Dark Things I Adore

by Katie Lattari

  “Yeah, so I’ll bring those, big and small—” Coral is beginning to get her feet under her, which is heartening.

  “And I also got her a Moleskine to sketch in,” Moss cuts her off.

  “Right, and the Moleskine, which I love.” She picks up the Moleskine from her lap and presses it to her chest. “So I have all of these different paper surfaces I’ve been working with. All of these different types of pencils—”

  “I keep telling her that a person has to try various tools,” Moss breaks in, steamrolling her. I watch Mantis’s eyes flash to him, supremely irked, the last of his twigs snapped and out of his hands. “Various qualities. You never know how it will impact your output.” Coral shrivels a little beneath his magnetism, just sits back and listens. Nods. “And with the Moleskine, I just let her know that’s a classic. A classic. Those little books can make anyone feel professional. Just carry around one of those, write in it from time to time, and watch—”

  “Take a fucking breath, Bark. She can speak for herself,” Mantis snaps, cutting the clearing down to silence. His eyes bore down into Moss’s skull. Trillium looks around the group nervously. Moss’s face betrays fear for a split second, but then he regains himself.

  “I know that. Bug.” Moss’s voice is defiant, venomous.

  “Call me that again, you pencil-dicked twerp.” Mantis bounds up to Moss in a flash, that old athleticism exploding to the fore. Moss flinches from his seat down on the ground, as if preparing for a blow.

  “Guys—” I start to say, springing to my feet. Moss’s jaw tenses, but he says nothing. Neither of them moves. We all hang in tense suspension.

  “He’s just helping me explain, that’s all,” Coral says, rising to her feet and coming to stand between them, her voice gentle but wary. She places a hand lightly against Mantis’s chest, her eyes searching his face for a way to diffuse this. Then she looks down at Moss, who doesn’t look back at her. His face is locked in an embarrassed snarl.

  “It’s okay to stand up for yourself, you know,” Mantis hollers at her. She flinches and looks down into the dirt. I flinch, too, not expecting the sharpness to turn her way. “Don’t let this asshole speak for you. You don’t need that much help explaining yourself.” He looks down on her. “Do you hear me?” Coral swallows and nods. “Speak,” he commands her. Coral bites her lip, her neck and cheeks red with embarrassment. The discomfort in the air is suffocating.

  “I hear you,” she finally says, lifting her eyes. Her voice betrays no fear. Just agitation. A desire to end this scene. I look at Moss, who stays silent. Seemingly relieved Mantis is no longer yelling at him. “Come,” Coral says, holding out her hand to Mantis, beginning to walk toward the edge of the clearing. Mantis drags his eyes away from Moss and follows her, putting his hand in hers at a delay. I look at the two of them—Mantis and Coral—and sense a deep and abiding kinship between them, despite his outburst. The way she offered her hand. The way he accepted it and followed her, without a word. And of course they would feel this quiet closeness; they grew up in the same small town. Have overlapping friend and family circles. Went to the same schools. They know each other in a way none of us could ever know them.

  We watch as she takes him just beyond the sphere of light cast by the fire. They look like mere silhouettes. Paper dolls in the night.

  She has her arms wrapped around her slim body for warmth, looking like a curled blade of dry grass. He is standing over her, bearlike at this distance, so she tilts her head back to look up at him. I watch their bodies shift positions around each other like magnets simultaneously attracting and repelling. I watch Mantis place a hand on Coral’s shoulder, slide it to the side of her arm. I watch Coral move her body toward his just the littlest bit. There’s a kitten. There’s a wolf.

  “What do you think is up with them?” Moss’s words startle me—he’s suddenly sitting right beside me on the downed log we dragged over when we first arrived. I was so focused on watching the Mantis-Coral shadow box that I didn’t realize Moss had made his way to me. Ash is getting up to stretch his legs. I watch Trillium and Barley pop up to go join him. Soon they are standing in a little triangle whispering among themselves at the far side of the clearing. Zephyr is tending the fire. Moss draws his knees up and rests his arms on them. I keep watching the two bodies in the forest, darkness on top of darkness. The heady smell of smoke threads through my hair. Once in a while, one of their voices pokes through on the wind, but I can’t make out any words.

