“I surf as long as there are waves. It’s a good wetsuit.” He slides the board next to my chair. I didn’t notice the black backpack in the sand before. He’s efficient with the zippers, pulling out a jacket that unfolds from nothing and a plastic rectangle. He puts the coat on over his wetsuit and opens the plastic. Unfurls it out into the dying light. Silver flashes. “For you.”
I catch a corner of it out of the air. A loud, crinkling catch. “A blanket?”
“For emergencies.” He takes a towel out of the backpack and dries his hair.
“I’m totally fine.”
He shoots me a look, and there’s a warmth in it. A familiar exasperation. “Your knees are shaking.”
It’s not because of the cold, but I tuck the blanket around my lap anyway. “There. No more emergency.”
He sits down on the surfboard. My chair is so low, and he’s so much taller, that we’re on the same level. More waves roll in. My muscles are tight with awareness of him. With how close he’s sitting.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sketching?”
I laugh at his joke, but I adjust my grip on the pencil and flip to a new page. The ocean is different when someone is sitting at my side. The whole scene is different—the feeling. Ocean droplets feel less like tiny chips of glass and more like snowflakes. Meant to wake me up, not to hurt. I’m not going to get hurt out here. If he was going to do it, he’d have done it already. He wouldn’t have given me a blanket.
It’s not the safest situation ever. I recognize that. But the Uber driver is waiting for me. A couple minutes sketching in earnest and my mind settles. It falls into the shapes on the page and building up the memory of the way the ocean is now. Darker by the minute. Soon the sky and the sea will be the same deep shade. Moonlight on the water will set them apart.
“They’ll like it.”
I’d gotten used to the crash of the waves, and the man’s silence in it. “Who?”
“Whoever commissioned the piece. What you’re doing here is completely different from the sketch you made before.”
“A few minutes makes a difference,” I say, hoping I sound sage and smart and not self-conscious. “That’s why the ocean is such a good subject.” This is a bit of a hedge. It’s the only subject I’m interested in lately. For months and months. “It changes all the time. Becomes something else.”
I meet his eyes over the arm of the chair. He’s nodding. Agreeing with me. Not in a patronizing way, either. His perfect lips part, gaze slipping down. He might ask me out. He might ask for my number. Men have asked before, but I always say no. If he asked, I would say yes.
“You have sand on your nose,” he murmurs, and he reaches for me.
I flinch.
I can’t help it. Can’t stop it. He freezes, his hand inches away. His face is transformed, like the ocean. Flirtation to concern. A flicker of something else, maybe. He lowers his hand. “Someone hurt you.”
He’s not a fan of questions, this man. You’re an artist. Someone hurt you.
More waves splinter on the sand. They’re a better place to look. “Everyone gets hurt at one point or another. That’s how you learn about power. Someone uses it against you. And then, eventually, it comes out onto canvas.”
“Like Lehmann’s paintings, right? That famous one. Where the Ocean Meets Sky.” The smile I put on my face is tense. Fake. It matches the cold disappointment in my gut at hearing the mention of a dead, terrible man. A celebrated artist, and a monster. He liked painting the ocean, too. We studied his pieces in school, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been compared to him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I relax my fingers around the pencil. Holding it in a tight grip makes it harder to draw. No good for anything. But my fingers are getting stiff.
“You don’t like his work.”
“His work is technically sound. He has an eye for color and light.”
“Then what?”
A soft laugh bubbles up. “Sometimes it’s hard to separate the artist from the art.”
This beautiful man, in his coat and his wetsuit, arches an eyebrow. “And Lehmann can’t be separated.”
“You know, all the information is out there. He didn’t try to hide how he beat his wife.” My voice has gone flat, but I can’t help that either. I can’t show emotion when I talk about this, otherwise it’ll come out—the broken part of me, from my own father. He didn’t get to me often. It was enough. Everything happened behind closed doors at our house while my father got accolades at church for being such a good Catholic. “His wife, his children. Anyone who got in his way. Everyone knew, and no one cared. The German government awarded him with a national art prize and made him the head of that art department. They didn’t care.”
I’ve said way too much. I’m almost sick with it, but I look anyway. Nervousness rises that he’ll judge me for caring, or worse, agree with society that it’s not a big deal.
But he looks thoughtful. “People care. People who know better.” He stands up from the surfboard. “Do you have a way home?”
The Uber is still waiting for me at the top of the rise. “Who said I was done sketching?”
“Your hands are too cold to draw.” He looks around. Spots the car. “For you?”
“Yeah.” I don’t want this conversation to be over. I want to listen to him talk all night. You could never capture this voice in a painting—it’s too fine for that, too gorgeous. But he’s right about my hands.
He offers me his. He’s got big, steady hands. “I’ll walk you. Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Emerson
Robert welcomes me into the gallery like he’s been waiting for me. He has. He and his beret have had two weeks to make Motif more acceptable. I’ve come after closing through fresh, dark night. Robert closes the door behind us and locks it. Flips the sign. He’s busy with it while I put my gloves in my pocket. “Mr. Leblanc. It’s an honor to have you back. If you’ll come this way…”
This way, as if the place is big enough to need directions. Daphne’s pieces are obvious. Two of them, side by side, in the center of the left-hand wall.
Not the display wall in the middle of the gallery.
I have to walk past an irrelevant piece to get to her paintings. The cutting comment I was about to make drowns in Daphne’s work.
Sensation pours out of them, so much so that I have to step closer. To see each one in turn. One is of the ocean at daybreak. The light from above doesn’t penetrate to the bottom of the canvas, but she hasn’t used flat black. I have the impression of movement. A creature lurks out of sight of the sun. Something’s down there. Something’s coming. Light outlines a door. Unseen danger on the other side. In Daphne’s painting, the sun will rise soon. Nowhere to hide.
And the second.
I don’t take my hand out of my pocket and put it to my chest, but I want to.
There is no beach in the painting, but I recognize the particular curves of the waves from that night. Twilight bleeds into dark water, the colors like an oil slick on the surface. Part of the surface. Heavy purple and palest orange refract over infinitesimal peaks. My heart has escaped its bounds. A casual observer might think this was similar to the first piece I bought, or even the one next to it, but it is not. The water rushes out toward the sky, not in toward the viewer. An undertow. And something out of the frame is causing a disturbance. No. That’s the wrong word. Something else, unseen to the viewer, is influencing the water. The shadow of his indentation reaches onto the canvas from the bottom.