Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins

by Danika Stone

  ‘Goddamnit!’ her mind yelled.

  Ava strode into the dark apartment, dropping her leather jacket on the chair in the foyer. She flicked on a light and headed upstairs, walking to the couch and glancing nervously at the blinking light on the phone display.

  Three missed calls, no messages. Caller ID: C. Thomas. She smiled, hitting the button to check the times.

  12:07 p.m., 1:06 p.m. and then 2:08 p.m.

  Ava giggled at the pattern – nearly on the hour. The knowledge that he’d called left her giddy, and she lifted the phone, hitting redial without a second thought. The phone rang without pause until a recording of Cole’s voice picked up. It was serious, almost brusque, but it still left her body buzzing with anticipation.

  “You’ve reached Cole Thomas. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, I’ll return the call.”

  No jokes. No lightness. Just… intense. Very Cole.

  The phone beeped, interrupting her rambling thoughts, and Ava stumbled to speak, having no idea what to say.

  “Uh, hi, Cole. It’s Ava...” she stumbled. “I, uh… I saw you called today. Sorry. I was painting at my studio and just got home… and um…” her words were growing quieter and more nervous as she went, her hands sweating. “So I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow in cl—”

  “Hey! Hi, Ava!” Cole interrupted, his voice bouncing loudly in her ear, clear and sharp. “I just got in the door, sorry!” He was panting like he’d been running and Ava laughed, grinning at the sound of his voice.

  “It’s okay,” she said with a smile. She could see him clearly in her mind now. “I was working earlier. Got in flow and never stopped painting at all today. Sorry I missed your call.”

  “I was at the studio too,” Cole admitted. “I still have a lot of work to do on my mid-term project. God, my arms are killing me. I can hardly feel my hands.”

  She smiled, his voice surrounding her like a bubble.

  “I’d like to see your work sometime,” she said.

  Cole laughed.

  “Oh, you’re gonna pose for it. So yeah, you will.”

  “Haven’t forgotten that, huh?” she said with a giggle.

  “Not a chance.” His words were low and sexy, and Ava lowered herself to the edge of the couch, grinning to herself. She was glad he couldn’t see her; her face was burning, the heat inching up to her blonde roots.

  “Well, then, you’d better hold up your end of the bargain, Thomas,” she drawled. “Don’t think I’m letting you get off easy.”

  Cole chuckled.

  “Wouldn’t think it. I’d love to see what your work is like sometime. Had a class with Marcus once. He spoke really highly of your artwork...”

  Ava closed her eyes as he spoke, the darkness behind her closed lids reminding her of the night sky above the ocean, years earlier, when she’d camped along the coast with her dad. The stars had been so bright, it almost seemed like you could see forever. The sound of the phone in her ear – echoing with slight static – was like the sound of the surf and it left her homesick. It felt right, hearing him like this. She could almost imagine Cole standing on the deck of a boat… his eyes on the distant sky.

  “…and so I swept up and came back to the dorms and heard you leaving the message on the machine.”

  Ava’s eyes fluttered open as his words ended.

  “Have you eaten yet?” she asked, suddenly inspired.

  Cole paused.

  “Ate around supper time, but that was a few hours ago.”

  “Well, I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” Ava answered, her growling stomach punctuating the thought.

  “Good lord, Ava. You must be starving!” Cole gasped, sounding so perfectly adult she wanted to hug him. Part of her was interested in seeing how he’d react to some of the more illegal activities she’d been involved in. She wondered if Cole Thomas always followed the rules, or just those that he wanted to.

  “So you want to go grab a bite or what?” she asked.

  “Absolutely!”

  “Then get your coat and come to the front of the dorms. I’ll come pick you up.”

  : : : : : : : : : :

  Supper was at an all-night truck stop near the airport since everything downtown was already closed. Ava drove, and Cole had a chance to watch her. Her movements were full of coiled energy, no matter what she was doing. She claimed she was starving, but when her food arrived, she offered to share it with him.

  He drank coffee instead.

  The two of them argued and talked artwork. Cole tried to describe what it was like when everything came together, and his muse was on fire, and each chip off the stone was a perfectly formed measure to get inward. The shape emerging by degrees. His physique, he admitted bashfully, was a reflection of this meticulous process. She giggled, and Cole continued. He told her how he thought of the sculpture as hidden underneath the layers of stone, and that his job was just to get rid of the excess around it. Ava smiled, wiping her lips with a paper napkin and winking at him.

  “Like Michelangelo did,” she said.

  Cole was shocked that she knew the Michelangelo quote, but then a lot about this woman surprised him. He liked the feeling.

  “Uh, yeah...” he admitted, grinning. “He said it. Though I’d like to think when my muse wants my artwork to be female, the sculpture actually looks female.”

  Ava giggled happily, picking up another fry as they continued talking. She told him what it was like to paint. How her father had gotten her involved in artwork to help deal with her anger. Her expression darkened, her gaze drifting to the black windows facing the highway. Cole wanted to ask her about it, but he didn’t. He knew about that side of himself, and he wasn’t ready to push her too much on that subject. He was amazed at how much had passed in the last twenty-four hours. He felt that sense, again, that he knew her already.