  “I dunno,” I respond, and that’s the truth. “They know each other, though. From town. They’re…close, maybe. Friends, anyway,” I say, not totally able to read their dynamic either. But there’s something. Something. “He’s protective of her, I think. He doesn’t completely trust us, our intentions with her, or something.”

  Maybe it’s the outsider status. While they pass in and out of Lupine Valley daily, back and forth from home to camp, camp to home, living their larger lives and dealing with people besides us, the rest of us stay put in King City. Wake here, work here, learn here, eat here, shit here, fuck here, sleep here, and do it all again. It’s a closed system. Coral and Mantis are our free radicals. I imagine there’s a bond in that, too.

  “It’s his ego. He’s insecure. He doesn’t believe any of the people who pay to be here could actually be friends with the people who get paid to be here. It’s very, like, reverse-classist, really,” Moss says.

  “Well, maybe he has a point. We all come and go. They stay.”

  “Coral doesn’t want to stay,” Moss says.

  “Maybe Mantis didn’t either. Yet here he is,” I reply. Silence falls between us. “Do you. You know.” I sniff, my nose suddenly runny. “Like her.”

  “I don’t know yet.” He pushes his hand back though his black mop of hair. “But I do need her.” He sighs.

  I feel a frown tugging at my face. Before I can try to understand, Coral and Mantis return to the campfire. Coral sits next to Mantis, rubbing his back in encouragement.

  “Uh, so, Mantis would just like to say he is sorry for his…outburst,” Coral says, a tight, faint smile on her face. She looks down at him and waits for him to continue, and I can tell she’s nervous that he won’t. She leans down and whispers something in his ear. He sighs heavily.

  “Been a long day.” Mantis sounds like an oak log. “Watching grown adults play kiddie games doesn’t do a lot for me.” His eyes peer around at us all, hard; I feel shamed. “And Coral wasn’t feeling well all day…” He shakes his head, kneading the back of his neck. “And she’s just so talented in her own right. And smart. Just wanted her voice to be heard,” he says, looking into the fire. “So, I apologize, Moss.” He looks across at Moss, who’s still sitting next to me. Moss gives him a nod. “And I apologize, C. I got cranky with you, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “I appreciate that,” Coral says and gives him a side hug.

  Things settle down and get back to normal from there, Barley entertaining us with stories from the world of dopey college co-eds, and Trillium capturing our imaginations with lush descriptions of her life in Puerto Rico. We let the fire die way down as we continue to talk, all of us leaning against each other in fatigue by night’s end.

  “Time to go, kiddos,” Mantis tells us when even our conversations have burned out. He gets up and dampens the remaining ember ashes with the gallon jug of water he brought, turning over the soil with a sharp branch. We all rise to our feet, creaky and ready for bed. But we still have the mile trek back through the woods to our cabins. I walk with Moss and Zephyr. Coral walks beside Mantis. Trillium, Ash, and Barley walk in their own little group. Our disparate flashlight beams bob and scatter in the trees, as if the light itself is breaking apart.

  June 11, 1988

  I went into Greenville today to re-up on supplies at the Dirigo Hill Trading Post and the local art supply shop, a well-stocked but overpriced boutique place called Maker. I
offered to pick up supplies for my painting posse if they gave me cash up front, and everyone was more than happy to let me be the Sherpa for the hour-and-a-quarter trek each way. I felt half pack mule, half soccer mom, just trying to remember and haul everything my charges might need.

  Ash needed a bar of soap, nail clippers, and four canvases. Moss needed scissors for cutting his hair, trail mix, wine, and some indanthrone blue. Barley needed toothpaste, pencils, and canned soup. Zephyr needed a travel sewing kit and more 4” by 4” tiles for her project. I also bought her a bouquet of flowers because I’m pretty sure we’re a thing now. When I asked Trillium what she wanted, she simply turned her light-brown lookers on me and said she had everything she could ever need. Her cabin looked bare. Austere. Well, then.

