They went down the hallway and stood together in the studio, suddenly like renovators mapping out grand plans with animated waves of their arms as they shared ideas and thoughts.
“I’ll move the easel,” Blake said. “Maybe that bench as well,” he added. His eyes were narrowed, scheming, understanding the intricacies of the process and seeing the room, not as it was, but how it must be. “And then I’ll have you standing here,” he gripped her lightly by the shoulders, moved her on shuffling feet like a mannequin until she was positioned at the window, leaning on the wooden sill and staring out into the blackness.
Connie glanced sideways at him. “Where will you paint me from?”
Blake took a couple of steps away from her, his eyes everywhere at once. “Here,” he said decisively, and he scraped his heel across the old floorboards, making a faint mark through the film of grey dust. “The light will spill across your face and your arms and then filter across the far wall, fading gradually.”
“Props?” Connie asked.
Blake blinked. He hadn’t considered the possibility. He thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “No, it needs to be you – your face, your shoulders. Nothing else matters. Anything more and the painting will become confused.
“What should I wear? What about jewelry?”
“Do you have any?”
That made Connie arch her eyebrows in uncertainty. She had a jewelry box. It was buried under blankets and clothes in the trunk of the car, but nothing expensive, nothing exquisite enough for a painting. She shook her head slowly. “No,” she said at last. “Nothing that would be worth painting.”
Blake nodded. It wasn’t important. The more he played the vision in his mind, the more he understood the need for simplicity. “I’ll need to paint your bare shoulders,” he said and drew a line across his own chest, level with his armpits, using the flat edge of his hand.
“You want me topless?” Connie’s voice was a panicked squeak.
“No,” Blake reassured her. “But maybe in a bra, with the straps off your shoulders. Would you be comfortable with that?”
Connie’s eyes became glazed for a moment of modesty, and then she gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Yes.”
Blake grabbed at the easel, set it on the mark he had scraped across the floor, and then went striding purposefully across to the rack where the rows of canvases were stored. He ran his finger along the shelf, and then snatched at a canvas. It was three feet high, and two feet wide. He took the canvas back to the easel and set it vertically on the crossbar. Connie left her place at the window and peeked curiously.
“It’s orange!” she said.
Blake looked up, so distracted that the sound of her voice came as a surprise. “Huh?”
Connie pointed. “The canvas is orange.”
“Yes,” Blake said.
“But it’s bright orange, Blake. Surely you can’t paint on that!”
The canvas had been painted the same bright color as a ripe piece of the fruit.
Blake smiled indulgently. “Tips and techniques,” he said vaguely. “Every one of my paintings was prepared the same way – under every canvas I showed you was this same shade of orange.”
She didn’t believe him and it wasn’t until he selected several of the paintings she remembered so well and pointed to the edges of the gallery wrap where there was still orange residue that she finally lapsed into incredulous silence.
“White canvas is a common amateur mistake,” Blake explained. “But for an artist who wants to paint realism, it just doesn’t work. The finished painting always lacks something intangible.”
“Which is?”
“Warmth,” Blake said. “The warmth of the sun, the light. Everything in nature gives off warmth – even fence posts and innocuous inanimate objects. So I prepare the canvas and then lay down an undercoat of orange. Then, as I begin to work the painting, some of that orange color glows through the top layers, no matter how thickly the paint is applied. It just seems to radiate – and that’s how I create depth and a sense of realism that maybe some other painters can’t capture.”
“But in a portrait?”
“It’s just as important as it is in a seascape – maybe more,” Blake said. “We’ll find that out the day after tomorrow when we start work.”
30.
The next morning Connie left early for Hoyt Harbor to collect the clothes and personal items she had left at the rental house, while Blake dusted Chloe’s bedroom and changed the sheets.
He felt a burden lifted from his shoulders today; an unexpected sense of lightness that came from having shared the pain of Chloe’s tragic death, and the shadow that incident had cast over his life. The grief never went away; the sorrow still seeped from him – and it always would – but now he sensed a glimpse of his old self emerging, rising up slowly to the surface from the darkness of despair.
He went to the bedroom window and stared out at the sweeping view of the beach. The morning was warm, the shadows across the sand shortening as the sun began to climb higher across the sky. Out on the ocean he could see the far off specks of fishing boats, bobbing like little corks on the swells, and closer to shore, the waves that curled before the beach were a translucent, vivid green.
It was a perfect summer’s day – and with a shock, Blake realized suddenly how lonely he was.
It was Connie of course – she had infused herself into his life, coming bright and smiling like a high wind through a house and sweeping away the gloom and the sadness so that he missed her when she was gone. He stayed at the window but now the view became blank, replaced by a vision of her, and the poignant understanding in her face as she had wept for him the night before.
He was lonely, and he was alone. And he didn’t want to feel like that any more. No matter how briefly Connie would be in his life, Blake decided it was at last time to make fresh memories – happy ones to fill the space in his heart he had given over to darkness.
