“There would be a limit to seven paintings each, four by four maximum size. M. Cellini has fifty spaces.”
Monsieur Cellini’s gallery was on Sherbrook’s “golden mile”, most frequented by well-to-do tourists. Sherbrook Street was posh. It was as good as it got.
“But I only have three paintings…” Maria moaned, “Do I have to pay the full amount?”
“I’m sure we can find an equitable arrangement between ourselves as far at the cost is concerned. We can divide the total by fifty, and multiply by the number of paintings each one of us wants to exhibit,” Zaza, who needed extra space, offered.
No one commented.
“That’s only forty-nine. Can I have the last one? I asked first?” she added, a twinkle in her eyes.
There have been days when Zaza had as much paint on her face as she had on some of her canvases. But she was also blessed with a sense of humor.
“You can have sixty-nine for all I care, as long as you pay for it,” Maria blurted before she understood what they were talking about. It seemed that she was jealous not only of Zaza’s money but also her very young husband.
Zaza looked at Maria with wide-open eyes. “What’s with you?” she seemed to ask. “I only meant…?”
“If I want sixty-nine I don’t have to pay for it like…” Maria almost said “like you” before she bit her lip. Maria knew that after Zaza’s first husband had died in a car accident, and a year later Zaza married a man half her age, or so they said. She was also her late husband’s sole life insurance beneficiary. As for Maria’s husband it was well known but never mentioned that he was much, much older than Maria.
“Girls! GIRLS! We’re all friends here, remember?”
This was Alicia. She was not the oldest but seemed to have the most common sense. “If anyone is short of space she’s welcome to one of mine, for free, of course.
This got the fever down a few degrees although Zaza and Maria exchanged a few more dirty looks.
“So do we go for joint exhibition?”
The heads were nodding almost in unison. So that was that. The date was fixed for Early September. Assuming there would be a vacancy, of course. There was no point having one while people were on holidays. Nor much later, when it got cold and wet. Alicia and Joan were to make it happen.
It seemed that Maria’s comments might have been precipitated by one of Zaza’s oils as well as other nuances.
All the great masters of the past had pained nudes; in fact that was what inspired the women to hire nude models. However, it just so happened that one of Zaza’s oils was pretty implicit if not quite explicit, but most certainly suggestive, of “sixty-nine”, and Alicia had no idea where to hide it. Perhaps there could have a little accident?
Still, Zaza’s husband apparently liked it. Alice suspected that the subject of Zaza’s painting had also been precipitated by her sense of humor. She liked shocking people.
Perhaps he could buy it from his wife before the show? There was no harm in hoping. She had to. Alice made a mental note to ask Zaza when was her husband’s birthday. Perhaps the girls might all chip together and buy it for him? Alicia wanted her son to see it, the exhibition—not the painting. Not now that Alec was already putting two and two together. That was enough math for now.
As Alicia walked out, Zaza met her outside. She seemed to hedge as though looking for the right words.
“You know what I mean, don’t you Alice?”
Alice had no idea. She said as much.
“Well,” Zaza began, wiping off a tear forming in her eyes. “It’s John.”
Alice knew John to be Zaza’s young husband.
“Yes…?” she encouraged.
“John is loosing interest…” She blurted right out.
The difference in age, Alice suspected. John was young, virile and successful. And then it dawned on her. Zaza was using her paintings to stir desire in John. Only then she realized that all of Zaza’s nudes carried a resemblance to her own face; perhaps her figure too, she mused.
She reached out for Zaza and held her in a friendly embrace. “You had ten good years,” she said. “Some of us don’t even get that,” she said, suggesting that it was her problem also.
“Really?” Zaza looked up.
“Of course, dear. Of course. Don’t worry. You have your painting and you have us—your friends. That is more than most.”
Zaza seemed to perk up. Her usual seemingly carefree smile returned to her face. In fact she and Alice shared a very similar smile. Perhaps an expression of a grateful heart?
“Thank you, Alicia. You’re a real friend,” she said, and made for her car.
That same night Alicia made sure that she was only kidding about sharing Zaza’s problem. She was proven right. And frankly she had no idea what she might do if Alex were to lose interest in her. Would life be still worth living, she mused? Or would she start painting nudes with her own face?
***
For a while Alec lay there, lazily watching the clouds drifting through the square opening above his head. He listened to the gentle lapping of waves against the hull. The clouds had begun to separate, to break apart. And now even the wind was dying down. Not down to doldrums, but to a more manageable ten or fifteen knots. Alec’s lesson was over.
And then he remembered the battle he’d ‘fought’, side by side, with Benedict Arnold. It struck him that too many of his imaginary jaunts had to do with killing. He would never dream of really killing anyone. Not really. So how come...
“Of course you wouldn’t kill anyone. No one ever does. But this is more complicated. In your imaginary battles you don’t have any qualms about firing your cannons at the enemy, because you know you’re just pretending. That reality is relative. It is just as real in the imaginary world as it would be in the physical world. But the laws of the imaginary worlds are different. You might remove someone’s existence from your reality and, within your reality, they would no longer exist. But this would not really terminate their being. They would continue in their own reality as though nothing had happened. It is a little like an actor dying on the stage. He no longer exists in that particular play; but the next day, a new audience can see him die again.”