  I get back at around three o’clock and deliver everyone’s items to their cabins, though Ash is the only one actually home at the time to receive me. He thanks me profusely but clearly wants me to leave. He’s lying on his bed with his forearm thrown over his eyes. He sighs. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s all terribly dramatic. So I wish him the best, tell him he can seek me out any time to talk, and leave him to his sulking. I get to Perspective and see Zephyr’s left a note on her door letting everyone know she’s down knitting with Hillock in her cabin. I leave her things and a sweet note paired with the flowers on the tidy desk. Barley’s cabin is also empty, but the door is left ajar, propped open by a boot. I surmise he’s airing it out—it smells strongly like he spilled some oil from his lantern. I leave his things just inside his door. Moss’s cabin is empty, no note, door closed, but I get the sense he hasn’t gone far: his paints are out and open. I set his stuff on the bed, since his desk is awash in paper and socks.

  I decide to wait, now done with my delivery service, to see if he wants to take a walk with me. Maybe out to the Ledge. While I wait, I stroll the few paces around the cabin and look at the painting on his easel. It’s a striking swipe of a thing done in bright, cheery colors, mostly yellows, a woman’s form ecstatically and vibrantly tangled in its lines and arcs. I can’t know for sure, but I know it anyhow, because I know him. It’s Coral. It’s arresting, compelling to look at. Better than anything he did before I got here in May. Not great, but very strong indeed. I go to his desk and flip through some of the sketches and paintings there to find more iterations of Coral. There are dozens. Most of them not so bright and cheery as the one up on the easel, and yet most of them even better in quality than the one displayed. In these, a darkness and brokenness haunt every line, every stroke. A cold shiver permeates my body. I set down the sheets of paper and back away, wondering how often this lovely, birdlike girl gets in one of her bad ways.

  I wait another minute or two for him then leave, impatient to stretch my legs, impatient to get away from the versions of Coral with her dead doll’s eyes, where her mouth seems open in an agonized wail. I assure myself that it doesn’t mean she necessarily modeled for him in distress, just that she as a subject is fruitful for him. That he can envision her in many states. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s none of my business anyway.

  ***

  I take a looping arc toward the Ledge, everything feeling warm and pliable and yielding: the air, the earth, the trees. A few birds chirp and trill and hop between high branches far above, the pines creaking in their slow, gentle sway. Fifteen minutes on, the forest begins to thin and open, a hard-packed trail winding up and to the left, revealing itself. As I take the familiar path past bare, wind-weathered trunks, the view out over the Ledge rises before me. But there’s something else, too. Or, I should say, someone else.

  Two of them. Embracing lovingly, kissing deeply. I halt to turn and leave them to it, but my step crunches some small stones as I do. The woman turns to look, but the man looks only at her, entranced, his eyes soft and loving. It’s Coral. And someone I don’t recognize; a man of about her age—nineteen? twenty?—with shaggy, brown hair tucked inside a blaze-orange beanie that reads Bouchard Timber Outfit.

  “Hey, June,” Coral calls. She looks happy to see me. Solid and assured in the man’s arms.

  “Hey, there, C,” I reply, forging my way toward them; no sense turning away now.

  “This is June. Or, well, Juniper,” Coral says, hugging into the young man’s side as I make it the last several yards. “She is one of the instructor-mentors here, in painting.” I come up and shake his hand.

  “Juniper, huh? Real name, or Lupine Valley name?” He smiles warmly.

  “Lupine Valley name,” I reply with a laugh.

  “What it means to be baptized twice.” Coral’s lips curl into a sleepy smile. “June, this is Brady—my boyfriend.” I try not to let surprise reach my face. But all I can think about are the numerous times I’ve watched her leaving Moss’s cabin—flushed and alive, only occasionally cold-eyed and scraped bare. Or the numerous times I’ve seen her and Mantis off on their own, some unreadable tempest between them. I feel suddenly very warm. Exposed. Coral manages to seem at ease in her body, despite her vaguely harried eyes. As if everything I know about how she spends her time is mine alone to shoulder. I wonder if Brady knows how much time she spends alone with Moss, with Mantis. I wonder if she tells him Moss paints her ceaselessly. I wonder if she tells him that Mantis hovers with her always. But something tells me he doesn’t know. His face is too wide-open. He has the look of a high school sweetheart.

