by Meg Watson
“Oh, Margot,” he sighed irritably, “it’s a studio. Probably the best you’ve ever had. In fact, say the word and I will make it the best anyone’s ever had.”
“This is…” I started, barely daring to even say it, “this is for me?”
“Pretty sure I just said that.”
OK, why does a conversation with this guy always feel like a wrestling match?
“Oh, my god.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
I pointed to the far wall. “So that really is my materials in those crates?”
He nodded. “And then some. Everything you could possibly need. I can have an assistant here in the morning. Actually, I can have four, and you can fire three just to get started.”
“No, that’s OK--”
“All right, you can fire all four,” he joked.
I swayed in place, feeling very high up and unstable like the floor was suspended on cables and moving from side to side under my feet.
“I really… I mean… I don’t want an assistant,” I stammered. “This is… oh my god wow.”
“You said that already.”
I looked around, hoping that taking another tour of the space would give me a few minutes to clear my head. I felt like I couldn’t really understand what was going on, though the simple facts were plain: Declan just bought me a museum to live in, to work in.
Wait, did Jackson know about this?
Was this what they were silently bickering over? I wondered as I touched the spinning wheel lightly with my fingertips. The slight touch sent the machine into quiet, efficient life.
Jackson knew, I felt sure as I stared into the motion of the machine. This was a test, or some kind of competition between them. This was some kind of ongoing conversation, and I had just been blind to it all.
Hadn’t it always been this way?
I stretched back to the first days I knew them, then to the very first day I knew them. Right there on the jet, I should have known it then. Declan had said if I couldn’t make a decision, then they would decide for me.
It had always been there, and I just didn’t see it. It was a contest, and I was the prize. I was the diamond M pendant Jackson had given me on that night at the gallery show, suspended between two lengths of a fine golden chain. I was being pulled from both sides, and someone was going to win.
It seemed preposterous. Me? Little old me? Did they realize what a ramshackle, feeble prize they were getting? I was at the bottom of a Crackerjack box. And, oh god, Bridget was right. I’m a toy.
The question was: which one treated their toys better?
Oh shut the hell up, my imaginary Bridget advised me, smoking an imaginary cigarette that I had to admit smelled absolutely fucking delicious. You’re being very dramatic.
I straightened up and flexed my shoulders, trying to stretch into a dignified posture. Then I left the hypnotizing wheel and continued my tour of the room. Declan was getting impatient, I could tell.
“It’s beautiful,” I said again, knowing I should say something.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Your furniture will be here by end of day. I’m sorry it wasn’t fully decked out when you arrived. It will be easier to visualize with the bed and wardrobes…”
“The bed?”
“Oh, yeah, gorgeous! Hand-carved in Portugal. There’s another for your other room on the second floor. You don’t have to live in a garret all the time of course.”
“Ha!” I bark-laughed. “This is hardly a garret, Declan.”
He grinned broadly.
“So does it have your approval then?”
I shrugged, turning around in the large, beautiful room. It was exactly the kind of studio I had always imagined as authentic. And it didn’t have to be forever, right? I could say yes for a week, then fly back home.
“I guess I… Well how could I say no?”
He raised a clenched fist of triumph. “Yes!”
I chuckled at his eager, confident smile.
“So… there’s more furniture today? Can I open the crates while I wait?”
“Of course, you can do whatever you want,” he said grandly. “The delivery guys will be here for a while but I’ll ask them to assemble the pieces and get out of your way first before hitting the other rooms.”
“Oh there’s more?” I said, rolling my eyes. He really did know how to go on a shopping spree.
“Oh sure… Jack picked out some teak Danish suite, and I went for this Japanese lacquer set that is truly gorgeous. Peter, of course, had to have this carved French thing with, like, cherubs or something on it…”
“Wait, what?” I asked, my lips parted in an unformed question.
He stopped mid-explanation. “Peter? The Baron? I thought you met him at the Rijksmuseum.”
I shook my head. “No that’s not what I meant--”
“You’ll hardly see him… He’s out of town a lot too.”
I put up my hand, Stop. I understood their unusually Bohemian living habits, flopping at a network of extended friends’ houses all over the globe. But what I wanted to know was less precise, and more personal.
“Aren’t we staying… What I mean is…” I worked the sentence around in my mouth, weirdly shy to say it out loud. “I thought we were together.”
The words bounced around the cavernous room then headed for the peaked ceiling, knocking conspicuously against each other as they went.
“Declan?”
His expression flashed briefly apologetic, then stony.
“We already talked about this, Margot.”
“No, no, no… No we didn’t,” I said, my voice rising. I took a few steps toward him, feeling the familiar tremble in my core. I knew this turning away feeling, the tearing apart of velcro strips.
“Everything is the same,” I insisted. “I came here just like you wanted. So… Everything is the same!”
He sighed irritably, his eyes cast to the side, his arms crossed. There was no way I was getting past his defenses, and I wanted to holler like a toddler in protest. Stomp my feet. Throw my head back.
Instead I crossed my arms, self-consciously mimicking his posture. I quirked an eyebrow at him and waited. He wanted me to beg him? Well, I wouldn’t.
