Work of Art ~ the Collection (34 page)

“Max?” the blonde goddess says.

I look over his shoulder at her calling out to him, and then look back at Max. He grimaces. I look away again as tears stream down my face and I refuse to look him in the eye. I won’t give him that.

“Shut up, Sheila!” he roars.

“Ava, please tell me why you came,” he pleads.

“You shouldn’t tell her to shut up—
she’s
all that matters now. I’m finished here. Let go of me.” I swing my arm down, loosening his grip, and rush to my car.

My hands shake so much I can’t get the key in the ignition, and as I fumble I hear an angry howl and a crash. There’s a shattered potted plant in front of his garage door now and he screams again.

“It fucking matters, Ava!”

I finally get the key in, start the car, and quickly back out.

CRASH!
The sound of pottery hitting a wall is so dramatic and B movie that it’s jarring and I’m grateful his target is the wall and not me.

“AVA!” There’s a pause and then more pottery, soil and plants crash to the ground. “It’s
all that matters
!”

I floor the gas and tear up the driveway as one more crash and his howl echo around me.

“AVA!”

It isn’t until I’m on Pacific Coast Highway and accelerating straight ahead that I realize I’m not breathing. My lungs ache as I suck in as much air as possible. I’m sure I’m not steady enough to be driving. The sun has dipped below the horizon, causing the sky to quickly darken, but all I can think about is getting as far away from Malibu as possible.

When I’m no longer gasping, I can focus again. The damage from seeing Max with Sheila and Max seeing my reaction seems irreparable. The rage-filled side of me is sure I never want to see him again. Yet, now that everything’s final, I have to face that not seeing him again is heartbreaking.

Max has broken my heart. And perhaps through all of the events that led us here, his heart is broken as well.

This hits me full-force as I drive up the canyon. When I get to the highest point of the hill, my tears turn to sobs and I pull over on the desolate road, too devastated to drive. My car feels like a cage, and I throw open the door and jump out, wanting to feel the solid ground under my feet.

I step over to the edge of the canyon and look at the inky black sky, moonless and calm now that the winds have died down. The stillness and silence make me feel completely alone in the world, which only amplifies my agony. Despite my fury over what I left behind in Malibu, I torture myself by allowing better memories of Max to seep into my mind.

The times he took me to his favorite places are when I saw glimpses of the real Max. We seemed to grow closer with each experience, which lead to that fateful night in the print studio. I’ll never forget his passionate expression and his whispered words as his body and his heart leaned toward mine.

“I’ve really tried Ava, God only knows how hard I’ve tried. But I can’t fight it anymore . . . I don’t have it in me to deny how I feel anymore.”

I’d never felt such passion, and as my fingers skim over my lips, I relive what followed . . . the kiss that I’d waited my whole life for. I let out a deep sigh. I thought we were destined for a great love, not a showdown on an emotional battlefield.

My tears continue to fall as my gaze trails down to the canyon below. Void of light, it’s a black abyss, much like my heart in this aftermath. If only I could float down and surrender to the darkness. Surrounded by silence, perhaps I would be spared the ugly voices in my head and the ragged stutter of my broken heart.

Feeling pathetic, I sink down on a nearby rock and cry until my tears run out. I wonder if I’m capable of holding it together long enough to drive home. A rustling in the nearby brush, followed by the sorrowful cry of a small animal, snap me out of my stupor. I’m not the only creature suffering in the universe.

My grandmother used to tell me that no matter how our rough circumstances are—large or small—life moves forward and we have to figure out how to carry on. I find the strength to climb back in my car and drive home.

Two horrid and hazy days later, I’m lying in bed, staring at the wall and willing myself to get up and make coffee. The phone rings. It’s Jess, which is a surprise, considering she never gets up early on Sunday.

“Hey, Ava.” She sounds tense, and I hear another muffled voice in the background. “Listen, when was the last time you talked to or heard from Max?”

“Friday night. Why?” A bad feeling settles in my stomach.

“What was his mood like when you talked last? Was he okay?”

She’s scaring me. “Why, Jess? What’s going on?”

“Answer me, Ava,” she snaps. “Was he okay?”

“No.” I take a deep breath.

