She cocked her head in the direction of the door.
“Let’s get out of here before the old ladies think we’re getting it on.” she giggled.
Together we exited the bathroom.
“Don’t you want to know?” Robyn said while we were walking the corridor.
“Don’t I want to know what?”
We were standing outside the studio door.
“How my date went last night?”
I’d completely forgotten.
“How’d your date go last night, Rob?”
She threw me another wink of that right eye. “I just hope I don’t start feeling nauseas.”
Chapter 13
The rest of my day passed in a haze of strange and for the most part, terrible art. Students came, students went. I encouraged them all, answered all questions, calmed their anxieties about failure and inadequacy.
Franny stayed the entire day, busily touching up his latest painting. His ability to paint so fast, so magnificently was beyond my understanding. But it certainly had everything to do with those things an autistic savant possessed and what ‘normal people’ lacked.
But all talent aside, I couldn’t help but sense that something else was going on here; something that lie far beneath the surface of the paint and the canvas. Franny might have been unable to communicate in the everyday sense of the word. But in my soul I felt that he was trying to communicate with me. The fact that the painting resembled the setting of a recurring dream of mine could not have been entirely coincidental. There had to be an explanation for it-an explanation that, at the moment anyway, seemed too elusive. If language and the emotional tools that went with it were closed off to him, then painting had become more than just an art or a vivid method of expression.
It had become his language of choice.
As Tuesday afternoon went from afternoon to dusk, Franny still occupied his stool in the far corner of the studio. I’d made the conscious decision to avoid him. Rather, avoid the new painting. Having assisted and critiqued her last student, Robyn had her jacket on, leather bag strapped around her shoulder. Standing near the exit, she raised her right hand high, pointed it at the exterior door. Sign language for ‘Mind if I split?’
I didn’t mind. Robyn had a life beyond the art center. Still, I couldn’t stop my curiosity from getting the best of me.
“Stockbroker.” I said like a question.
She smiled.
Once again the pit in my stomach made its bulky presence known. Was it envy that plagued my insides, or just a simple gastro-reaction to my lunchtime half-picked at rubbery grilled cheese?
“Details,” I said, in place of a good night. “I want all the juicy details tomorrow.”
Rob had her hand on the metal and wire-glass door.
She said, “You want me to see if the stockbroker has a friend?”
“He’ll just reject me in the end,” I joked. But I immediately regretted having opened my big fat mouth.
“Sister Mary Rebecca,” Robyn said, as she opened the door. “That’s what I’m going to start calling you.”
That’s when I did something completely unlike me. I stuck out my tongue and closed my eyes like a ten year old.
She burst out in laughter.
I quickly pulled it back in before Franny got wind of the gesture. Not that he’d have any clue what it meant.
“Don’t make me scream,” Robyn said.
“Now there’s a challenge,” I said, as she bolted through the exit.
She was hardly out the now open door when Franny’s ride pulled up, those familiar round headlights spotlighting Robyn’s voluptuous frame as she tossed a wave at Franny’s mom.
“Time to pack it in, Fran,” I announced, turning to him.
But he’d already beat me to the punch. In the short time it took me to bid farewell to Rob, Franny managed to seal his paint canisters and jars of turpentine. He also packed up everything that needed packing. Except his new painting, that is.
I swallowed something sour.
“Fran, don’t forget your piece.”
“Painted this for you,” he mumbled, big brown eyes peeled to the paint-stained VCT. What disturbed me more than his gifting me yet another painting was how his voice took on that same odd tone that had first revealed itself last night. The tone that revealed the man locked inside the perpetual boy. His face also took on the look of a man who knew something I did not. That voice, that face; they were enough to fill my spine with ice water.
A horn blared.
I nearly jumped through the concrete block wall.
The horn blared again.
Franny’s mom was growing impatient. It occurred to me that I should follow him out to the Scaramuzzi pickup truck, pose a few questions to his mother. Were you aware that he’s given me two of his paintings? Did you know that I’m seeing words in the paintings that no one else seems to see? That is, if I don’t point them out first? Did you know that today’s painting very much resembles the setting of a recurring dream I’ve had? That it matches the place where my twin sister and I were attacked by a monster who lived in the woods thirty years ago almost to the day?
I wanted to ask her these things and more. But Franny would overhear our conversation. Franny went for the door, the ratty, old, cuffed dungarees dragging along the floor.
Out the corner of my eye, I spotted the new painting resting on the easel.
“What do you call it?” I called out.
He turned, slow, awkward, the open glass door pressed up against his stocky shoulder.
“The title,” he mumbled. “The title. The title.”
“See.” I swallowed.
“Goodnight, Rebecca.”
“Goodnight, Franny.”
And then the artist was gone.
Chapter 14
The dark evening had become shrouded in a thick, foggy mist. Broadway was empty of motor vehicles, its sidewalks empty of people.
I climbed the parking garage ramp to the second level where I’d parked the Cabriolet. The concrete garage was brightly lit with sodium lamplight. It was also damp, cold, lonely. I walked with my knapsack hanging off my right shoulder, Franny’s ‘See’ painting tucked under my left arm.
My footsteps echoed inside the cavernous garage.
I was all alone.
I didn’t like being that alone; the vulnerability that went with it. My body was a live wire, my senses picking up every nuance of sound, movement and smell. It wasn’t as though I were being watched. It was more like being totally naked and exposed.
The Cabriolet could not have been more than seventy or eighty feet away from me. But it might as well have been a mile. That car was my safety zone-four walls and a retractable roof.
