Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Gabriel
The art gallery was in Chelsea, just off Tenth Avenue. I arrived toward the end of the evening, hoping to blend into the crowd.
Dream pop music filtered from the speakers and groups were clustered around the art and socializing with drinks in hand.
I started at the beginning and studied an abstract piece called: Hey DJ, change the fucking music .
It was a mix of different media, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that at the center of it all—amid the paintings and ripped-up self-portraits—was a mosaic of the human brain.
A tangled web of neurons fired music notes from a cannon aimed at a bruised and battered anatomical heart cracked down the middle.
Cleo’s poetry was woven into the piece, and I moved in closer, reading the swirling words over someone’s shoulder. Heart beats. Brain misfires. Soul mourns. You are a ballad in E Minor. I am barely breathing. Sorrow and Exaltation unite. Rise up. Kill the DJ.
I moved on to the next piece and then the next, studying every detail, marvelling at her talent and insight. She’d created without boundaries and bared her soul, on canvases.
“Exciting, isn’t it?”
I glanced at the woman next to me with sleek dark hair and olive skin dressed all in black. “It’s fucking incredible.”
“Greer Ainslie.” She held out her hand. “I own the gallery and represent Cleo.”
I shook it. “Gabriel Francis.”
“I know who you are.” She looked over her shoulder then back at me with an amused smile. “Half of the people in this gallery know who you are.”
I glanced around furtively, noticing the curious glances, and faced forward again, tugging at the collar of my shirt.
After my near-death experience and subsequent disappearing act, I’d achieved a mythical status.
Half the stuff written about me wasn’t even true. I’d been misquoted, hounded by the paparazzi, and propositioned by women I didn’t know.
I couldn’t understand the fascination. I was just some guy who could sing. Not like I’d found the cure for cancer or put an end to world hunger and poverty.
I lowered my voice. “I don’t want Cleo to know I’m here. I’d like the chance to appreciate her art first.”
Greer gave me a sidelong glance. “I won’t say anything. But if you want to know more, come with me.” She ushered me to a large piece spanning the back wall: I dreamt that you loved me .
Shades of indigo and lilac, like the button-down shirt I was wearing.
Cleo was at the center of a group, answering questions so I ducked behind a pillar and listened intently, unobserved.
“I wanted to explore my raw emotions before the fickleness of memory warps and changes them into something different… more idyllic,” she said.
“Right before I started this piece, I went away for the weekend. When I returned, my bedroom had been flooded. We were having a lot of heavy rain and a pipe on the roof burst. My boxes filled with love letters, photos, and journals were destroyed. I tried to salvage them but couldn’t, so I layered all the notes and photos onto the canvas. ”
The sadness in her voice told me that she was still mourning the loss. But I couldn’t help but wonder if all her memories of me were so tainted now that she would prefer not having them at all.
“The water motif can be taken both literally and figuratively,” she continued, pointing to the left side of the canvas where a wave curled and reached, building force, and cutting a swathe through the piece.
“It represents a tsunami of grief but as the water flows across the canvas it begins to lose its power. In the aftermath of destruction, it’s time to pick up the pieces and rebuild something stronger and more resilient.
The water becomes a symbol of healing. A life force.
A reminder that you can’t go back. You just have to keep moving forward with the current. ”
“It’s a beautiful piece,” a woman said. “I can feel the pain and the turmoil but there’s so much hope and so much light in it, too.”
“Thank you. It was so cathartic,” Cleo said. “Art is the only way I know to process my emotions and try to make sense of the world around me.”
Cleo’s words were inked on the canvas, undulating like a wave. Tears flow like holy wine, flood the bathtub. The wild river carries you home. Cleansed. Baptized. Absolved. Cry no more. The sun rises…and we begin anew.
“What technique do you use?” a guy with shaggy, blond hair in tortoiseshell glasses asked. Next to him, a petite girl with pink hair was taking notes.
“It looks like a palimpsest,” the girl said.
Cleo nodded. “I work on a stretched canvas and build up the layers. Paint, paper, photographs, sketches, self-portraits, raw materials like glass and sand and string and caulk. After I coat it in clear shellac, I use a power sander to get down to the essence of the piece. So my process is to first layer and build up, and then to rip and tear and efface.”
