Art's Blood (2 page)

KyraandBozandAidan: one tended to think of them that way. Indeed, when they had first moved to the little house across the road from her farm, Elizabeth had assumed they were a ménage à trois. Laurel, however, had explained, with the careful patience of one speaking to the elderly and unhip, that while at first Kyra and Aidan had been partners, when Boz had come on the scene they had briefly experimented with a three-way relationship. Eventually Kyra and Boz had excluded Aidan from the king-size futon that dominated the larger of the two bedrooms. However, no matter who slept with whom, the three still functioned artistically and domestically as a single entity and seemed to live in relative harmony.

When Dessie, her old neighbor across the road, died, Elizabeth had been saddened to see the once neatly kept yard growing up in weeds. It had been welcome news when one of the daughters called to say that the house was rented. “They said they was friends of Laurel and they seemed real nice, though they are awful hippies. They want to fix up the ol’ barn fer a place to do their paintin’ and such.”

And the three young people had settled into the rural mountain community with uncommon ease. Boz and Aidan had been quick to offer help with simple carpentry and plumbing repairs for some of their older neighbors and were said to be “right good hands to work,” while Kyra— whose nose ring and tattoos were the source of much head-shaking and tongue-clicking among the local women— Kyra had won hearts by joining in, friendly and competent, at a quilting bee held at the volunteer fire department.

Elizabeth had taken her new neighbors a round loaf of homemade bread and a basket of fresh herbs when they first moved in. But chores of the farm had kept her busy, and beyond a quick chat the few times she met one or another of the trio at the mailboxes, Elizabeth had seen little of the three in the six months since they’d arrived.

There had been the occasional encounter in Ransom, the nearby county seat, a somnolent country town that had only recently attained its second stoplight. She’d seen her neighbors most recently in the hardware store where she was purchasing hinges to repair a sagging door. All three were clustered around a metal bin, evidently assessing the artistic potential of a mass of nails. Boz, at six five and in his customary red cowboy boots, towered over the other two. His frizzy brown mop of hair, wide, crooked nose, and acne-pitted face were unattractive, at best, but his deep voice and booming laugh seemed to mark him as the trio’s obvious leader.

Aidan was as handsome as Boz was ugly.
Really…beautiful, rather than handsome,
Elizabeth had thought at the time. Slender, but well muscled, Aidan stood not quite six feet tall with smooth tanned skin and long pale blond hair that he usually wore in a sleek ponytail. Only his lower left arm and hand marred the perfection, carrying as they did the discolored marks of some long-ago injury and three permanently crooked fingers.

Kyra was tiny, barely reaching Aidan’s shoulder. With her spiky hair dyed a jet black, nose ring, and multiple tattoos, she was an incongruous sight amid the hardware and farm implements— yet in spite of all these distracting affectations, Elizabeth had suddenly realized that Kyra was a very pretty young woman.

Shaking herself out of her reveries, Elizabeth tried to pay attention to the scene unfolding around her.
Strike on Box
had been billed as participatory performance art and had been accorded the honor of being the inaugural “piece” to be presented in the museum’s new wing. Kyra and Boz and Aidan, billed simply as The 3— the name they signed to all their joint artworks— were moving around the gallery, each armed with a digital camera. Kyra was flitting about the room, chatting easily with onlookers and encouraging their participation. Aidan’s camera was focused on the growing pile of burnt matches, and as Elizabeth watched, Boz, snapping shot after shot, approached the chair where the old woman was seated. He thrust the lens close to her unsmiling face and said something. An expression of distaste pulled down the old woman’s thin lips, but she did not reply. Instead she raised one hand slightly.

Instantly the blue-suited man came forward and motioned Boz to move away. Boz stared down in disbelief at the smaller man, then laughed. The smaller man took a step forward and spoke briefly. After a moment’s hesitation Boz shrugged his shoulders and moved on. The other man watched him go and then turned to the old woman, whose displeased look had not wavered. She raised a finger and the man bent his head close to her mouth. She spoke a few words, then resumed her aloof study of the evening’s entertainment.

