Axis of Aaron (29 page)

“Um … ”
 

“Did she ever do anything for you, sexually? Was there one time — even
one time
— when she didn’t come, but made sure you did?”
 

“Uh … ”
 

“I mean, I know she gave you head and swallowed, but that was really for her, because she was — no offense — kind of slutty. Like, she was really into swallowing jizz. I get it. I can get down with that sometimes. But did she ever do it selflessly? Like, you wanted it and she was so-so?”
 

Ebon didn’t know how to respond. How did a guy draw a line re: the selfishness versus selflessness of blow jobs? He also didn’t know why Aimee was on his lap, or how the top two buttons on her blouse had come unbuttoned. He couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bra, but knew it would be inappropriate to look down and find out.
 

“I don’t know.”

“I would. I’d totally give you head just to be nice.”
 

“Thanks?” Ebon wasn’t sure if she was offering. But then again, she’d always talked to him like this. Or at least she had in letters … as a teenager … when her hormones had been stronger and her judgment had been poorer … using less overt language … while not sitting on his lap.
 

Ebon was starting to rise to raging attention beneath her. It was only a matter of time before she felt him knocking, but before it happened she stood with a casual air and marched back to the oven. He’d forgotten there was another batch of cookies. She pulled it from the oven, placed the second tray beside the first, and began poking at them with a spatula as if nothing inappropriate had passed between them. The radio changed again, this time to Oasis singing “Wonderwall.”
 

Aimee’s eyes were on the cookies. “What do you want to do today, Ebon?”
 

He looked at his lap, wondering if Aimee’s last two statements were related.
 

She said, “I thought we could put up the crown molding in the studio.”
 

Ebon’s brain battled his erection for blood. “Doesn’t the studio already have crown molding?”
 

“The
recording
studio,” she said, gesturing toward the back of the house.
 

“Oh.”
 

“I thought we could put crown molding in there.”
 

Something popped into Ebon’s head, and, still afraid to stand and finding his attention back on the boat key, he reached for something relevant to say. “Do you really want crown molding in a recording studio? I’d think you’d want egg carton padding.”

“Below the egg cartons. Aren’t you thinking of resale at all, Ebon?”
 

“Sorry.”
 

“Don’t be sorry.” Aimee turned her head and nodded her chin toward the coffee table. “In fact, maybe you want to take your boat out before we get started.”
 

Ebon looked at the key, then back at Aimee. She was no longer bent over and was moving the sheet of cookies off to the side, to sit atop hot pads on the countertop. She opened the oven and removed a new sheet, which she placed on the cold cooktop and began tending.
 

“Maybe?” said Ebon, surprised she’d made the suggestion. He was still watching her lips in profile. They were very red. Despite knowing how inappropriate it was, he kept imagining them places, leaving lipstick rings.
 

“Sure.”
 

“You don’t mind?”
 

Aimee moved the sheet of cookies to the side and removed another from the oven. “Not at all. Why would I?”

“I thought you didn’t like the idea that I’d bought a boat.”
 

Aimee laughed. “What am I, your dead wife?”
 

Ebon looked at Aimee for a long moment, then back at the key. With a feeling that he should act before time ran out, he reached out and grabbed it, shoving the key deep into his pocket.

Aimee turned away from the stove.
 

“Funny thing about that boat. About any boat. Do you know how many island artists paint paintings of boats? Go ahead. Guess.”
 

It wasn’t the kind of question that normally begged a numeric answer.
 

“Six?”

“All of them,” she said. “When you live on an island, it’s like painting fruit. Only you paint boats. Do you know how many times I, by contrast, have painted a boat, Ebon? Not painted it literally, like walking out to a boat and applying a brush to it, but recreating a ‘boat scene’ on a canvas. How many times? Go on. Guess.”
 

“I … ”
 

“And while you’re at it — while you’re compiling this guess — add in the number of times I’ve made a sculpture of a boat, sung a song about a boat, sketched a boat, or written a story about a boat. Then multiply that by the number of boat photographs I’ve taken, other than accidentally. How many, Ebon?”
 

Ebon felt like he was being grilled by a high-pressure lawyer all of a sudden. “Zero?”
 

“Goddamn right, zero,” she said, pointing at him with her spatula as if this had been a point of contention. “I don’t know why everyone paints boats. Or fruit. And do you know how many famous artists have come from Aaron?”
 

“Zero?”
 

“Because they only paint boats. I see the connection. They don’t, I guess. But think about it. How inspiring is a painting of a boat? How moving is a painting of a boat? Can you think of any reason that anyone, ever, would hang a painting of a boat in a museum?”
 

Ebon was pretty sure he’d seen paintings of boats in museums, but decided not to bring it up. Maybe there was a line between a painting of a boat and a painting that happens to contain a boat. He’d never been an artist and didn’t understand such matters.
 

“No reason at all,” Aimee said, now moving away from the oven and setting an egg timer on the counter — for what, Ebon couldn’t imagine, though the oven was still on. “Because painting boats is like art masturbation.”
 

Ebon didn’t want to ask what that meant. He looked at the door. Then he turned (while she wasn’t looking; he got the idea that he’d be yelled at if he looked away during this vital boat-painting discussion) and peered out at the bay. The wind through the trees was still slight; the waves on the water were still gentle and absent of whitecaps even at his vision’s limit. The ocean side would be choppier, but it was usually simple math: double the chop on the bay side to approximate the chop to the east. Perfect conditions, right now, to head out and give Aaron’s water the finger. Perfect conditions for testing the box it seemed determined to keep him inside.
 

