by Paula Cox
She lets out a long sigh. “Yes, of course I’m tired. My eyes are heavier than bricks.”
“Well, come on, then, pretty lady. Come and lie in your man’s arms.”
“Ooh, my man?”
She dances over to the couch, pushing away her problems for the moment, and drops next to me. I grab a blanket resting on the arm of the couch and throw it over us. Then I move close to her, wrap my arms around her so that we’re spooning. I get hard again, but I ignore it. For some bizarre reason lying with her like this is all I want right now. I’ve never had that with a woman. Never. Just lying here. Peace. It’s strange, but I can’t deny that I like it.
“So am I your woman now?” When she speaks, her breath caresses my forearm.
“You’re my woman,” I say, “if you want to be.”
“Of course I do, you silly man.”
I close my eyes. I can’t see her, but I know she’s closed her eyes, too.
After a few minutes, she lets out sleepy breaths.
After a few more minutes, I’m falling through the couch and into a dream.
I’m standing in a field of blood-red roses. They stretch from where I stand—trampling roses underfoot—all the way to the horizon, which is tinged red with the flowers. I turn in a full circle and roses extend as far as my eye can see, until a fog blocks them, a fog which is far, far away.
For a while I just stand where I am, smelling the roses, taking in their scent and relaxing. My life is wild, hectic, violent. In my waking hours I would never just stand in a field like this, at peace. But right now it’s heaven.
I walk through the endless field, brushing the petals under my hands, brushing them and feeling the tickle of them on my palm. I have a foolish grin on my face, a grin which would make the men laugh at me, question my leadership. But they’re not here. I don’t have to be the leader right now. I can just walk; I can just be.
I don’t think about anything as I walk, the sound of the roses crunching under my footsteps my only companion. I just walk, and smell, and empty my mind of all worries.
After a half hour—or a half month, or a half year—I come to a tall rose, stretching over the others like a parent over his children. It’s three times the height of the other flowers. Its petals are larger, more like leaves, and the red of them is deeper.
I approach the rose and extend my hand, desperate to touch it.
I grip the step, not caring when the thorns pierce my skin, and then slide my hand up and stroke the petals. I wonder if this rose is my feelings for Hope or my contentment or my longing for my dad or what, but I don’t know. I’ve never known stuff like that about myself. So I just touch this massive rose, touch and smell it and enjoy it.
But there’s something solid beneath one of the petals. It pokes through the petal, a small spike. Not a thorn—it’s too thin for that—but something else.
I peel away the petals, chucking them into the air where they flutter down to the other roses. I peel and peel until the needle is revealed. A giant needle, like the kind heroin addicts use. A giant needle full of something sick-looking, something life-wrecking, something which does no good for anybody.
“No,” I mutter, as the stem of the rose peels away to reveal the needle in its entirety. “No, no, no, no.”
Then I look down. The roses are gone. Fields and fields and miles and miles of roses disappear. Needles sprout from the earth, pushing through the dirt and rising high around me, giant needles which push toward the sky, sky-scraper needles which surround me, box me in.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
I smash my hands against them, but I might as well smash my hands against marble. They’re solid, immovable.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!”
When I wake, sunlight filters through the partition, shining onto me and Hope.
She looks down at me, her elfin face framed in the light. I reach up and touch her lips, run my forefinger along her lower lip. “You’re so beautiful,” I say. I don’t know where the words come from. I’m not a soft man, but these are soft words, aren’t they? But it’s true. She is beautiful. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“Did you have a nightmare?” she asks, touching my arm, moving her feathery fingers up and down my skin.
“Yes, but I can’t remember much about it now.” There was a flower? Something else? I reach for the dream but it drifts away from me.
Hope is fully dressed, wearing tight-fitting jeans and a tank top, through which I can see her bra.
“Did you check on her?”
“Yes. She was sleeping. Patrick said she woke up in the night and screamed, but he just went in there and gave her some water and told her to take a painkiller for the headache. He even made her a peanut butter sandwich.”
“Good.” I nod. “Our relief should be here soon.”
“Our relief?” She arches an eyebrow at me. “Are we soldiers now, Mr. Biker?”
“Addiction is a war, so yeah, I guess we are.”
I lean up on the couch, stretching my arms out, yawning.
“I need coffee.” A thought occurs to me, rising out of my sleepy mind suddenly and urgently. “Hope, are any of your pictures on display at the gallery in town?”
She bites her lip, a nervous schoolgirl in front of a teacher. “Yes,” she says finally. “Why?”
“Good. I’ll get coffee and then we’ll go and take a look.”
“But . . . why?”
