by Jerry Cole
Chapter Eight
Mario
Mario stretched his long legs into the studio space, arriving ten minutes late. Normally, after a one-night stand, his body rattled with confidence, his words spat out with assurance. Yet now, standing before his class, he felt bubbly and wild, unsure of himself. He placed his hands on either side of his waist, blinking once at each of his students—all eight of them, including little Christine. While he would have assumed, after burning her painting, that Christine would have given him nothing but disdain, anger—in actuality she looked at him with all the love of a little schoolgirl. She swept to the edge of her chair, her pencil aloft. She even adjusted herself slightly, so as to show him the light shining down on her tits.
Whenever Mario was afraid of something, he always approached it head-on. It was the Italian hot-headedness in him. He strutted forward, placing his fingers at the very top of Christine’s canvas, as if he were peering over a fence. She drew herself tighter into her own form, bringing her arms tightly over her chest. Her pencil shook. He made her anxious. Even more anxious than he made her father—admittedly a much older, much more famous man.
“Christine, are you all right after yesterday’s little escapade?” he asked her, lowering his voice only just so—ensuring the class could still hear it. “I mean, I just want to make sure…”
“Absolutely!” Christine said. It was too bright, her answer. It felt discolored, wrong. Immediately, she cleared her throat and shook her head, allowing her curls to flow on either side of her shoulders. “I mean. Um. I’m sorry.”
Mario wondered where Christine had thought her father was, the night before. Whether or not she could ever trust her father again, if she ever found out. He marveled at his, Mario’s, personal ability to be so destructive with something so delicate. It was the thesis of his art, of course. Destruction. Burning. Death. It was why he was such a popular force amongst musicians and other more youthful, druggy artists. He took charge of time and space. He didn’t hold back.
Of course, he’d hurt people before. It just had never really mattered before.
Mario swung back toward the front of the classroom, beginning his instruction for the day. He spoke with zealous energy, stabbing a canvas onto an easel and beginning to slash at it with black paint.
“The thing you have to understand about what we’re doing here at this art school is—“ He began. “We’re generating conflict. We’re crafting anger. We’re not playing by any rules that any of us understand, ones our parents have given us…”
At this, Christine’s eyes shone bright. These were words that she comprehended, fully. Perhaps she felt he was speaking directly to her. Always, we hear poetry in places we search for it, Mario knew. We hear music, even if we craft it ourselves.
After an hour of demonstration, Mario dismissed them to work separately—around the city, if they so chose. Christine hung close to her easel, her eyes like a fox’s, watching as her other classmates scampered into the sun. Mario watched her from the edge of the studio space, puffing at his cigarette. Her body simmered with some kind of promise, her shoulder yanking back and her stomach flattening. The moment she realized she was the last person inside, she whipped her head toward Mario, drew up from her stool and walked toward him, almost sauntering. Her lips curled into a smile. It was now that Mario first realized she was wearing light pink lipstick, a color that many women in Italy didn’t bother with—giving way for darker reds and even purples.
There was something so youthful about it. But also, Mario recognized that she’d donned the pink lipstick only for him. That this was one of her tactics, as a young girl falling for an artist. A young girl, falling for a gay artist. A tale as old as time.
“I wanted to apologize for my reaction yesterday,” Christine told him, spreading her thin fingers in front of her and staring in between them, at the gaps. “I know that you push your students. It’s why I’m here.”
Mario nodded.
“And I want you to know that I’ll fight for this spot at this school,” Christine said, taking a very small, baby step toward him. Her eyes drew a line from his torso, along his neck. Mario wondered about that neck—if it was bruised, now, with the sharpness of Max’s teeth. They’d slid into him, nearly drawing blood. Mario had splayed his body back against the pillow, giving himself totally—much in the way an orange must feel, when it’s being peeled.
“Christine,” Mario said, allowing his chin to drop. His voice was a bit too low, a bit too sensual; always, he got off on the concept of his own power, of what he could do to other people. “Step back.”
