by Berinn Rae
She slugged him.
“Seriously.” He laughed. “The, well, the heat in that painting, when the paint was still wet … Gradyn took one look at it and said you wanted me bad and not in a rated ‘G’ way.”
“Like, duh!”
“You painted us into it.”
“Yes.” Lily slipped away to dance around him. “A paradigm. You and me. Loving each other up.”
“I’ll take it.” Daniel caught her, lifted her to kiss her laughing mouth.
“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously, Daniel.” Lily buried her hands in his no longer tidy hair. “I’m proposing marriage, kids, a house in the country.”
“I know. And I’m saying hallelujah.”
She went still in his arms. “That’s not a yes.”
“It is!” he cried. “It’s a resounding yes. No, don’t start with the — ” Daniel felt her wild magic stroke his skin, saw it as golden stars in her eyes before her mouth hit his. She pulled him under with her lips and tongue and the press of her body.
After a long time she let him go, saw his eyes unfocused and dumbstruck for a change. “If you keep distracting me this way, Daniel,” she said in a perfect mime of Madame Bagasha, “we won’t make it to this opening, which will then never end and we’ll never consummate — ”
He spun around to drag her back towards the Lennox. “We need to drive. It’s faster.”
Laughing, Lily ran to keep up. “I like fast.”
Night dropped a shutter of darkness over Little Belfast, the old houses, last century’s apartment and office buildings. The solar street lamps cast deep, elongated shadows across yards piled thick with leaves. A cold wind blew off the lake smelling of muck and fish. It swept the leaves into crackling little dervishes around Daniel and Lily’s racing feet. There were few people about. The night lay quiet except for the far off sounds of expressway traffic, the snarl of an alley cat, a mother calling her kids home.
It took awhile for Daniel’s old truck to warm up. And while warming Lily up, he realized kissing her was like drinking in springtime, full of promise, provocative, unexpected and ever fresh. He drove downtown with her arms around his waist and her head on his chest, half drunk at the feel of her against him.
Parking was not a problem this late in the day. When Daniel turned off the ignition, Lily stayed wrapped around him, suddenly too nervous to move. He held her quietly until at last she sat up with a huff of breath and slid across the seat to climb out of the truck. They held hands crossing the street, hers cold and trembling in his. She stopped abruptly at the sharp edge of light cast through the windows of the Gallery. Her pulse throbbed beneath Daniel’s palm. Standing in the shadows beyond the light were Rodney and Look-Alike.
“Damn them,” Lily shivered. “Can’t they leave me alone for just one night?”
“They won’t come in,” Daniel said. “They never do.”
“Except in the magic shop. Do you suppose they’re attracted to the magic in my paintings? I mean, that’s what they are, technically speaking.”
“No,” Daniel said. “I think they’re attracted by emotion, Lily. You loving me.”
Lily looked at him in surprise.
“You painted them with love, didn’t you? All your paintings are full of love and light and passion.”
She shivered. “Not Rodney.”
“Yes, even Rodney. I can sense their longing, Lily. It matches yours, bittersweet and lonely. Desperate.”
She threw her arms around him. “Say you forgive me, Daniel. For not wanting you when obviously you were all I wanted.”
“I forgive you, my darling girl.” Daniel kissed her lightly. “When will you forgive yourself?”
“Are you saying … ?”
“All I sense in them is longing and hungry, unexpressed need.”
Lily’s face lit up. “Then when we finally have sex they’ll disappear?”
He laughed. “We can only try, can’t we?”
“Half an hour, max,” Lily said sternly. “After that, rescue me. Tell Gradyn I have meningitis or something.”
Still laughing, Daniel buried himself inside another of her kisses before letting her go.
Lily stepped into the light to peer through the window. “Look, a crowd already. There’s Ellen. Whoa, she’s actually talking to Gradyn! I thought they hated each other.”
“Like the sun and the moon.” Daniel nudged her through the door and they were inside the gallery and beyond escape.
