The Art of Love

by Anne Whitney

  The phone call is quick and ends abruptly, but Fitz continues to pace, as if he is prowling for prey. It makes me more nervous than I already am. After the Simon Phillips television interview, he held me until I stopped shaking and then made sure we had a plan to sort out the immediate issues, mainly my job and current location. If the police did indeed know I was in New York, then they could potentially be trawling the streets for me. The local news coverage would increase and not even a haircut and some lipstick could disguise the similarities for long. For now, I am limited to Fitz’s apartment. Here I will be safe, for now, or so Fitz insists. I don’t know if even he believes that.

  “V will be here soon,” Fitz says, his voice even and cold. “Rachel’s okay with everything. She understands the situation, and she’s going to talk to the rest of the staff and make sure they keep their mouths shut. But you’ll have to go in to pick up your final check. Legally, she can’t allow anyone else to pick it up for you. She’d like to keep the illegal activities to a minimum.”

  “Okay,” I whimper. “What happens now?”

  “I...” Fitz takes a deep breath. “My mom and stepdad have a place in Miami that they use for vacations. Derek gets to use it sometimes when he goes to Florida for shows. He has the keys. He can take you down there for a while until the heat’s off New York or the search ends.”

  “Florida?”

  He nods. “It would be safer for you to get out of the city. It’s too risky for you to be here now that they know you’re in New York for sure. Someone might have already recognized you and made a report. We don’t know who made the tipoff. Right now, I’m not sure there’s many people we can trust.”

  “Will... Will I be there alone?” I ask.

  “Derek can look after you, and then I’ll come down a week or so later. Change of artistic scenery and all that good stuff.”

  “What about your show? It starts in two weeks.”

  He cringes at the mention of his show, but quickly regains his composure.

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Please don’t give up the show for me. I’ve fucked around with your life enough as it is.”

  “Marina, this is far more important than any stupid show.” He joins me on the couch, but does not touch me. Instead, he leans in and makes sure our gazes are practically fused together. He needs me to know how serious he is about this. “You are more important than any show. None of that stuff matters right now.”

  He’s been so kind to me. Too kind. I can’t help but feel immense guilt over this. It seems like all I ever do is ruin people’s lives. I’m nothing but an inconvenience to everyone I meet. Once again, the tears take over, flowing freely down my scarlet cheeks. It’s almost impossible to breathe, and I’m fighting for each breath I take.

  “Why won’t they just leave me alone?” I ask, more for myself than Fitz. “I’m an adult. He doesn’t have responsibility over me. Why won’t they let me be?”

  “I don’t know, Marina,” Fitz mumbles. He’s close to me but still won’t touch me. Now, more than ever, I could use his warm embrace.

  “This is what he does,” I continue. “He spins lies and makes everyone believe them, even me. I mean, a kidnapping plot? That’s how he’s trapped me. That’s how he got all those idiots on the news and in the papers to buy the sob story. The more he cries, the more they think of me as some poor victim who can’t make choices for herself. Then they’ll find me and won’t listen to a word I say because, clearly, I’m just traumatized or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I’m a poor little girl who needs to go home to her loving daddy, and I wouldn’t put it past him to say I’m psychotically deranged and in need of a mental hospital.”

  By the end of my rant, my voice is strained with anger and I’m digging my fingernails into my thighs again, creating throbbing crescent moons in my skin. Fitz places his hands over mine and gently lifts them from my legs.

  “I’m so fucking sick of being a project,” I sob. “I want this to end now.”

  “So do I, Marina. I wish I could make it all go away.”

  Desperately needing him close to me, I force him into a hug, clinging to him for dear life as if I’ll drown without him. His touch is softer than mine, but I need it badly. He is the calm before the storm, the sole shelter amidst the monsoon. I can’t believe that only this morning, we had been discussing our slow and steady relationship, the next big adventure in my life. That felt like a dream more than anything now. Soon, I would have to run away again. A new state waited for me, with more strangers to lie to.