“Fucking hold on.”

“Dylan!” she yells. She’s louder than I expect, even though it sounds like she moved the phone away from her mouth.

“Please, tell me what happened,” she asks me.

“We had a fight and I left.”

“Fuck! That’s just what I was afraid of.”

She speaks to Dylan again. “They had a fight. She hasn’t heard from him either.”

“How upset was he? I really need to know.”

“
Very
upset, and I’m getting
very
upset now too because you aren’t telling me what’s going on. Is Max okay?”

“Listen, can you come out here?”

“Come out where . . . Malibu?” I’m freaked out. What the hell’s going on? My heart sinks. Max’s house is the last place I want to go right now.

“Yes.” Jess sounds frustrated. “No one’s been able to reach Max since Friday night. He didn’t show up for a lunch meeting with Dylan yesterday. When Dylan still hadn’t heard from him, he drove out to Malibu. There’s no sign of him.”

“When I got to Max’s house on Friday evening, he was with that blonde, Sheila. Maybe you should call her?” I know it’s not likely they’re together, considering his reaction to her that night, but it’s worth a shot.

“Sheila?” she snaps. “He was with that idiot? Okay, we’ll try to reach her, but could you still come out here?”

“You know, Jess, I’ve been through enough crap with Max. I’m done. I really don’t want to come out to his place when I’m trying to forget him.”

“Please? I’m scared something bad has happened. When Dylan showed up, he thought Max had been robbed. His front door was wide open, and there was broken shit like the place had been trashed. But all the stuff robbers would take like TVs and cameras were still here.

“Dylan couldn’t find him, but his car is parked outside. And the paintings . . . Ava, I’m so worried. I’ve never seen anything like this. You have to come here and see what I’m talking about.”

My heart pounds in my chest. The fear in her voice compels me to set my own reservations aside. “Okay, Jess. I’m on my way.”

Chapter Twenty-Three / Missing

When painting, an artist must take care not to trap his soul in the canvas.

~Terri Guillemets

W
hen I pull up to Max’s house, the state of his house is even worse than I imagined.

There’s broken pottery, dead plants and potting soil everywhere. Max’s garage door and walls are dented and scratched from multiple impacts. There’s considerably more damage than I remember from before I drove off Friday. In the heat of his fury that night, Max must’ve kept throwing things.

I gingerly step over the shards and enter the front garden. Even though the sun’s burning through the fog, it’s still quite cool, and I shiver as I look around.

More pages from the book have blown into the yard, decorating the garden with the wandering pages. Several are perched in the trees, captured by branches. A few are in the flowerbeds and others float on top of the koi pond like a fine layer of snow. The sight of it humiliates me and fills me with hopelessness.

One of the dining room chairs is on its side on the lawn, a fallen soldier undoubtedly surprised to be part of the melee. I breathe a sigh of relief to see it’s nowhere near the tree as the image of a noose dangling from a branch comes to mind.

Jess stands in the doorway to the house and looks battle-worn. I’ve never seen her expression so bleak and my nerves instantly fray.

“Where’s Dylan?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

“He’s in the studio. We’ll go see him in a minute. Come on.” She motions me into the house.

Broken glass litters the floor and the stench of alcohol permeates the air.

“Watch your step,” Jess warns.

There’s a scar where the glass hit the wall—probably the bottle of tequila. The sweater that’d been tossed on the floor is no longer there. White pages are scattered all over the room.

The dining room table is on its side and the remaining chairs are askew. One of the sheer white curtains has been ripped off the wall, the rod hanging at an odd angle from its uprooting. It’s as if a savage animal tore through the house.

Could Max have that much rage?

A framed picture is smashed on the floor and there’s a dent in the plaster where it collided before falling on the tiles. Jess carefully picks it up. It’s a photo of Max accepting an award amid the shattered glass.

“The Whitney Biennial. Damn, Max,” Jess whispers and narrows her eyes as she stares at the broken mess that framed one of his successes. She gingerly sets it on a nearby side table.

“I don’t even know how to process this,” I say.

Jess shakes her head. “It’s complicated. Let’s go to the studio. I want to warn you . . . Dylan’s really upset, so take anything he says with a grain of salt.”