• • •
Megan was there to take their coats. Then she took Daniel. It seemed she’d made it her personal mission to introduce him to everyone while leading him possessively by the hand. He sent a despairing look at Lily. She tried to kill the rise of jealousy, but had no time before the claustrophobic swarm of strangers overwhelmed her. Then Gradyn was beside her. Draping his arm around her shoulders, he thrust a glass of wine into her hand and planted a lusty kiss on her cheek. He grinned a taunt at Daniel across the room.
Spencer Gallery glowed with goodwill and beauty. Gorgeous bouquets of ivory-colored flowers filled the air with subtle scent. The lighting was both bright and mellow, pulling warm colors from the wood, the frames, pedestals, and display cases. There were catered trays of shrimp and crispy stuffed pastries. Waiters stood ready to refresh goblets with champagne, wine and other spirits. Everyone smiled, relaxing. The room filled with boisterous conversation. Gradyn, arm draped possessively around Lily, introduced her to one group of people after the next until her head felt ready to pop with too many names and facial features. She longed for a moment to just breathe and settled for drinking instead. After an endless amount of circling the room, they ended up in front of her oil painting, Paradigm.
“Oh, Gradyn, the frame … it’s perfect.” Lily was delighted with the baroque style of molding he’d chosen for the frame and how it added a grandiosity to the already stark drama of the work.
“I’ve had four offers for this tonight, Lil.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “All above thirty thousand.”
She turned, angry at him for mocking her, and saw he was serious. “It’s a masterpiece, Lily. I’d buy it myself if I didn’t know you painted it for Daniel. It’s shocking and beautiful, tormented and poignant all at the same time. And brilliant, truly.”
“Thank you,” she said with her first genuine smile of the evening. They stood together looking up at the paradigm figure with her perfect angel face, womanly yet naïve and childlike, her eyes rapturous yet tortured. One luminous arm stretched up from a naked shoulder and bare breast while swirling cloth fell away in dark, brooding folds. Rising above and dominating the figure were two large, powerful wings, feathers angry and clasping … a threat or perhaps redemption.
“Tell me it’s not a self-portrait, Lily.” She heard compassion in Gradyn’s voice.
“It isn’t, not really. Why, has someone asked?”
“No. But no one here knows you, except Ellen and Nila. And Daniel, who already knows what this painting is about.”
“Yes. He’s the only one who does. Though Nila probably understands. More than she’ll ever reveal, anyway.”
Gradyn’s glance shot across the room to where Nila stood, a Nila unlike any they’d seen before. Slim and chic, her unbraided hair fell in shining auburn waves past her waist. She wore a dress of saffron silk slit up one side to expose a long, perfectly shaped leg.
“I’ve never seen her reveal so much, actually,” he growled and downed his champagne in one gulp.
Gradyn wasn’t the only man in the room who couldn’t keep his eyes off Nila, though he was the only one who mattered, Lily knew. Catching her attention, Nila grinned and was, for a moment, recognizable as the prankish, urchin witch. Who stayed close by Daniel’s side, Lily noticed.
“She scares the hell out of me,” Gradyn muttered and seemed shocked at Lily’s burst of laughter.
“Really? She said the same about you.” Lily tucked her arm in his and pulled his head down for a peck on the cheek.
“Thank you, Gradyn. For all this. And,” she grinned, “for thinking I might be this dark and tormented soul. But then a hint of madness in an artist never hurt sales, did it?”
Chapter Twenty-five
Megan, arm stuck like crazy glue to Daniel’s, very pointedly kept him away from Lily and her work. When at last he managed to shrug her off, he and Nila slipped through the crowd to join Ellen standing in front of Lily’s largest painting. An abstract landscape, it was overpowering in scope. An almost threatening darkness in the background broke open under grand, incandescent sweeps of light.
“Good Lord,” Daniel said, stunned by such darkness dissolving into mercurial pools of golden luminosity.
Ellen laughed. “And to think she was nervous about showing these, the darling.”
“This one is … breathtaking,” Nila whispered.
