Bright Fires Burn Fastest

by Unknown

  Millions of them, the sad bastards. Reading endless drivel about celebrities and those sincerely better off than them in bodies, brains and bank accounts. Who in their right damn mind would think that could ever help?

  See that was the problem Lucas thought as he looked down on the vultures through gritted teeth and shining eyes.

  No staying power, no fucking graft. And the worst thing, he was point in case. Asked and answered Lucas spat inwardly. Wasted years that culminated in one painting done and only one. Expensive education, love of friends and family and he was just as bad, worse. Overnight fame. What a fucking cliché. The painting was for the only true reason of all, love, and she wasn’t here.

  Even if ‘that feeling’ came on like epilepsy, all he could see in his mind was a red mist bloodied and fuelled.

  “Fuck off all of you”, he roared from on top of the stage.

  He felt Polly’s grip on his arm tighten and silence was instantaneous.

  The journalists all looked at Lucas with wide eyes. Charles Kidd began to mumble something of an apology trying to pretend he hadn’t just heard the words issued.

  Silence still rang onwards until one of the journalists, one at the front who looked like a giant praying mantis began to clap. Then the rest joined in. Cheering echoed around the room. God, they didn’t even recognise open mockery. It was all about column inches, not a jot of self-pride remained.

  “Woo…hooo!”

  Polly had been right, Lucas as himself was just as marketable as the painting itself, a rakes progress but those journeys always ended abrubtly and tragically, they always had.

  “Were going”, Lucas said and grabbed Polly’s arm.

  Off the stage they almost fell as microphones and cameras were shoved aside by Lucas.

  The crowd began to part after he lashed out.

  They made it to the door and Lucas looked back on the mass and flicked them a V-sign.

  Lucas felt his phone buzz and took it from his pocket.

  He and Polly walked in unison along a deserted street in downtown, they had escaped. It was dark but mild for New York. Spring was coming.

  Lucas unlocked his phone.

  ‘1 new message’.

  He opened it, seeing it was from April, the missing piece.

  “Lucas, well done tonight. We have always been honest. I fucked Tom, the guy I met at the airport. I am sorry.”

  The phone was back in his pocket and everything went numb.

  Polly immediately sensed this man disappearing into a place where not many can go, where not many would want to go.

  “Are you ok?”

  “Uh huh”, Lucas managed turning towards a Dwayne Reed window to mask the unstoppable flow of instantaneous tears.

  He began walking quicker tugging on Polly’s arm.

  “Where are we going?” Polly began to ask.

  Lucas turned with tears streaming down his face. He was shaking.

  “Take me somewhere I can paint. Take me somewhere I can drink.”

  Polly looked at him.

  “Ok, follow me.”

  Lucas let himself be led towards the Meatpacking district. He knew now what to paint. He knew exactly what he wanted to do though time, like daylight, was slipping away faster than he could know.

  Chapter 7

  April unlocked the door to the apartment balancing the two coffees and bagels she clutched in her hand. Why were there so many fucking locks in this putrid place? How paltry an offering, a cold breakfast. A piss weak coffee and a staling bagel to apologise for fucking someone else, all night long.

  Its one thing to drunkenly fumble with someone, memories the only reminder that the oldest sin in the book had occurred. Quite another to fuck all night and even in the morning where the brain, the heart and the body were fully functioning once again. It was that half point away from making love which made it even more devastating to both parties concerned in the fallout. This was enough to leave the taste of sickening bile and the weight that would be for some time tormenting guilt.

  In flashes of memory she thought of the night before.

  Lucas should have credited her, she should have been by his side when the painting was sold but instead, like the arrogant prick he was, he took all the glory with a slice for the bitch by his side, Polly.

  Her fingers had worked out of principle and out of spite. The text had been so simple but so devastating. A sharp blade was just as effective as a bullet if you were close enough to the target.

  ‘Its April. What are your plans?’

  I mean jesus that text could have been to her mother, a friend, even a fucking colleague. Instead it was to a man, a clearly single man and a cocky one at that who by his eyes alone had let April know all she needed to about intentions. Only women could truly tell when it was ‘on’, men just always hoped.

  The reply was instant, ‘Nothing. Where can I pick you up?’

  ‘Christies, Rockefeller Plaza.’

  ‘Know it, there in ten.’

  April hadn’t even bothered to put any sort of safety net up in the shape of going for a drink. After walking away from the auction room, her decision was final and fateful. When asked what she wanted to do by Tom, who since their last meeting had definitely become more attractive, at least to the furious and highly charged April, she had sidled up next to him in the back of a yellow.

  ‘Yours’, was all she had said.

  Tom had given the address and instantly their mouths smashed together as a Bush song ‘Adrenaline’ pumped out of the crap speakers. They gorged on each other, licking and clinking teeth, it seems they both needed the release, or the escape.

  The thought of what the fuck was she doing had come and gone like the last breath of a dying man, or woman in this case.