  “So tell me the story.” I smile. “How did you two meet?”

  “In school. Probably really started getting to know each other sophomore year,” Brady says, looking down at Coral for reassurance. She nods. “Been together ever since. Football player, artsy girl. Match made in heaven, right?” He smiles.

  “Oh, football—so you must know Mantis?” I ask him.

  “He does,” Coral replies. “Brady and Mantis are friends. That’s how I got to know Mantis—through Brady.” Coral shoves her hands in her jeans pockets.

  “Mantis,” Brady scoffs good-naturedly, shakes his head a little. “He hates that—you know that, right?” Coral just shrugs.

  “Oh, so you all are pals,” I say, pointing vaguely in the air.

  “Yeah, kinda.” Brady rubs the back of his neck, looking uncertain. “He was one of the volunteer assistant coaches for football when I was on the team in high school.”

  “Brady was the quarterback,” Coral tells me with some pride. “Mantis was a defensive lineman, in his day.”

  “He was…an interesting character. A little too much of a wild man for me.” Brady’s chuckle is tinged with weariness.

  “Brady thinks Mantis is a dick,” Coral says simply, her long hair fluttering in the mild breeze. Her fingers comb through the strands, running over and through some snarls.

  “Oh, yeah?” I ask, surprised at her candor. I look between the two, not sure what else to say.

  “Yeah. You get to know a guy,” Brady says. “Parties with the whole football team, girls who don’t know any better, him kind of wanting to show off. Relive his glory days.” Brady shakes his head. “Anyway, we don’t pal around so much anymore.” He looks down at Coral. “Try to keep our distance, right, Cindy?” He hugs her closer to his side, tight, and kisses her on top of the head. Her eyes flash to me for a split second, mischief in her face.

  “That’s right,” she says. An awkward silence falls. Brady, like Mantis, is a big guy. Football players. I think of bookends, Brady and Mantis. Little Coral being held between them.

  “Cindy?” My brain jumpstarts, looking to Coral for confirmation, grasping on to this piece of information hungrily.

  “Cynthia.” She nods.

  “I prefer Cindy myself, but I can let her have her fun. Let her come out to the willy-wags and traipse around with you artist types. Part of the job, I guess. But thank god you go home to the real world at the end of the day, right?” Brady runs his hand up and down her arm, voice jolly. Coral’s face strains.
>
  “What’s so real about the world out there?” I ask him, wanting to stand up for us but also wanting to make sure it comes off as playful. I think it does.

  “People…can pretend to be whoever they want to be out here,” he says, very serious. “Like their pasts don’t matter. But they do.” He nods then looks down at Coral. “Gus likes to give people second chances. Sometimes to people who don’t deserve them.” He strokes Coral’s arm again. “Besides—I’d get the life beat outta me if I went in to work asking to be called Boomerang or something.” He laughs, shrugs.

  “That’s a problem with out there,” I say. “Not Lupine Valley.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so.” He nods politely.

  “And what do you do, Brady?” I ask. He points to his hat.

  “Work for Bouchard Timber Outfit. Brady Bouchard, at your service,” he says. “We supply wood to lumberyards. It’s my dad’s business.” He stands up straighter. I take in his flannel shirt and plain, forgettable handsomeness.

  “You’re out of an L.L. Bean catalog,” I say.

  “He’s even got the Bean boots.” Coral gestures down at his feet.

  “Well, shit,” I say, looking down at the rubber-toed duck boots, and Brady smiles.

  “Anyway—we were just about to head out,” Coral says, her eyes locking with mine. “I’ll see you around, okay, June?”

  “Absolutely,” I tell her.

  “Maybe I can sneak into one of your cohort powwows this week?” she asks hopefully, a small smile creeping onto her lips. A genuine one. She comes to almost all of them now, our painting group gatherings. We both know there’s no sneaking about it and no need to ask permission. She’s one of us now. Which makes me wonder if Brady doesn’t understand the extent of her involvement with us. Which makes me worry that it would be a problem for her if he did.