Daniel’s fingers itched to trace shapes that seemed to pulse with primordial life. Planets swirled in nebulas of color … no, not planets, eggs. He stepped back and the eggs became pebbles on a river bottom wavering in brilliant rippling water.
“Shocking to the senses, huh? Kind of like her,” Ellen said.
“Where does this come from inside her?” he murmured in soft wonder.
Ellen leaned close. “You should know. Been there yet?”
Daniel’s face reddened and Ellen strolled away with a smile.
Beside him, Nila let out the breath she’d been holding. “I have this compulsion to just dive in,” she murmured. “Is that the pull of her magic, Daniel?”
“I’m afraid so. Thank the Gods Madame Bagasha can’t see these. The Cohort would freak.”
“Are all her paintings this … this demanding?” Nila asked.
“All the ones here tonight.” Daniel led Nila to Paradigm, heard her shocked gasp, saw her eyes fill with tears.
“But this, this manic intensity, it isn’t Lily,” Nila insisted.
“It is sometimes,” Daniel said.
“This is the painting that burned you?”
“Yes. It’s her declaration,” he spoke carefully. Her unconditional offering of herself to him, her binding of him to her, though he didn’t say so out loud. He hated the fact that this intimate display hung here for all to see. The vulnerable figure trapped on canvas with her tormented yet hopeful face, revealed too much emotional honesty and tore too brutally at his heart.
“And then afterwards your magics mingled and recreated themselves,” Nila mused. “Amazing.” Then she asked, “Do you really love her, Daniel? Because she is going to take everything you are.”
“Love isn’t a big enough word for what I feel, Nila. And she already has all that I am. She’s had it for a long time.”
“The Cohort could, well, temper her power if that would — ”
“Never!” Daniel turned suddenly hostile eyes on his cousin. “Her power can’t hurt me, Nila. It’s part of my magic now. As mine is part of hers. You must promise not to involve the Cohort. And convince Madame to leave us be.”
“Is that wise? Or even responsible?” Nila ventured. “I saw those creepy apparitions outside.”
“Just back the hell off, Nila,” Daniel snapped, a kind of agony on his face. He leaned to whisper. “It’s the sexual energy in the paint, can’t you feel it? That’s why the paintings are so mesmerizing. It’s what draws Rodney and company. When we finally — ”
“You mean you two haven’t had sex yet?” Nila blurted out and Daniel walked away from her, too angry for words. Glancing at his watch, he found they’d been at the opening for over an hour. It was past time for a kidnapping. But scanning the gallery, he saw no sign of Lily.
• • •
As the showroom floor filled with more and more people, drink flowed and conversations grew louder. Lily met a couple of the other featured artists in the show, a potter, and a mixed media sculptor who seemed as startled by the crowd and the attention as she was. Somewhere in there, Lily escaped to the ladies room and locked herself in a stall.
Ellen found her there and cajoled her out to splash cold water on her pale face.
“Are you crying?” Ellen tore off a paper towel and passed it to her. “Why, Lily? This is your night!”
“I sold every painting,” Lily scrubbed at the mascara bleeding down her cheeks.
Ellen’s mouth fell open. “Wow! They are truly magnificent, you know. You should be very proud.”
Lily turned on Ellen. “You don’t understand. I painted these after I took the potion!”
“So?”
“I’ve never painted anything so … so multi-dimensional before. Not without magic. I don’t just pick up a brush and paint like this. What if I can’t do it again? What if the potion fades?”
“Lily, get a grip. Here, sit.” Ellen lifted her onto the counter as if she were a child and tucked more tissue into her hands. “Deep breaths, Lily.”
“I never used to cry,” she sniffed angrily.
“That a girl, get mad. A little anger works wonders for a crying jag. See? You’re already drying up.”
Lily blew her nose, eyeing her boss. “I saw you talking to Gradyn. Flirting with Gradyn. Shamelessly.”
“And I saw you drop Daniel’s hand as you stepped through the door. Who attacked first?”
“He did. Then I did.”