“I want to see what you’ve presented to the world, I guess. Yeah, that’s it. Goddamn, I don’t know. You’ve cast some kind of spell on me, Hope. I’m not myself.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
I shrug. “I don’t think about stuff like that too deeply. All I know is that it’s a true thing.”
“You’re so poetic, you know that?” she pouts.
I jab her softly, playfully, in the side.
She winces and then slaps me on the arm. “You’re an animal!” she snaps, smiling. “You’re a beast.”
“I am,” I agree. “You’ve got me pegged.”
“Anyway,” she sighs, taking my hand in hers, her small fingers gripping my large, callused fingers, “haven’t you seen enough? You looked at thirteen of them the night before last!”
“You’re an amazing painter. What do you want me to say? And they were private paintings, weren’t they? I want to see what you’ve thrust out there. It’s the difference between seeing a whore and taking your woman to dinner.”
She tilts her head at me. “How’s that?”
“One’s dark, hidden, secret; the other’s out there for all to see.”
“I don’t know if I like my secret paintings being called whores,” she comments, with a small smile on her lips.
“Nobody likes being called a whore.”
She brings her hand to my face and prods me in the forehead. “You know, I didn’t expect much in here, Mr. Biker. I thought you’d be just an animal. I mean, you are an animal. Your performance last night proved that. But you’re not just an animal. There’s more to you, isn’t there, Killian?”
I fidget uncomfortably. She’s looking deeply into me. Her dark brown eyes are staring right into my thoughts.
“Maybe there is,” I mutter. “But don’t go telling the men that, alright? A biker club is like a Viking war band or something like that. An army. Men only follow strength.”
“You can be strong and deep, you know.”
“Not in this world, not with these people.”
“But with me?” she persists, moving her hand to my cheek and stroking it. “With me you can, right?”
“Sure, pretty lady. If it makes you happy.”
She leans in and kisses me. It’s not sexual, just a fresh, quick kiss. I kiss her back. When she pulls away, I’m smiling like a man in a dream.
We ride back to the Cove, Hope’s arms wrapped around me. I’m starting to get used to riding with her. I’ve ridden with women before, but it’s always felt awkward, like
I have a parasite clinging to me while I’m trying to ride. But with Hope, it feels natural. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have any of that bull ‘ride or die chick’ wannabe stuff about her. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t look at me like I’m an action figure.
We stop outside of the gallery, which does decent business with tourists and local collectors, decent enough business to stay open, at any rate.
It’s the fanciest building in the Cove, sticking out like a too-sore thumb made of glass and ornate stone. The front is like a church, three-floors high with a triangular roof. The front doors are twice my height and carved patterned wood. The handles of the doors are like something you’d see in a medieval castle, black metal and looped.
“Wow,” I say, bringing the bike to a stop and kicking out the stand.
Hope hops off and looks up at it. “It is something, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never been in here, not once. I don’t think I’ve ever had a real look at it before now.”
“I used to stare at it all the time when I was a kid,” Hope says, her voice far-off and dreamy. “I used to sit right over there . . .” She points at a public bench opposite the gallery. “I used to sit right there and gaze up at it and wonder if they’d ever take my paintings.”
“And they have,” I say, climbing off the bike. “You can be proud.”
“They haven’t sold, though.”
“How many are in there?”
“Three.”
“Three! That’s amazing.”
She shrugs. “It is, I know, and I’m proud. But it makes me uneasy at the same.”
“What? Why?”
I go to her, touch her hand. She looks up at me timidly, but still with that strength in her eyes, always lurking there.
“I started art because I wanted to . . . Okay, this is going to sound odd. But I wanted to express the inexpressible, I guess. I wanted to bring form to something which only had form in my mind before, which I could never express with words, which nobody around me would understand even if I did express it with words.”
“That’s some college-level stuff right there, pretty lady.” I smile down at her. “Right over my head. It kept you sane? Is that it?”
“Yes, I suppose it did.”
I offer her hand my hand. She takes it. We squeeze each other’s fingers, each other’s palms, tightly.
“Let’s go and take a look, then.”
I lead her toward the ornate double doors.
Chapter Thirteen
Hope
My chest thumps nervously as we walk into the gallery. Having my paintings stacked high in my living room is one thing; having them hanging on the wall of a gallery for anybody to see is quite another. Ever since the gallery took them, I have avoided this place, only for the reason that I might chance upon someone judging one of my paintings. I might see their reaction. The idea terrifies me.
When we approach the main desk, a face-painted, ultra-thin woman jumps out from behind it. She has short military blonde hair and wears a sleek white suit. She looks as out of place in the Cove as the gallery does. Her shiny black shoes click on the hardwood, reflective floor. Her face paint—there’s too much of it to call it merely makeup—is ghost-white.
