Like That Endless Cambria Sky

by Linda Seed

  “Fine. I’ll get a cab.” She heard more rustling, and she imagined him cramming heaps of clothing and other detritus into his suitcase.

  “No. Wait. Just … just sit tight,” Gen said, cursing under her breath. “I’ll be right there.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at herself in the mirror, in her date outfit and her nice hair. All of that hotness, just so she could talk Gordon Kendrick off the ledge.

  Shit.

  She picked up the phone again and called Ryan. She hoped he’d pick up, and that he wasn’t already on his way here.

  “Gen,” he said, and he sounded so pleased to hear from her that she felt awful about canceling their date. She felt awful about it anyway, because it meant she definitely wouldn’t be getting laid.

  “Something happened,” she said, and filled him in on the details.

  “I’ll meet you at the guest cottage,” he told her.

  “You will?”

  “Sure. Somebody’s gotta make sure he doesn’t leave before you get here, right? I’m already here.” The way he said it made it seem like simply the logical thing.

  “Thank you,” she told him. “Really, thank you. I’ll be right there.”

  She hurried out to the ranch still in midprep for her date; she was wearing eyeliner but had not yet applied mascara, and she was carrying the big, clunky purse she used for work rather than the sleek little bag she’d planned to bring to dinner. And she hadn’t yet put on the accessories she’d chosen. Her necklace and earrings still sat on her dresser, waiting for her.

  None of that mattered, though, if Kendrick was going to flee the ranch. The money she’d spent, the time she’d put into the artist-in-residence program—all of it would be gone, wasted, if he got into a cab or a rental car and scurried back to Chicago before the residency was over. She’d have to sue him for breach of contract, and the very thought of that caused a knot of stress to form in her chest. She might spend thousands on a lawyer and never get back her investment.

  When she pulled her car up to the guest cottage, Kendrick was hauling a suitcase out onto the front porch, and Ryan was talking to him, trying to calm him down.

  “Let’s just go back inside and talk about this,” Ryan was saying as Gen got out of her car. “The cab’s not even here yet. We’ve got time to just settle down, think this through.”

  Oh, shit. If Kendrick had called a cab, this might not be simply a show of drama, a display of fragile artistic temperament. He might really intend to get the hell out of here. Gen went into damage control mode. She took a moment to calm herself before she got out of the car and walked purposefully toward the cottage.

  “Gordon,” she said in the most soothing tone she could muster. “What’s going on here?”

  Kendrick looked disheveled, his clothes askew and his hair sticking up in all directions, his man bun flopping pathetically. Gen could smell the alcohol from here. “I told you on the phone,” he said. “I’m leaving. I can’t work here. I feel trapped. There’s no air! I can’t breathe!”

  Kendrick turned away from her to go back into the cottage and retrieve more of his belongings, and Gen looked at Ryan and rolled her eyes extravagantly to indicate the depth, the sheer size, of Kendrick’s absurdity.

  Wordlessly, she pointed to Kendrick’s suitcase, which was sitting on the porch, and then made a sweeping motion with her hands to indicate that he should put the case back inside the cottage. Ryan grabbed the handle of the big Samsonite and hauled it back in the door, Gen following close behind.

  Inside the little guest house, Kendrick had an armload of his things and was carrying them toward the door. Apparently, he planned to take his shampoo, razor, spare shoes, and umbrella back to Chicago without the benefit of a bag to contain them.

  “Gordon, please. Let’s just sit down on the sofa and talk,” Gen said in a soothing voice she imagined police used to calm hostage-takers.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Kendrick said. “It’s over. I can’t paint. My career is finished. I’m going home.” A stick of deodorant fell from his arms and clattered onto the floor, and he made no move to retrieve it.

  “Your career isn’t finished. Here, let me take this.” Gen reached out and started taking the collection of random belongings out of Kendrick’s arms and setting them on the coffee table. “There. That’s better,” she said when he’d been relieved of his burdens. “Now, sit down. Let me make you a cup of tea.” Kendrick had tea, Gen knew—he’d insisted on a particular brand that she’d had to have shipped from India.

  She went into the kitchen and started rooting around through the cupboards for the tea. When she found it, she filled a kettle with water and turned on the stove. Ryan came into the kitchen and whispered to her.

  “I heard a car pulling up outside. It’s the cab. What do you want me to do?”

  “Get rid of him!” Gen hissed at him.

  “We can’t hold this guy prisoner,” Ryan shot back.

  “Just get rid of the cab! Tell him we changed our minds! Tell him … tell him Kendrick got another ride! Just get rid of him! And get out there before he rings the doorbell!” Gen shoved at Ryan’s shoulders, pushing him toward the front door.

  With Ryan gone, she continued with the tea, using the task to stall for time so she could think about what to do. She poured hot water over the tea bag and thought about artists and their egos. She thought about Gordon Kendrick and his particular ego. By the time the tea was ready, she had just about settled on a strategy.

  “Here we go,” she said brightly to Kendrick as she set the cup of hot tea on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Oh,” he said, frowning at the tea, looking crestfallen.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “You forgot to add the milk and sugar.”