He was also infected with an unexpected enthusiasm for painting once more. There was a tingle of anticipation in his fingers, and a feeling of daunting anxiety at the prospect of picking up his brushes and resurrecting the skills he had honed, directing them to a fresh challenge that was untainted by his memories. Never again would he paint the ocean, but now, at last, he would paint again. Maybe one last time – one last chance to create the perfect work, for always the looming threat of blindness hung over him.
He finished in Chloe’s room, drew the window wide open and let the breeze off the ocean scour the walls of tears and sadness. The light spilled over the dark corners, chased away the ghosts of his regret, and then he closed the door quietly behind him.
Connie returned after lunch and came bursting and banging through the front door, calling out to him in gasps of laughter with a cardboard box in her arms. “I’m back!” she cried out. “Did you miss me?”
Her hair was awry, flicked across her face by the breeze and her cheeks were flushed pink. She dropped the box to the ground with a theatrical groan and stood back with her hands on her hips, breathing hard, her breasts beneath the tight cotton of her t-shirt rising and falling. She pouted her lips, blew the errant tendrils away from her face, and Blake couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s all of it?” he asked, glancing down at the box.
She nodded. “I’m the kind of girl who likes to travel light,” she smiled playfully. “Everything else I own is in the trunk of the car.”
Blake carried the box into the bedroom and stood back. Connie stepped across the threshold and cast her eyes around the room, taking it all in with a single glance. She went to the window as if drawn there, and stared out across the beach, standing on her tiptoes to see past the low shrubs so that Blake could not help but notice the cheeky clench of her bottom within the tightness of her jeans.
“The view is beautiful,” Connie’s voice brimmed with enthusiasm. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something quite so perfect.”
“Nor
me,” Blake said with feeling.
31.
They spent the rest of the day cleaning out the studio, re-arranging furniture, and sweeping away great billowing clouds of dust so thick on the ground that when Thad Ryan arrived in the afternoon with the weekly delivery of groceries, he thought for a moment that the house had caught fire.
It was late in the afternoon when Blake stood back satisfied. His sleeves were rolled up high on his forearms and his shirt clung to his back with sweat. Connie was cleaning the window and she turned to him at last, exhausted, with dust on her face like a pale powdered mask.
“Enough,” Blake decided and Connie threw down the cleaning rag into a bucket of dirty brown water.
They went down to the beach in a solemn procession at sunset and then Connie took charge of the kitchen with a subtle feminine propriety. She grilled steaks, gave Blake orders, and cooked ground beef for Ned. For the first time in as long as they could remember, both man and dog ate a meal that had not come from a can.
Connie and Blake were both exhausted, so that it was still early in the evening when Connie trudged wearily to bed. She fell onto the mattress with a great sigh of relief, but then sat up again abruptly when she heard Blake’s uncertain footsteps outside the room, and then a polite gentle knock on the door.
“Yes?” She was naked. She drew the bed sheets beneath her armpits and clamped them there.
Blake pushed the door open a few inches.
“Is everything all right?” Connie asked in a husk.
Blake nodded. He glanced across the room as if maybe the words he wanted were written on the wall. “I just wanted you to know that I’m not crazy,” he said softly. “In my head I know Chloe will never come back… but in my heart…”
Connie nodded. She felt his pain and his discomfort. She smiled in sympathy. “I understand, Blake. I truly do.”
He nodded, but Connie sensed there was more he wanted to say and she fell silent to encourage him.
“I told you this place was like a prison to me. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“It’s because I can’t leave,” his voice began to choke and there was a lump of emotion lodged in his throat. “My heart won’t let her go.”
“That doesn’t make you crazy,” Connie whispered. “It makes you a good man.”
32.
In the morning it was better. Gone was the melancholy of the evening, and in its place was an irrepressible sense of exhilaration, so unfamiliar that Blake struggled to recognize the feeling for what it was – excitement.
The studio door was open and he could see long shafts of sunlight spill into the hallway. He stood in the middle of the living room, his eyes drawn, but anxiety gnawing at his guts.
“Are you ready?” Connie seemed just as nervous.
He nodded, “It’s now or never,” he said prophetically.
Connie went to the studio window and tried to replicate the pose Blake had set her in when he had been planning the painting. She propped her hands on the window sill and saw her own face reflected in the glass. Over her shoulder she saw Blake rummaging through the wads of rags at the bottom of his painting box. He stood at last, clutching a camera.
“This morning I’ll take all the reference photos,” he explained as he quickly inspected the camera and cleaned the lens. “Then I’ll project the final image, so I can begin painting this afternoon.”
Connie looked intrigued. “Project?”
Blake nodded. “Digital projector,” he explained. “It’s a way to get a detailed image onto the canvas. Once I choose the photo I want to paint, the projector enlarges the image to the size of the canvas and I pencil in the outline. It gives me a highly detailed sketch that is the foundation for the painting.”
“Isn’t that considered cheating?” Connie asked naively. “I thought artists drew everything by hand.”
Blake smiled. “That would be bad business,” he said. “Especially for a realism artist. I want the most detailed image I can get before I start painting, so a projector just makes practical sense. Why spend days struggling with a sketch when people pay for my painting? They don’t care about the drawing – they only care about the finished work, and using a projector saves time.”
