Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (10 page)

She and Suzanne
were washing up their brushes, chatting about scholarship applications, when
Chim came bounding up the stairs, Cole Thomas next to him as if conjured from
her thoughts.

“Hey, look who I
found lurking downstairs!” Marcus said excitedly. Cole was red-faced and
wide-eyed.  He caught Ava’s gaze, horrified.

“
You
,
Marcus Baldwin, are the only one who ‘lurks’ in the alley,” Suzanne answered
smugly.  She shook her head.  “Unless, of course, Cole’s taken up
smoking pot.”

“Well,” Chim
said thoughtfully, “I was offering, but he wouldn’t take me up on it.  No
accounting for taste.”

Ava
giggled.  (If Cole’s face was any sign, he was about to die of
embarrassment.)  She pushed between Chim and Cole, dislodging her friend’s
arm.  Marcus’ clothing stank of cannabis.

“C’mon,” she
said to Cole.  “Want to see my studio?”

She linked her
arm through his and they retreated to the sound of Chim and Suzanne’s
laughter. 

“Supper in
fifteen minutes, children,” Chim called out as they disappeared around the
corner.

: : : : : : : :
: :

Cole stood
before the wet canvas, his eyes drawn to the gold and green splotches next to
the ripple of blue.  There was something he recognized about the colours –
though he couldn’t really tell what it was right now.  It left him feeling
like he’d had a dream that he couldn’t quite remember.  Grief and regret
just barely pushing at the edge of his consciousness like the hinted throb of a
migraine, minutes before it occurred. 

It scared him
.

“These are
really good,” he said absently, turning to absorb the others. 

They were still
laid out from when Chambers and Simpson had been there and Cole wandered from
one to the other, admiring each.

“Better than
good,” he said quietly, “they’re amazing, Ava.  Unbelievably
beautiful.  God, I wish I could paint like this...”

Ava smiled,
stepping beside him, her shoulder against his arm.

“Yeah, well, I
wish I could sculpt,” she muttered. 

He grinned down
at her.

“The carving’s
going really well now…”   He leaned in, squeezing her arm, then moved
back just as quickly.  “Thank you for yesterday.  You really helped.”

She smiled,
warming under the praise, and he stepped to the next canvas, appraising it
slowly.  One of them was a smear of tinted colours, like water on a lens,
and Cole gestured to it.

“This one looks
like a Frankenthaler,” he said.  “I like the pigment on the raw canvas.”

Ava let out a
mirthless laugh.

“It’s that way
because I couldn’t afford any gesso.  Do
not
compare me to her,”
she sneered. 

Cole blinked,
catching her eyes in confusion.

“Why not?”

She snorted,
shaking her head as they stepped up to the next painting.

“You never heard
that she and Greenburg had a thing?  She was years and years younger than
him, Cole, and he basically
told her what to paint
.”  Cole raised
his eyebrows.  “Now that’s a fucking patron system with benefits.” 
She began to giggle.  “Don’t you know your art history?  I’m sure
Wilkins
would know that juicy tidbit.”

He started to
laugh and they made their way down to the end of the line where the last
painting – dark with crashing black waves and inky clouds – was propped up
against the easel.  With the waves now painted, the perspective on this one
had changed too.  The horizon line angled precarious sideways, leaden
waves with white-caps like teeth, looming forward over the viewer.  It
was, Ava realized, a view from in the water.

“Oh my god,”
Cole gasped, his face ashen.

“What?” 
she asked warily. 

He was breathing
hard, eyes wide and aghast.  Without warning, Cole turned, pulling her
into a tight hug.  She was startled by the reaction, her arms fluttering
like panicked birds before settling against him, holding him tight.

“Jesus, Cole.”
she said shakily.  “Are you all right?” 

He was clearly
upset.  She wished she could see his face.  He took deep, shuddering
breaths as if he had been running and there was something about the
way
he was holding her that worried her, as if he expected her to run from him.

“It’s nothing,”
Cole said after a moment.  “It’s just… it’s…
it’s me
… The painting…
it just… it just reminds me of a dream I used to have.”  He pulled back,
his eyes glittering, his fingers painfully tight on her shoulders.  “I
want you to know that I love your paintings, Ava –
I really do
...”

He pulled her
back toward him, burying his face against her neck,.  His breath was warm
against her skin, but she still shivered at his words. 

“But I do not
like that one.”

Two more weeks
passed by under a welter of projects, papers and parties.  Ava and Cole
continued to hang out in Wilkins’ class, chatting afterward, but their
weeknights were spent separately.  They’d grabbed supper more than once, a
movie on two occasions (once with Chim and Suzanne and once alone), but nothing
more serious than that.  There had been several passionate kisses as he’d
dropped her off at home and one make-out in the back of a mostly-empty movie
theatre, but it had ended when the lights came up.  Ava hadn’t asked him
back inside since that first drunken night and Cole had been holding strong on
his decision to wait out her nervousness.   He
wanted
things
to work out with her.  For now, friendship with a slow burn of sexual
tension was the extent of how they related. 

Ava, for some
reason, was fine with that.

Cole took out
his growing frustration with the impasse on his artwork.  He pounded away
at the form, the slivered stone chips releasing his pent-up dissatisfaction with
their relationship.  He
,
for one, wanted more from their
companionship, but for the time being, things were at a standstill.  Cole
spent every evening working on his sculpture, with Ava posing twice more, and
it hadn’t gone well.  Partway through the first week, he hit an unexpected
vein in the stone and an entire portion of one arm broke off below the elbow,
pushing the shape back yet again. 

That night, Ava
talked him down from abandoning the project altogether. 