It sounded like a metaphor for life. Or, more accurately, our relationship.
The words I had no memory of writing were layered into the canvas. The photos I’d felt no attachment to were buried under the water. Preserved in an incredible piece of art that didn’t belong on anyone’s wall but mine.
I pulled Greer aside. “I want to buy that piece.”
She gestured to the red sticker. “I’m afraid it’s already been sold.”
“I’ll pay double. Triple. Whatever it takes. I don’t want anyone else to have it.”
She studied my face for a moment then nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Just don’t tell her it was me.”
I felt Cleo before I saw her.
A Mazzy Star song was playing and I was standing in front of a piece entitled: I said goodbye to your ghost today . It was violent. Beautiful. Haunting and dreamlike, much like the music.
When I turned to face her, we stared at each other without speaking, drinking each other in. She was just as beautiful as I remembered, maybe even more so.
Lush pink lips and golden-brown hair spilling around her shoulders. Long bangs brushing her dark brows.
In a silky blue slip dress trimmed in black lace with hand-painted black roses tumbling from the bodice to the hem. One of her own designs, maybe.
My gaze returned to her face. Apricot skin and kohl-rimmed eyes. A constellation of freckles dusting her cheekbone.
She swallowed, licked her lips, and glanced over her shoulder at the piece I’d been studying.
“Stunning,” I said finally.
“The art?”
“Yes.” My eyes locked onto those green, green eyes that haunted my vivid dreams. “The art.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “Why are you here, Gabriel?”
“I’m here to see you and to see your art.”
“You never returned my calls.”
She must have been referring to the messages she left when I was out. One day before the local deputy slapped a manila envelope against my chest and crowed, “ You’ve been served .” He’d gloated like he got a real kick out of it. As if he’d been waiting his whole life for that special task.
“Have you signed the papers yet?” She looked me up and down, searching, as if she expected me to produce them on the spot, signed, sealed, and delivered.
“Nope.” My gaze lowered to her ring finger. It was bare. I looked more closely at the canvas on the wall. They weren’t cherries in the snow; they were rubies. “Did you stab the canvas?”
She nodded. “Thirteen times.”
“You can’t kill a ghost, Cleo. It’s just the lingering spirit of someone who’s already dead.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t trying to kill it. I was just trying to be free of it.”
Free of me . I rubbed my hand over my chest, trying to ease the ache that wouldn’t subside.
A few months ago, I went to the doctor, convinced I had a heart problem. Another ticking bomb just waiting to go off. After running all the tests, the doctor confirmed that my heart was strong and healthy, no cause for concern. But it didn’t feel that way to me.
So I came up with my own non-medical diagnosis: my heart remembered Cleo even though my brain didn’t.
This strange phenomenon, an intense longing for someone I barely knew, hadn’t happened overnight. It grew gradually. First, when I found my way back to music, a lost piece of myself. Then, when the dreams started…
“And how did that go? Did you banish the ghost?”
She opened her mouth to speak but I never got to hear her answer.
“Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but can I have your autograph?” The girl with pink hair gave me an apologetic smile as she thrust a program and a pen into my hand.
Did I have a choice? Sure. But I didn’t want to be a dick about it, so I scrawled my name across the front on a slant. The S at the end of my name kissed the N at the end of Cleo Babington.
“Thanks so much,” she said when I handed it back to her. “Would you mind signing one for my boyfriend too? He was too shy to ask.”
By the time I finished signing autographs and posing for a photo with the girl and her shy boyfriend, Cleo was gone.
I spotted her talking to a group in the back of the gallery, so I slipped out the front door, undetected.
Thirty minutes later, after the show had ended and the crowd had dispersed, I was leaning against a brick wall, hidden in the shadows. When Greer and Cleo walked out of the gallery, I crossed the street and joined them by the front door while Greer locked up.
“You again,” Cleo said with a sigh.
“How about dinner?”
She gestured to Greer. “We already have dinner plans.”
