So Much Fire and So Many Plans

by Aaron S Gallagher

  He ran a finger over the first question. He stared into space as he considered it.

  How the hell had Christoph Ossirian gotten from Wilmot, Wisconsin to São Paulo, Brazil? How had a seventeen-year-old boy managed to travel 5300 miles and cross countless borders with no papers, in the six months between his foster parents reporting him truant from school and him turning up in São Paulo at an art show?

  He stared at the page, wondering if he’d ever truly know. Certainly, Delgado had some answers. But she was acting very flaky. Very… not okay. He’d known more than a few junkies in his time, and they all tended to get like this eventually. They spun faster and faster until they burned out in the heat of their own friction, unable to slow their descent into an incandescent explosion, a meteor that flames out and is reduced to ash in the upper atmosphere of life. She had seemed to tell the waiter, Goodwin, at Bellini’s, goodbye. Not ‘so long.’ Goodbye. As in I’m not coming back. She’d said as much to her driver when they had arrived at the airport.

  She had seemed to admit to him that Christoph Ossirian had been the love of her life, despite never marrying him.

  And Ossirian was dead.

  Pollock would have been proud of you, Brent thought. Wiping out on the road between New York and the Hamptons. Wet night, shitty conditions. Alcohol in your system, likely, although the autopsy was inconclusive. You burned for three hours before they found you. Had to use your teeth to prove it was you. Had to send away to your old dentist in Wilmot. And you left her behind. Your manager. Your lover. Your friend. She’s hurting, man, and you’re not here.

  Brent most often thought about Ossirian, most often thought at him, as though interviewing or questioning him, when looking through the notebook. He knew what Ossirian’s voice sounded like, of course. Anyone with a keen interest in the art world did. That Wisconsin twang wrapped around a philosophical, ephemeral mindset. He was an enigma. The lovers he’d left behind him could fill a good-sized cocktail party in Manhattan. Some wags suggested that, as Genghis Khan had in Asia, Ossirian had indelibly subverted the gene pool of the art set with his relationships. Upwards of forty percent of any art-scene gathering, someone else (he thought it was Toefler, which he found unbearably droll in light of his earlier enlightenment) had theorized, was made up of Ossirian’s present or former lovers. The other sixty percent were merely on the waiting list.

  No one had ever been quite the star Ossirian had become. Two parts Mick Jagger, two parts Pablo Picasso, equal parts Aristotle and Lenny Bruce, Ossirian had been unique. No other artist had defied, enraged, and seduced critics as he had. No other artist had ever dominated without being domineering. He was reported to have been unfailingly kind, in turn sweet and spoiled, and utterly disconnected from the world. One critic had called him the first painter-mystic. An artist so ephemeral as to be something of a phantom, a will-o-the-wisp with a brush. An upstart emperor whose gravity had drawn all nearby into his orbit.

  “Ossirian,” one socialite had said, “is the only person on the face of this Earth that has slept his way across continents, indulged in every vice and virtue, ensnared and released every willing participant to cross his path… and to have made an enemy of none of them. The closest thing to an enemy Christoph Ossirian has is Hans Toefler, a man who reviles Ossirian’s behavior while simultaneously extolling the virtues of his work.”

  So many people, yet no enemies. For the most popular and important painter living, that had been almost more impressive a feat than the paintings themselves. He sat, pensive, staring out of the window, not seeing the landscape beneath them. Before he realized what had happened, he’d fallen asleep.

  He woke only when they touched down. They taxied to a jolting stop. Louise came back to them. “Refueling will take thirty minutes. They’ve requested we not leave the plane. The traffic is heavy, and we’re already slotted for takeoff.”

  “Thank you, Louise,” Carolyn said.

  “Will you take dinner now, Ms. Delgado?”

  “Please,” Delgado said. “And martinis, if you would be so kind.”

  “Right away.” Louise went to the small kitchenette behind the panel.

  “Do you always drink this heavily?” Metierra asked.

  She pursed her lips. “This isn’t heavy.”

  “You don’t think the wine with lunch, the… whatever it was in the car, the wine now, and martinis is heavy?” he asked. “That’s more than I usually drink in a week.”

  “It isn’t heavy. I can tell.”

  “How?”

  She gave him a blandly amused look. “I’m interested in drinking, but I’m not passionate about it.”

  He snorted laughter and she gave him a beatific grin.

  Louise and her copilot, a slight woman named Helen, went about the various checks and safety lists that getting the plane in the air would entail. Louise served them a three-course meal of Delmonico’s best, Lobster Thermador with vegetables, a salad with tangy dressing, and for dessert the baked Alaska, which, as cautioned, hadn’t traveled as well as the lobsters. Despite the cracks, it was delicious, and he’d eaten more than his fill. Brent noticed that while Carolyn ate, she ate sparingly. He followed his martini with a glass of champagne. She had three martinis as the mechanics outside thumped and prodded and connected and filled. Finally, after more than an hour, they were cleared. The dinner was taken away, although they had to bottles of champagne on ice as well as a pitcher of martinis.

