Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (6 page)

BOOK: Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins
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“Uh, yeah...” he
admitted, grinning.  “He said it.  Though I’d like to think when my
muse wants my artwork to be female, the sculpture actually
looks
female.” 

Ava giggled
happily, picking up another fry as they continued talking.  She told him
what it was like to paint.  How her father had gotten her involved in
artwork to help deal with her anger.  Her expression darkened, her gaze
drifting to the black windows facing the highway.  Cole wanted to ask her
about it, but he didn’t.  He knew about that side of himself, and he
wasn’t ready to push her too much on that subject.  He was amazed at how
much had passed in the last twenty-four hours. He felt that sense, again, that
he
knew her already

An hour later,
her plate was empty, as was his coffee mug.  They both had class the next morning,
both needed sleep, but neither wanted to break the moment. Ava sighed, sat
back, sighing contentedly.

“I should take
you back...” she said, but didn’t move to go.

Cole nodded,
then leaned forward, his hand catching hers across the table, holding it
still.  Her eyes flared wide, but she didn’t pull away.

“I want to see
you again,” he said quietly, his voice intent and serious.  He rubbed his
thumb against the back of her knuckles. His eyes, pale grey surrounded by
darkness, focused on hers, watching and waiting.  This time, there was no
flicker of worry in her expression.  Slowly Ava smiled.

“Me too.”

 

 

 

Chapter 6:  Midterms

The next two
weeks were a blur. 

The student show
would be taking place a little over a month and a half, but the projects had to
be completed early in order to give the curators time to hang the show over
Christmas.  Even the art foundations course was getting heavy. Wilkins’
particular focus was the dissection of Clement Greenburg's writings in
preparation for launching into modernism.  He had assigned a précis for
each of the man’s long-winded articles.

Ava hated it.

The first Monday
after the diner incident – (she had been labelling everything as “incidents”
with Cole Thomas ) – he sat front and center in Wilkins’ class, one spot off
from her usual seat.  She had paused at the end of the row, unsure for a
second, scowling darkly.  She hadn’t liked the
assumption
Cole
had made
by sitting next to her.  It had felt like everyone else in
the room was watching for her next move. 

The feeling
she’d had before with him began rioting through her body.  The part
telling her to
run and keep going
. Before she had been able to make a
decision, Wilkins had yelled at her to sit down and stop holding up his
class.  Ava had stumbled to the middle, leaving one spot between her and
Cole, angrily dumping her bag into the empty seat.  The projector had
shone a band of light between them. 

Cole had glanced
at Ava’s backpack and frowned wordlessly.  Professor Wilkins had started
droning about Pre-Modernism and the French Revolution, and Cole had written
notes in his tiny, terse script, Ava tight-lipped in frustration.  ‘
Too
much, too fast,’
her mind had prompted.  Three hours later, she’d
walked out beside him, grumbling about David’s role as a propaganda master of
the French Revolution.  He’d chatted with her, intense and focused, and it
had almost seemed like before…
but not quite. 
He’d waved quickly,
face cool, and had walked away from
her
that time, leaving her feeling
worried.  Then annoyed with him… and then furious with herself for even
caring.

The next day he
had been in the same middle seat, and this time she’d sat down beside him,
placing her bag on the floor and kicking her feet up on the chair in front of
them. 

“Wilkins started
the water torture yet?” she’d grumbled as the first slide flicked on. 
Cole had smirked, but he hadn’t looked up from his notes. 

That day had
been the start of a new pattern for the two of them.

There were no
free weeknights those two weeks at all.  Cole was sequestered in his
studio until almost midnight, pounding his frustrations onto the stone. 
Ava was downtown in her studio painting in ever-widening swirls, her body
aching and tired, as she tried to translate her repeating dream (coming almost
every night now) into a two dimensional image.  It frustrated her… the
limits of the canvas, even though she had stretched it herself, as large as she
could make it and still get it down the stairs of the studio.  Ava wanted
to paint larger
… missed it…
and she found herself aching to be out in
the darkness, painting the way she used to.  Illegal or not.  She
woke sometimes in the night wondering if she should go and do it again. 
Other times she woke, listening to the rain and remembering the beach she’d stood
on as a child, wondering if Cole was awake too. 

On Friday, Ava
skipped class like she always did.

She painted all
day in the studio and when she came home, itching to check the answering
machine (though she wouldn’t even admit that to herself), she discovered a note
taped to the door.  It was a new reading list from Wilkins that someone
had brought by.  “
More fucking Greenburg!”
  Ava swore as she
stomped inside, knowing she’d be spending the weekend in the library making
notes.  Reaching the living room, she threw herself down onto the
couch.  She flipped the page over and then froze, heart pounding. 

There, in Cole
Thomas’s tidy handwriting, was a note:

Ava: 
Leaving to go to my parents’ house this weekend. 

Sorry I missed
you in class today.  - Cole

The message left
her even more frustrated than before, so she poured herself into the
readings.  The convoluted descriptions and modernistic lingo left her
irritated and angry.  She needed to vent, but all she was doing was
reading and regurgitating.  No time for actual thought.  ‘
Fucking
précis!’
her mind screamed again.

She spent all of
Saturday in the library fighting with the assignment, then met up with Marcus
and Suzanne and a few other friends from the university for drinks later that
night.  Chim offered to proof her précis – he was about as good at
double-talking his way through art history as stirring up controversy – so Ava
promised to give him a copy the following day, and Saturday ended with happy
laughter. 

Sunday, Ava
painted again. 

She hadn’t had
the dream in two days, so she left the canvas to sit and dry, and moved to
another sitting in her studio. It was one which captured her darker
moods.  This particular painting was a swirl of purple and blue smudges
darkening to black in the middle. Today she added details, realizing she had
been painting clouds rolling in off the water all along. 
‘A storm on
the ocean,
’ her mind whispered apprehensively.  She frowned seeing it.
The image worried her.