“I’m going to take a rain check,” Greer said, stashing the keys in her tote bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’m sure you two have plenty to catch up on.”
Before Cleo could protest, Greer hailed a taxi and hopped in, leaving us alone.
“Looks like you’re free.” I clapped my hands together. “What are you hungry for?”
Cleo pressed her lips together and planted her hands on her hips.
“No. You can’t just show up at my opening night uninvited and expect me to drop everything to have dinner with you.
” She stabbed her finger at me. “You don’t get to do this to me.
Not after....” Cleo sucked in a breath and shook her head then turned on her heel and hurried away like she couldn’t get away fast enough.
I debated for all of thirty seconds before chasing after her. If she really wanted to get away from me, she would have taken a taxi. I caught up to her outside a retro diner on 22nd Street and put my hand on her arm to stop her from running.
A car sped past, windows down, music blasting. Tupac’s “Holler If Ya Hear Me.”
“You did this the first time too, didn’t you? You ran and I chased. It was winter…” I rubbed my temples, eyes narrowed, and tried to focus on the flash of memory before it disappeared.
Tupac blasting from a boombox. Foot-high snow banked against the curbs.
“You were wearing a fur coat, and I tucked your hair into your hat and kissed you…I asked you to choose me, but you didn’t.
I stood on the street corner, and watched you walking away, and it hurt like hell because all I wanted was you… ”
Cleo’s breath hitched as she slowly turned. “You remember that?” Her gaze flitted over my face. “Did your memories come back?” She sounded so hopeful that I hated to disappoint her.
I had no idea where that came from. Chances were I’d never get my memories back, and for the most part, I’d stopped chasing them.
I shook my head. “No.” Although that wasn’t entirely accurate. “Sometimes when I’m playing guitar, I’ll play certain chords and I’ll get a flash of memory. Or when I hear certain songs…They’re just fragments, not as fully formed as this one, and so fleeting it’s hard to grasp.”
“Like what? What do you remember?” she prodded.
I wish I could tell her that every memory was of her. But this was the first time it had happened. All the others were old memories from my childhood.
“I remember singing along to the car radio, but I have no idea who’s in the driver’s seat.
My mother, I assume.” I rubbed my hand over my jaw.
“I remember standing in the front yard while my father screamed in my face. ‘You were too busy daydreaming to mow the lawn in straight lines. Do it again. And this time, do it the right way.’” I snorted.
In another memory, I was practicing guitar in the garage, playing Led Zep’s “When the Levee Breaks.” My father stormed in and told me to cut out the racket. “You sing like a girl. It’s a fucking embarrassment. You’re never gonna amount to anything.”
What stupid-ass things to remember.
Why did I only remember the bad things and none of the good?
Cleo looked at me for a minute. “Your father was an asshole.”
We started walking, our pace leisurely. Soft lights glowed from brownstones and the night was sultry, filled with promise.
Our story could begin again. Tonight.
We headed east and then south on Eighth Avenue without speaking. It was enough to be next to her. Inhaling her scent. One I didn’t recognize.
“You changed your perfume. You smell like orange blossoms now.”
“It was time for a change,” she said, and I got the feeling she wasn’t talking about her perfume.
We stopped in front of a Cuban-Chinese restaurant. I lit two cigarettes and offered her one. She hesitated a moment before accepting it. Her hand trembled as she guided the cigarette to her lips.
“I’m ready to move on,” she said. “I have moved on.”
“Have you met someone?”
“I’ve met a lot of someones.” She took another drag of her cigarette before tossing it on the sidewalk and stomping on it like she was putting out a major fire. “You’ve been gone a long time, Gabriel.”
Three years. Not a lifetime. I’ve met a lot of someones . My jaw tightened. “Fuck it. Let’s have dinner.”
Cigarette clamped between my lips, I held the door for her. She yanked the cigarette out of my mouth and crushed it under the sole of her shoe before brushing past me. “You’ll ruin your voice.”
I followed her inside. “What does that matter?” I slid into the seat across from her in the booth, with our knees bumping. “You’re breaking my fucking heart.”
She snatched up a laminated menu. “Only one heart was broken, and it sure as hell wasn’t yours.”