The silence grew around us, fueled by our twinned powers of stubbornness. It was like a staring contest, only with no staring.
Finally, he dug in his pocket.
“Ask Anders to take you shopping,” he sighed, producing a fat wad of multi-colored bills from his pocket.
“I don’t want your money,” I spat.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he drawled as he dropped it on the table and strolled past me, his heels echoing on the worn, thick floorboards. “I won’t even miss it.”
***
More than anything, I wanted to call Bridget. It was about 2am her time, and yet I knew she would pick up the phone if I called her.
And then she would tell me how she told me so.
Shuffling toward the crates, I noted that at least two were from my own studio. I snapped open the metal latches and peered inside at the paint and brushes, neatly nestled in parcels of securely taped bubble wrap. When had these been packed?
Taking them by their rope handles, I heaved them to the side and flipped open the other crates. Despite my sour mood, I began to feel excited, like a kid with a backpack full of fresh school supplies on the first day. There were dozens of my favorite brand of linen panels in a selection of sizes, all in a neat stack. I wedged my fingers between them to release the waft of linseed oil from the primer coat, triggering a sensation in my head that I can only call “art hunger.” Must Paint. Want.
The last small create held an entire apothecary's worth of tiny mysterious bottles, each papered with a neatly penned label. Venetian Oil. Lavender Oil. Maroger. I held them in my palm like baby birds, wanting to unstopper each one individually.
Shaking my head, I nestled the bottles back in their crate, loving the clink of the thick glass as they tumbled agai
nst each other. When had these been ordered? And how did he know? Did he have an inventory of my favorite brands or what?
Despite feeling like I’d been led up the garden path, this was a remarkably intimate gesture. Maybe his feelings for me ran deeper than he was admitting. Maybe even deeper than he knew.
The power of wishful thinking is strong in you, imaginary Bridget intoned.
Whatever. If he was a pro, then I was a pro. If it was a business arrangement he wanted, I wasn’t going to follow him around like a puppy begging for a cuddle, nor waiting for his hand to drop to his side so I could lick it.
I didn’t come here to fall at his feet. I came here to network. Getting to actually paint is quite a bonus.
I stood up and looked around. The studio was fantastic. I couldn’t have made it better, myself. How could I ask for more? Time to do what I did best. Make things.
After digging through my luggage which I found in a closet, I retrieved a pair of tennis shoes and a patterned cotton wrap dress that I hoped would pass for respectable outerwear. I twisted my hair in a knot and clipped it in place, then found the driver in the kitchen, seated across the counter from Declan, leaning over a cup of steaming coffee.
“I’d love to go to the shops,” I announced as boldly as I was able. They both looked up at me with identical expressions of surprise. I pasted a polite smile on my face and ignored Declan’s amused, gloating stare.
“Yes, miss,” the driver said, who I hoped Declan had been referring to when he said “Anders.” I wasn’t accustomed to just handing out orders for service to whoever was in my eye-line.
He set down his coffee and stood, flashing me a polite grin. “Meet me in the front in five minutes.”
“Thank you,” I said as he walked past me. Then I turned and followed him up the stairs, leaving Declan sitting in the kitchen alone.
***
Though we passed a half dozen sumptuous-looking boutiques, I asked Anders to stop the car at the first floral market I saw. It had to already be noon, and I wanted to get what I needed and get back to the studio before I lost the passion or the daylight.
“How will I find you?” I asked him before I got out.
“I will circle, miss,” he explained. “Parking is not possible. I will be here.”
Thanking him, I hustled across the sidewalk and through the door, my heart racing slightly as though on a hunt. I knew what I would look for at my local markets, but I had no idea what to expect here.
Spurred on by the art hunger, I trotted up and down aisles, muttering to myself. I needn’t have worried: this was the birthplace of tulips. There were bushels upon bushels of cut flowers wrapped in string, next to towers of forced flowers in clay pots. I stuffed my arms with a lush assortment in reds and cream that made me dizzy to think about and raced back to the red-cheeked older woman who sat on a tall stool behind a digital cash register.
She smiled as I grabbed a couple foil-wrapped chocolate bars and a bag of oranges and blessed her silently for the bright green translation-not-required LED readout of my total. Hoping that their currency worked like ours, I handed her what I presumed was an appropriate amount of Declan’s colorful folding money and she nodded her approval.
As I walked to the street, Anders was already pulling up. He leapt from the driver’s side and opened my door for me so I could fall into the back seat, bundles clutched to my chest.
“Anywhere else, miss?” he asked politely.
“No, no. Just, uh... home please,” I said quickly, trying to remember not to be too brusque. Bridget had told me several times that I was a selfish asshole when getting my paint fix. Well, I was on a mission. What could I say?
“You were very quick!”
“What? Oh yes… so many beautiful things here, Anders,” I added, trying to be as thoughtful as I knew normal people were supposed to be. “You must be very fond of this place.”
“Most beautiful in the world,” he agreed.