“It’s just not
working,” he’d snapped, dropping his face into his hands.  “I can’t stand
it.  I’ve worked so goddamn
hard
on getting the hand right and it’s
just… gone!  You can’t
fix
that, Ava.  Don’t you
get that?!
”

He sat on the
chair, his tools scattered in anger on the cement floor at his feet. 
Leery of his mood, but wanting to help, Ava broke the pose to step up to
him.  She reached out for his shoulders, letting him rest his face against
her stomach.  He was breathing harshly – like he had the day at her studio
– and she ran her hands through his hair again and again.  Waiting out the
storm.

“Just stop
worrying about it,” she said quietly.  “Just let the stone be what it
wants
to be.   You can’t control everything, you know.”

Cole laughed
harshly before lifting his chin to look up at her.  Under the strain, his
face looked older than it really was and the thought made her sad. 

“And if the
stone wants to be a one-armed war amputee?”

Ava tried to
look serious, but she couldn't keep her face under control.  She put her
hand against his cheek, trying desperately to keep from cackling aloud.

“I won’t assume
that has anything to do with how you feel about me,” she said, stifling a
giggle.

Cole reworked
the statue again. 

Under his
relentless toil, the shape had begun to shift and change from his original
vision into something completely different.  Ava stopped posing; the face
was already done and she had her own canvas to complete. 

The finished
pieces were due to the gallery Thursday after class.

: : : : : : : :
:

Friday, Ava
lured Cole out for a night of partying with Chim and Suzanne, refusing to take
no for an answer. He was finished his sculpture now – the piece submitted to
the curators – though it wouldn’t be seen until the student exhibition. 
Ava was annoyed that she hadn’t viewed the sculpture completed, but she had
been impossibly busy these last days.  Her own painting had still been
damp in patches when she dropped it off at the university gallery. 

Tonight they
were sitting at ‘their booth’ in the Crown and Sceptre, laughing loudly and
telling stories.  Around them were the remains of five pounds of chicken
wings, several empty pitchers of beer and a crumb-lined dish from a
once-heaping portion of nachos.  Ava decided that she hadn’t felt this
good in a long time.  Cole somehow
fit
with them, the same way that
Suzanne did.  As if yet another piece of the puzzle of ‘
what this was’
had now found its place.

“So how about
you, Booker?” Chim asked, kicking her foot under the table.  “You and your
dad doing anything special this year for the holidays?”

Ava shook her
head, smiling.

“Nope,” she said
with a sigh.  “He’s still in Sydney.  The tour ends on the
twenty-eighth, so he’ll be back in time for the student show in January, but
not before.  Christmas will just be me.  Lots of painting time
without you guys to distract me.”

Cole sat up
straighter.

“Come home with
me,” he announced. Around the booth, everyone turned.

“Nah… it’s
alright,” Ava answered.  “I’ll just chill at home.  It’s fine.”

“No, really,”
Cole repeated, face earnest.  “I fucking
hate
family events. 
I’d love to have an excuse not to make small talk with my dad. 
Come
with me - PLEASE.”

Ava bit the
inside of her lip.  Chim leaned against the backrest, an eyebrow arched in
interest.  The pose said everything he hadn’t:
Told you so…’
 
(Chim had been insisting that Cole was completely smitten with her for
weeks.)  ‘
Smart-ass
,’ Ava thought in annoyance.

“So I’m a
distraction from your dysfunctional family dinner?” Ava asked with
half-concealed contempt.

Cole laughed,
embarrassed.

“I think I
pitched the idea
way better
than
that
sounds.”

Ava giggled and
the banter between their group began again.  Chim told stories about Ava’s
high school antics.  How she had shaven her head on a dare three weeks
before graduation, and had had ‘monkey hair’ for the grand march at the
prom.  Ava glared at him.

“You’re an
asshole, Marcus Baldwin .… that was YOUR dare at YOUR grad party that caused
it.  It did
not
look like monkey fur.  It was badass.”

Hearing it, Cole
started to snigger, trying to smother it under his hand, but Suzanne picked up
the sound and in seconds they were all hooting with laughter, the occasional
“monkey hair” comment being thrown out again and again. 

They ordered
another round, and the stories grew worse.  Ava wanted to know the most
awful stunt Cole had ever pulled.  He rolled his eyes.

“Knew this crazy
ass girl who dragged me out in the middle of the night.  Just about got me
busted by the police for trespassing.”

“WHO?!” 
Suzanne shrieked, her eyes wide.

Cole launched
into the story of spray painting in the train yards, describing Ava’s anger at
him coming to save her.

“She’s yelling
at me to
‘fucking RUN
...” Cole said, “but I’m caught up on the goddamn
fence and can’t get over.”

Ava grinned at
him, lifting Cole’s arm and pointing at the muscles like a salesman.

“These guns, my
friends,” she said in a stage whisper, “are all for show, apparently.”

Cole chuckled
and kept going.

“Ava leaves me
on the other side.  Climbs over and gets to my bike before I’ve even hit
the top.  I forgot to cover the spikes.  Got a nasty cut on my ass
for my trouble.”

“My hero,” she
said dryly, and Cole elbowed her.  As the last chuckle disappeared into
contented sighs, Ava caught sight of Marcus.  He was frowning, brows
pulled low over his eyes.

“Not to sound
like your dad, Ava...” he said, “but if you
do
get caught now, you know
there’s going to be serious consequences.”  He sighed, crossing his
arms.  “You’re not a kid anymore.”

She snorted.

“Good god, Chim,
YOU are
not
the person to be lecturing me...” she leaned forward, eyes
narrowed though she was still smiling, “I’ve seen the stash in your
studio.  It’s a fucking pharmacy up there.  Get the police in on
that
and there’ll be hell to pay.”

He laughed,
shoving her across the table so that she bumped against Cole, leaving her body
humming with the unexpected connection.