penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (22 page)

Why was I having dinner with Wynn? I should be lying in my bed zombified. Several times over the last couple years, I have slipped into a catatonic state unable to breathe. I tried to stop breathing a couple times, but my body rejected the plea. I wanted the pain to end. My breaths were undeserved.

Maggie helped me during the last anniversary. She didn’t say a word, but went through her morning routine before coming to my aid. She came into my room with her cup of coffee and sat on my bed next to me. She lifted my head, placing it in her lap, and ran her fingers through my hair as I cried. I spent the whole day curled into myself and the brief words she said were
just breathe.
She drank coffee and read her book. She refilled on occasion or grabbed something to eat, but never dismissed me. She let my pain and heartache become a normal fact of life. She didn't make it more than it was and she didn't make it less. She accepted it and I needed the silence of her acceptance.
Words cannot make it better.

I took deeper breaths while I clung to Wynn and memories flooded me.
Just breathe
. I focused on my breaths and continued to force them into my lungs. Something that is a biological response without thought now required my focused determination to take place.
Just breathe
. I tried to match my breaths to Wynn’s that I held within my arms. I couldn’t have a panic attack on a motorcycle. Deep breaths, in and out—just breathe. I wished I could see and hold his breaths.

“We’re almost there
,” he reassured me, sensing the odd rhythm of my breathing.

A few blocks later we were pulling into an alley between two old apartment buildings that looked as if they were warehouses at one time. He parked and we both climbed off the bike.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I handed him the helmet. He stepped closer to me and looked at me with understanding eyes. We stood inches away from chest to chest and I thought he was going to reach out and touch me. This was it. This was the moment where he begins to show that he was another number. He couldn’t be a friend to me. We couldn’t even be acquaintances once he became a number.
But I never allowed my numbers to kiss me and I needed that from him.

I waited for him to lean in for the kiss and the anticipation was beating out of my chest, but instead he smiled and nodded his head before taking the helmet. He turned to pull a ladder attached to a fire escape. With his back turned to me, he gave his attention to slowing the drop of the ladder to stop it from creating a loud clang on the ground. I found myself watching the muscles in his forearms as his sweatshirt rose to his movements and my thoughts drifted to the
kiss I was desperate to take from him. I wanted to be surrounded by the life he might awaken in me.

“I prefe
r this way over the elevator,” he said matter of fact, breaking me from my thoughts. He put his hand toward me to allow me to go first.

I climbed the ladder and pulled myself up onto the balcony outside the window he said was his. I watched as he opened the window as one opens their front door. It was interesting and I had to wonder why he didn’t use the actual door. He climbed in first, and turned around to help me. He looked nervous to have me in his home and I didn’t want to add to it by being a bitch so I succumbed to his chivalry.

He took off his sweatshirt and emptied his bag in what appeared to be a ritual. He laid his keys in a dish next to the window and removed a camera from his bag and placed it in a drawer of his computer desk.

I laughed to myself as I thought of my own room. Clothes are ripped off me and dropped to the floor and are still there days later. “I swear half my life is spent trying to find my keys. I should start doing as you
.” I smiled, pointing toward the window and his belongings.

He gifted me with his demure smile and ran his hand through his hair, before scratching the scruff under his chin. “I used to be that way too. Do you want a beer or something?”
he asked as he walked toward his fridge. I smiled as his ass bent toward me and he looked in the fridge. He put his hand in his back pocket as he was studying the contents, and I let myself ease away from the memories today held if for this brief time.

“Do you have any wine?” I asked. The tension in his shoulders returned full force when I asked that and
I wondered why. He didn’t respond right away and kept looking in the fridge as if he were searching for treasure amongst his food.

“No I’m not much of a wine drinker. I h
ave beer and whiskey, though,” he replied with his back still turned to me.

“Okay, do you have coffee?” I set my jacket and purse on a stool. “I will take that with a shot of whiskey.”

“That I can do.” He smiled, but the tension was still present in his shoulders. I watched as he moved with expertise through the kitchen. He wasn’t a domineering man, but his presence demanded attention.

His home was without rooms or walls except the basic four outer walls. The bathroom had a simple credenza enclosing it and the shower in the far corner of the loft had glass doors. What I assumed was his bedroom sat atop a small balcony in another corner of the room. It had no walls either but a small railing made of old piping. Next to the small spiral staircase leading to his room were several easels and canvases.

Each of the paintings filling his walls had a silhouetted figure surrounded by an eerie light. It was a constant theme and I wondered if the figures were of someone in Wynn's life. The silhouette was ominous as it stood over the viewer, encased by a halo of light. The paintings made me uncomfortable and I wondered how Wynn went through his daily life surrounded by them.

In the living room, he had black and white photos with the occasional color one. They were photos of decaying landscapes, with the occasional portrait of Blake, Petra, and who I had learned the other day was Sid.

The photo of him at the gallery was a headshot, so I hadn’t seen Sid in his entirety. One of the photos on Wynn's wall was of Sid sitting in his chair at work. He had on a sleeveless shirt that exposed his many tattoos covering his arms. Sid wore a smile that wasn’t present in the other photo of him. He was laughing and looking right at the camera, as if capturing a private joke between him and Wynn.

Many of the other photos were images of abandoned buildings. Shambles were captivating through the lens of his camera. He focused on minute details, drawing the attention of an eye that on a usual day passed by them without a second glance. He had the ability to pull beauty out of the smallest of sources and he was astounding. I glanced over at him and saw that he watched me. He wore a w
ithdrawn expression on his face, anticipating my response at seeing such a raw side of him.