Elizabeth looked on, bemused, as the flamboyant Boz moved through the crowd, seemingly unfazed by the recent rebuff. He moved to one wall where a voluptuous blonde
— trophy wife,
Elizabeth decided— was stretching to retrieve a box of matches from the topmost grid. Boz crept up behind her, aimed the camera at her stiletto heels, and slowly, lasciviously, shot the length of her tightly gowned body, lingering on the rounded buttocks, then, as she turned, zooming in on her abundant cleavage. Her squeal expressed surprised delight, and a tanned, silver-haired man who had been wordlessly watching burst into a raucous guffaw. “He’s immortalized that expensive ass of yours, babe. I always did say you were a work of art.”

Across the gallery a little knot of attendees burst into laughter. From their midst emerged a trim middle-aged man in beautifully tailored evening clothes. His head was completely bald and shone as if waxed. Diamond studs sparkled in his earlobes, and a vest, lavishly embroidered in deep metallic blues and greens, could be glimpsed beneath his dinner jacket. A man’s voice somewhere to Elizabeth’s right said in a low tone to an unseen companion,
“He’s
here to protect his little investment. I warned him that he was taking a chance with a loose cannon like Boz, but oh no, the big gallery owner knows best. He swears that the photographs from this performance will fly out the door, once he mounts the show at the QuerY.”

“I’d heard that he likes them rough,” sniffed the other man. “I, personally, don’t care for the acne-pitted look. Now, the other one…that blond boy…quite delicious. Just like that gorgeous elf in the
Lord of the Rings
films.”

The owner of Asheville’s newest gallery had succeeded in gaining Boz’s attention and was trailing after him, speaking urgently as the young artist continued his circuit of the room, seemingly intent on capturing images of all the attendees. After a few minutes, Boz turned the camera on the bald man, aiming first at his shining head, then, as he had done with the shapely trophy wife, slowly panning the gallery owner’s body, pausing at his crotch, then crouching down to angle for a rear shot.

The bald man whirled, his face flaming, and melted back into the crowd. Pleased snickers erupted from the pair at Elizabeth’s right, and they, too, moved away, trading delighted speculations as to whether or not
those
particular photographs would show up at the QuerY.

Elizabeth looked around the crowded room for Laurel, who seemed to have disappeared. Standing on tiptoe, she tried to catch a glimpse of her daughter’s fiery mop of dreadlocks amid the careful coiffures of the society matrons who were giggling like teenagers as they struck match after match.

But Laurel was nowhere in sight. Elizabeth began edging toward the door that led to the smaller gallery where photographs of rural Appalachia were on display. She had seen them before, but
…All this silly carrying-on,
she thought,
I need to look at something real.

She wove her way between the chattering art patrons, feeling safely invisible in her anonymous black skirt and white shirt.
Maybe not exactly invisible,
she thought, as a pair of men thrust empty glasses in her direction while continuing to squabble amicably about the stock market.

At the door to the smaller gallery, Elizabeth stopped and scanned the crowd once more for sight of her daughter. No sign of Laurel, nor, she suddenly realized, of The 3. She hesitated, wondering if a new phase of the performance was about to begin. But the smell and smoke of hundreds of matches were beginning to be annoying. Deciding that she would risk missing whatever was next, Elizabeth shouldered her way between two brittle-faced women who were regaling each other in piercing tones with horror stories concerning the outrageous demands of their respective au pairs.

The smaller gallery was blessedly quiet and almost empty. A few patrons studied the large black-and-white photographs whose subjects were so like many of Elizabeth’s neighbors. Straight ahead of her was a picture of a sturdy white-haired woman in a housedress leaning down to milk a cow.
That looks familiar.
Elizabeth smiled, remembering her recently deceased neighbor. She moved slowly around the gallery, working her way to her favorite picture— a shaggy workhorse being led down through a snowy barnyard toward a rude gate— when she heard voices.

She paused to read the artist’s statement, which was on an easel by the door. Beyond the door stretched a small hallway where restrooms and an elevator were located, and glancing out the door, Elizabeth saw The 3 reflected in the glass of a framed poster hanging beside the elevator. She was about to move away to avoid being caught skipping out on their performance piece when she heard Aidan say, “And you’ll show up before they actually arrest me?” In the reflection she could see him tossing his long ash-blond hair back in a strangely girlish gesture. “I don’t want to end up in a cell with some big Bubba type who fancies me for his bitch.”