Christine fluttered away from him, her cheeks turning bright pink. A drip of sweat careened from behind her ear. She tittered, hunting for the right words to say. Words that wouldn’t make her feel so alien, maybe, in front of this man she respected. “I’m terribly sorry,” she sighed. “I really am. I don’t know what got into me. Jesus.”
She swirled back toward her drawing, ripping it from its easel. Her body seemed electric, charged with adrenaline. Mario’s felt nothing. He took a deeper step back toward his office, marveling at the depth of emotion in young people. How they could latch onto things that didn’t exist and make them entire worlds. Perhaps that was the beautiful thing about being alive. That you could invent so much, and then believe in it.
Christine whipped out from the studio space, her drawing pad at her side. Mario marveled at the fact that she was the product of Max Everett, that she was the reason that Max had decided to marry a woman. To “ruin” his life, to charge down a different path. Inwardly, Mario felt the messiness of this; knowing that sleeping with his student’s parent was ill-fated and wrong, especially with this girl. This girl who looked at him like he was the sun and the moon and the stars.
Before she disappeared for good, Christine appeared back in the doorway of the studio space. She perked up, holding herself high on her toes.
“What is it, Christine?” Mario asked, feeling dread make his stomach clench. Was this what keeping secrets felt like?
“It’s just, I learned from my parents that I can’t waste time,” she said. “You know. They wasted nineteen years being married to one another. They could have said the truth, years ago, maybe. Or at least, my dad could have. I just, I don’t want to waste time with a lie…”
“Then don’t,” Mario said. He hardly found his own voice. It felt gravelly and unsure, so unlike his normal one.
“Do you feel that you should always say the thing? Always blurt out your emotions, regardless of… what they are?” she asked, her voice becoming string-like. “Do you think you have to be brave like that?”
Mario’s heart quaked. For the first time, hearing these words from Christine, he felt affronted with the intensity of his night with Max. Say the thing. Always say the thing you felt the most. Should he explain to Max just how big that had felt to him? Just how much that had shot through a cloud of thought, made him clumsy and strange on this day—and perhaps more days in the future?
“I don’t know. What if you don’t feel it the next day?” Christine continued, tapping her little heels along the edge of the burnt orange bricks outside the studio. The sun caught a ring on her finger, making the emerald stone gleam.
“Maybe you have to give purpose to the day,” Mario heard himself say, unable to believe it himself. “Maybe all the power you’ll ever have is what you have right now. And you can do with that power whatever you like.”
Christine nodded. Her lips parted, then closed. Her eyes were heavy with feeling, showing him that he—her teacher, her tutor—was her raison d’etre. All he wanted to do, in those moments, was spread open the door and push her out into the swirling mess of the world. To show her that staying cooped up with him at this school would do her no favors. Especially since, well. She was barking up the wrong fucking tree.
“Maybe, sometimes, you use that energy… that feeling… and you give that power to something else. Like art,” Mario said, whispering the words. H
e felt like he was cooing a baby to sleep. Telling the baby it was all right to flicker those eyes closed. To cast itself into the ether beyond.
Christine nodded. After a smart, whip-fast blink, her eyes filled with tears and then dried again. This was akin to a kid falling on the playground, scabbing his knee and then bumbling back up onto his feet, running away. Christine would surely fall and injure herself, both emotionally and physically, throughout this decade and the next. And probably, Mario thought, he, himself, would do the same. Even Max ached with horror and pain, after his divorce. And he was thirty-eight years old. As an Italian man, Mario knew not to discredit the emotions of the elderly; they were just as strong, just as passionate. It was difficult not to feel like things must dull out, later on.
Christine bowed her head and then snuck along the edge of the canal. Her curls danced behind her. Mario stepped to the edge of the studio, then glanced back toward his own easel, where he’d begun a painting on a previous day. He toyed with the idea of standing before it for hours on-end, to digging into the canvas and struggling to yank emotion out of it. His cock was full and his brain was simmering and anxious. How could he possibly remain there, alone, in his echoey studio—when someday, soon, he would die?