“Hope!” she cries, in a high-pitched squeak. “It’s so good to see you!”
“And you,” I mutter.
Killian and I stop just before her. I’m wearing jeans and a checkered shirt, rolled up at the elbows, and black mini-heels. Killian’s wearing his biker leathers and jeans, with brown workman’s boots. I have no idea what we must look like to her. The woman, Kelsey, was the main opponent to having my paintings here. Not modern enough, she said. Not stylish enough. Too traditional. Too much of an actual painting.
“Are you here to look at your paintings?” she grins, a jackal’s grin. “Does this lovely gentleman wish to lay his lovely eyes on your lovely paintings?”
Killian turns to me, a bemused expression on his face. He raises both his eyebrows in question. What’s with this woman?
I shake my head, a small gesture. Don’t ask.
“Yes, Kelsey,” I reply. “Killian wanted to take a look.”
“Killian!” She shouts his name like she’s never heard a name before.
Just as I felt awkward around this woman when I first met her, when the gallery manager and I were discussing my paintings, I feel awkward around her now. She makes me feel like a small-town girl, like a nowhere girl. She’s off in the city somewhere, in a penthouse, drinking cocktails and talking about art. I’m here waiting tables.
“Oh, I’ve heard of Killian, I’m sure. And a biker, are you? Yes, a biker?”
“Yeah,” Killian grunts.
“Oh, you must be the Killian!”
She emphasizes her words randomly like a person who’s recently learned English, though her accent is American. I guess she picked it up at some fancy art conference somewhere. Maybe it’s the way super intellectual art critic type people are supposed to talk.
“The Killian?”
“You’re the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs!”
“Yeah, I am.”
Kelsey brings her hands to her chest, clutching them together. She reminds me of a clichéd sweetheart waiting for her love to come back from World War II. Then she leans in and whispers. “Please don’t judge poor Hope too harshly. She really is a fantastic artist! But she is so, so young. How old are you, Hope?” She barrels on without waiting for a response. “Nineteen? Twenty?”
“Twenty-four,” I put in.
“She’s still learning her trade, you see. Everybody has to start somewhere, you see.”
“Are you the owner?” Killian says.
“Oh, no, I’m—”
“The receptionist, right?”
“Well, I do run reception, as it were, but I’m not exactly—”
“That desk there, with the phone and the computer and all that.” Killian points to the main desk. “That’s where you work, right?”
“For the time—”
“So what the hell are you doing having a goddamned opinion about Hope’s art? What the hell are you doing telling me to not judge her? I’ve seen Hope’s paintings, and they’re beautiful. They deserve to be in this place.”
Kelsey makes a tut noise, shaking her head. Nothing shakes Kelsey. That’s what I learned during the process of getting my paintings in here. Even when the manager and the owner both told her my work was decent—that’s as much praise as they ever gave—she just made that tut noise and told them they were wrong. I was not good enough yet.
And that’s the main reason you’ve avoided this place, isn’t it? Not the public, not potential buyers, but this sleek, modern, impressive woman.
“You are a biker, sir, and I work in an art gallery, sir, so excuse me, sir, if I value my opinion just a little bit more than yours.”
Killian rubs his eyes and lets out a groan. He turns to me. “Ignore her,” he says. “Just ignore her. Someone clearly thought you were good enough to be in here. When it comes down to it, who cares what the receptionist says?”
Kelsey just smiles her fake smile, and stands there looking modern and cool and like she couldn’t care less about the whole thing.
“Come on,” I say, taking Killian’s arm. “Let me show you my paintings. They’re in the realist section.”
“The graveyard of art,” Kelsey comments.
I pull Killian away before he gets too angry.
“I wish she was a man,” Killian rages as we walk toward the realist wing. “If she was a man, I would’ve—”
“It’s okay, Killian, really,” I interrupt. “I have to learn to take criticism, don’t I?”
“Yeah, sure, but there’s criticism and there’s being a dick about it. She was looking down on you, Hope. Looking right down on you.”
I shrug. “She’s only been in the Cove for just over a year. She joined right about the time my pictures were under assessment. She was very . . . Let’s say she’s not a
fan of my particular style. To be honest, Killian, she scares me a little.”
“Scares you?” he asks seriously, taking my hand. “Why would she scare you?”
“I’m just a waitress, a small-town waitress. When she looks at me, that’s what she sees. She used to live in New York, in a loft apartment or something like that, and have dinner parties and . . . I must look like a farm girl to her.”