“You mean no one ever dies?”
“In some respects, we all die. We die to our concepts of yesterday, we are born, daily, to new ideas, new concepts, new challenges.”
“Is this true of the physical world also?”
“The physical world has completely different rules.”
She paused as though to gather her thoughts. Alec felt a peculiar feeling of being moved from place to place, or rather from time to time. The square opening over his head lost its geometric definition; it wavered like the air over a hot pavement…
“You’ll learn in a few years that your physical body doesn’t really exist. Every atom, even the subatomic particles, wink in and out of existence in fractions of a second. You are continuously being created and dissolved. You live on the very brink of physical reality. It is this uncertainty, if you like, that enables you to make trips in the inner worlds.”
Somehow Alec understood what she was saying. In fact, it sounded familiar to him. As though he knew it but had forgotten it for some reason.
…and then everything came back to normal. There was so much Alec wanted to discuss with her. There was his descent into the mad scientist’s domain. Later into the witches’ green, foul-smelling cauldron, and finally into the No-Man’s-Land. This last he wouldn’t know even what questions to ask. It had to mature within him. Or perhaps he had to grow into the reality he’d witnessed.
Suddenly he felt incredibly privileged.
“Gosh, I’m lucky. I’m the luckiest guy in the whole world!”
And once again he felt bathed, all over, in a wondrous smile. Or it could have been the first rays of sun winning the battle with the receding gale. He didn’t care. It felt great.
21
Coffee
For the first time in
his life, Alec felt his bones. It wasn’t like after tennis. After a good match he felt his muscles. This was different. Sure, some of his youthful muscles felt a bit sore, but it was the bones that he felt most. It was like being wrung through an old-fashioned mangle. Like Miss Brunt, the geography teacher, must have been, he remembered. It wasn’t pleasant at all.
Poor Miss Brunt, he thought.
Yet the smell of coffee, something he’d just started to enjoy, reached him from the galley and was stronger than his desire to remain prone. Nothing, nothing can compare to a coffee after a three-hour sail across a stormy sea, while sitting in a quiet bay, sunning one’s tired bones.
“I thought you were still asleep,” dad said as Alec peeked in from the fo’c’sle. Alex Senior was propped up on two pillows against the toilet bulkhead. He looked a lot better.
Alec glanced at his watch. His parents had been resting for almost three hours, but he’d hardly napped. The rest of the time he was reliving the gale with his usual heroic overtones. Only his chat with Sandra gave him some detachment.
“Give me a second, Mom.” And before his mother had a chance to answer, he pulled himself up through the square hatch in the ceiling onto the deck and dove overboard.
Just the thing for his tired bones. The cool and warm water was simultaneously bracing and invigorating. The tension seemed to dissipate into the water around him like ice in water. The coffee would taste so much better now.
“By Jove, it’s good to be young!” Alex Senior sighed, his eyes following his son through the starboard porthole. He raised himself from his cushioned perch when he heard the splash.
“Whatever do you mean?” Alicia wanted to know.
When Alec climbed the ladder, the smell of coffee was accompanied by the inviting aroma of eggs and bacon. Mom could do miracles in their small galley. Just two rings. One for coffee, the other for the eggs. What more could one possibly hope for?
The table had been laid out. Usually dad sat on the port side, with mom and Alec facing him from the starboard. Now, while Alec was swimming, dad moved to the other side to join his wife on the starboard bunk and leave the ‘captain’s place’ for Alec.
After Alec dried himself in the cockpit and came down the companionway steps, dad whistled him in. Like a real captain. His mother stood up and saluted. Alec stood at the head of the table and said, “At ease, men!”
“Here’s to Captain Alec Baldwin, Junior,” his dad said as he raised his coffee with his good hand in a salute. “May he brave the seven seas as he’d braved the gale.”
“May he live long and prosper!” Alicia added, holding her hand up in Mr. Spock’s salute. With her other hand she also raised her coffee cup.
And they all laughed. The first relaxed laughter since last night. It was high time to forget the horror of the sail. The horror, but not Alec’s accomplishments.
Their impromptu celebration went on for a while. Alec was feasted, feted, and after breakfast squeezed by his mother to within an inch of his life.
“What on earth would we ever have done without you?” she asked more than once, while dad looked on him with real, unabashed pride in his eyes. “That’s my boy!” He repeated too frequently, as if daring anyone to contradict his words. “That’s my boy!”
Alec tried to explain that he only did what he had to do. He told them that a dozen times, but it seemed to make no difference. His parents were determined to treat him as a hero and that was that. Trying to change the subject, Alec asked what they should do with their afternoon. Happy to get off the boat for a while, they decided to go for a walk on one of Valcour Island’s nature trails.
