Secret Triplets(13)

 

After another minute, I still didn’t know what to say, but luckily Brock rose and strode off to the kitchen, saying, “Would you mind if I painted? Talking about the old days just gave me some inspiration, and sometimes I lose the thread if I let it go.”

 

“No. Not at all. Could I join?”

 

Already opening the cupboard, Brock paused.

 

Inwardly, I groaned, averting my gaze. Why on earth had I asked that?

 

“I don’t have to,” I said quickly. “I mean, I’m not like an artist or anything. It’ll just be a waste of paint.”

 

But when Brock returned, two canvas boards tucked under one arm and several tubes of paint in the other, he shook his head.

 

“No. I…just never thought of it. I want you to; it’ll be fun.”

 

“Okay,” I said, smiling at him.

 

Putting the canvas boards and paint tubes on the floor, he added, “And don’t worry about getting paint on the floor. God knows I have already.”

 

At his words, the paint flecks on the floor suddenly stood out to me, the little dashes of yellow, blue, and red seemingly everywhere. Funny, how some things you only saw once they were spoken of, how clear some things were in retrospect. What else in my life was like that?

 

“We can share these brushes,” Brock said, slapping an old tomato tin filled with paintbrushes on the floor between us.

 

“Any advice for a newbie?” I joked as we sat on the floor side by side.

 

“Yeah,” he said, shooting me a sidelong smirk. “Don’t take anyone’s advice. Art is art, not a science. It’s personal; it comes from the heart. You have to feel your way through. Just do what feels right.”

 

As I reached for a brush, he added, “That, and if you mix all the colors you’ll end up with brown.”

 

We laughed, he grabbed a brush of his own and got started.

 

At the beginning, I only circumspectly watched Brock out of the corner of my eye, his face focused yet calm, a strange light in his eyes as his brush flowed across the page.

 

Until he growled, “Get to work or your canvas is getting confiscated.”

 

Surprised, I glanced at his face to see a silly grin.

 

Next thing I knew, his brush was sweeping over to my canvas, flicking a navy line in the center.

 

“There, I gave you a starting point,” he said, returning to his own canvas.

 

I looked at the navy line dubiously. A blank white canvas and some random line were supposed to inspire me? What had I been thinking, wanting to paint anyway? I was no artist. I was a logical, curious private investigator who, even as a child, had hated coloring.

 

But as I stared at the line, it began to grow and swell with potential, swirling into a raindrop, into a bent-over back, an outstretched finger. Suddenly, I knew what I was going to paint.

 

I started out with more navy, outlining the spread-fingered figure with her thin, ponytailed head looking up. Then it was some brown for the outside, for the bricks around the window. There was yellow for the inside, a whole coat of it for the window. Then black was for the figures joined at the arms, the ones bent over the table with the cocaine baggie between them. White was for the baggie’s contents, yellow to cover it all again, only halfway. The dark, sad figures were bathed in yellow light, the yellow reaching out, brushing against the spread-fingered girl outside. Above it all was more navy for the uncaring sky, a dab of yellow for the sliver of moon. And then I was done, finished and looking over Brock’s shoulder at his canvas, which contained army-green figures with their guns connected in the center, all of it light-haloed just like mine.

 

“Not bad. You have an artist’s eye,” Brock said with an approving look at my canvas.

 

My gaze slid from my canvas to his and then back to mine again, and I laughed.

 

“Don’t tease me.”

 

Brock squeezed my shoulder.

 

“I’m not teasing. I mean it. That’s a really compelling scene, and those colors you used to frame it, the point of view, it’s all great. What’s it of?”

 

My gaze slid back to the somber scene, and my voice caught in my throat.

 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel comfortable,” Brock said, squeezing my shoulder again.

 

“No. I…”

 

I thought back to the scene, to me crouched outside the window while I watched Charlie and some girl snort coke off our living room table. How ironic it had been, watching this low-bloused, short-skirted stranger with her ass parked between my boyfriend’s legs, leaning over and snorting drugs that had doubtlessly been bought with my money off my table—and there I had been feeling like I was the stranger.