Chapter 23 Matías
Matías
Seven Months Ago
Four months into their relationship and on their sixth visit to the Met—New York’s most famous museum—Claire confessed.
“Before I met you, I’d never actually come here before.”
“What?” Matías said so loudly that it echoed through the gallery. A few patrons glared at him, and he raised his hands in apology.
He lowered his voice and shook his head at Claire, amused. “How long have you lived in New York?”
“I just…wasn’t really into art before I met you.”
“But you’re friends with Yolanda and Jason.”
“Yes, but that’s because I like them as people, not because I was particularly into what Jason did for a living. I mean, he’s married to Yolanda, but I think the only time she talks to him about work is when he asks her to help him fall asleep by telling him the latest developments in employment law.”
Matías laughed. “Okay, that’s fair. But have you been pretending about art around me? Please tell me I haven’t been subjecting you to suffering for the last four months.”
Claire got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. “No, art is so much more interesting with you. You explain each artist and painting like a story, rather than just a dry recitation of history. I like hearing about what was going on in the painter’s life when she was working on a piece, like that she chose to use lemon ochre instead of Italian yellow earth because her husband had gotten in an argument with the owner of the paint company that made the Italian yellow. Or like how that one guy was deathly afraid of water, so he made his entire career about painting boats and the sea to confront his fear. And the way you talk about the paintings themselves—you bring art to life, and that makes me love it.”
Matías’s entire body warmed at the thought of introducing her to so much joy.
“So what should we see next?” she asked. “What about sculpture? We’ve never been to that exhibit.”
Matías stiffened.
Claire’s brows knit together. “You don’t like sculpture?”
“I do…”
“But you’re afraid you don’t know enough on the subject and you’ll be mortified when I find out?” she said, teasing.
Matías tried to school his face into something resembling neutral. “I used to date a sculptor.”
Claire tripped on her own feet. “Oh. Um, you did?”
He shrugged. “Yes, but it’s in the past. Anyway, I had my eye on the exhibit on costumes. What do you think?”
Claire’s fingers fluttered, and Matías was pretty sure she was debating whether to ask more about his ex or not. He hoped she decided on not . At the end of each of his dates with Claire when he asked When can I see you again? she always seemed surprised that Matías was still interested. So he didn’t want to talk about his previous relationship right now, because he knew Claire well enough to know that she would immediately compare herself to his ex, and he wouldn’t be able to convince her that he was so much better off with down-to-earth Claire than another free-spirited artist like himself.
Maybe what Claire needed was to see herself more clearly—that she wasn’t only a buttoned-up attorney, but also a woman who could let loose and have unstructured fun sometimes.
“Forget the costume exhibit,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
—
They left the city and drove the windy roads out into the forests. Matías checked the address on his phone one more time and asked Claire to pull over in a small patch of dirt.
“Where are we?” she asked as they got out and he led them toward the trees, their red and gold leaves rippling in the breeze.
Matías pointed to a painted wooden sign: Welcome to Anything You Want.
“A professor in my department inherited acres and acres out here,” he said. “But instead of building on it, he decided to make it an art collaboration. Any artist is welcome to come onto his land, anytime, to create. The only restriction is you can’t harm the plants or wildlife. I’ve been meaning to come out here but hadn’t had the chance.”
They found a narrow, worn footpath from the dirt pullout that led deeper into the property.
“So this place is called Anything You Want? What does that mean?” Claire asked as they walked through the thicket of trees—some with delicate, pale orange leaves, and others broad, in crimson hues.
“Literally anything you want to make here, you can,” Matías said. “Like that.”
He gestured into the woods to the left. There, bristly square doormats made of coconut fibers had been dyed black and something close to white, and they were laid up and down the hilly ground like an uneven chess board. Three- to six-foot-tall chess pieces made of copper wire stood on some of the squares—stumpy pawns, regal knights on horseback, bishops with hollow bodies except a solid cross at the heart.
“Oh my gosh, look!” Claire laughed, pointing at a wire figure behind a particularly stout tree trunk. “There’s the king!”
Matías laughed, too. Because the king was cowering behind the tree, only his crowned head sticking out, and just a few yards away from him, a queen stood on her coir doormat square, her wire body mounted on a pole so she spun around and around in circles, as if searching for him.
“Checkmate,” Matías said.
“Definitely.” Claire grinned and linked her arm through his as they continued down the path.
They passed a long wooden shed with a sign over the doorway that read: Tools of Imagination.
Farther down the path, there was more: A dragon made entirely of bicycle gears, suspended on a zip line in the canopy above.
A single platform with a glass-covered plate—inside was a marble apple, waiting for Snow White. Little fairy houses nestled in fields of wildflowers, and colorful glass wind chimes in the tree branches. A gold statue of Aslan the lion. A topiary of a dancing couple. A fallen, lightning-struck trunk carved into a totem pole in repose.
When they came upon a low stone bridge over a creek that had dried up, Matías’s chest swelled in the same way as when inspiration struck him for a new painting.
“There,” he said.
“There what?” Claire looked at the bridge and all around it.
“Stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He ran through the woods, along the twists and turns of the various dirt paths, until he found the wooden shed with the Tools of Imagination. The door was unlocked, and inside, Matías found what he’d been hoping for—paint and brushes and tarps—as well as all sorts of art supplies he didn’t need now but might use another day.
“What is all that for?” Claire asked when he returned with several canisters of spray paint.
“We’re going to decorate the stone bridge,” he said.
Her eyes grew wide. “Like, graffiti?”
Matías smiled. “Sort of. I know it’s not in your comfort zone to deface something like a bridge, but since we do have the professor’s permission to create anything we want here, do you want to give it a try?”
She bit her lip. Her fingertips did their cute, unconscious fluttery thing. Then she took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
In the end, they didn’t scrawl their names over the rocks or anything resembling the art that graced the city’s alley walls. Instead, Claire wanted to paint faces on the round stones. Dozens and dozens of happy little faces.
She beamed at their work when she was done.
Matías beamed at her .
“It’s only a small rebellion,” she said, “and technically it isn’t even a rebellion because we were allowed to do it. But somehow, it still feels like it counts.”
“It definitely counts,” he said, spinning her toward him and kissing her.
The smell of paint lingered on her skin, and she tasted like sun and salt. Claire’s hair had come undone from its bun, the strands dancing around her face in the wind.
He liked Claire in the city, where she had everything beautifully orchestrated.
He also liked Claire in the forest, with a lightness in her eyes from letting a little of her control go.
He backed her up against a smooth tree trunk next to the bridge and kissed her harder, letting his tongue find hers. His hand slipped into the waistband of her jeans.
She pressed her body against the length of his, and he could feel the urgency of her wanting, as much as he wanted her.
But then she said, between kisses, “Not here.”
“We won’t get caught,” Matías said, already hooking his finger into the side of her panties. “There’s no one else here.”
“But they’re watching…” Claire said.
“Who?”
Claire glanced sideways at the bridge. Matías’s gaze followed.
“You mean…the stones?” he said.
She giggled, then fully cracked up. “Their cute little faces…”
Laughing, Matías hoisted her over his shoulder. He carried her farther into the forest, where there were no paths and no other art installations.
Then he lay her down on a bed of autumn leaves and they made love under a canopy of trees, the dappled sun on their naked skin, on someone else’s property. And that was how Matías helped Claire achieve her second small rebellion of the day.