“Don’t do this to yourself,” Mario said, bringing his fingers to his temple and rubbing. “Don’t make yourself so crazy. Love, it just holds you back. It takes you away from the work.”
He had to tell Max the truth. He had to tell him that he’d never felt such volumes for someone, so suddenly. He’d never felt so smacked in the face with what, to him, felt very similar to love. Love, or whatever brewed just before it…
Mario rushed from his studio, slipping his beret hat on his head. His motions were light as he ambled back toward the center of town, where his old friend, a shoe-maker named Antonio, manned his shop. Antonio knew the ins and outs of Venice, who came and went—the important people that lurked across the cobblestones and took refuge in the refined hotels. Celebrities. People who might be into purchasing Mario’s paintings. That sort of thing.
“Ciao, Antonio,” Mario said, leaning across the counter and kissing his friend twice, once on either cheek.
“You look absolutely radiant, my dear,” Antonio said, stretching his smile wide. He was a bit older than Mario, and his teeth were vaguely yellow—the result of nearly twenty years of constant smoking. Always, Mario resolved to quit when he saw him. Yet always, he found himself rolling up another round.
“Radiant? Ah, surely it’s just the creative influence of that dynamic group of assholes they’re calling my students,” Mario said, winking. “I wanted to ask you, Antonio. You’ve heard of the new hotel going up just outside the city. That famous architect…”
“Ah, the American. You hate those Americans,” Antonio said. He spun from behind the counter, reaching for a stack of half-made shoes in the corner. Each lacked a heel. He matched them up with their partners on the top of the glass countertop, snapping his fingers across the top to show the strength of the fabric. “Really fine material, this. Fucking great leather.”
“This American, Max Everett. My father really respected his work,” Mario said, pushing it. “I think it would be good to meet him. Or at least see how the progress is going.”
“I hear the progress is like sludge,” Antonio said, tittering. “They keep running into the stuff underground, you know. A whole selection of cooking pots from, what, the 1500s? What I want to know is, when are we going to run out of all that stuff? I mean, time is a finite thing, isn’t it, Mario? Surely, we’re going to run out of pots.”
Mario chuckled, bringing his hands to his waist. His nostrils filled with the smell of this fresh leather, such a warming, familiar smell. The smell of fine craftwork, much abandoned throughout the rest of the world.
“You know where the site is, then?” Mario asked.
“Sure thing. It’s just outside the city, near St. Paul’s Basilica,” Antonio said. “You’ll know it because it’s barely anything at all. Just a couple of bricks stacked up toward the sky. More and more when I hear about it, I think about what you’ve always said about the Americans. That they’re all talk.”
“Maybe they believed in what they were saying, once,” Mario offered.
Antonio snapped a heel along the edge of the shoe, analyzing its fit. It was about three inches high, a sensible heel for a sensible Italian woman. Antonio’s eyes flickered toward him as he worked, filled with humor.
“You’re becoming soft, aren’t you?” Antonio asked. “I can see it in you. You’re just flowing with feeling. Come on, dude. Who did you fuck, hey? You’ve met someone. Or, you’re sleeping with that buddy of yours again. The one who won’t leave his wife…”
“Gio? Of course he’s not going to leave her,” Mario tittered. “That was never in the cards for us. Oh, the straight men, Antonio. They’re so resigned to something, lying to themselves at every turn about their reality. It’s a marvelous dance to watch…”
An elderly woman crept into the shoe shop, her claw-like hand gripping the railing. She snuck closer to them, tapping her finger against her nose as her black eyes burned into them—deep and hollow. On her feet, an old pair of shoes that, Mario felt sure, she had fixed up by Antonio probably once a month, clacked on the floor.