He fired off a dozen quick photos of Connie looking out through the window, testing the settings of the camera, and also getting a sense of the fall of light across her face. He was unhappy with the way she was positioned, but it was not until he scrolled back through those first images that he understood why. Looking at a scene was vastly different to looking at a photo. Now, as he stared through the digital display screen, he saw Connie framed and isolated, and recognized with an experienced eye why the images were not working.
He set the camera down and came to her. Connie was gripping the window sill as though she might fall. Then he had an inspired idea. He let it bloom in his mind for a moment, before dashing from the room. He came back a few moments later with one of the fresh roses Thad had brought with the weekly groceries. Without a word he handed the rose to Connie.
They were both aware of the subtle meaning, the significance of that moment, as though it was a deepening of the trust and understanding between them. Connie took the flower, realizing it was intensely important. She clutched the rose to her like it was precious.
“Take off your shirt,” Blake said softly.
Connie was wearing a pale pink blouse. She unfastened the buttons one at a time, her fingers suddenly trembling. She could hear the pounding of blood at her temples, and her heart began to race. When at last the blouse gaped open, she slid it from her shoulders and stood, facing Blake.
The bra was white, delicately laced around the top of each cup in fine intricate whorls of pattern. Through the gauzy fabric Blake could see the dark shadows of her nipples, becoming hard. He nodded, said nothing. Connie picked up the rose again. Her eyes had become huge and soulful. She licked her lips.
Suddenly the world went very quiet. Outside the surf still pounded endlessly across the beach and the gulls still cried their lamenting calls, but in the studio, there was just the tense hum of deafening silence.
“Now hold the rose up to your face a little, as if you are inhaling the perfume,” Blake’s voice became very soft. They were so close he could feel the heat from her body, sense the quivering vibrations of her.
Connie’s eyes were locked on Blake’s. She couldn’t breath. She lifted the rose slowly.
“Now turn your head a little to the side,” Blake murmured.
He reached for the closest strap of her bra, and his fingers brushed against the flawless soft skin of Connie’s shoulder. He heard her gasp. His touch was soft, almost reverent, as though unwrapping some priceless gift. He drew the strap gently off her shoulder and reached around her to lower the other. His body brushed against hers and his senses became overwhelmed by the fragrance of her. He caught the scent in his breath and drank it down like elixir.
Connie felt the fine hairs along her forearms rise amongst a rash of goosebumps. She could feel tremors of fear and desire jangling along her spine. Blake eased the other strap from Connie’s shoulder and then delicately brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek. His fingers lingered. Connie’s flesh seemed to catch alight.
Blake took a step back, reached for the camera and snapped off several more shots. Connie watched him, her eyes liquid with simmering emotion.
“Look past my shoulder,” Blake said quietly. Connie tore her gaze away, fixed her attention on a mark on the far wall. Blake took a dozen more photos, then came back to her again, standing so close that they seemed to share the same air.
Blake drew his fingers delicately once more across Connie’s cheek and got lost in her eyes. He saw them fill with drowning desire, and knew that his own gaze was a mirror. Connie’s lips were parted, pink and glossy. He heard her gasp a soft shuddering breath – and then he kissed her.
The warmth of her lips was a sensuous thrill that seemed to melt their mouths together. He slid a
n arm around her waist and she wrapped her hands about his neck, lacing her fingers into his hair, and lifting herself up onto her toes. Blake caressed the soft skin of her throat with his touch, and then gently cupped her chin within the palm of his hand. Her mouth against his was alive with her passion, her lips blooming open like the petals of a beautiful orchid as he drew her body close and she swayed against him until he could feel the urgent press of her breasts against his chest.
Blake heard singing in his ears, and then Connie whimpered softly. He brought his hand down across her chest and then placed it gently over her heart. He could feel the race of her pulse, the hectic pounding through the warmth of her skin. Connie nuzzled deeper into his arms until at last – at long last – they broke the kiss and came apart gasping and shaking, their eyes filled with a profound sense of shattering wonder.
33.
When Connie came back to the house in the afternoon there was high color in her cheeks and a luster to her skin from running with Ned along the beach. She was in a sparkling mood as she came down the hallway then quietly pushed open the door to the studio.
Blake was working at the easel, so absorbed that for long moments he did not realize she had returned. A spotlight clamped to the wooden frame above his head cast his features in stark relief. Connie saw the determined thrust of his chin, the hard shape of his jaw and the long line of his nose that met with the brow and darkened his eyes. His mouth was slack, the bottom lip thicker than the top one, his face made rugged by the shadow of stubble.
She stood uncertainly in the doorway until he seemed to sense her presence and looked up suddenly.
“Am I intruding?” Connie asked timidly.
“No,” his expression changed in an instant, lighting up with pleasure. He smiled, and the warmth of it reached all the way to his eyes. “In fact I’ve been waiting for you.”
He had been hunched on the chair. Now he stood up and stepped back from the canvas as though to invite her inspection. She came to him, standing deliberately close so that she could feel the press of his shoulder against her own, both of them delighting in the intimacy.