  The door burst open, both of them already half naked and high on the fact that there was no introduction, no formality before the fucking. Thank you internet, thank you for the pornography and the influence that courtship was dead.

  Once the first act had been completed, that being that she was clearly a cheat and abandoning her supposed mate for life on the most important night of his life, there seemed little point in stopping. April wasn’t known for holding back, particularly when smited, hell hath no fury and all that.

  As April’s memory continued, the door clicked open to her and Lucas’ apartment and she burnt back the actual acts of confused copulation and the accessories to the fact. Sucking, biting, licking, lapping, swallowing, gagging, crying, coming.

  What the fuck had she done?

  This man Lucas had brought her here to rescue her. And what gave her the right to be so pissed with him? She knew damn well who, what and which way this boy moved, she had signed that contract the moment she went for a drink with him in the Punchbowl in London. He had said he was going to do something and he had done it, a damn sight more credit worthy than the rest of the drones buzzing themselves towards a nursing home.

  When the door swung inward her fears were confirmed.

  Lucas wasn’t there and hadn’t been back in the night, the sheets were untouched. He never ever made the bed.

  Whilst April could do something hurtful to others, particularly in this case, Lucas was different. He was much more likely to hurt himself, and gravely. He carried self-loathing like an infection. In him lay a deep seated unhappiness that peaked with loneliness and belief that anything wrong in his life was due to him, and him alone.

  Somewhere within April she longed for him to be normal. She wanted the shouting match, the flinging of plates and bittersweet words. At least then it was out in the open, out for repair, able to be coaxed back to life even if it took time. If he acted as she feared he would, that nagging headache and heartbreak of pain and guilt would never leave.

  Dumping the bagels and coffees she walked back out onto the streets of Manhattan. She had to at least try and look, if nothing else to try and alleviate the lifelong guilt that would haunt her if he had done something as final as he was capable
of doing.

  *

  Polly sat in a vest top with her jeans somewhere in a pile by the foot of the bed.

  Reaching right and fumbling she found her smokes and the lighter, she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  All around resembled pandemonium. Cigarette butts, bottles and empty wraps covered the floor as well as sweeps and stains of paint tarmacked into the polished black floor.

  The cigarette smoke twisted out of her mouth and caught the light streaming in through the vast studio of her friend Chris in the Meatpacking District. He had always said if she ever needed to use it, it was hers, in case she ever found inspiration.

  Inspiration had been found, paramount to nothing before she had seen, but not by her hand.

  Polly stood and ran a hand through her hair still gazing with glass eyes over what looked down at her.

  He wasn’t there, the master had gone.

  They had arrived the night before with Lucas still sobbing quietly armed with the brethren’s of the broken; fags, booze and drugs.

  Silence had ensued as Lucas drained almost an entire bottle of whisky, a half-gram of cocaine and three cigarettes.

  “Lucas, look, are you ok?”

  He had nodded and began to take slower breaths, his hands beginning to fidget clicking the flint of a bic lighter over and over again.

  He gave a hurried and muffled explanation that he wanted to paint. When he went to the bathroom Polly saw the message on his phone.

  He rushed to the back of the studio after an hour and becoming ‘drunk enough’ as he put it to where the canvases were stored and pulled out the largest one, 12ft by 12ft, and let it fall back against the east wall. The halogen lights blinked upon its bareness. A world of possibility, the virgin canvas. Polly swallowed, she wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  Then she had watched. Lucas certainly did know how to begin, at full force and speed with what looked like diminishing control.

  Polly watched something seen by none before barring his hand.

  For six hours Lucas had gone to work on the painting. Paint was thrown, brushed and slammed into the dripping canvas. Red came first, blood red covering the surfaces and some of the wall. Long black lines came next, horizontal then reversed to vertical. Dabs of white were added almost at random as he hopped from foot to foot and side to side in front of the massive canvas.

  With the oil still bumped and bruised on the canvas he had begun to work with a half-inch brush bringing in greens, blues, yellows and peach. With the butt end of a hammer he thrust at the canvas with hummingbird yellow letting blotches block out most of the red of the base layer.

  Occasionally Lucas would stand back, then stumble as the second bottle and gram took effect. He would cock his head and blink slowly for a second before leaping forward again.

  He made no noise, none at all.

  Polly drunk and watched in awe. He occasionally turned and looked at her his face, hands, arms and clothes stained beyond repair. He tried to smile but he wasn’t truly there, he was somewhere far off in the distance.

  The figure on the canvas begun to take shape somewhere nearing four hours.

  It was hateful but full of admiration. Bitter but caring, strong but weak. Whatever it was or had been when Polly passed out at around 6.00am it had been better than the first. Something neither her, Charles Kidd at Christies or Lucas himself ever dared to dream.

  Polly now stood under the shadow of the completed painting.

  The face was similar to that of the first painting, if more feminine. It was more the face of April she guessed with the remaining space was merely black. There was the hint of an eye but that was all. It was a person who was living in shadow, someone who belonged in the black. The most powerful, abusive and irreversible colour of all.

