The Art Of The Heart (6 page)

“
She told me that you pretty much fooled everyone, Two-Tone. She says you’re actually a very smart guy. That you had read almost every book in the library.” He flipped to the next page. The one of himself standing against the wall of the general store. He continued: “She thinks that you purposely failed tests to hide how smart you are so no one would bother you, and because you knew you wouldn’t be going to college anyhow. She thinks you did things intentionally to be left alone. She didn’t know why.”

He turned to the page of him in silhouette by Bullfrog Pond
. Again the heat of embarrassment seared Zac’s cheeks, burned his ears.

“
I think I know why,” he said. The tone wasn’t accusatory, or mean. It was matter-of-fact, the words said in a quiet voice.

He felt trapped in that terrible space inside his head, caught between wanting to scream and sob.

“Don’t worry. I’m not telling anyone. That’s your business,” Rory went on in the same soothing tone. “You’re not like all us ordinary folks anyhow. I can see that right here in these pages. You’ve got a talent that makes you different; will make you important one day. You’ve got a ticket out of Sweetwater.”

He couldn
’t believe what he was hearing. Relief poured through him washing him free of dread’s dirty stains. It departed him through a purifying sigh. But he still couldn’t look into the face next to him. Rory had to know how he felt about him. It’s one thing to tell someone they are your world, but for them to discover it so clearly in the secret things you’ve drawn is quite different.

“
You remember things, details, and can draw them like this. That’s pretty wild, Two-Tone,” he said, turning to the next pages showing him in the theater with his girlfriend of that moment. “I bet that means you’re some kind of genius. I don’t know anyone else who can do what you’ve done here. I’ve never even heard of it. That makes you pretty special. You know that?”

Zac didn
’t know how to respond to a compliment. He didn’t recall anyone having ever given him one. He shrugged.

Rory
’s eyes scanned the entire scene drawn on the next page. It was the square dance. And even though Rory himself was clearly the center of the rendering, no one had escaped Zac’s eye for detail. Down to the string-ties the men wore, the berets on some of the women’s heads, a cat crouching in a doorway. Somehow he’d taken it in and remembered it all. Rory shook his head in apparent amazement at this extraordinary ability.

“
One day you’ll be famous, and they’ll come back to see these sketches and then I will be famous too…because of you.” His head cocked in Zac’s direction. Zac could feel his eyes on him. Without warning, the twenty-one-year old former farm boy, now a young man, put his arm around him, hugging him. Everything inside him melted into a glow like summer sunshine. From the radiance inside him, a smile bloomed. Even after the arm left Zac, its warmth remained.

“
You have dimples,” Rory said, surprised. “I didn’t know that. I’ve never seen you smile before.”

Blushing, he hid beneath the rust colored drape again.

Rory had already turned his attention back to the sketchbook. The storyboard of Eros was in front of him. He drew his legs up under the book and crossed them into a bow. One of his beautiful feet grazed the leg of Zac’s pajamas. He couldn’t help but study it; the solid ankle, the smooth curves, the mound of heel. Diaphanous wings would bring those lovely feet to earth for a gentle landing.

“
So your superhero, by day, is an ordinary farm boy named Rick who was adopted.” Rory was making his way through the drawn story. “His parents have no idea that he is really a supernatural being named Eros. His mission is to bring love to humanity and he does that with his magic arrows.” He glanced at Zac. “Like the Cupid character only older?”

Zac
nodded.

“
As Eros, he becomes invisible so no one can see what he’s doing? Like when he shoots them with the arrow? And he does it so that the very next person they look at; that’s who they fall in love with?”

He pointed to the sketch showing the barest outline of the shimmering figure of the hero with his bow drawn, aimed at a couple seated on a park bench.

“Is that where the Valentine with the arrow through it comes from? You know like the ones everyone carves on trees with their initials in them?” he asked.

Again, Zac nodded. Rory was quickly catching on to the story. Zac turned on the bed so he could also see the sketchbook as the older boy continued reading.

“The problem with Eros is that he has brought love to many people, but he’s never felt it himself. He’s been alive for centuries and never been in love…and he wants to know what it feels like.” He turned the page. This was where Zac chose to insert the real life scenes of Rory with his series of female conquests; from the mayor’s widow to the girl from Clarksville in the movie theater. “But as hard as he may try to find it, he still isn’t able to feel it. He goes through the motions, but none of it is real inside him.”

Zac was nervous again. The next few scenes were the final additions he had added that very night, just a few moments before Rory had knocked on his door.

Thunder boomed outside, shaking the house. It was so deep and resonant he could feel it deep inside himself. Looking down, he saw that in his anxiety, he’d balled his fists tightly until his knuckles were white. The last few frames of his drawn story would lay his soul bare to his idol of so many years.

“
Then one night Eros is sent on a special mission to a lonely eighteen year old boy’s house. The boy has been alone all his life because he’s so shy.”

The picture clearly depicted Zac
’s bedroom. Every nuance of it had been intricately drawn down to the print of the curtains, the shoes tucked underneath the bed, a Cardinals ball cap hung over a closet doorknob. The boy was seated in bed, pencil poised above his sketchbook with a lantern on his nightstand.

“
Eros will shoot the boy with an arrow so that he can feel love…”

The next frame show
ed the boy seated up in bed looking surprised. The invisible Eros has revealed himself to the boy.

“
But he is the first person who can actually see the character, which surprises him and the arrow falls from his bow to a chair behind him...” Rory's voice had a hypnotic effect on Zac.

“
The boy asks the superhero, ‘Who are you?’ Causing the startled Eros to fall back upon his own arrow…”

Eros looks upon the shy boy…

“And he falls in love with him…” Rory whispered. Goosebumps made a trail over Zac's arms.