  An hour later, her plate was empty, as was his coffee mug. They both had class the next morning, both needed sleep, but neither wanted to break the moment. Ava sighed, sat back, sighing contentedly.

  “I should take you back...” she said, but didn’t move to go.

  Cole nodded, then leaned forward, his hand catching hers across the table, holding it still. Her eyes flared wide, but she didn’t pull away.

  “I want to see you again,” he said quietly, his voice intent and serious. He rubbed his thumb against the back of her knuckles. His eyes, pale grey surrounded by darkness, focused on hers, watching and waiting. This time, there was no flicker of worry in her expression. Slowly Ava smiled.

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 6: Midterms

  The next two weeks were a blur.

  The student show would be taking place a little over a month and a half, but the projects had to be completed early in order to give the curators time to hang the show over Christmas. Even the art foundations course was getting heavy. Wilkins’ particular focus was the dissection of Clement Greenburg's writings in preparation for launching into modernism. He had assigned a précis for each of the man’s long-winded articles.

  Ava hated it.

  The first Monday after the diner incident – (she had been labelling everything as “incidents” with Cole Thomas ) – he sat front and center in Wilkins’ class, one spot off from her usual seat. She had paused at the end of the row, unsure for a second, scowling darkly. She hadn’t liked the assumption Cole had made by sitting next to her. It had felt like everyone else in the room was watching for her next move.

  The feeling she’d had before with him began rioting through her body. The part telling her to run and keep going. Before she had been able to make a decision, Wilkins had yelled at her to sit down and stop holding up his class. Ava had stumbled to the middle, leaving one spot between her and Cole, angrily dumping her bag into the empty seat. The projector had shone a band of light between them.

  Cole had glanced at Ava’s backpack and frowned wordlessly. Professor Wilkins had started droning about Pre-Modernism and
the French Revolution, and Cole had written notes in his tiny, terse script, Ava tight-lipped in frustration. ‘Too much, too fast,’ her mind had prompted. Three hours later, she’d walked out beside him, grumbling about David’s role as a propaganda master of the French Revolution. He’d chatted with her, intense and focused, and it had almost seemed like before… but not quite. He’d waved quickly, face cool, and had walked away from her that time, leaving her feeling worried. Then annoyed with him… and then furious with herself for even caring.

  The next day he had been in the same middle seat, and this time she’d sat down beside him, placing her bag on the floor and kicking her feet up on the chair in front of them.

  “Wilkins started the water torture yet?” she’d grumbled as the first slide flicked on. Cole had smirked, but he hadn’t looked up from his notes.

  That day had been the start of a new pattern for the two of them.

  There were no free weeknights those two weeks at all. Cole was sequestered in his studio until almost midnight, pounding his frustrations onto the stone. Ava was downtown in her studio painting in ever-widening swirls, her body aching and tired, as she tried to translate her repeating dream (coming almost every night now) into a two dimensional image. It frustrated her… the limits of the canvas, even though she had stretched it herself, as large as she could make it and still get it down the stairs of the studio. Ava wanted to paint larger… missed it… and she found herself aching to be out in the darkness, painting the way she used to. Illegal or not. She woke sometimes in the night wondering if she should go and do it again. Other times she woke, listening to the rain and remembering the beach she’d stood on as a child, wondering if Cole was awake too.

  On Friday, Ava skipped class like she always did.

  She painted all day in the studio and when she came home, itching to check the answering machine (though she wouldn’t even admit that to herself), she discovered a note taped to the door. It was a new reading list from Wilkins that someone had brought by. “More fucking Greenburg!” Ava swore as she stomped inside, knowing she’d be spending the weekend in the library making notes. Reaching the living room, she threw herself down onto the couch. She flipped the page over and then froze, heart pounding.

  There, in Cole Thomas’s tidy handwriting, was a note:

  Ava: Leaving to go to my parents’ house this weekend.

  Sorry I missed you in class today. - Cole

  The message left her even more frustrated than before, so she poured herself into the readings. The convoluted descriptions and modernistic lingo left her irritated and angry. She needed to vent, but all she was doing was reading and regurgitating. No time for actual thought. ‘Fucking précis!’ her mind screamed again.

  She spent all of Saturday in the library fighting with the assignment, then met up with Marcus and Suzanne and a few other friends from the university for drinks later that night. Chim offered to proof her précis – he was about as good at double-talking his way through art history as stirring up controversy – so Ava promised to give him a copy the following day, and Saturday ended with happy laughter.

  Sunday, Ava painted again.

  She hadn’t had the dream in two days, so she left the canvas to sit and dry, and moved to another sitting in her studio. It was one which captured her darker moods. This particular painting was a swirl of purple and blue smudges darkening to black in the middle. Today she added details, realizing she had been painting clouds rolling in off the water all along. ‘A storm on the ocean,’ her mind whispered apprehensively. She frowned seeing it. The image worried her.

  That afternoon, Raya Simpson showed up with a photocopied information package for Ava to complete. The agent stood for a long while in Chim’s studio space, her shantung silk suit and high heels looking odd alongside the drop cloths and clutter. She asked Marcus to pull out his recent works and lay them along the wall, taking pictures with a digital camera and giving him a card afterwards.