  Brent’s head spun as the plane tilted aloft. Once leveling out, Carolyn finished her martini.

  “I’m going to go to bed now,” she said.

  “Oh,” Brent said. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll be out here, I suppose. Could I get a blanket, do you think?”

  “Come along, dear boy,” she said, and held out a hand.

  Unsure, he took it and rose. “Uh-”

  “Hush now,” she commanded him.

  He followed, silent. They made their way to the rear of the plane, through the anachronistic door to where a full bedroom awaited, complete with a king-sized bed and dressers. She looked him up and down, calculating. “There are night things in those drawers, if you feel shy,” she pointed.

  He swallowed as she went to the other dresser and began to remove filmy, dark things; a negligée, other things he didn’t recognize.

  She excused herself and entered the spacious bathroom, complete with a double shower, which occupied the very back of the plane. He went to the drawers she had indicated and found a pair of flannel pants and a shirt. He shook them out. They seemed newish, but not wrapper-new. He quickly changed, after pulling the curtain closed, sealing the bedroom away from the main cabin. He shucked his clothing quickly, feeling he dislocation of a dream in which the oddest behavior seemed perfectly natural to everyone else except the dreamer. He folded his clothes, more for lack of anything constructive to do than out of a sense of neatness. Soon enough the bathroom door opened and Carolyn Delgado entered the bedchamber.

  The negligée was filmy, as was the wrap, but layered together they gave the appearance of revelation without the exposure of it. The materials hinted at her body rather than displayed it, and he found himself quite breathless. After a moment, he realized she was modeling for him.

  “You’re beautiful, of course,” he breathed. “I’d suspected, but it’s gratifying to have a theory proven.”

  She blushed a little. “You’re very good for my ego, you know. I thought you might be.”

  He didn’t know what to say. She moved away from the door of the bathroom. “If you need it,” she said, gesturing. He gave her a half-bow and slid by her. She had just barely edged out of the way. Their bodies almost brushed, and he caught a tendril of her perfume as he slipped by. It caressed his brain like a fingertip running over the surface of his mind. He realized he was almost unbearably turned on. She gave him a smile, cat-full-of-canary, and he closed the door gently.

  He leaned against the sink, fighting waves of dizziness that had nothing to do with alcohol. He was a
wash with emotions he couldn’t immediately name, and puzzled more than excited, and he was plenty excited. He’d never considered the possibility of taking Carolyn Delgado to bed. It had simply never occurred to him. Certainly she was beautiful; she consistently topped the lists of best-dressed women in the fashion world. She was emulated and imitated, and could set trends by simply lunching in a particular outfit. She had somehow moved from society bird to important art dealer in the span of twenty years that allowed her to command legions of sycophants and imitators.

  And she was coming on to him.

  At least, he thought, I think she is. It’s possible. Isn’t it?

  She’s twice your age, he thought.

  So what? he argued. She’s amazing. Timeless. Sensual and seductive and impossible to read.

  She was Ossirian’s lover for thirty years, he thought.

  Ossirian’s dead, he growled in his mind. And the last two years, he’d distanced himself from her. He’d sunk deeper into his holy trance or whatever it was. All he did was paint and sleep. He sent everyone away and produced painting after painting. She marketed them, that’s all. He shut himself away in his studio, and died making a grocery run.

  He ran the water, splashed some on his face, and smoothed his hair back. Did he want to sleep with Carolyn Delgado?

  “Are you insane?” he muttered aloud. “Who doesn’t?”

  He shook himself. This wasn’t an argument he could win, nor was it one he should have out loud, he supposed. He availed himself of the toilet, took a last look in the mirror at himself, washed his hands, smoothed his hair back again, and shut the water off. He took a deep breath and opened the door of the lavish (for a plane, certainly) bathroom.

  She was reclined on the bed, half-curled like a cat or a courtesan, watching him.

  He cleared his throat self-consciously.

  “Come,” she said. “Please would you join me?”

  He nodded. She gestured to the light switch, and he flicked it off. The overhead lights dimmed, and only the underlighting of the plane’s side panels lit the room. They flickered, flickered, and he realized it resembled candlelight. He slid into the bed next to her.

  She put her face up and pulled his down and they kissed. It was a simple kiss, but full of promise. Had he more experience, he would have realized what it was, but he was simply unprepared for a language he’d never studied.

  He broke the kiss first. “Ms. Delgado-”

  “Carolyn, please,” she murmured. “We’re no longer in public, nor are we strangers any longer. In this room, this bedroom, we are Carolyn and Brent.”

  “Carolyn,” he amended. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to- I mean, I don’t know what you want from me.”

  She gave him that catlike smile again. “What is it you think I want from you?”

  “I’m not coy,” he assured her. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

  “I don’t like to sleep alone,” she said. “I never sleep alone if I can help it.”

  “Why not?”

  “There isn’t anything worse than waking up in the dark, alone. We all die alone, you know. There’s a moment when we wake, in darkness, and we are at last alone. I wouldn’t have that, not even a pale reflection of it, not while I’m still living. If I wake in the night and I can hear someone, feel someone, touch someone next to me, I know that I’m alive still, and that I am not dead. That I have more still to do, more life to live.”