  The impatient tapping at the door made me jump like a startled house pet. Every sudden noise brought about panic now.

  “It’s okay,” Fitz reassures me. “It’ll be Viridian with your stuff. Just stay here. I’ll get it.”

  Fitz opens the door slowly, peering through the miniscule crack he’s created to see who it is.

  “Dad?” He says with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  Oh, please, not now, I beg as Fitz fully opens the door to reveal his father, unshaven and looking as if he hasn’t slept in days.

  “Fitzroy, son,” he replies in between deep breaths. I wonder if he ran up the stairs to Fitz’s apartment. “May I come in?”

  Fitz hesitates for a few seconds, but relents and stands aside, allowing him in.

  “What do you want?” Fitz asks, his tone very clearly one of annoyance. He doesn’t want to be bothered by family strife right now. None of us do, to be honest. Fitz’s father notices my bloodshot and teary eyes and looks concerned.

  “Miss Fenton, is everything alright?”

  “Yes, it’s... It’s fine, Mr. Cottrell-Iver,” I respond, desperately holding onto what I hope is a clear tone and not one of impending hysteria. “I just had some bad news - private stuff. I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course, Miss Fenton. My apologies. I’m here to talk to my son, but I think I need to say sorry to you as well for what happened at Whiteread’s. I... I was extremely unkind and crude toward you and it was completely uncalled for. Please, accept my apologies.”

  I nod silently, really not in the mood for a conversation with him. The way he looks at me, with a mixture of sympathy and intense scrutiny, unnerves me greatly. Being judged as well as being pitied is too much. Fitz looks ready to drag his father out of the building with his bare hands.

  “Was that everything, father, or would we be able to schedule this therapy session for later, because we have other things to deal with right now. You know where the door is.”

  “Fitzroy,” his dad sighs. “I know you’re still mad at me and I completely understand that, but there’s still some stuff we need to talk about. I just want five minutes. Would that be okay? Then I promise I’ll leave.”

  “Fine. Five minutes.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  They spend the first thirty seconds or so of their allotted time in silence, mulling around the apartment and doing everything possible apart from making eye contact. I’ve never felt more like the third wheel in my entire life. At least in the restaurant I had food. Fitz’s father eventually coughs, breaking the unbearable silence.

  “I went to put some money into your account,” he says. “When I got back, my secretary called me to say the money had been returned.”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t need your money. I can do perfectly well without your smug sympathy.”

  “It wasn’t sympathy, it was support. I said I would support your work and I do.”

  “Is that what you call support? Making a scene in public?”

  Fitz’s father cringes. “That was a mess. I had a lot on my mind from work and other things. I shouldn’t have taken it all out on you like that. I’m sorry.”

  “How gracious of you,” Fitz says, sounding anything but gracious himself. “I guess you’ve had a lot on your mind for twenty four years. Any other excuses you want to use while you’re at it?”

  “How are you going to suppo
rt yourself if you won’t accept mine? Have you found any grants?”

  “Like I said. I’ll manage. I’d rather deal with this on my own and run my own life than have you push money on me while you wait for me to turn into the prodigal son.”

  “Tell me, Fitzroy. Was your life before you started all... all of this, was it really so unbearable that you had to turn into a completely different person?”

  “People change. I know you find it most inconvenient that I didn’t turn out exactly like you, but surprise surprise, I’m not you.”

  “I never wanted you to turn into me.”

  “Oh, really? So the fact that my life was the complete fucking double of yours for eighteen years was a total coincidence? Same schools, same tutors, same faces everywhere?”

  “You had the best education money could buy. Don’t try and claim you lived some tragic and impoverished childhood. I know you’re desperate to sell yourself as the ultimate starving artist, but nobody’s buying it. If you’d wanted to really prove that, you never would have asked me to pay for art school tuition.”