Rory seemed transfixed by the page in front of him.
“I tried to fall sleep tonight, but I couldn’t,” he continued in a low voice. “I can’t explain it, but ever since I walked into the house yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about last Thanksgiving when I first saw the pictures you’d drawn. I was lying there in bed and when I’d close my eyes, that’s all I could see. And then I knew I had to come in here...” He turned his face toward Zac again. “I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was being pulled in here.”

Zac slowly raised his head to look at Rory. His light blue eyes seemed far away, searching through the thoughts that were running like strange, though not unwelcome, spirits through his mind
. “I’ve never had anyone look at me the way you do, Two-Tone. I look at these pictures of me and I’m amazed. It’s like you see some kind of magic in me. Something no one else sees and that I don’t see in the mirror. Something I don’t feel about myself.” His voice had more emotion than Zac had ever heard. “I’m just a poor, dumb farm boy who rides tractors, drinks beer and chases girls when he’s bored. But here,” he touched the sketchbook. “Here you’ve made me someone great and beautiful. Your eyes see me like no one else ever has. You’ve made me appear so much more special than I am or ever imagined I could be.”

He flipped a page backward to a frame of Eros floating downward through the sky toward the
Cloverfield farm house. It had been composed so artistically it looked like a museum piece removed from its frame. Rory’s finger traced the outline of the figure of himself.

“
I didn’t believe in magic before, but I do now. Because it’s inside you, Two-Tone...Zac. Real magic is in you, and it reveals itself here...like this. In these drawings where you can change people, change the whole world; see things that no one else can see. I don’t think anyone else could ever have the ability to make someone feel about themselves the way you have made me feel right now. I don’t believe I even have the words in me to tell you. This is not something I will ever, ever forget.” He closed the book. “You make me wish I could be something like this, even if for only a few moments of my life.”

Without realizing it, Zac had been looking straight into Rory
’s face while he spoke, unhidden by his hair. In the lantern light, combined with his subdued disposition, the young man appeared more angelic than ever. His face was softened by humility and respect. His eyes were wet with emotion stirred by the awe he was experiencing.

“
I didn’t realize how carelessly we use the word love.” His finger smudged the tears from his eyes to dry on his cheeks. “You feel…
I
feel this need to repay someone for such an honor as this.”

Zac
’s heart made him want to reach out and touch Rory’s cheek where the tear had disappeared, but the fear in his head held him in its petrified grip. Rory seemed to sense this. He reached up and with the gentlest of gestures, pushed the bangs from Zac’s face and tucked the hair behind his ear. His mismatched eyes were his most striking feature and Rory seemed riveted by them. His ivory complexion still had the faintest trace of freckles, and his whiskers were too light to be seen, which made him look young. A blush had blossomed in his cheeks and spread down his slender neck. But he didn’t look down or away. He maintained eye contact with another person for the first time in his life.

“
I don’t know why you hide behind your hair,” he said. “You have a handsome face. And your eyes…” he looked deeper into them. “Your eyes look like jewels.”

All Zac could focus on was the soft lips moving in front of him.

“You’ve never been with anyone, have you?”

The heat in his cheeks spread through his whole face and sent his head bowing downward again.

Rory lifted it back up by the chin with his fingertips. “Being a virgin is nothing to be ashamed of Two— Zac. Your first time should be special. It should be something for you to always remember with a smile.” It was Rory’s turn to look down. His hands lay palm up in his lap and he appeared to be studying the lines crisscrossing them like a roadmap. “I’ve never had that myself. I’ve never felt like what I had done with a girl was something important to either of us. I guess maybe I need to feel that myself after all this time.” He looked back down at the closed sketchbook. “You need more of an ending to your story, don’t you?”

He reached to the back of his head and freed his hair from the rubber band that fastened it into a ponytail. It fell loose to his shoulders as he stood. Stepping to the nightstand, he laid the elastic band next to the lantern and then extinguished the light. It took a moment for Zac
’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, he could see his room in its different layers of shadows. Rory was standing near the door, a tall but indistinct form. Zac was confused. Was Rory playing some sort of game? He could hear him breathing from across the room.

“
Only the boy in the story could see Eros as he appeared in the room, right?” And with that he stepped into a thin strip of illumination that had angled its way onto the floor through the narrow slats of the window shutter. It painted his skin in lighter hues of blue than those within the dark shadows. Zac could see that he had shed his clothes. Rory was standing naked before him. His astonished gasp was involuntary. His heart galloped against his breastbone, making it difficult to recapture his breath. The elegance of Rory’s body in its natural state confounded his senses. The impetuousness of the action had blindsided him.

“
In his surprise, he’s fallen on one of his own arrows. And now he’s looked upon the person who was supposed to be his target, but he’s fallen under the spell himself.” The soft tread of bare feet brought him closer to Zac, now seated on the edge of the bed. He knelt in front of him. A floorboard creaked beneath his knees. The breath that was on Zac’s face was moist like evaporating morning dew.

“
Close your eyes,” his whisper urged. Zac did as instructed, feeling the familiar tremor take hold of him. He didn’t know what to expect. But he couldn’t wait to find out what it would be.

Rain outside the window conducted a rhythmic symphony as lips closed upon one of his eyelids and kissed it.
“These are for your dreams,” he said delicately pressing his mouth to each eye. The sigh coursed through Zac’s entire body before it left his mouth. He felt lightheaded, almost faint.

“
This is to remember when you’re awake,” he cradled Zac’s head between his palms. He could feel the small calluses on those hands from years of chores on the farm. Rory’s lips met his. They were warm and firm. Teeth pulled Zac’s apart so a tongue could find its way inside his mouth. It made a soft spiral around the tip of his own. He disintegrated, the feelings overwhelming him.