I was grateful for his silence, already wrapped up in the imaginary slideshow of what paintings I could create from these flowers. I could almost see them, barely, the images slipping in and out of focus like slips of paper that bobbed to the surface of a bowl of milk then sank again.
Humming to myself, I tried to concentrate and form a plan around the amorphous urge that bubbled inside me. Was there a sensation I could pin down? A common idea among the images that I could form into a word?
It felt like… scaffolding. But not exactly that. A bridge, but not exactly that either. The image of the giant skylight cages in the Rijksmuseum flashed through my mind.
“Suspended,” I said aloud.
“Excuse me, miss?”
“Oh nothing!” I said, all perky, excited I had figured it out. He pulled smoothly to the curb in front of the canal house and I tried to clutch all the paper-wrapped flower parcels securely to my chest. Suspended. That was it.
I held the idea in my mind like a lozenge in my mouth: carefully cradled on my tongue, letting the edges melt and suffuse my thoughts with its flavor. It was such a simple thing, so right, so clear…. I couldn’t let it go as I rushed inside and up the stairs to the attic studio, barely aware of the steps under my feet.
Submitting to the effort of concentration, I unwrapped the flowers as though I was in a dream, focusing on the thought instead of my surroundings. I knew if I let it take me over, the images would come together in some kind of sense.
Before I knew it I had four panels set on easels and a brush in my trembling hand. The flowers cascaded from the selection of vessels and jars I had scrounged from the house’s many cabinets and closets.
I held the thought clear in my mind: Suspended. Like a pendant on a chain. Like a bridge between two places. Like a hog on hooks. Like a thing that is being held up by the forces that pull it in opposite directions.
And then I began to paint.
CHAPTER 5
LATER, I DON’T KNOW how much later, I woke to footsteps in the hallway.
“Hello?” I croaked, my throat raw and unfamiliar.
The door swung inward and Jackson entered. At first I felt a wave of relief and excitement. I wanted to talk to him all about my day… the flowers… the painting… the sensation of being here in this place and how it felt to paint with such clarity and purpose…
But then I remembered I was also angry at him for reasons I didn’t really understand. I clenched my jaw as he entered the room, his eyes sweeping the perimeter, looking at all the changes. He spotted the paintings and walked toward them.
Despite myself, I slipped from the white satin duvet atop my enormous new bed and padded up to him in my bare feet. I couldn’t resist being close to him when he saw what I saw.
“What is…” he murmured. “Margot, you did this today?”
I nodded, knuckling my chin. Standing just behind him, I tried to see it afresh through his eyes. The panels were covered in drawings in diluted red paint. They dripped in dramatic sworls, with vigorous marks for placement and composition. They hardly looked like paintings at all. They looked like blood spatter. They looked like a crime scene. I cringed, wanting to drape them all with a sheet.
“It’s just the underpainting,” I said, more defensively than I meant. “This isn’t what they’ll be. It’s just the start.”
I stepped back, hoping he would turn away and follow me, but he didn’t. He stepped closer.
“They’re so raw…”
“I know,” I said quickly, fighting an urge to tug on his arm. “That’s what they are, exactly… They’re too new to be looked at, really. Can you just… Here, let’s talk over here.”
He pointed. “What is this part… This pattern?”
“Actually, you know what? I don’t really talk about in-progress things,” I admitted nervously, my voice rapid and staccato. “It’s like… unwrapping a wound too early, you know? I’m sorry… I don’t mean to be the overly sensitive arteest or anything…”
“That’s cool. You’re entitled,�
�� he said affectionately and turned toward me. As soon as he was facing away from the paintings, I felt my stress go out like the air from a balloon.
“It’s wonderful how fast you got to work,” he said, putting his arms around my shoulders and pulling me close. I melted into his embrace, vividly aware of the tension in my muscles and bones. I felt like an over-tightened string on a guitar.
“And I see you got your new furniture.”
I nodded, saying nothing. The workmen had practically tiptoed in then assembled it in place, all while I ignored them from across the room, painting and probably talking to myself like a loon the entire time.
“Are you OK?” he asked into my hair.
I sighed, wanting to say yes, and definitely not wanting to give into the urge to lash out at him. But then, who would I be? Just the pawn?
“Actually I think I’m just hungover from painting,” I averred. “Bridget says I am not fit company until I’ve had at least two days to recover.”
There you go, Jack. That was your chance to leave.
He pulled back, scowling into my face with concern.
“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.”
All right. You asked for it.
I took a deep breath. Where to begin?
“Did you know everything from my studio was on the jet?” I asked in a rush, my words tumbling across a single breath.
He pressed his lips together, hard, then nodded.
“Did you know about this house? Everything?”
“Declan buys houses all the time,” he said.
“Don’t try to dodge me, Jackson. You knew about all this?”
He paused, then nodded again. His arms dropped and hung at his sides.
“Is it really that bad?”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Wow, you guys really are cut from the same cloth, huh? You know that’s not the point.”
He shook his head. “We’re nowhere near the same cloth,” he said softly. “And you’re right, that’s not the point.”
“I don’t feel like you’ve been honest with me.”
Filling his chest with a deep breath, he closed his eyes.