  This time compared to his debut the entire body sprawled out over the vast canvas, not just the face at its pinnacle. The womanly curves of the goddess like body were being engulfed by thousands of buildings. The buildings formed a million fingers all pulling at the flesh of the deity made real. The buildings resembled famous landmarks from London and New York. She could depict Grand Central alongside Battersea Power Station. Cleopatra’s Obelisk from the Embankment smashed into the Empire State Building. The buildings seemed to swallow the figure whole, helped by the right hand of the woman reaching for a red brooding sky above, a sky one could never hope to see let alone touch in a metropolis.

  It was brilliant but terrifying and Polly felt herself shiver. There was something about the face craning upwards towards the pocket of sky, like it had already lost. The struggle was already over.

  At the very top of the painting and set behind the twisted face stood a building she knew well. The Rockefeller Centre.

  There were probably over three hundred buildings painted that spread out over the rest of the canvas even extending to beyond the wooden frame and onto the wall but the Rockefeller took centre stage over the figure.

  Then Polly looked closer.

  In a fine hand and small brush there were words written, inner musings Lucas had paraphrased between cigarettes the first night they had met.

  Lighting another cigarette and sinking to her haunches she began to read.

  The paint was still glistening in the light and nowhere near dry. She guessed this hadn’t been completed more than half an hour before.

  Maybe its poison and maybe I self dose.

  Whichever, judgement time.

  This wasn’t the inner musings of an artist at work, this was something quite different.

  She called out his name but knew he wouldn’t be there.

  “Lucas”, sounded hollow in the empty studio with only the figure in the painting to hear.

  She stepped back and took in the painting with tears rolling down her heart shaped face. She had just read a confession, a goodbye in the only way he would ever know how to say it.

  Then she saw it.

  At the top of the painting where the Rockefeller Centre drove skywards from behind the head of the figure she saw another figure, it was miniscule, it might have been a smudge or a dollop of black paint.

  She grabbed a chair and stood atop of it.

  Making out arms, and then legs and a face with the mouth laughing. There was a tiny mocking figure looking down on the mass of buildings below and the figure that was his muse, his April.

  That figure was Lucas.

  Grabbing her jacket and keys she began to bolt down the stairs.

  It was 9.45am, the skydeck of the Rockefeller Centre opened at 10.00.

  That’s where Lucas would be, that’s where he would say goodbye. Forever.

  *

  April was somewhere between 43rd and 44th near Bryant Park. It was 9.55am and she hadn’t done much actual searching, more self-loathing.

  How was she meant to find someone in a city? So many millions of faces, all human but none friendly and none understanding her exact state of crisis. All had worries but she was certain, right then, hers outweighed them all.

  She thought back to all the time they had spent together, how she had blown it all.

  All they had done. The memories, the fucking, the dancing, the drinking and the laughing. All gone.

  New York had not been what they had planned, not at all. They had come here to follow a dream, his dream, she was but a collaborator. That’s the problem with dreams though, you might not actually want to touch them. Once you reach them there truly remains nothing left, the search is over.

  Those at the pinnacle always fall, they must. Their lifelong quest for fame, love, fun, money, dreams, nightmares, hope, faith, houses, children, companionship, friends, memories, futures must all slip away once they get there. There remains no hope, no motivation once you reach the top. Without a motor the boat will stop, without a cause so too will the heart.

  Then April halted causing others to divert around her. She looked down at the floor, the sidewalk beneath her. She felt the concrete under her soles.

  The top.
What if you reached the top? Not just of life but physically, the top of New York.

  She looked up at the countless and endless skyscrapers knowing exactly what he would do. Jesus, he had even said it.

  ‘This would be a good place to die.’ He said when they went there, he was telling her then.

  Lucas had one person left to piss off, the Almighty. He would make the final and ultimate deal with his maker.

  Then she began to run.

  *

  Lucas looked down over the city, which, as ever, was passing each other in nonchalance. Cabs and people all on their own personal locomotives to reach a pre destined and personalised stop.

  To the south was downtown and Tribeca, the districts of hope and wealth. In Tribeca you signed the dotted line, worked for forty years, but could provide for a family. Mini-you’s trekking across the earth with your only hope that they will do an infinitely better job than you.

  In Downtown you sought true inspiration.

  Lucas had found neither. He had tried the dotted line and blown it, he had tried creative and it had blown him. There was nothing that remained without April, his beacon was put out for good.

  It was cold and bright, a good day for it. It was also quiet, he had gotten the first lift up to the top of the tower.

  Even he had to smirk at what they would say when they saw the painting. There was a certain style to it he liked, the death. The death, the word made him freeze up for a second.

  Leaning forward he pressed his head against the glass surrounding the deck at the very top. He could make it if he took a run and was quick, they had guards around. It would be a struggle to get over but then peace.

  Looking up at the sky a tear he didn’t feel coming escaped from his eye. It rolled down his face, tickled his chin and stayed there. It seemed even that wanted to cling on.

  All he had ever known or might know one day was soon about to vanish.