for the way I was feeling.