“They need to do something to feel like artists.” Aimee made her way to the kitchen’s far side, where they’d built a breakfast nook that was, as always, packed with more of Aimee’s bouquets from the flower shop. “But do they take a risk and show their souls? No. It’s like these flowers. You can play it safe, but a good florist knows that it’s all about putting the red ones next to the yellow ones.”
 

Ebon considered protesting that the room’s roses were all red, but he hadn’t realized that so many of the other bouquets around the room, now that he looked, were a carnival of colors. Aimee began to fuss at each she came to, tall heels clacking beneath her. Ebon stood, but then she glanced over, and he arrested his movement toward the door, toward the outside, toward the bay and his boat.
 

“Or sometimes, island artists realize they’re one-trick, boat-painting ponies, so they try to paint something else. But their ‘original’ work screams of amateur originality. Like they’re trying too hard. Again, like the flowers. Red roses are the best flowers. Face it. So why doesn’t everyone only buy roses?”

Ebon took two steps toward the door.
 

“Because they’re trying too hard. So they buy daisies, lilies … I don’t know, buttercups or something. Might as well stick to painting boats. And do you know what else? Ebon, are you even listening to me?”
 

Ebon’s hand was outstretched, fingers brushing the doorknob leading out onto the side porch.
 

“Of course.”
 

“I think we should talk about our arrangement,” she said.
 

Ebon looked through the window. A brief gust made tree limbs shake, then stand still. He thought the sky had darkened. The key in his pocket felt pressing, as if it wanted him to hurry.
 

“Our arrangement?” It sounded like something a girlfriend would say when she wanted to talk about “us.”

“Do you need any money? Because you haven’t worked in a while.”
 

“I think I’m okay.”
 

“You’d have to check your bank balance,” she said, “but I’m not talking about your long-term savings. How much can be in your day-to-day account?” She put a finger to her chin as if calculating. “There was, what, a year’s expenses in there when you came, and you spend just under three grand a month, I’d say, but you did buy that boat, and you have residual income coming in to the tune of … ”
 

“I’m fine.”
 

“Because I have a lot of money. You know that.”

“Sure.”

Aimee went to her purse, which was on the kitchen table, and began rummaging. Inside, Ebon thought he could see the flash of large amounts of cash, as if she’d stuffed it after a bank heist. Outside, there was the sound of a tree branch nakedly raking the cottage’s siding as the wind picked up. Now he could see a few whitecaps on the water, and the sky was definitely darker. Had there been rain predicted for today? Ebon couldn’t remember. He also couldn’t remember what day it was, what the weather had been like yesterday, or whether he’d so much as buttoned the boat down to prevent water from sloshing into the cabin if the waves came up.
 

“I’m good, Aimee.”
 

She stopped rummaging. Ebon took the pause as a sign and reached for the doorknob again, but it wouldn’t turn. The lock was engaged. But as he wiggled it, the lock refused to budge. Aimee prattled on.
 

“You know,” she said, “your agency may already be thinking of letting you go. They kind of already did. But is there really any reason to go back? You’ve been here for three months, I think. It’s December, right? Yes, three months. So I’ve gotta ask: If you stayed here — just moved in, and stopped pretending this was temporary — would that really be so crazy? I’ve lived here all my life, and I turned out okay. That’s the door we painted shut.”
 

Ebon felt jarred but suddenly realized that the door he’d gone to, after failing with the lock on the first, was only a wall ornament. He could see the plates and screws where they’d sealed it forever, and realized that it would, if it opened, yawn over the fountain pond below.

“How do I get out of here?”
 

“Well, that’s the question I’m asking, isn’t it? Not only how, but why? You could have stayed here all those years ago, but you left.”
 

There was a third door at the glassed-in patio’s far end. Ebon moved to it and turned the knob, but it came off in his hand.
 

“I’ve been meaning to fix that.” Aimee reached into a toolbox that looked like an old-time doctor’s medical bag and handed Ebon a screwdriver as if expecting him to fix it. There were no obvious screws on the knob or on the door’s plate. He ignored Aimee’s screwdriver, set the knob on the floor at the door’s foot, and brushed by her, into the hallway.
 

“I have a theory,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?”
 

Outside, Ebon heard a whoop as the wind wound up. His heart was beginning to beat faster, too fast for the circumstances. Clacking heels followed him.
 

“The island ‘artists’ try to sell their dumb boat paintings, but really they don’t want any success, and it’s only a hobby. So they paint dumb things that nobody would want to buy, except for twenty bucks here and there for something droll to hang in their cottages. Just some fun money. And yet how long does a boat painting take? Does it take any less time than something with heart? Where do their hearts truly lie, Ebon? On the island? Or off somewhere else?”
 

There was a sliding door at the end of the hallway. It was jammed. At the other end of the hallway was the home’s rear exit — the door he and Aimee had once run through to evade Richard when he’d come home early. But before Ebon could reach it, a clutch of ceiling tiles fell from above in a cloud of dust. Scraps of lumber, inexplicably stored above, came with it. He began to climb over the pile, but it felt too desperate.
 

Aimee’s hand was on his shoulder. He turned.

“I like to paint things with an expiration date,” she told him. “Like people. Or emotions. Or the feeling of mind and memory. Things that decay. Things you have to capture in a moment because a second later they’re already something different. They’ve changed. They’ve decayed.”

Ebon pushed past her again, this time moving back into the living room/patio area, where he’d begun. He stood in the middle of the room, his skin slick and wanting to sweat.