  “Of course.” Gen wanted to throttle the guy, but instead, she hurried into the kitchen to get milk and sugar.

  “Make sure it’s the soy milk,” Kendrick called after her. “And the raw sugar. Lumps, not loose.”

  She briefly considered searching in the cabinet under the sink for rat poison she could substitute for the sugar—lumps, not loose—but dismissed the idea, because Kendrick couldn’t paint if he were dead. She gathered the items he’d demanded and returned to the living room, where she prepared the tea to his specifications.

  “There,” she said, when he finally sipped the tea and pronounced it acceptable. “Now, let’s talk about this.”

  Ryan came back in through the front door, and Gen shot him an inquiring look. He raised one eyebrow at her, and she took it to mean that the cab was, indeed, gone, but that he was questioning the wisdom of keeping Kendrick here rather than just letting him flee like his ass was on fire.

  She questioned it, too. There was a certain appeal to the idea of just letting him go, writing off the expenses, and pretending none of this ever happened. Then, the only sheets and yogurt she’d have to worry about would be her own.

  But as she looked at Kendrick huddled on the sofa with his tea, his hair disheveled and his clothes rumpled, with dark circles under his eyes and the smell of bourbon drifting up from him, she realized this was about more than her business investment.

  Arrogant or not, a pain in the ass or not, the guy was having a genuine crisis. She knew what it was like to feel as though your entire career was bursting into flames and burning down to a heaping pile of ash.

  She sat down on the sofa next to Kendrick and her voice softened.

  “Gordon. Just take a few deep breaths and tell me what’s going on.” She put a hand on his arm, and he seemed taken aback by the one small gesture of compassion.

  He told her.

  With Ryan leaning a hip against the kitchen counter listening in, Kendrick told Gen about his efforts out in the barn, his attempts to paint, his endless, fruitless sketches of concepts and ideas, and his ultimate, deep conviction that everything he’d produced since he’d been here had been a hot, steaming pile of shit.

  He cr
ied—not loud, showy boo-hooing, but quiet tears that slipped down his face and plunked wetly onto his shirt—and her heart hurt for him.

  “I think Chicago is my muse,” Kendrick concluded, snuffling into a tissue that Gen had handed him. “I think I need to go back.”

  “Gordon,” Gen began. She leaned toward him with conviction and enthusiasm. “The work you did in Chicago was good. It was very good. But you haven’t had your big breakthrough yet. You know I’m right. And as long as you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve always gotten.”

  “The blender,” Ryan said from where he stood observing them with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Yes!” Gen said. “The blender!”

  She explained the blender concept to Kendrick—how if he kept putting the same ingredients into his blender, the result would be an acceptable but bland smoothie that would keep his career on its same flat trajectory.

  “But this …” Gen gestured to the world around her. “…The ranch, Cambria, California … It’s all new ingredients. If you put new stuff into the blender, you’re going to get something new and fresh and exciting!”

  She found herself pumped up by her own motivational speech. She wondered if it was all bullshit, and she decided it probably was not. There probably was something to the blender concept.

  “But …” Kendrick rubbed at his face with his hands, folded over onto himself, his knees splayed. “It’s not working. It’s not … blending. I think the blender’s broken.”

  “The blender isn’t broken,” Gen said soothingly, putting a hand on his back to comfort him. “This is all perfectly normal! It’s a well-known fact that creative people sometimes have a big emotional crisis right before a breakthrough. You don’t get new growth without some pain, Gordon. It’s like …” She scrambled for a simile. “It’s like birth!” she finally concluded. “Birth is a painful, bloody process, Gordon, but at the end of it, you get new life. You get new creation. Freshness, and … and infinite potential!”

  Gordon looked up from where he’d buried his face in his hands, and she saw a glimmer of something there, a hint of something in his eyes that said she was reaching him. It was time to close the deal, time to bring this train into the station.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “We’re going to get you out of that barn, for one thing. The barn is great—especially with the new skylight.” She shot an apologetic look toward Ryan. “But working indoors, simulating outdoor light—it’s what you’ve always done.”

  “It’s the same old ingredients in the blender,” Gordon put in, and she knew she was getting somewhere.

  “Right. Exactly. So, starting tomorrow, we’re going to get you outside.”

  Kendrick made a snuffling noise and sat up straighter. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready for that. It just … It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Will you at least think about it?” Gen rubbed Kendrick’s back with her palm in tight little circles.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And, Gordon? You need to stop drinking.”

  “But …”

  “Just while you’re here,” Gen reassured him. “Just while we’re working out your creative issues. You might have a muse in Chicago, Gordon, but I know you’ve also got one here. And you can’t hear her talk to you if you’re …” She hesitated, not wanting to choose a word that would offend him.

  “If you’re lit up like a goddamned Christmas tree,” Ryan put in.

  She wondered if that last part might have taken it too far, but Kendrick nodded at her, and she felt buoyed.

