Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (15 page)

“Love you, Ava,”
he whispered, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. 

Cole didn’t
sleep after that, just laid with her in his arms while light seeped through the
curtains and dawn broke.  She was here now and she was alive. He knew that
this time, he was going to make it right.

Ava woke to the
enticing odour of fresh coffee.  She squinted at the clock; well past one
on a Sunday afternoon.  She’d slept so long and deep that she was almost
groggy, but her body felt better than it had in a long time.  Warm and sated. 
She slowly stretching under the heavy blankets, tallying the subtle aches – her
breasts and between her legs – that hinted at last night’s events. 
Outside the bedroom, she heard someone walk across the floor, and she
smiled. 

Cole was still
here. 

She ran a hand
through her tangled hair and glanced around. She knew she’d had the dream of
the snake and coins again.  Somehow she also knew that it had changed… but
what exactly
was different eluded her.  That was frustrating; the
large canvas had already been submitted to the gallery and she could no longer
add to it.  Maybe, Ava thought, a new project was exactly what she
needed. 

She grinned at
the idea.  There was nothing like an unmarked expanse of primed canvas to
put Ava in a good mood (unless, of course, it was an unmarked train bridge or
rail car).  She shook her head at that.  Chim was right.  She
was too old for that shit.  But knowing it and really
believing
it
were two different things.

Dashing into the
small bathroom, she cleaned up, forcing a comb through the mess of knots and
smoothing her hair down with a splash of water.  With slightly swollen
lips, flushed cheeks and unkempt hair, she looked like she’d had a memorable
night.  Closing her eyes, she remembered.  A blush rose up from her chest
to her cheeks. 
That part
was amazing… she just needed to deal with
the stuff
before
it.  The things that had worried her.  She’d
made a promise to herself (and to her father) that she would deal with this
rather than run away.  She intended to.

Staring at
herself in the mirror, Ava forced her expression into a calm that she didn’t
totally feel.  With a roll of her shoulders, she stepped out of the
bathroom, padding toward the kitchen.  Cole was at the table, a cup of
coffee in one hand and a book in the other. 
‘Greenburg’s essays,’
Ava realized in annoyance
.  ‘Another fucking précis is due tomorrow…’
 

She hadn’t even
started it yet. 

On the other
side of the table was a bouquet of exotic flowers in a cubed vase: hydrangeas
and orchids and bamboo protruding from a water-covered layer of smooth
stones.  She stopped in her tracks as she saw it.  Flowers like that
cost a hell of lot of money…   Cole had gone over the top on this
one.

“Whoa,” she
muttered, walking over.  “You didn’t have to do this, Cole.  It’s
way
too much.”

She glanced up,
noting a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“I didn’t,” he
bit out before his eyes dropped back to his book.

Ava reached for
the card with trembling fingers.  It had “Booker” scrawled on it in
unfamiliar handwriting.  That made her pause.  Taking a deep breath,
she slid her fingernail under the sealed envelope edge, shaking the small card
into her hand.  Ava’s body was starting to thrum with that panicked
feeling she’d been fighting since she awoke. 

Ava,

Sorry things got
a little rowdy at the gallery last night.  Didn’t mean to provoke your
friend.

Hope it won’t
affect our business dealings in the future. 

Kip

P.S.  Raya
is working on the numbers now.  She’ll have them to you as soon as she
can.

“Oh.” Ava said
tightly, holding back what she really wanted to say:  ‘
Just my fucking
luck!’

“The flowers
were outside the apartment this morning,” Cole said quietly, his eyes still on
his book.  “I saw them when I ran out to grab a few things.”

He wasn’t
looking at her, and it left her feeling slightly off-balance.  It was like
sliding across the wet deck of a boat, not sure if you were going to be able to
right yourself before you hit the edge.

She dropped the
small card on the table, then headed to the kitchen cupboard to pick up a
mug.  As she poured her coffee, adding cream and sugar, she peeked over
her shoulder to see Cole pick up the card and look at it.  He held it for
a second before setting it down carefully in the center of the table. 

The lines of his
face etched into heavier grooves.

“Raya Simpson
approached me,” Ava announced as she walked back, “to see if I wanted to do a
collaboration with Kip Chambers in the new year.”  Cole tipped his face up
and she saw the annoyance waiting under the surface. 

“Oh really...?”

Ava smiled,
though her nerves were strung taut.  She stepped closer, picking the book
out of his hands and placing it face-down.

“I haven’t said
‘yes’ or ‘no’ at this point,” she said, shrugging.  “Haven’t even seen the
numbers yet.  But I’d be stupid to refuse without at least hearing
Raya’s
offer.” 

Ava emphasized
the agent’s name.  She didn’t want this to become about Kip and Cole. The
drunken memory of the almost-fight last night at the gallery rose in her mind,
but she pushed it away in irritation.  Cole reached out, his concern
fading.  His eyes were still worried, but he was touching her arm
now.  That was a start.

“I thought you
were doing that film thing in the summer,” he said quietly.

He stroked her
forearm gently with his thumb.    It was the barest hint of a
caress, completely distracting her. 

“The public
exhibition was one thing.  This new collaboration is another… it was only
mentioned a couple days ago.  I guess I didn’t tell you yet because I
hadn’t really
seen
you yet,”  Ava said with a genuine grin. 
She leaned against the table, coffee mug in her hands. 

“You know,” she
drawled, “during the last week and a half when you basically locked yourself in
your studio and refused to come out?”

Cole laughed
sheepishly.  Setting her cup down, Ava reached out, brushing the top of
his head with her fingers.

“Hey,” she said
quietly.  “Look at me…” 

He glanced back
up,, eyebrows creased together. 