So he’s going to blame this all on me?
I wonder.

To avoid facing the chaos inside, we weave between the palm trees along the side yard until we reach the front of the studio.

Jess grabs my arm to stop me before I go in. “I have to warn you . . . this may freak you out. But I’m here, okay?”

Am I wearing my heart on my sleeve? She’s scared for me. Am I that transparent? I take a deep breath, ready for more chaos, and slowly step inside.

At first, I’m surprised by the quiet cleanliness of the studio. Nothing’s smashed or overturned, and it’s as pristine as I remember it. But the look of accusation on Dylan’s face just before he turns away is intimidating.

What?

I look around the studio again, searching for the piece of the puzzle I’m missing. And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. Three large paintings are leaning against the wall. Are those the paintings that were supposed to be on their way to Barcelona? They’re gorgeous—all color and emotion. Or at least they
were
gorgeous until Max defaced them.

Across each canvas, a large letter has been slapped across the face in dripping black paint. It’s savage—the most brutal form of graffiti to deface something so beautiful with so little regard.

“No,” I groan, reaching for the paintings, as if I can undo the mess with a wave of my hand. I stumble forward and Jess catches me. Max has crushed me with his final message scrawled across his work. My eyes move left to right, painting to painting.

A-V-A.

One letter per painting, each one a cry in the dark, a surrender, a loss.

If there’d been any lingering doubts about Dylan’s theory that Max was obsessed with me, there aren’t anymore. Replacing them is a feeling of anguish that, if I’d understood the depths of Max’s feelings, perhaps I could’ve handled everything differently.

“I’m fucking tempted to just send them to Barcelona like this, damn it!” Dylan spits out, as he paces back and forth in front of the paintings.

“I don’t think so. You don’t want to leave him open for ridicule,” Jess says.

“What the fuck was he thinking, Jess? He knew these paintings were late.”

“Obviously, he wasn’t thinking. That’s the problem.”

“Can’t he fix them?” I ask.

“Well, we’d have to find him first, wouldn’t we?” Dylan says, exasperated.

“And so far, we have no idea where he is.” Jess’s defeated expression and the hopeless tone in her voice surprise me.

“Did you reach Sheila?” I ask Jess.

“Yes, but she wasn’t very helpful. She said she hoped she never saw the fucker again. Before she hung up, she said she left Friday night right after you; she didn’t know about the rest of what happened around here.”

The jealous part of me is happy to know she didn’t stay and party with Max after I’d left.

“Dylan, what about that art restoration guy? The one you used last year after the rain damage at your place,” Jess says.

“I’ve already called him and he’s on his way. Hopefully, he can fix them. I’m going to try him again to see where he is.” Dylan steps into the garden with his cell phone.

“Now do you see why I called you, Ava? You had to see all this to understand the depth of it,” Jess says gently.

I nod but I’m confused. Is this an obsession or something more?

Jess shakes her head. “Remember my party in New York? I had an argument with Max that night because I wanted him to stay away from you. He’s too messed up for a relationship right now.”

I study her face. I know she’s right . . . he’s a mess . . . and now he’s a missing mess.

“I see now that he tried to avoid falling for you, but in the end, he couldn’t help himself. Max is a force of nature. Once he focuses on something or someone, I’ve learned to just get out of the way. There’s no stopping him. And now that he knows he’s ruined everything . . .”

“But Jess, none of us can know for sure what he’s thinking.”

“I have two more things to show you.” Jess leads me to his desk and carefully opens a large folder. On top, there’s a computer printout. In the margin of the print-out I notice that he’s doodled my name a number of times in different sizes and styles.

“This doesn’t mean anything. He could’ve been talking to me on the phone while he was doodling,” I argue.

“Really?” she asks with raised brows like I’m deluded.

I give her an exasperated, wide-eyed look and let out a long sigh.

She gently lifts the paper out of the folder and holds it up me. “It’s a love poem, Ava.”

I take it out of her hand to examine it more closely.

The printout is of an E. E. Cummings poem, “Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond.” My breath catches—he couldn’t possibly know it’s one of my favorite poems. My gaze drops down to the last graph and I silently recite it to myself.