  Fitz doesn’t seem to have a retort to that part, so he sneers, instead. I have to admit, Fitz’s dad has him cornered there. Fitz could have completely cut his dad out of his life and lived a life truly free from his family’s influence, but he chose not to. He knew he would need the money, and he couldn’t totally remove his dad from the equation. Like Derek said, the urge to conform and be the perfect son, to finally earn his approval, was clearly still there.

  “So was it really that bad?” Fitz the elder asks. “You’re smart and so full of potential. You could have been anything that you wanted to be.”

  “And I wanted to be this. Why can’t you accept that?”

  “And this is what you choose? Being a laughing stock? Sometimes I look at you and I have no idea who you are. My mind still can’t figure out how you went from the man you were to whatever this is today. And how long do you think you can be like this for, huh? A few years? You think you can spend your entire life taking your clothes off and pretending it has some deep and complex meaning behind it all, while everyone laughs at you and our family behind our backs? How can you support yourself doing that?”

  “Oh god,” Fitz groans. “Is everything about money with you? You think you can just throw your wealth at all your problems and everything will be a-okay.”

  “It got you out of jail, didn’t it?” His father fires back. “It got you a degree in modern art. It got you a place to live. If it weren’t for my evil money, you would be nothing. You didn’t suddenly gain an aversion to capitalism when you needed my help all those times. How convenient.”

  “I swear you live solely to make me feel completely worthless, dad. Congratulations, you must be very proud of yourself. Aren’t you glad you’ve got Vicky to compensate for the complete failure that is your only son?” Fitz’s voice gets louder as he goes on, close to hysteria. His pacing turns to stomping. The elder Fitzroy has an undeniable talent for reducing his adult son to a child.

  “And what about all the people you’ve hurt?” Fitz’s dad raises his voice to match his son’s, making the pair of us curl into ourselves. “Did you ever stop to think about anyone other than yourself for five seconds when you decided your life just wasn’t good enough? You weren’t there to see the woman you were supposed to marry fall apart and wonder what she’d done wrong, or your teenage sister cry at night because she thought her big brother hated her. You certainly didn’t give a shit about how I felt. Shockingly, I care about you, even though I have no fucking idea who you are now.”

  The painful silence returns. I’ve been watching this dual confession unfold from the couch in a state of train-wreck style fascination. Their argument makes me feel emotionally naked.

  “Is that all you came here to say?” Fitz asks. “Was that all you wanted? Want to bring anything else to the table while we’re here?”

  “I want you to think about your future, son. Really think about it.”

  Fitz’s dad takes a folded up piece of paper from his pocket and lays it on the kitchen counter. It’s clearly a check. Fitz stares at it as if it will spontaneously combust.

  “Think about it, Fitzroy. Think about everything you could be.”

  “You should leave now,” Fitz says, still staring at the check, his voice steeped with the tone of defeat. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  With a nod, Fitz’s father shuffles toward the door. Before his hand grasps the handle, he turns around to look at Fitz and I, with sad eyes and a long, deep sigh. He is the double of his son in more ways than either of them would ever admit.

  “My door is always open to you,” he says. “Whatever you choose to do, I’ll be there. Everything will work out for the best. For all of us.”

  He leaves after that, and Fitz doesn’t move until the tapping sound of expensive leather shoes against the stone steps disappears. Once we are again engulfed in silence, Fitz grabs the folded up check and scrunches it tightly into a ball, holding it in his fist. Now it’s my turn to comfort him. I drag his tense form back to the couch and rest my head against his shoulders, rubbing circles on his thighs. We are bound together through circumstance and understanding, albeit on a subject neither of us wishes to be experts in. For now, I hope we can be enough for each other.

  CHAPTER 27.

  For a Tuesday night, the cafe seems remarkably dead. The clock ticks past seven o’clock and the only souls in the restaurant were a couple seated by the table eating some unappetizing-looking appetizer and Derek and Viridian at the bar, watching me scrub glasses as usual while the bartender plays a game on his phone.