  “Okay, then,” Gen said. She gave her thighs a prim little pat, as though she were a first-grade teacher saying it was time for recess. “Let’s just get you unpacked.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gen and Ryan unpacked and put away Kendrick’s things and got the cottage back in order while Kendrick lolled around on the sofa, looking frazzled and depressed but more or less resigned to staying. When they were done, Gen coaxed Kendrick up from the sofa and shooed him into the bedroom to get ready for bed. It was early still—not quite nine p.m.—but Kendrick needed to sleep off the alcohol and the self-doubt so he could start fresh the next day.

  Once Kendrick was asleep—he was snoring loudly less than fifteen minutes after being nudged into the bedroom—Gen leaned limply against the back of the bedroom door and sighed.

  “That was a close one,” she said.

  Ryan was leaning his hip against the kitchen counter, his arms folded over his chest, in the position he’d adopted since arriving here earlier this evening. “Is it true all that stuff you said about artists having a crisis before a big breakthrough?”

  “I have no idea.” Gen ran a hand through her loose curls. “It could be. It sounded true.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “Nice improvisation.”

  Gen went into the tiny kitchen and picked up the partial bottle of bourbon that was sitting on the counter. “I guess this has to go.” She opened the bottle and started pouring the remainder of the bourbon into the sink. A second or two into it, she stopped pouring.

  “Wait a minute,” she said.

  She opened a cabinet and rooted around, then brought out a couple of glasses. She poured two fingers of bourbon for herself, then looked questioningly at Ryan. At his nod, she poured some for him as well.

  She held up her glass and clinked it against his, then took a sip and felt the liquid burn down the back of her throat.

  “Jesus,” she said, scowling at the bedroom door and Kendrick behind it. “After all this, he’s probably just going to leave tomorrow when he sobers up.”

  Ryan shrugged. “Well. You can’t exactly keep him here against his will.”

  “I know.” She went over to the sofa and slumped down onto it with her glass in her hand. “I just really wanted this to work.”

  “So you can go back to New York?” He brought his drink to the sofa and sat down next to her.

  “Not even that,” she said. “I just wanted to achieve something. In the art world, I mean. I wanted to redeem myself, I guess.”

  “Redeem yourself from what?” He stretched out on the sofa and looked at her with interest.

  “That’s right. You haven’t heard the full story.”

  So she told him about Davis MacIntyre, about the sexual harassment and the fraud, and how she’d fled the city with a payoff from MacIntyre and a black mark against her name in every gallery in the city.

  She shook her head and polished off what was left in her glass. “I guess I just wanted to prove something.”

  Ryan took the last sip of his bourbon and put the glass down on the coffee table. “I guess I don’t see why you want to prove something to people who treated you so badly in the first place.”

  She regarded him. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shrugged. “You just seem so confident. So self-assured. You know your place in the world. I can’t imagine you feeling like you need to prove anything to anyone.”

  Ryan let out a low laugh and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “That’s because you don’t know Sandra Delaney.”

  “Your mom? I know your mom.”

  “You know her,” Ryan said, “but you don’t know her.”

  Gen considered that. The bourbon was seeping into her system, and she was beginning to feel warm and relaxed.

  “I can see that she’s a little … rigid, maybe,” Gen allowed.

  Ryan nodded slowly. “She is that. Look, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. She’s a great mom. As steady and constant as the earth. Always there for me and my brothers and sister.”

  “But?” Gen prompted.

  “But, there was always that feeling that if you weren’t doing things the Sandra Delaney way, you were a disappointment. And the Sandra Delaney way is never the easy way.” He gave her a wry smile.

  She regarded him, all tal
l and strong and at ease with himself. “I seriously doubt you’re a disappointment.”

  “No, I don’t think I am,” he said. “But there’s always that worry, that fear of not quite measuring up.”

  She shifted on the sofa, turning to face him more fully. “Look, Ryan. About that time at Kate and Jackson’s party, when I got so drunk …”

  He grinned. “That was months ago.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed.” He shrugged. “People get drunk sometimes. It happens. I’ve been known to do it once or twice myself.”

  “Yeah. But …”

  “But what?”

  Her pulse sped as she weighed whether she should go ahead with what she was about to tell him. Part of her said she should keep the walls she’d erected intact, keep him at a safe distance, protect her heart. But another part of her said that nothing was ever gained without risk. Especially when it came to love.

  “But, I never told you why I got drunk.”

  He waited, and she plunged forward with the heady, reckless abandon of a gambler laying all of her chips on a soft seventeen.

  “Part of it was because of Davis MacIntyre dying, and what that meant to my future, my career. And part of it was about Kate moving in with Jackson, which I thought meant she didn’t need me anymore. But the rest of it …”

  He raised his eyebrows, listening, waiting.

  “You couldn’t stop talking about Lacy that night. About how much you wanted to be with her. You kept asking me about her, what she liked, what she didn’t like, what kind of men she dates.” Gen swallowed hard. “And I was jealous. I wanted you to want me.”

  The tension filled the air between them like a gathering storm.

  He eased closer to her on the sofa. He put his palm against her cheek and ran his thumb over her skin. Then he leaned in and gently touched his lips to hers. She closed her eyes and felt a pure, crystalline rush of happiness and need.

  She put her arms around him and deepened the kiss. Her blood rushed faster and her senses were heightened, as though this moment were more real, more present, than those that had gone before.