“Can we move
past this?”  Ava asked quietly.

Without warning,
he pulled her onto his lap.  His eyes were darker than their usual
silver-grey.  In the filtered sunlight they were a cloudy grey, shadowed
with anxiety. 

“After last
night,” he said quietly, “I… I wasn’t sure
what
you’d want.” His hands
tightened on her hips.  “But I hope we can move on.” He smiled. 
“I
want to,
if you do.”

Ava leaned in,
hugging him.  A heartbeat later, his arms rose, crushing her to his chest,
the sound of his breathing sharp in her ear.

“Cole, I want to
talk about what happened before you came over,” Ava said, her lips against his
ear.  “Sometime, when you feel like it… I need to know
why
you get
like that…”  She pulled back to see his face.  He watched her with a
worried expression, but she pushed on.  “If this thing between us is going
to work, then I
need
to know that.  Okay?”

His eyelids
closed, as if seeing whatever experience had created this facet of who he
was. 
The anger.
  Ava waited.  When he said nothing, she
held him closer.

“I’ve seen some
crazy shit in my life. 
Trust me on that, okay
?” Her voice
wavered.  “I was really angry for a long time.  Just couldn’t deal
with…
things
.  When you’re ready to talk,” she paused, her mother’s
face flashing in her mind.  “Then I’ll… I’ll talk too.”  Her cracked
as she said it.  She felt Cole lift his head, his lips turning toward her.

“Deal,” he
answered raggedly.

But then his
lips were against her cheek, and then against her mouth, and then there was no
more space for words between them at all.

: : : : : : : :
: :

Classes plowed
forward at a steadily-increasing pace as they reached the end of the
semester.  They’d hit the post-modernists in Wilkins’ class and Cole was
drawn into the darker imagery.  It reminded him of his dreams, especially
the repeating one that tortured him for so long after the death of Hanna. 
It had come back twice more since the fight, and as Cole’s knuckles slowly
scabbed and healed over, he wondered if it wasn’t somehow related to his own
internal demons, though that didn’t explain
Ava’s
presence in it.

He hadn’t told
her about the dream yet…  It wasn’t a coffee shop conversation and he was
worried that she would react badly.  (He was terrified of what she would
think if she knew the depth of his damage.)  So instead, he let it sit and
wait, allowing the connection between them to grow stronger by the day, hoping
that by the time
he had to tell her
, that she would love him
anyway.   The story had been there for the last decade, after all… it
wasn’t going anywhere.

This day was
like all the others.  Cole and Ava sat in the partial-darkness of the art
history amphitheatre, her feet kicked up in wilful disobedience on the chair in
front of them.  Next to her, Cole wrote in the halfways-shorthand that had
come to represent his experience of Modern Art.  His hand scrambled to
keep up with Wilkins’ tumbling words; fingers cramped and aching.  He
wrote endlessly, his mind floating – transmitting without pause or thought –
the prof’s lengthy descriptions of the paintings they studied. 

Cole’s eyes danced
between two depths of field: the scrawl of notes on the desk and the distant
projection screen.  The screen left after-images of muted colour as he
glanced at the white paper, gradually turning black with ink.  His eyes
flickered up and down… up and down… up and down… - the slide changed – up and…

Cole stopped.

His first
thought came as a smell:  the copper-penny odour of blood.  A smell
he
knew.

For a brief
moment, he flashed to an image of himself, seventeen years old, standing on a floor
stained and sticky with spilt blood.  The huge image looming in front of
the classroom was wet with it; the gore translated perfectly through projected
light.  His hand, moving seconds earlier, hovered motionless above the
page. 

Francis Bacon’s
painting:
Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef
.

The image of
blood and meat and figures - emerging from the dark canvas - was beautiful and
horrible, and Cole
could not understand it
.  The skin across his
scalp crawled and tightened as his body reacted.  There was a taste to
this type of image.  He swallowed, his mouth  suddenly dry.  It
was too much to take in.  The ‘prettiness' of other paintings seemed
unnecessary by comparison.  The ominous room, the figure of the man, the
glistening sides of meat hovering like wings above him were painted with
incredible detail and beauty, but they were raw and demanding.  They
commanded Cole’s full attention. 

His eyed roved
across the image – (Wilkins’ voice continued on, heedless of him) – to the man
in the forefront.  His face was tormented, empty sockets staring blindly
forward, anguish augmented by the juxtaposition of dripping meat.  Cole's
forehead wrinkled in concentration as he was drawn further into the
painting.  The man’s hands were clutched in pain or anger, his mouth
slightly agape.  ‘
Smiling?… Screaming?...’
Cole wondered.  The
entire painting writhed with emotion.  Lines of paint – tears or blood –
poured down his face and through the meat, dripping across the canvas.

The amphitheatre
and the shuffling of students and even Ava at his side had disappeared, Cole’s
awareness focused entirely on the small space before the screen.  He was
conscious only of the power of the image, his sensory connections to this
painting –
smell, sight, touch
– and of his breathing as he tried to
take it in, swallow it whole and understand
‘how’
. 

The power of the
artist’s intention and message was overwhelming him.  He was amazed and in
awe.  
He didn’t understand.

Without warning,
the image flashed white as Wilkins changed the slide.  The sudden
brightness interrupted Cole’s thoughts as his consciousness returned into the
present.  It was like surfacing after diving, and he was momentarily
disoriented.  For the first time in this class, Cole Thomas had written
absolutely nothing.  

Next to him, Ava
suddenly rose and sprinted from the classroom, her metal chair clattering
backward.

Cole stood up
half a second after Ava bolted, his eyes following her as she ran down the
aisle.  Up at the front, Wilkins was open-mouthed, his jowls florid with
anger.