  “Honey, it’s just sex,” Viridian says. “It hurts the first time. It’s not like he’s a bad lay or anything like that.”

  I eye her suspiciously. “And how would you know that?”

  She sighs and says, “Once upon a time, we had sex, but oh, my sweet Angelina Jolie, we could never, should never, and would never work out as a couple.”

  “Viridian does not lie,” Derek says with a snort into his drink. “Except for her name, hair color, and about fifty other unmentionable things.”

  Viridian smacks him playfully on the shoulder.

  “Tell her your real name,” Derek implores.

  “And why does that even matter?” Viridian asks. “It’s Ashley, though, and I hate it. It just costs too damn much to actually go to a lawyer and get it changed.”

  “Ashley Maria Perez,” Derek says, his voice muffled by another snort. “I personally think it’s a very charming, nice, normal name.”

  “For a nurse or a kindergarten teacher,” Viridian says. “Not for an artist. Not for someone who wants to push the limits of art. Ashley Perez makes you think weak and sad and innocent. But Viridian makes you think-”

  “Of the color blue-green,” Derek says. “And besides, that color is so out of style, but Ashley Perez still sounds just as normal as it did when you were born way back in 1990. You, my dear, are ancient.”

  “Oh shut up, Mr. 1987,” Viridian snaps.

  “I was born in 1992,” I say, putting another glass back into the cabinet. “Now you’re both making me feel like I’m a baby or something.”

  My sudden contribution pulls the two of them out of their argument, as if they’ve suddenly remembered that they’re here because of me.

  “Sex!” Viridian says dramatically. “Case in point, losing your virginity isn’t a big deal. I mean, it hurts like a bitch the first time, but once you realize how everything down there works and how to deal with varying degrees of manhood, it’s horribly satisfying with the right man. Or woman. Or toy. You learn to love it after you get past the taboo over it all. I mean, it’s just putting a pole into a hole. I hope he used a condom, though. Can never be too safe.”

  “Don’t want to have Fitz Junior running naked around New York City quite yet,” Derek says, tipping his head in agreement.

  I stare at them in bewilderment for a few moments, thinking back to the
night that still hung fresh in my memories. Eventually, I look away and go to find a chair. I know what my face looks like - worried, anxious, and even sad.

  “I saw the news, by the way,” Derek says. “You-know-who is everywhere, and he’s coming to town for his little search and rescue endeavor.”

  Viridian nods knowingly. “You should just go to the cops and tell them the truth about what happened between you and your dad. It would fix all of this, wouldn’t it? They’d know the truth and they’d stop.”

  I’ve heard that time and time again from everyone who knows. Tell the cops and go free. But I know my father better than anyone else alive.

  “He’d still find a way to punish me somehow,” I say. “Punish me for killing my mother, for abandoning him, for running away and making him look like a fool.”

  “Or they’d put him in jail where he belongs,” Derek tells me. “For a long, long time.”

  “The only evidence is me,” I say listlessly. “And it’s my word against his. You’ve seen the stuff he’s been saying about me and how I’m mentally damaged and all that shit. Nobody would believe me.”

  Viridian rolls her eyes and swigs from her vodka tonic. “Mare, come on. You can’t live like this forever. Someone is going to find out.”

  I know I can’t go on forever, but I can’t give up, either. It would be too easy to give up and accept the inevitable. That’s what he is counting on.

  “Sure,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I’ll figure something out, okay? It’ll just take some time. Especially if he’s coming here to find me. How could he have known?”

  “Fitz’s dad?” Derek says. “That would be the most obvious to me.”

  Viridian nods in agreement. “Selfish bastard.”

  “Then again, after some of the illegal crap Fitz has done over the past couple of years, I wouldn’t be surprised if his dad thought he’d actually risen to kidnapping. He’s bailed him out jail more than once, but not even a lot of zeros on a check could write off a felony like that.”