Chapter 5 #2
"In the painting. The corner. The warm thing I couldn't get true.
I figured out what it is this morning, like—" he checked a clock that wasn't there "—an hour ago.
And it turns out you can't paint a warm thing true if you won't say what it is.
You taught me that, actually. So." Charlie's heart was going but his voice was steady, steadier than he'd expected, because the thing was so true it held him up.
"It's you. The warm thing's you. It's been you for weeks.
I've been painting the light on your face and calling it a corner problem, and I figured out this morning that I'm—" the word arrived, easy, no drama, the relief of a color finally named "—that I want you.
That's the whole interior life. That's the interrogation.
I looked at you like you might disappear and the truth got in around the edges. "
The office was very quiet. Out in the main room a drill went and stopped.
And Charlie watched Laurent Marchand's face do the thing — the one-second thing, the open thing, the walls-gone thing — except this time it didn't reassemble after one second.
This time it held. Held long enough that Charlie's whole reckless certainty came up under him like a wave, and he did the thing he could not not do when a truth got out, he closed the two feet of doorway between them and he kissed him.
It was — Charlie would try to paint this too, and get closer than the corner, and never quite land it — it was like the first time a color goes down exactly right.
Laurent made a sound, low, involuntary, and for one second, two, his hand came up and found the side of Charlie's jaw, warm and certain, and he kissed Charlie back like a man who'd been leaving the pastry on the desk for fifteen years and had finally, finally—
And then he stopped.
Both hands, on Charlie's chest. Not shoving. Just — stopping. Setting Charlie back, gently, the same clean careful distance as the doorway, as the coats, the step Charlie was starting to know by heart.
"No," Laurent said. Quiet. Wrecked, a little, the accent all the way loose. "No. Charlie. We can't."
"Why not?" Charlie wasn't hurt. That surprised him too.
He was standing an inch back from a man who'd just kissed him like the building was on fire and then said no, and he wasn't hurt, because he could read faces, it was his whole thing, and this face wasn't rejecting him.
This face was terrified, and it was terrified for him.
"You want to. I felt you want to. You've wanted to since the floor, I think. So. Why not."
"Because you figured it out an hour ago.
" Laurent said it like it cost him. "Do you understand what you just told me?
You've never — with a man, you said it yourself, you never even looked.
And then I put myself in your path, I gave you a wall, I gave you the most attention anyone's ever paid you, and an hour later you decide you want me.
Charlie." He said the name like the first day, careful, checking it for cracks, except the cracks were his now.
"You don't know if it's me or if it's the first door that ever opened. You can't know. It's been an hour."
"I know the difference between a color being right and a color being convenient," Charlie said.
"It's my whole job. I've been getting it wrong on purpose for people my entire life because the wrong one was easier.
This isn't that. This is the right one and I know it's the right one the way I know the blue.
" He didn't step forward. He let the distance stay, because he could see it was the only thing holding Laurent up.
"But okay. You think it's too fast. You think I don't know myself.
Fine. That's — honestly, that's kind of an amazing thing to be worried about, most guys wouldn't've stopped, so, points. "
Laurent almost laughed. It broke across his wrecked face for half a second, there and gone.
"I'm not gonna push it," Charlie said. "I'm not gonna make it weird for the show, I'm not gonna show up drunk at your door, I'm not gonna be a problem.
You've got a name to protect and I've got a wall to earn and I get it, I get all of it.
" He picked his jacket up off the chair where he'd dropped it.
At the door, in the doorway, in the exact spot, he turned back, and he gave Laurent the grin — but underneath it, steady, sure, a flag going into the ground.
"But you asked me, at the Foundry. You said, you'd tell me, right?
If the room got real. And you never told me.
So I'm telling you. The room's real, Laurent.
It's the realest thing I ever walked into. "
Laurent didn't answer. He stood in the office with his hand still half-raised from where it had been on Charlie's jaw, a man who'd spent fifteen years learning to leave the thing he wanted on the desk, looking at Charlie like the leaving had never once been this hard.
"Okay," Charlie said, gentle, letting him off the hook, because that was love too, he was starting to figure out, love was sometimes not making somebody answer. "But I'm right. You'll see. I'm slow, but I'm thorough."
And he went out through the torn-up room, past Naomi who did not look up from her tablet and said, very quietly, "Two minutes," as he passed, and out into the November street, and the whole way home on the M he felt like he'd finally gotten a color down exactly right for the first time in his life.
He went home and he finished the third painting.
The warm thing in the corner came in true on the first pass, because he could finally say what it was.