She could see the mirrored Boz clap Aidan on the shoulder and hear the growl of his deep voice. “Don’t worry, man; I’ll be back in time to save your skinny ass.”

Her curiosity fully in gear, Elizabeth strained to catch what Kyra was saying. The young woman’s voice was pitched low and she sounded distressed: “…tell us where you’ll be…danger…” That was all Elizabeth heard before Boz’s deep rumble cut off Kyra’s murmurings.

“Naw, baby girl, it’s better Aidan don’t know where I’m at. They might want to give him a lie detector test and he’d spill his guts. Now you two get on back in there and we’ll get this show on the road.”

Hastily, Elizabeth moved away from the door and hurried back to the main gallery and the pile of burnt matches. Without the presence of The 3 and their busy cameras, the attendees/participants seemed to have grown a little weary of the game. Many were frankly ignoring the unopened matchboxes still on the gridded wall. Most of the men seemed to be huddled discussing financial matters or golf, and the table where champagne was being poured was doing a lively business. The ancient benefactress and her bodyguard were gone, but no one had presumed to sit in her chair. The director and the chairman stood on either side of it, deep in talk, each holding an empty champagne flute.

“What do you think, Mum?” Laurel, her tall, slender frame draped in a floating garment made of red-orange silk shot with gold threads, materialized suddenly at her mother’s elbow and waved her glass at the pile of matchsticks on the red circle. “Look at the composition that makes! And the grid on the walls— well, obviously it references Mondrian, but the ongoing depletion speaks so clearly to a postmodern sensibility!” She nodded toward the dark lattice of shelving. It was mostly empty now, but for a few untouched matchboxes, and Elizabeth had to admit that it did have a certain…

“Well,” she ventured, “in the words of the philosopher, I don’t know much about art, but— where did that outfit come from, Laurel? It looks expensive.”

Laurel grinned and struck a pose. “It’s an original— a friend lent it to me. We did a trade; I’m going to model some stuff for—”

She broke off as Kyra and Aidan reentered the room and began snapping pictures again. Elizabeth was amused to note that many of the patrons who had been busy with their champagne and gossip were suddenly moved to resume the lighting and extinguishing of matches. Just as one particularly expensive-looking woman was elaborately placing her scorched match at the very apex of the pile, there was a loud hissing sound.

The crowd of art patrons parted, revealing Boz, carrying a hefty fire extinguisher in one hand. His other hand held its hose and he grinned with manic glee as he aimed the dripping nozzle at first one woman and then another. Each brief hiss was accompanied by a little jet of white foam.

The crowd shrank back— but not too far— eager to see what the next act of the performance piece might hold. Boz advanced steadily on the pile of burnt matches and the blonde woman in the blue-green dress, who seemed frozen there, her hand extended over the twisted and blackened slivers.

The onlookers stared in delighted anticipation as Boz, brandishing the hose, came nearer and nearer to the stricken woman. She uttered a tiny sound— fear? excitement?— but stood stock-still, as if hypnotized. Boz, his face set in a demonic rictus, raised the fire extinguisher as if in salute, then slowly lowered it and covered the cowering woman and the pile of burnt matches with white foam.

There was stunned silence and then Boz spoke. “Aidan, you pathetic shit, it’s over.” He dropped the fire extinguisher and walked calmly over to Aidan and Kyra. A woman behind Elizabeth whispered, “Isn’t this exciting! I just adore performance art! But I had no
idea
that Marilou was going to be part of it.”

Marilou, evidently the woman who had been sprayed with foam, didn’t act as if she had known either. She was wiping the white froth from her arms and making sputtering noises as she stared down at the ruin of her turquoise silk gown. The throng of guests made no move to assist her as they watched eagerly to see what would happen next.

Elizabeth was confused. Aidan and Kyra seemed to be cowering away from Boz as he approached. He strode toward them, his body massive in the black slacks and black T-shirt that were the uniform of The 3, his red cowboy boots resounding on the slick floor. The two stood mute while Boz reached out, snatched the cameras from their hands, and hurled them to the floor. With a sardonic grin he ground his boot heel into a metal case. There was a sharp crack and a lens popped out and skittered across the polished floor. The boot heel came down again, crushing the second camera.