Art-Crossed Love

by Libby Rice

  “Convincing enough,” Lissa breathed, “but if that’s a desert, I’m a double-D.”

  Cole reached around Lissa and flicked the end-cover closed. “We were in the Sahara.”

  “So? There’s sand in that picture, Cole, but we both know the dirt’s not the focus.” She drew out the word “dirt” like a victory lap. “More like a garnish.”

  Sometimes he hated her way with words, of stripping back the hard chocolate coating for the creamy nougat beneath in five syllables or less. Breathing into her neck, he let the zesty scent of spiced lemon cool him down. More and more Lissa opted to smell like food instead of flowers, like she knew exactly how badly he wanted to savor the secrets of her skin. If he licked along her neck right now, would she taste like merengue?

  The glossy edges of the album slipped against his fingertips when she pulled the book to her chest and turned in his accidental embrace. Looking up, she repeated, “Garnish.”

  They were supposed to be having a disagreement about the picture, duking out whether she’d actually discovered him for a fraud. But with Lissa pressed against him, staring earnestly into his face and smelling like pie, he lost track of winning. Maintaining the artistic status quo felt far away, insignificant.

  “It’s Kate,” he admitted. “She’s in the desert, but I angled the camera to make her body—her hip, a rounded shoulder, the nip in her waist—blend with the sweep of the dunes behind her.”

  “You’re telling me you styled an erotic photo of your wife to look like something it wasn’t? Skin meets desert desolation?”

  He let his head fall back against his shoulders in mock-focus on the network of abandoned webs in the rafters. “Yes.”

  “Why? What intrigued you?”

  “During that first year of our marriage, there was this mystery”—magic—“about life.” We knew each other so well, yet each day I learned something new. The trick fit. Here was my wife, who’d become totally familiar and yet remained unknowable, very like the shifting sands I’d photographed over and over… what?”

  Satisfaction sparked in her eyes. “I think you know.” When he refused to bite, she went on. “You used your wife and a bunch of sand dunes as props to show something completely different—a feeling of mystery rising from the familiar. You did exactly what I do when I paint. You used your camera to capture a sensation.”

  Her finger stabbed him in the chest. “Viewers don’t see that photograph, Cole. They don’t think, ‘What a beautiful woman’ or ‘Nice landscape.’ They feel your point.”

  Cole brought his palms to her shoulders. He knew exactly what she meant. He’d rebuked her for looking at a house and conveying sadness and grief or looking at a folding chair and painting the promise of a new beginning. Yet in the past he’d played with the same tactics. He couldn’t block the irony from his tone when he said, “Busted.”

  Far from static, his creative process changed from project to project. Kate in the dunes provided one example of a nebulous take on reality, but there were others, easy fodder for Lissa’s gloating smile. Keep those to yourself. In Northern Italy he’d staged a midnight icefall as a lunar runway. In Turkey he’d set a table with an endless array of exotic foods—köfte, dolma, thick yeasty flatbread, kebabs, baklava, cheese, olives, and pots and pots of tea. Instead of shooting the feast in sharp focus, he’d allowed the camera to wander close and the angle that light entered the lens to skew. The result had been a spread of vaguely recognizable shapes that reminded the mind of a life of plenty, but not all or even any of the foods waiting to be enjoyed.

  Lissa’s gaze stayed with him, eerily clear behind the ridiculous cutouts of the mask, like she was privy to the movie playing inside his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Being right all the time? More like she wanted to rub it in and apologizing kept the conversation in full swing.

  Lissa tugged the mask off and let it drop to the floor. “I’m sorry you can’t look at the world with unblemished eyes anymore, that the beauty of seeing all the unseeable things was taken from you.” Candor rang in her voice and raised a lump in his throat.

  She doesn’t know my imagination was cursed.

  He’d mentally painted his devoted wife a jade. A look had become a clandestine invitation, a hug the prelude to a quickie over the washing machine.

  All of it real, if only in his head.

  No more.

  “Don’t be. I’ll never regress to that.” The words were sharper than necessary, and Lissa flinched. The challenge that had faded to sorrow now morphed into bitter regret.

