She had had time to sit with the shock of it, but it was a shock still. She said, voice breaking, “Ossirian-”
“Chris.”
She blinked and fell silent.
“It’s just Chris. I’m Chris now.”
She thought about it. She weighed it, and spoke it aloud. “Chris.”
He smiled, and it wasn’t his old smile, either. It was something new. It was something just for her, and she realized it. She realized all of it was for her.
He took her hand. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
She smiled at him, tears threatening. “It’s been but a moment,” she breathed. “Everything’s only a moment.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you right away. It needed to look right. Toefler-”
“Toefler,” she whispered vehemently, fondly.
He nodded. “Toefler.”
“The bastard. He let me think-”
He grinned at her. “Please don’t talk about my best man in that way.”
Her eyes popped and she gasped. “Are you getting-”
She broke off.
He reached for his pocket.
Overhead, the sun shone down upon them, the jungle burst with lush sounds of leaves and wind, the scent of the greenery and the dirt and the paint enveloped them, and all was as it had to be.
THE END
Afterward
This was a strange book for me. It’s a spiritual sequel to my first foray into literary fiction, What You Wish For. That book explored what it meant to be driven to create. I think this book explores the flipside of that coin: what do you have to give up for art? In that book, the main character gave up nothing. In this one, everything. The net result is about the same, I think. Is it possible to have it all? Not and be happy, I don’t think.
In the later chapters, Carolyn Delgado quotes Marge Piercy’s excellent poem The Nuisance. To me, it encapsulates the inconvenience and insistence of love. It reads thusly:
“The Nuisance”
by Marge Piercy
Circles on the Water. New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc, 1982.
I am an inconvenient woman.
I’d be more useful as a pencil sharpener or a cash register.
I do not love you the way I love Mother Jones or the surf
Coming in
Or my pussycats or a good piece of steak.
I love the sun prickly on the black stubble of your cheek.
I love you wandering floppy making scarecrows of despair.
I love you when you are discussing changes in the class structure
And it jams my ears and burns in the tips of my fingers.
I am an inconvenient woman.
You might trade me in on a sheepdog or a llama.
You might trade me in for a yak.
They are faithful and demand only straw.
They make good overcoats.
They never call you up on the telephone.
I love you with my arms and my legs
And my brains and my cunt and my unseemly history.
I want to tell you about when I was ten and it thundered.
I want you to kiss the crosshatched remains of my burn.
I want to read you poems about drowning myself
Laid like eggs without shells at fifteen under Shelly’s wings.
I want you to read my old loverletters.
I want you to want me
As directly and simply and variously
As a cup of hot coffee.
I want to, to have to, to miss what can’t have room to happen.
I carry my love for you
Around with me like teeth
And I am starving.
Everything you need to know about love can be found in those lines. The desperation, the passion, the sometimes-impossible juxtaposition of happiness and love.
I disagree with Carolyn Delgado, who said that love cannot reason. I think love can be reasonable. I think love is simple, really. Love is that peculiar state of being wherein someone else’s happiness means more to you than your own. If that’s not reasonable, I don’t know what might be
Each of the four sections, Sfumato, Chiaroscuro, Cangiante, and Unione, are the four main styles of painting developed by the Renaissance masters. I do not believe it is an accident that smoke, contrast, change, and union are also states of human existence. After all, that is what their work represents. What they tried to convey. It’s a message I’ve contemplated on numerous occasions while writing this book. As a writer, I don’t consider myself an artist. Like Ossirian, I think that there is a delineator between a workman and a master, and well there should be. I’m a writer; he a painter. It’s what we do. How well we do it is a different matter entirely.
You’ll find all of the references in this book about painters and sculptors and their work to be completely accurate. History is far too interesting to make up any of it. Stanislov Szukalski, by the way, is exactly as I have described, including his oddly famous obscurity. His sculptures are… distinct, and quite worth your time.
There were too many sources to count used in the researching and writing of this book. Suffice to say, any biography and every Renaissance- focused art history class in college will give you what you need to know: the Renaissance painters invented it as they went, and they were, despite their personalities and because of their tireless practice and pursuit of excellent, singular artists and masters. What we have today in art we built on their bones. Whether we surpass them is immaterial; they know what they did, and so do we.
As always, thank you for giving my worlds a try.
Aaron S Gallagher
Copyright © 2021 by Aaron S Gallagher
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Aaron S Gallagher
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Aaron S Gallagher
Visit my website at www.asgallagher.com
Also by Aaron S Gallagher
Novels
Pros
Return Fire
The Other Side of the Atmosphere
Dirty Wings and Other Stories
Orphan World
The Long Way Home
What You Wish For
So Much Fire and So Many Plans
The Veiled Earth
1) Magician
2) Martyr
3) Savior
The Bennett & DeMarko Mysteries
1) The Bleecker Street Bodies
2) The Delancey Street Disappearances
3) The Mercer Street Murder
4) The Elizabeth Street Epiphany
5) The Angel Street Assassination
The Iron Age of Piracy
1) Blue Sail
The Reapers MC
1) Nomad
So Much Fire and So Many Plans Page 27