  Then she did the same for Ava.

  Raya stopped speaking when Ava reached the swirling clouds. The room was quiet as Ava pulled out the remaining canvases, ending with the last, unfinished piece for the student show. Raya looked at them fiercely.

  “I need to show these to Kip,” Raya said abruptly, her ringed finger tapping the papers she was holding. “But he’s in Lisbon.”

  “What?”

  Simpson looked up, face businesslike again. She gave Ava a once up and down, measuring something.

  “I want to send Kip over to see your real artwork when he gets back,” she said, stepping forward and dropping her voice. “I’ve got an idea for a collaboration for you two.”

  “What do you mean?” Ava asked, feeling a little unsettled. The words ‘real artwork’ left her bristling.

  Raya smiled benignly, pushing the heavy information package into her hands.

  “The summer exhibition in the public space and the filming is just one of the things I want you to consider, but I have other projects on the go, too. I’m going to give your friend Marcus a call in the Summer. Seeing these,” she said, “I have an idea for you and Chambers.”

  She tipped her auburn head and Ava fought the urge to fidget. Raya Simpson exuded a powerful force of authority in the art world, and Ava was wary of playing her cards wrong.

  “I’ll leave it to Kip to explain it to you, alright?” Raya said. “You paint here most evenings?”

  Ava nodded mutely and took Simpson's offered card, and then her hand, sealing the deal.

  “Good,” Simpson said curtly, pulling on oversized sunglasses. “I’ll send him over when he gets back.”

  That night, Ava could hardly sleep. She called her father in Australia to relay her excitement, needing desperately to share it with someone. Cole – her first choice – was still not back in town.

  She knew because she’d called, but had hung up on his machine.

  : : : : : : : : : :

  Monday she showed up to class in a good mood, walking to their spot in the centre (absently wondering to herself when she’d stopping thinking of it as ‘her spot’ and had switched to ‘theirs’), and then flopping down next to him. Cole was reading when she approached, glancing up as she sat. He looked tired, she noted, dark smudges under his eyes and a bluish shadow of stubble on his chin. Ava thought he looked sexy this way – dark and somehow more dangerous than his usual clean-cut looks – and she caught herself grinning at him.

  “How was the weekend with the family?” she asked, ignoring Wilkins as he turned off the lights and started the projector.

  Cole sighed heavily, running a hand across the back of his neck, leaving his dark hair sticking up at odd angles.

  “Same as always,” he muttered, his tiredness telling more than his three words. Ava winked at him, gesturing to the heavy book.

  “Clem here didn’t leave you in the best mood?”

  Cole laughed wearily, and then the prof began droning on about the Impressionists. The class went by in flashes of colour and light, punctuated by Wilkins' voice and the scratchy sound of students’ pens. Ava was distracted, her body aching with the closeness of Cole, wanting to reach out and touch him though she didn’t dare. Instead, she crossed her arms and settled in for the tedious lecture.

  Tuesday, the cold weather lifted in a brief late-Autumn warm spell. By Thursday, students lounged on the lawns around the campus, soaking up the rays. Ava itched to be out of the classroom, but Cole had reminded her that they had a midterm exam in Wilkins’ class, so she made a rare Friday appearance. Afterwards, Ava wandered out next to Cole, waiting for the inevitable moment he would turn away and she’d go the other direction to start their separate weekends.

  This time, however, he stepped closer.

  “So I’ve got the front of the sculpture roughed out, but not the back,” Cole began, his face serious. He was staring at Ava’s right shoulder as he spoke, as if measuring and tracing it. There was nothing remotely sexual about the look. Ava raised her eyebrow.

&nbs
p; “And...?” she asked.

  His gaze jumped to her eyes and she felt the snap between them. Ava caught the way that his eyes darkened and his lips parted for a second. ‘Oh,’ she thought, holding back a smile, ‘there it is again...’

  A moment later, his attention was on her arm again, following the shape to her elbow. Analyzing. The spark narrowed down to sharpened focus.

  “I need to start working from a model now,” he said. “Probably should've earlier… and I could ask someone else, but I want it to be you. I want this sculpture to be you…”

  Ava shifted, wariness pushing at her senses. She really liked Cole… , but the fierceness of his reactions worried her.

  “Uh, I’m not sure, Cole,” Ava said, watching the other people on the lawn. “I mean, I’m trying to get my own piece done too. Wasn’t the agreement that you pose first?”

  She turned back to him, grinning, hoping to make a joke about it. Cole wasn’t laughing. Instead, he stared down at her intently.

  “Look Ava, I’m just really having a hell of the time with the arms.” He grimaced, eyes dropping to the ground. “It’s okay, though,” he added with a sigh, “I know you’re busy, but I really need to figure this bit out. I’ve pushed the shape back further than it should be – there’s no way to ‘fix’ mistakes in stone – and now I’m just…”

  He scrubbed a hand across his face in frustration, glancing at the other students laughing around them.

  He muttered a curse under his breath and then turned away. “Just forget it. I gotta go.” He headed toward the far side of the campus, stomping down the sidewalk, his back stiff.