  Slipping between his arms, she withdrew with a curt nod that made him wish he could retract the insult. The album landed in its box, and she closed the lid with careful movements that only emphasized her desire to escape.

  Damn her for making him feel guilty over the deserved harshness. He’d been nothing but honest about his expectations. She had overstepped. She had frustrated a done deal.

  Breath came in increasingly shallow gulps. Each wheeze ushered in a more fully realized awareness. She was the woman he saw when he tried to picture his wife.

  Chapter 14

  “Look,” Cole began, not with full-on desperation, but definitely plausible urgency, “I said that wrong.”

  Already halfway up the basement stairs, she snapped, “You say very little right.” But defeat simmered beneath her bravado. Worse, now he knew why. Every time he challenged her work, she took a hit to her worth.

  Throat stinging, he said, “I don’t mean to upset you.” Even so, he couldn’t let lust override logic.

  “Really?” she asked, slowing her pounding steps. “I try to show you our approaches aren’t so distant. When proven beyond any conceivable doubt, you claim doing things my way—which we now know is also your way—would be an unacceptable regression.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “Lissa, I didn’t mean—”

  “You did.” Before, Lissa had reacted to his reserve with her own brand of breezy insolence, acting like the two of them staged a comedy of errors that would work out in the end. Now her voice flared raw with hurt.

  Averting her face, she began to talk. “You guessed right the other night. My younger self was reviled for being lucky. I thought I deserved the hassle because I was… lucky, that is. When school ended, I figured I’d survived intact. Yet for years, I’ve been told my successes aren’t my own, that they’re the result of sucking the silver spoon. Critics say I’m as good as my parents’ last dollar. Friends, and even lovers—unless they’re on the hunt for a sugar mama—tire of trailing behind somebody they’ve pegged as inferior.”

  Lissa didn’t need to add, “Like you,” for him to hear the accusation.

  Expelling a deep breath, she plunged ahead. “I’ll say this again”—she held up an index finger—“one more time. You asked me here, knowing full well how I create. I could give a shit about your rules or your hang-ups. I’ve had unique opportunities and made the most of them. How the hell do you think your wife came to love my work? Because it’s fucking good, Cole. Instead of using my presence as a pretense, a fake shout out to Kate, why don’t you respect her opinion by respecting me?”

  Cole hesitated, a thousand reactions jostling for the chance to be said. “I realize,” he hedged, “that your approach isn’t inferior—”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “—but different.” Strangely, he believed what he said. “‘Regress’ only relates to me, my situation. I don’t mean to apply the term universally to any shift from my way to yours.”

  Moving forward, he cupped the back of her calf from the side of the stairs. Her position above put her lower legs at eye level, and he hoped an earnest touch might convey the truth. Smooth muscle tensed beneath the softness of her jeans, and he massaged into the tightness, drawing her strain into his palm.

  “I fucked up with Kate.”

  The cloth under his hand moved, and he realized Lissa was turning. She lowered herself to the steps, elbows to kne
es, chin in hand. “Why do I feel like we’re finally getting somewhere?”

  Because you’ve bent me over, and I’ve finally grabbed my ankles, wanting you more than I should. “I loved her.”

  “I know.”

  “I suffocated her with it.”

  “Figuratively,” Lissa prompted dryly.

  “Yes.” He licked his lips, stalling for time to explain how he could have caused such damage. “Like you said, Kate was a beautiful woman.” Though not as beautiful as Lissa. “That’s not an excuse. Actually, I don’t think it played a part, but her looks always come up when I think about what happened.”

  Sometime during the speech, Lissa’s hand swept down the length of her shin and caught his. She squeezed, an unspoken, “Yes, about what happened…”

  Cole said, “Kent told you Kate had ‘moments.’ He meant depression. Kate was the sweetest thing imaginable, but she had her own inner demons. She used exercise and sleep and sometimes medication to keep the worst at bay. Despite those struggles, or maybe because of a will to overcome them, she made friends easily. I think people who grapple with depression often present the happiest front.”

  “She got particularly close with another man, and I assigned every gesture a double meaning. If they spoke at dinner, I fumed over being left out. If they touched casually—and I mean overlapping fingers in passing the salad dressing or a head-on collision through the swinging kitchen door—I imagined they did more behind my back.”

