Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(125)

“You’ve always been alive, Margot. You’re a self-taught, self-made fucking pro who gets everything she ever wants. Twice, these days. What’s not ‘alive’ about that, you ungrateful twat?”

I heard her sigh for a long time and just let her go on. The painting in the middle was starting to speak to me. I knew what I wanted to do with it.

Finally she just emitted a series of disgusted moans. “There’s no talking to you. Just fucking paint the paintings. They’re leaving soon right?”

“Tomorrow,” I responded automatically, trying not to think very hard about it. The date had been pushed back twice, but now I guess they really meant it.

“Did you hear me?” She was yelling again.

I had enough.

“I gotta go, Bridge.”

“Paint the goddamn paintings!!” she yelled again as I let my arm drop and thumbed the phone to disconnect.

I cocked my head at the middle painting. It was still barely a sketch in charcoal, scrawled like graffiti in the vague outline of a cross. But in the smudges and masses, I could see a whisper of forms. Tangled vines, sweet things, fruit ripe past bursting. A stretching strain in the shapes… I could feel it. My fingers twitched.

I had to watch it grow in my head, let the image evolve, throb into something that rang like a bell in my mind, and then dive for it. But it was still nascent, not yet firm. Soon.

I padded to the laptop for music and brought up a moody, sing-along-type playlist with Neko Case and Patty Griffin. If I was going to bleed emotion all over the panel, I wanted music that left some blood on the floor too.

Within seconds, Neko was singing about being a tornado who expressed her love by destroying whole towns. That’s poetry.

Squeezing out neat piles of paint onto my flat glass palette, I arranged some brushes I knew I would need. The gooey, perfumed mediums that made the paint more or less slippery sat in neat puddles at the bottom of small jars. I undid the metal latch on the brush cleaning tin but left the lid closed so the solvent wouldn’t evaporate too much into the room.

The image was forming ever clearer in my mind as I indulged in the simple ritual of preparing my tools. All these tinctures and potions, these pastes and waxes: they were the magical, alchemical mixtures that painters have been using for the last 2000 years, give or take. Preparing it felt like a prayer. I aligned myself with all the history that came before me, mindful of my teeny, tiny place at the end of a very long parade.

“Dad says to tell you ‘bye,’” came Marnie’s voice from the door. I turned to her, smiling.

“Aw, you look completely adorable!” I cooed, smiling broadly at her vintage valley-girl outfit complete with mall hair.

“Thanks,” she said, then stepped into the room and squinted at the easel. “These look weird,” she said boldly.

“Weird?” I echoed with a small smile.

“Yeah, they’re cool,” she said decisively. “Much cooler than before.”

My heart swelled. “Well, thank you. That is high praise. What do you think is cool?” I asked, feeling sheepishly like I was just begging for more praise.

She shrugged, stalling slightly, forming the words.

“I don’t know,” she began. “They’re… Confusing. Like, you can see the things you always paint, but then you can’t. They have… Something… Like a dream. Like they look like something you dreamed.”

I shook my head, amazed.

“That’s pretty awesome, Marnie. That’s exactly what they are. You have a great eye.” I wanted to hug her. If she could see it, I hoped everyone could see it that way. Early responses from collectors seemed positive, at any rate.

“OK, well, bye,” she said with a shrug and was gone.

As soon as she left, I tested the image in my mind. Was it ready? Congealed into sense? I could feel it vibrating in there. I could see the image, hold it on my tongue like something sweet. And I knew exactly how to get from here to there.

Striding forward to push the rolling cart to the right side, I started to hum with the music. Patty Griffin started to sing. Oh Heavenly Day, all the clouds blew away…

The hours flew by as I painted, scraped, and repainted the image. I brought passages to life then wiped them back. Brought others to fine detail and then painted right over them, obscuring the image with veils of new paint.

Soon the images started to come together in pieces. A section would seem to be correct, then the adjacent sections lifted themselves to their rightful imagery. It was like dragging a net from the water, bit by bit. My hands flew over the lines, adjusting here, trowelling on more paint there… It was almost more like a spiritual possession than a painting. The imagery birthed itself.