It was fun to be on land again. Even after only two nights on board, those first few minutes felt different. Then the landlubbers got their legs back. And his father’s arm was much better. He couldn’t use it yet, of course, but walking and generally moving around didn’t hurt. Much.
Since the footpaths were narrow, they walked in single file—Alec ahead, mom close behind him and dad bringing up the rear. Alec’s mind, however, wondered off in a different direction every hundred yards or so. Hearing the footsteps behind him, Alec was suddenly the scout leading the revolutionary band towards the British garrison. He scanned the bushes for any sign of the enemy. Looking anywhere but the path in front of him, he soon tripped over a root sticking up from the ground. His reality changed instantly. Having been bitten by a snake (the root, actually), he doubled his pace to get to the field hospital. He knew he would make it, but time was of the essence.
“Alec, take it easy!” He heard mom’s plea. “We can’t keep up with you.”
He slowed up immediately. The wounded needed a rest. He sat on a stone and waited until the convoy caught up with him. He knew he would have to treat the gun-wounds with makeshift supplies. No matter. That’s what army medics were for.
“C’mon, son,” dad stood before him, the pride in his eyes still visible. “We’ll rest when we get back.”
They got back in less than two hours. There was plenty of daylight left. Alicia and Alec swam to the shore while dad did some reading. Later they all relaxed with a glass of juice by their side. Dad was given his first and only Scotch. A small one.
Alec was not pleased with himself. Sandra had told him just to live, and his mind kept drifting off in all directions. He just couldn’t help it. Or could he? Don’t we all define the worlds we live in? She’d said something like that. She’d said so many important things. Like this business of what defines people. He still wasn’t satisfied. How can so many different beings all be people? Some men and women, even on Earth, behaved more like animals than people. Who knows what might happen on other planets? Billions and billions of them on planets circling billions and billions of stars. It was as though intelligence had spread itself too thin...
And anyway, aren’t we what we eat?
And then he felt the familiar smile.
“Animals are what they eat. People are not defined by what they put inside themselves but by what emanates from them. From innocent little thoughts, to whole Universes...”
“Sandra?”
But she was gone. A smile, a word and that was it. Not even a goodbye. Of course, if she’s always with me, she can hardly say goodbye. He smiled to himself and sensed concentric circles of contentment emanating from within. The waves expanded into wider and wider circles, skimmed over the water, then rose up in the air and mixed with the sun’s rays. Together they bathed the trees and bushes and flowers and anyone who cared to bask in a moment of joy.
The sort-of-nap he’d taken in the fo’c’sle had helped but hadn’t really been enough. He needed real rest badly. His body took care of itself, but his youthful yet wrought nerves needed switching off for a while. A gale takes a lot out of anybody, more from him who is at the bridge. Finally, for the first time since early dawn, Alec fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. His last thought was that he always got what he needed. We all get what we need... How come people didn’t know that?
And he was gone.
22
The Last Sail of Summer
Sailing season does not end with our definition of summer. The best sailing goes well into September, often into the beginning of October. Even so, six more tennis matches, as many days sailing, and the season of the three/four-day sails would be over. Dad couldn’t take any more time off from work, and Alec was returning to school.
This year would be his penultimate year in school. He was born in a month that entitled him to join a class ahead of his age group. On top of that, he’d skipped a grade in elementary. So, all in all, Alec was two years younger than most of his class. But soon, like everybody else, and despite being only thirteen, he would have to decide what to do with the rest of his life.
His problem was not what to do; it was what not to do. Offhand, he couldn’t think of anything that did not interest him: Nature, as in geography, biology, physiology, physics and even chemistry on the one hand; and history, and literature, and all aspects of
fine arts on the other. When mom took him to a symphonic concert, he wanted to learn to play all the instruments. After a trip to a museum, he became determined to learn painting, and sculpture, and etching, and just about everything else to do with art.
What am I going to do? He wondered. What am I supposed to sacrifice?
Sandra would know. The problem with Sandra was that when he was really busy—whether working, studying or just playing tennis or sailing—Sandra was nowhere to be seen. Or heard, for that matter. She was right, again, when she’d said that she never imposed her presence.
He wanted to ask Pete, but, other than playing tennis, Pete was always busy with his girlfriend. He ran to her like a trained poodle.
Alec began to regret that his inner worlds had taken the place of developing friendships with other boys and... yes, and girls. He had no desire whatever to become a trained poodle, but having someone his own age to talk to would be nice. He didn’t mean Sandra, of course. He meant someone he could see and touch. With whom...
With whom he could just live...
Why was it that his Sandra was always right?
The summer had been marvelous. The best Alec could remember. To be honest, he thought that about every summer. He wondered sometimes what would happen if they lived in the South. In a climate of continuous summer. No one could do any work. No one could go to school or do anything really useful. What did people in the South really do? He found it hard to believe that when immersed in balmy weather one could concentrate on work. It just wouldn’t be proper. You could study fish and nature, but not really from books. You had to get out there and do it in situ. Outdoors. Summer was not a time to stay inside. If we were meant to stay inside, we wouldn’t have been given a summer, he reasoned.
ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy) Page 17