  Cole tried to tell the story objectively, but the facts, even without the seething anger that had accompanied them, sounded ugly to his ears. “The way they horsed around—playful slaps and faux karate chops—felt too familiar. There was a knowledge, almost a muscle memory about their movements that said they’d had their hands on each other in a different way.”

  “How’d she know him?” Lissa asked.

  The truth was too damning. No one else would have suspected what he had. “Through me.”

  “Even harder.”

  It shouldn’t have been. “On a random Tuesday, Kate parked her car outside the St. Julien hotel in Boulder. An aging ding in the bumper left no doubt. I pulled into the parking garage, thinking we’d have a drink after she finished what I assumed was a late business lunch. Parking was sparse that day, so my brother’s truck stood out. Supposedly he was traveling back from a business meeting, but in that moment I knew—knew with a certainty that pushed all critical thinking aside—that he was in that fucking hotel with my wife.”

  More like in that hotel fucking my wife. There, he’d said it. His brother.

  “How did you know the truck—”

  “Corporate logo in the back window.” Cole tried valiantly not to cringe at Lissa’s pitying look. She thought him the injured party, but he was the culprit. “I lost my mind. That night I told my wife—my very vulnerable wife—that if she wanted him, she could have him. Her tears spurred me on. Two weeks before Kate jumped from that cliff, I accused her of being unfaithful.”

  “God, Cole, I’m so sorry.”

  “I almost,” he rasped, “almost wish I’d been right.”

  Cole swallowed, hoping he’d said enough. He couldn’t go beyond the sure and the solid and the seen. Imagining more had cost his wife’s life.

  ******

  A heavy thump sounded from somewhere overhead, breaking through Cole’s confession like an axe to a sickened tree.

  Lissa recognized Cole’s words for exactly what they were—the answer she’d been searching for. Cole had accused his wife of fooling around and been wrong. When Kate had reacted drastically, he’d assumed all fault. Now the man didn’t imagine. Anything. Ever. Not even for the sake of art.

  The house had been quiet, but the commotion unfolding above proved she and Cole weren’t alone. Lissa let her hand tighten on Cole’s as she looked warily over a shoulder to the door at the top of the stairs.

  The low growl from Sasha, surprisingly menacing, proved they might not welcome the company.

  The stairs spit them out in the far corner of the kitchen. At first Lissa didn’t see anything amiss, only Rhea standing behind the granite island, looking pale and shocked against a fuchsia wind breaker. Lissa wouldn’t have guessed someone as beautiful as Rhea could look like a clown, but the bright pink did little for the woman’s bloodshot hair, like the jacket had a vendetta against its owner.

  A collection of Rubbermaid containers spread over the counter. Lissa and Cole had happened upon a morning food drop.

  “He collapsed,” Rhea whispered, worrying the edge of a dish with shaking hands. “No warning.”

  Cole didn’t ask who. He simply rounded the island on a harsh curse and dropped out of sight. The vicious demand that followed brought the situation into stark focus. “Call 911 for fuck’s sake!”

  Rhea didn’t budge. Fear and indecision froze her face into slack lines, so Lissa scrambled to the basement and snagged the phone she’d propped on the stairs. Back in the kitchen, she charged around the granite blockade to see Kent leaning against a cupboard, one hand clutching his chest. Labored breaths sawed in and out of his throat, but he managed a muted request. “Nitroglycerin pills,” he said, lifting his eyes to Rhea. Their gazes held for a single heartbeat before Kent’s jaw went slack, and his torso slumped forward.

  Ruddy color faded too fast from Kent’s cheeks. Dear God, was he dead? He didn’t make a sound. No movement, only that horrible, lifeless slouch.

  Cole let out a feral growl and dove for his uncle, stretching Kent’s unconscious form flat on the floor and patting the front of his polo shirt. All of Cole’s focus remained on Kent when he spoke. “His pills?”

  Rhea’s response was immediate. “I don’t know.” Fluttering hands rose against her throat in a faintly protective maneuver. “Not in his front pocket?”