As he approached me, I tried to keep my wandering eyes hidden. Without realizing his own exquisiteness he gave me a smile that hit me in the chest. He carried himself with a humble strength that came from knowing who he was to his core. There was not a facade with Wynn. He was welcoming me into his home to meet this part of him and I felt special. His life reminded me of the Böhme.
He kept his life a secret much like they did their club.

He lifted a coffee mug toward me and I met his hazel eyes and he smiled at me as he handed me a shot. He still hadn’t spoken a word since I asked for coffee, but his eyes continued to say so much.

I put the shot to my nose and let the scent burn my nostrils before I drank it. I never let shots affect me and I embraced the burn because it felt good as it warmed the coldness always present. I held his eyes as I threw the shot back in my throat and gave the glass back to him. The corner of his mouth lifted with the raise of his eyebrow and the humor in his eyes was obvious. He liked what he saw when he watched me.

“I have to ask, can I see your drawing of me?” I met his eyes and he looked away from me
. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I’m just curious. Your paintings hold so much in them and I love your photos.”

Wynn looked back at me and nodded before going to his studio under his bedroom. He didn’t need to search for the drawing as he knew right where it was. A canvas was lying in front of the drawing, blocking it from view, as if he wanted to hide it from others. When he lifted it out, the drawing was in a matted frame and a shy smile formed on my face. He cherished the drawing and it filled me with excitement and sadness.

“I had to frame it,” he said as he set it on an arm chair, allowing me an unobstructed view. The drawing was exquisite, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t hold the same allure as the woman in the drawing. She was content and relaxed. But the eyes of the drawing held sadness. The eyes were the most familiar part. That he chose to draw them with the most detail filled me with a raw nakedness that was more intense than the one I held the day I sat on that stool for the drawing.

“My eyes weren’t facing you. How did you do that?” I asked as I stared at the eyes in the drawing. I knew the drawing was of me, but I couldn’t believe such intensity belonged to me.

He touched the eyes in the drawing. “I didn’t have to see them. I knew. I told you I liked your eyes.” He smiled back at me as he started toward his photos. I kept looking at the drawing as yet more sadness filled me.
Who is she? Will I ever find her again?
I let my questioning thoughts rest as I turned back toward his photos on the wall. I needed to focus on something other than that drawing.

I looked through the many photos until one caught my eye more than the rest. It reminded me of my childhood. “This one is my favorite
,” I said pointing toward an image of a jungle gym at a playground that looked as though a child hadn't set foot on it in years. The twirling paint design had rusting circles that made the metal resemble chickenpox on a child. The photo made me sad because so many children had once played on it, yet weeds now covered it.

“I do too
.” He waved toward other photos and continued. “I took these in a ghost town I visit. You should come with me sometime. It’s amazing.”
You’re amazing.
“It’s surreal and calming at the same time.” Watching him speak on what he was passionate about made my chest ache. “They always make me uncomfortable and at peace with myself at once. They are contradicting emotions that together make me whole. Have you ever seen any Magritte’s? He was a surrealist painter,” he said as he set his beer on an end table and went to his bookshelf.

I hadn’t even noticed the simple shelves that wove around the entire room. They were three feet high, and made a constant bench around his entire loft. He had thousands of books in the wide expanse of his home.
This was Wynn.
I smiled at the thought. He knew right where to find the book he wanted and in what takes several minutes for me in my apartment, he did so in seconds.

“I’m not sure. I know Dali was a surrealist. His was the
 one I picked out in the gallery’s mural,” I said as I sipped my coffee and watched him squat to search through a lower shelf for the right book.

I tried to control the obvious infatuation filling me as I watched him do that simple act. He was mesmerizing in his element. The simple flexing of his muscles as his fingers moved across the spines of the books was intriguing. Watching him
be
was enough to make me explode with emotions.

“Magritte w
as as well. He’s my favorite,” he said as he turned back to me and walked toward the couch to sit. I followed and sat next to him as his artistic hands opened a book that had a man and a woman kissing on the front cover. Covering their heads were white cloths that did not hinder their kiss.

The image made me uncomfortable as Wynn described, but I didn’t think it was because of the cloths over their faces. I was intruding on an intimate moment belonging to them. Though it was a painting, the emotion felt
unrefined as though they were two living, breathing people. The sensual bond was purer and more intimate than any act of sex.

“It’s called
The Lovers
” He said, drawing my eyes away from the image and onto him. “They thought he painted so many with them with the cloth covering their heads because of his mother’s death. But he denied that line of thinking. She committed suicide and drowned with her apron over her face,” he said it without emotion, but I could see the tension in his jaw as he tried to keep indifference as he spoke of death.

“Is it death that bothers you so much?”

Looking at the book Wynn ran his fingers over the cover, “It's not death that bothers me. It’s the death of his mother by drowning. It reminds me of my mother.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize
.” I looked toward him and let my eyes show that I meant it. I never said that word unless I mean it.

He gave a bitter laugh, “Oh don’t be sorry. She was a horrible bitch
.” His eyes went dark for a moment as he spoke, lost in memories that haunted him.

“We each have ghosts, don’t we?” I took the book from him and began to thumb through the pages. “Which is your favorite, Wynn?”

“I like this one too.” He turned to a painting of a pipe. “This is not a pipe,” he said, translating the French below the pipe and laughed.

“Funny, that is a good one,
” I said as I took the book from him. “That was in the mural?”

“Yes, Sid did that one. It's one of my favorites of Magritte’s. I appreciate the depth of its simplicity. It’s a pipe because that is what we know it as. It reminds me of
1984
and doublespeak.” He turned toward me with an excited tone. “Have you ever thought of how dystopian novels can compare to surrealism? Both can make the viewer or reader uncomfortable by making them look at the world in a new way. They instill a belief that something better is possible. Life can't be that shitty and dark forever. Those conflicting emotions aren't attached to a painting of flowers, you know?”