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I did not want to go.
I'd been called and asked to catalogue a small book collection and I don’t know why, but something inside me said, Refuse the job. Do not do it. Stay home and deal with the myriad other things you have to do. So many...things. List of things. To do. Make a list to...to prove you have a list of things to do. On top of that, do not forget that every time you’ve ignored this feeling, you’ve regretted it. So do not go.
But reality has this cold manner of bringing you back to a simple understanding...that sometimes you have to be one with the world, whether you want to or not. And in this case it simply boiled down to...I needed the money. Repairs to my little CRV had depleted my savings below a level I was comfortable with. The payment this job would bring promised to rebuild it well enough to ease my concerns.
I should have listened to my voice.
I should have said, No.
I was working on a new painting when the call came. A commission I’d agreed to for a client who already had two of my works. He’d sent me a photograph of himself and his lover, and this would make it a triptych. I was close to completion, so normally I would have just let the call go to voice mail.
Except I was stopped by uncertainty as to where to add the final touch on the piece. It was in my stark black and white style, on canvas. Kodalithic. Two men in an embrace, from the hips up, front three-quarter angle. My client with his back to the wall, left arm dropped to his side, his shirt open to reveal a full chest with hair, his face open but turned away from the other man. Whose shirt was buttoned and who was trying to kiss him. His right hand was around the man’s waist and his face lost in darkness.
The shadows were sharp against the white of their shirts and highlighted areas of their bodies. To me, the pose offered up an interesting tension. Want on the part of the one kissing; rejection on the part of the other. Lovely and sharp, awaiting my signature...a dash of blood red. Like on all of my paintings. But nowhere seemed right for it.
If I put it on the man who was looking away, at the base of his jawline, it could look like the kissing man’s nose was bleeding. Not what I wanted. If I put it along his lip, it would seem as if they’d had a fight. Also not my preference. His eyes were focused away from the other man and sad. The dash of red there would offer the same impression. So on his chest? No. That would be seen as a stabbing wound, and I did not want it to be linked solely to violence.
So when my phone buzzed, I accepted the call as a welcome distraction, since I knew the caller. Olivier Deskin, an antiquarian book dealer in London.
It’s no surprise he would call me. I’d worked in book stores my entire life, especially antiquarian the last twenty years...well, almost twenty-five. I’d recently retired to live on Social Security, supplemented by the sales of my artwork or, as noted, commissions. Of which I’d received three, prior to this one. But I was finding the cost of living was far greater than I had expected. And that’s with me already being a very frugal person. Then with my car needing new brakes...any additional income was welcome.
Initially, Olivier’s call seemed to be an opportunity to cushion my financial situation.
Oh, to clarify, my name is Simon Halloran, and I look like someone you might expect to see in a book store. Quiet. Slim. Normal height. Still a full head of hair but more silver than brown, as it once was. Plain features and good posture, with no facial hair. And I still had all my teeth. Dental health had been drilled into me since a toddler while living with my grandmother, in San Antonio.
Olivier was a short man born into relative wealth near Wimbledon. He was very trim, like a tennis player, thanks to always being in motion, and a bit on the posh side. He had a very nice profile with a Roman nose, thick wavy hair, and when he learned I was gay made certain to let me know he was not interested in the lads, just the lassies. His words, not mine.
As if I were planning to molest him, or something. It was silly.
We’d met when he came into the shop where I worked and I sold him a nice East of the Sun, West of the Moon illustrated by Kay Nielson as well as a Grimm’s Fairy Tales done by Arthur Rackham. He also came close to purchasing a framed leaf from Rackham’s Das Rheingold.
I ramble here because this information is important to the context of what happened, after Olivier called.
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