  “No.” The rest of Cole’s exasperated reply faded behind the voice of the emergency operator who answered Lissa’s call.

  “Ambulance,” Lissa urged. She fumbled through the story of an unconscious man who’d probably gone into cardiac arrest. In the meantime, Cole took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, neither lost nor searching. His face bore a mixture of resolve and acceptance, the kind of look that said he dreaded death, but knew all too well that death didn’t care.

  Lissa laid a palm on Cole’s shoulder. “Ready?”

  Calm certainty broke through after a moment of silent commiseration, and Cole nodded. Without any coaxing, he bent close to Kent’s face, ear to mouth, obviously listening for breath. Shaking his head, Cole trailed two fingers down Kent’s throat, resting at the pulse point beneath the chin.

  Sasha approached Kent with somber knowledge in his brown eyes. The dog usually lumbered along, never in a hurry. Somehow the encumbered movements never interfered with him looking perfectly pleased with himself and the world. Not today. This time when Sasha dropped to the floor with his favorite kill-the-elbows dive, he made the same noise that had leaked out in the basement beside Kate’s box—a mournful, beyond-his-dog-years whine. Sniffing at Kent’s foot, Sasha occasionally licked the man’s Denver Bronco’s sock, doing his part without interfering.

  Unable to help in any other way, Lissa gave the operator the address and a play-by-play of events, while Cole felt for a pulse with increasing urgency, upping the pressure in circular motions along Kent’s neck. After several spots, Cole whipped his hands away with a muttered curse. He stacked his palms over the center of Kent’s chest, and then over and over in a rapid beat, Cole pumped his uncle’s heart. Every thirty compressions or so, Cole tilted Kent’s head and pinched his nose, blowing into Kent’s mouth with enough force to visibly inflate the man’s chest.

  Once. Twice. Then back to that steady pressing.

  The work lifted the veins flowing along Cole’s forearms. With each pump, his healthy arteries seemed to beat a unique brand of encouragement to Kent. This is how you do it, they said.

  When Cole looked up at Lissa, his eyes were swirling and dark, his usual sea b
reeze suddenly a hurricane coming ashore. The stark change reminded Lissa that even through their most antagonistic encounters, Cole had retained a level of boyishly crumpled appeal. No matter how dry or how cutting he’d become, those tangled blond curls and Caribbean irises had lightened the mood. At first she’d think, He’s pissed, but then she’d graduate to, How serious can one be and still look like a Coppertone commercial?

  The answer crouched on the floor, radiating equal parts resolve, desperation, and helpless rage. Shoulders bunched and face ghostly beneath his usually-swarthy tan, Cole looked ready to kill the very concept of heart failure.

  Keeping his eyes on Lissa, Cole snapped, “Find the nitro, Rhea. He always has the pills.” The sharp command pulled Rhea from her stupor, and Cole’s sister-in-law joined him on the hardwood. Feeling her way, she checked the pockets of Kent’s khakis, one by one.

  Nothing.

  The woman on the line calmly explained that the nearest hospital was Boulder Community, over forty minutes away. Numb, Lissa stared at Cole’s systematic pressing and Rhea’s frantic pat down. “Should we drive to meet the ambulance?”

  “No, ma’am,” came a polite reply. “If at all possible, continue CPR until help arrives. You can try to cool him down to reduce his metabolic rate and oxygen requirements, but don’t get him wet.” She explained that moisture on the skin would make shocking the heart extremely risky due to the possibility of electrical arcing.

  “Cole,” Lissa began, her voice steadier than she’d expected, “the ambulance is on the way.” Keep going. No need to emphasize a wait that felt like a lifetime.

  “Rhea,” she went on, “we need ice packs, frozen vegetables, whatever. Wrap them in towels and pile them on. Don’t dampen his skin.”

  Trevor’s wife looked up slowly, posture loose, gape vacant and aimless. Initially Lissa thought the woman had misunderstood, but suddenly Rhea lurched upward and spun toward the freezer.

  Lissa remained on the line. The dispatcher didn’t have a magical solution—only stay the course and keep oxygen flowing through Kent’s body—but Lissa felt more useful with the phone against her ear.