“I better run,” Mario said, reaching for his friend and kissing him on both cheeks once more. He bowed his head to the woman in greeting, before darting out behind her. He felt almost child-like in his motions. When his shoes clicked across the cobblestones, they did so with a kind of rhythm. Like everything had a song to it.
When he spotted the construction site, he stopped, caught his breath. Several cranes rose into the gray sky around it, flashing yellow. He felt a sense of foreboding. As he stepped forward, his eyes glazing over the crew around it. He knew Max, already, from over two hundred feet away. Could sense that it was him through the way he walked, by his black hair that curled around his construction hat.
He was the proper world of art, the kind of art that was technical and pushed the future of humanity forward. So unlike anyone else Mario had been interested in. Mario watched as Max’s fingers traced a line on a blueprint. He spoke loudly, his words echoing, yet still too muffled for Mario to hear from that distance. He evoked such power.
Mario approached from the side, wrapping his arms around his chest and then dropping them again. He’d never felt so clumsy in his own body. When Max was alone at the blueprint, Mario burned his gaze into him, hopeful that he’d glance up, that he’d see. Construction workers ambled around him, their boots scuffing against the mud and dirt and dust. Toward the far end of the site, something had been roped off—probably the area with the ancient pots, to be studied and put into yet another museum.
Finally, Max’s eyes found Mario’s. With slow, planned motions, he reached for the map and drew it together, folding it and slipping it into his back pocket. Somewhere behind, a worker began to blast a machine into a piece of old concrete, sending loud “ping” noises across the arena and back toward the canals. Mario felt the blast like an affront on his very way of life. That was akin to what Max was doing to him now, wasn’t it? Tearing through his existence. Making him wonder if he wanted something… else.
“How did you find me?” Max asked. He stepped toward the side of the building. He was unable to hide a smile. It slid out from beneath his mustache, flashing his white, American teeth. What a prosperous man. His muscles burst out from his t-shirt, veined and thick. Mario brought his hand around one of them, feeling at the girth of it. Just touching him made electricity bolt up and down his arms and legs. His cock filled, firm against his black pants.
“I have a sense for these things,” Mario murmured.
Suddenly, they were behind a pole, blocked off from the site. Mario, unable to resist this fire, burning in his belly, brought his face toward Max and kissed him, full-on. At first, he felt the resistance in Max’s body. He could almost feel the articulation of his thoughts,
don’t let anyone know. Don’t let anyone see. Mario’s lips were insistent, ferocious against Max’s. They kissed long and deep. A moan escaped Max’s throat, burning over Mario’s lips. He wanted his every sound.
When their kiss broke, they stood in silence for a long time. Max’s eyes were heavy. He opened his lips, then closed them again. Mario felt, for some reason, like he’d met him five years before. Like they didn’t need words. They’d already said and done so much, side by side.
“I’m sticking around Venice,” Max murmured. He brought his hand beneath Mario’s elbow, gripping it at the tip of the bone. It was such an intimate gesture. “I want to stay to…to make sure Christine is all right.”
Mario nodded. He reached for Max’s elbow, matching his motion. “If you really think that’s a good idea.”
“You came all the way to the site. To see me?” Max asked.
“You flatter yourself. I was just passing through,” Mario said, sniffing.
“Is that some of that honesty we’re going to use on one another? If so, we’re off to a great start,” Max said, flashing his smile again.
“All right, all right. You Americans and your honesty,” Mario sighed. In the back of his mind, he heard Christine’s voice—piping up, from the very recent past. How she’d wanted her life to be honest. How she’d always wanted to “say the thing,” whatever that truth may be. Mario parted his own lips, preparing to charge forward toward this truth.
Instead, Max kissed him, making the decision to do it within a few hundred feet of his construction site, in full view of the world. He wrapped his arms around Mario’s shoulders, gripping at the bones, rubbing at the tense muscles. Mario fell into him, his chest rubbing tight against Max’s. How could you ache with such feeling for a future that hadn’t happened yet? How could you possibly know what was going to happen next? Mario marveled.