  He stared at her, a lump in his throat. “I-I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “There isn’t anything to say,” she said. “You cannot fight the weather. Why bother?”

  “You can’t fight it, but you can buy an umbrella to use against the storm.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “in fact at least one time, the world sends a storm so large that an umbrella is simply futile. At the end, I wouldn’t waste time fighting a fight I cannot win. Better instead to accept it, to enjoy all the moments until it happens, and be at ease when it comes.”

  “Resigned to losing the fight? How can you think that way?”

  “Because unlike you, dear boy, I have had years of fighting. When fighting seemed the only way, death appears as an enemy. Once you understand that there is grace in knowing when you’ve lost, death becomes instead an old friend, not an enemy. A balm instead of a tincture.”

  “I see,” he said, and she could see that he did not.

  “Until then, I will never sleep alone. It’s better to wake in darkness beside an enemy than not know when one has finally slipped into the unknown. When it comes my time, I will know for certain, for I shall be alone.”

  He couldn’t think of a thing to say to that, so he didn’t. Instead he curled up next to her and when she turned her face up, he kissed her lips. She moaned against him, and pressed closer, and as the plane ascended into the heavens, she drew him down into her embrace.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They slept and woke, and he could feel her reach for him, not to bring him back into her, but to check and see if she were still with someone, that she wasn’t alone. He held her hand and she pressed against him, the warmth of their bodies heating the sheets. And when her hands sought more, he rose to her touch. When his hands reached for her, she came to him. All the night long they found comfort in one another, and she whispered his name as he whispered hers, and they swallowed the words as they kissed.

  When Louise announced that they had reached São Paulo, they were dozing, wrapped in one another instead of the bedclothes or their sleeping clothes. He sat up, groggy, wondering where the light had gone. She whispered to him from the dark, “It’s still night, by our body’s clocks. Louise has the lights set accordingly.”

  “I see,” he muttered, and lay back down beside her. They lay curled around one another as the plane slowly descended and touched the runaway. Outside the windows they heard rain pattering on the fuselage until Louise and Helen taxied into a private hangar. Carolyn led him into the bathroom where they showered and changed in leisurely fashion. He had groped for his clothing, but she had directed him to the second drawer of ‘his’ dresser where he found cotton slacks, a rough cloth shirt, and sandals. Nothing else, apparently. She dressed in a simple wrap that bared a lot of skin and she also wore nothing underneath the colorful fabric.

  “You’ll soon know why Brazilians often go nude,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m not there yet,” he told her.

  “Give it time, dear boy,” she said with a knowing smile, and the lights slowly rose as she twisted a control. They joined Helen and Louise in the main cabin, and Brent found himself blushing as the pilot and copilot asked if they had slept well.

  “Perfectly well,” Carolyn said. She looked over her shoulder. “Come, Brent. I want to show you my São Paulo.”

  “Shall we have the plane made ready, Ms. Delgado?” Louise asked.

  Carolyn’s face was masked in shadow for the briefest moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps yes. I have a feeling our journey isn’t over. But I have no itinerary. Please, enjoy yourselves. It will be a week or more until I have need of you. I’ll send word.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Delgado,” Louise said, and Helen echoed her.

  Brent shouldered his bag and followed Carolyn out of the plane and into the oppressive, sultry heat of São Paulo.

  The humidity seemed to leech the oxygen from the air, and he felt a moment of panic as he felt like he was drowning. He coughed a couple of times, and tasted the air. It was alive with the fresh green scent of the jungle, which pressed in around the airfield. He scanned the horizon, and as far as the eye could see the mountains which cradled the valley were lush and green, verdant with trees.

  She led him to a smaller car than had brought them to JFK in New York. She took the keys from a man dressed in a light shirt and rough cotton slacks similar to Brent’s own dress. He realized that, although the heat and humidity were oppressive, the clothing actually did much to alleviate the uncomfortable feeli
ng of humid, close air.

  Carolyn slid into the driver’s seat, while Brent opened the passenger door. “No driver?” he asked.

  “Not when I’m home,” she said.

  He closed the door of the small car. “You keep saying that. I was under the impression you were born in Ecuador.”

  She gave him a searching look. “And where is your home?”

  “I was born in New Jersey.”

  “Indeed. And where is your home? Surely you realize that when I say ‘home’ I mean ‘heart.’”

  He smiled. “Ah. I understand. Chicago.”

  “And São Paulo is my home.” She started the car. “This is where my heart has always lived. And this is where I met Christoph.”

  His skin crawled. Suddenly he was alert. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There is much you do not know,” she said. “But that is all right. There is much the world does not know of Christoph Ossirian.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  She gave him a sunny smile. “That is exactly why I’ve brought you with me.”

  “To teach me? Why? Why me, and not someone else?”

  “Because you want to be taught. You want more than facts. You wish to understand. You wish to know. The reporters out in the world who are concerned with Ossirian want to be told. They want answers. You’re different. You wish to understand what the answers mean. What Ossirian meant. That is why I’ve brought you.”