“Well then, all is right with the world.” Ellen held up her hand as Lily’s eyes began blurring with tears again. “You will paint like this. Again and again and again. The power is inside you, Lil, not in a bloody potion.”
“The cosmic landscape was supposed to be yours, Ellen. Gradyn put a huge price on it so it wouldn’t sell and someone bought it anyway.”
“Good for him. After all, he’s in the business to make money. What’d it sell for?”
“Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Lily cried mournfully.
Ellen stared at her. “Gods and Saints! Lily, you’re rich! Not only that, Gradyn will spread the word like wildfire that your paintings sold out. Which will make everyone in town ravenous to own a Lily Barnett original.” She rubbed her hands together in greedy delight. “We can so take our clients to the cleaners! No wait, what am I thinking? You’ll quit! Damn, lost the painting and lost the artist! Not a good night for me, let’s get sloshed!”
Laughing, Lily jumped off the counter and turned to the mirror to reapply lipstick. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Aren’t we a pair.”
“Thank the Powers. And Ellen, thank you.”
“Anytime. Want me to sneak Daniel in here for a quickie?”
“No. And stop teasing or you’ll jinx it.” Lily took a last look at herself in the mirror. The girl staring back with nervous eyes was a long way from glamorous now, with her puffy face and wane skin. She certainly didn’t look as if she’d just leaped into fortune and fame. She was so out of her league here in this beautiful salon, meeting people with more money than sense. But then … so what?
These people might buy her best paintings but they couldn’t buy her passion. Ellen was right. She would always paint with feeling and zest and magic. Paradigm would live on Daniel’s wall and she’d paint something new for Ellen, a masterpiece that lived and breathed because she created it for someone she loved.
Ellen held the door open for her, a strange smile on her face. “Follow me, Lil. I’ve got something to show you.”
Lily followed her across the floor towards a short wall beside the sales counter. Hanging, one above the other, were four mid-sized drawings all the same size, matted and set in long, narrow frames.
“G.I.L.?” Lily stared in astonishment at the signature on four original inks of the cartoon strip Lost and Found. They were done larger than they appeared in newsprint and vid-strips, of course. Hand drawn, the strips were broken into G.I.L.’s typical four frame format. Lily found them more appealing and stylized in their original form. She liked the quick, strong strokes that defined character and humor as clearly as any portrait she’d ever done.
“They must be part of th
e show.” Ellen turned to take in the people crowding the showroom floor. “Which means G.I.L. is here somewhere, right? I so want to meet this guy.”
“I don’t,” Lily said forcibly. But Ellen was already gone, weaving through the crowd to find Gradyn.
Lily turned her attention back to the strips. Only one was familiar. Two others made her laugh out loud. And one opened a melancholy ache inside her. The computer nerd character with his big glasses sat slumped in front of his computer. A balloon above his head said: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” A quote from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
Delighted, Lily leaned closer. An answering balloon out of the computer read: “What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”
In the second frame the nerd argued, “The private wound is deepest.” To which the computer responded, “Praising what is lost, makes the remembrance more dear.”
The third frame showed the nerd resting his chin despondently in his hand. “When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions.” And the computer answered, “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.”
In the final frame, the guy was striding away upright and determined, a baseball cap on his shaggy head. The light is turned off in the room behind him where the computer sat in the dark, thinking, “Love all, trust few, do wrong to none.”
Lily stood stunned, moved, a hand pressed to her heart. Each quote was from one Shakespeare play or another. How whimsical and wonderful and endearing! She loved it, the computer geek pouring his heart out to his hard drive. And a computer that offered hope, wisdom, and possibilities.
Lily suddenly wanted it hanging on her wall at home, an original drawing of a famous syndicated cartoon strip. And she could probably afford it, having sold all her paintings! So yeah, she might have railed a bit against the cartoonist G.I.L. But this particular vignette revealed more heart and pathos than she’d have ever guessed the writer possessed. Lily wondered if the computer nerd might be something of a self portrait. Turning, she scanned the thinning crowd, wondering if one of these glittering personages could indeed be the illusive, enigmatic G.I.L.