That afternoon,
Raya Simpson showed up with a photocopied information package for Ava to
complete.  The agent stood for a long while in Chim’s studio space, her
shantung silk suit and high heels looking odd alongside the drop cloths and
clutter.  She asked Marcus to pull out his recent works and lay them along
the wall, taking pictures with a digital camera and giving him a card
afterwards. 

Then she did the
same for Ava. 

Raya stopped
speaking when Ava reached the swirling clouds.  The room was quiet as Ava
pulled out the remaining canvases, ending with the last, unfinished piece for
the student show.  Raya looked at them fiercely.

“I need to show
these to Kip,” Raya said abruptly, her ringed finger tapping the papers she was
holding.  “But he’s in Lisbon.”

“What?”

Simpson looked
up, face businesslike again.  She gave Ava a once up and down, measuring
something.

“I want to send
Kip over to see your
real
artwork when he gets back,” she said, stepping
forward and dropping her voice.  “I’ve got an idea for a collaboration for
you two.”

“What do you
mean?”  Ava asked, feeling a little unsettled.  The words
‘real
artwork’
left her bristling.

Raya smiled
benignly, pushing the heavy information package into her hands.

“The summer
exhibition in the public space and the filming is just
one of the things
I want you to consider, but I have other projects on the go, too.  I’m
going to give your friend Marcus a call in the Summer. Seeing these,” she said,
“I have an idea for you and Chambers.” 

She tipped her
auburn head and Ava fought the urge to fidget.   Raya Simpson exuded
a powerful force of authority in the art world, and Ava was wary of playing her
cards wrong.

“I’ll leave it
to Kip to explain it to you, alright?” Raya said.  “You paint here most
evenings?”

Ava nodded
mutely and took Simpson's offered card, and then her hand, sealing the deal.

“Good,” Simpson
said curtly, pulling on oversized sunglasses.  “I’ll send him over when he
gets back.”

That night, Ava
could hardly sleep.  She called her father in Australia to relay her
excitement, needing desperately to share it with someone.  Cole – her
first choice – was still not back in town. 

She knew because
she’d called, but had hung up on his machine.

  : : : : :
: : : : :

Monday she
showed up to class in a good mood, walking to their spot in the centre
(absently wondering to herself when she’d stopping thinking of it as ‘
her
spot’
and had switched to
‘theirs’
), and then flopping down next to
him.  Cole was reading when she approached, glancing up as she sat. 
He looked tired, she noted, dark smudges under his eyes and a bluish shadow of
stubble on his chin.  Ava thought he looked sexy this way – dark and
somehow more dangerous than his usual clean-cut looks – and she caught herself
grinning at him.

“How was the
weekend with the family?” she asked, ignoring Wilkins as he turned off the
lights and started the projector.

Cole sighed
heavily, running a hand across the back of his neck, leaving his dark hair
sticking up at odd angles.

“Same as
always,” he muttered, his tiredness telling more than his three words. 
Ava winked at him, gesturing to the heavy book.

“Clem here
didn’t leave you in the best mood?”

Cole laughed
wearily, and then the prof began droning on about the Impressionists.  The
class went by in flashes of colour and light, punctuated by Wilkins' voice and
the scratchy sound of students’ pens.   Ava was distracted, her body
aching with the closeness of Cole, wanting to reach out and touch him though
she didn’t dare.  Instead, she crossed her arms and settled in for the
tedious lecture.

Tuesday, the
cold weather lifted in a brief late-Autumn warm spell.  By Thursday,
students lounged on the lawns around the campus, soaking up the rays.  Ava
itched to be out of the classroom, but Cole had reminded her that they had a
midterm exam in Wilkins’ class,  so she made a rare Friday
appearance.  Afterwards, Ava wandered out next to Cole, waiting for the
inevitable moment he would turn away and she’d go the other direction to start
their separate weekends.

This time,
however, he stepped closer.

“So I’ve got the
front of the sculpture roughed out, but not the back,” Cole began, his face
serious.  He was staring at Ava’s right shoulder as he spoke, as if
measuring and tracing it.  There was nothing remotely sexual about the
look.  Ava raised her eyebrow.

“And...?” she
asked.

His gaze jumped
to her eyes and she felt the snap between them.  Ava caught the way that
his eyes darkened and his lips parted for a second.  ‘
Oh,’
she
thought, holding back a smile,
‘there it is again...’
 

A moment later,
his attention was on her arm again, following the shape to her elbow. 
Analyzing

The spark narrowed down to sharpened focus.

“I need to start
working from a model now,” he said.  “Probably should've earlier… and I
could ask someone else, but I want it to be you.  I want this sculpture
to
be
you
…”

Ava shifted,
wariness pushing at her senses.  She really liked Cole… , but the
fierceness of his reactions worried her.

“Uh, I’m not
sure, Cole,” Ava said, watching the other people on the lawn.  “I mean,
I’m trying to get my own piece done too.  Wasn’t the agreement that you
pose first?” 

She turned back
to him, grinning, hoping to make a joke about it.  Cole wasn’t
laughing.  Instead, he stared down at her intently.

“Look Ava, I’m
just really having a hell of the time with the arms.”  He grimaced, eyes
dropping to the ground.  “It’s okay, though,” he added with a sigh, “I
know you’re busy, but I really need to figure this bit out.  I’ve pushed
the shape back further than it should be – there’s no way to ‘fix’ mistakes in
stone – and now I’m just…”

He scrubbed a
hand across his face in frustration, glancing at the other students laughing
around them.

BOOK: Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins
12.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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