Chapter 8 #2
The door swings open, and a new guy clutching a canvas to his chest enters the room.
“Kael,” he says. “Good to see you guys again.”
“Hey, Kael,” I say, squaring my shoulders and making space beside me. Marcus Wilder slides into place.
Kael’s gaze hits my abs, and he almost trips over them. “Someone understands the assignment,” he says, then blushes. “You look great. Uh—your work looks great.”
“Thanks,” I say, relieved at how easy it is when the truth is simple: I’m distracting. “I’m Marcus. I call it Anguish in the City.”
Ridiculous.
“It’s, uh, really good,” he says. “Alistair will love it.”
That’s more progress than I’ve made all night, and it sparks adrenaline enough for me to keep at it.
The door opens again, and this time it’s not another guy with a canvas but a woman dragging her drunk friends along with her.
“Oh my God, Cassie, in here!”
“Heyyy, boys,” a woman in a shimmering gold dress chirps.
“Oh my. I can’t believe he has a private art room.” Her words are slurred, and her gaze lands on me. “Complete with eye candy.”
Perfect practice for Marcus Wilder.
“Hello, ladies!” I say, stepping forward.
“Hello, you,” one says, while another purrs and brushes her hand across my bare back.
Who does that? Marcus Wilder does.
I return her stupid little cat-scratch gesture, because stupid isn’t going to blow my cover the way pretending to be some highbrow artist will.
She’s into it, smiling and shy, so I take her hand and guide her around the room of actual artists. Each of them has prepared a speech like the one Evie prepared for me, except they know what they’re talking about and mine only works if I’m flexing while I say it.
“And this is Kael,” I say, reaching the guy next to me.
His canvas is not on the wall, still clamped to his chest like a secret.
“Heyyy, Kael,” the drunkest one slurs. “What have you got there?”
Kael turns his canvas around, and the knot in me loosens so suddenly I almost laugh.
It’s blank.
This guy brought a blank canvas to an art show, and his darting eyes look as shocked by that fact as everyone else.
Even the drunk girls grind to a halt. Everyone stares past the empty canvas to the terrified boy holding it, his mouth slightly open, like he’s waiting for the paint to appear or the room to laugh him out of it.
My mission demands I leave it alone.
But isn’t helping men like Kael why I’m here? Isn’t Alistair the explanation for what’s happening, even if Kael’s the one being stared at?
I know that look. I know what it feels like to realize the room has noticed you wrong, and that you had no say in being made visible.
My father sent me to public school in a uniform nobody else wore, my hair cut high and tight. He called it discipline, but to every normal kid, reporting for duty instead of showing up for seventh grade was blood in the water.
I hadn’t resisted him out of spite. I resisted to keep from getting singled out and bullied, to survive long enough to figure out the rest.
Kael’s fingers tighten around the blank canvas.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Marcus Wilder snaps and steps in loud enough to redirect the room. “I’ve seen this. Um… um… Futurist Illusionism!”
I lock eyes with Kael, and he’s quick to see I’m serving him the ball. He straightens, paints a smile on his face instead of his canvas, and hits it.
“Yes!” he beams.
“What is it?” a woman asks, the only one leaning in instead of out.
“You tell them, Marcus,” Kael says.
I hit the ball back. “You’re the artist.”
“I honestly can’t believe you’ve heard of it,” he says, voice still shaky. “Impress these beautiful ladies. Tell them what you know.”
Fine. “It’s, uh, about the collision between futuristic technology and traditional art, right?”
“Exactly.” His shoulders settle as he makes the lie his own.
“People look at a blank canvas and think nothing’s there, but that’s not true.
The materials are already doing half the work.
Fabric, wood, tension, labor, all of it shaped by machines and systems and the invisible structures holding the thing together.
Then the canvas gets stretched almost to breaking over a frame.
That’s the illusion. The violence disappears, and what’s left is something pristine enough to hang on a wall. ”
Is this guy for real?
“Damn, boy,” the woman in gold says, tilting her head at the blank canvas like it might reveal itself if she squints hard enough.
Heads tilt as people start seeing things that aren’t even there, and when the lie takes, I know Kael’s off the hook.
I gesture to my splattered monstrosity. Anguish in the City suddenly feels more palatable beside Kael’s fake art movement, and I’m surprisingly okay with the fact that I’m half-naked at a party.
Every time someone laughs too hard or glances over their shoulder, I wonder if Alistair has entered the room.
A few more groups drift into the gallery, giving Kael and me a chance to perfect our stories.
I dial my intelligence up and down to avoid full muscle-head dope without wandering too close to smart.
It’s a strange tightrope, and it lands uncomfortably close to the truth.
I’m here because of my body, not my art.
Kael gets so into his monologue about Futurist Illusionism that I worry he’s starting to believe it himself. But Marcus Wilder has limits. He’ll help you once. After that, you’re on your own.
The door opens, and the air tightens as Alistair Blackwood slithers in. Shoulders lock, and smiles stretch too wide. His gaze flicks through the room like a snake’s tongue, tasting the salt of our collective desperation.
“My boys! Sorry I’ve neglected you all night!” Alistair’s voice is too loud, his gravitas outlandish as he opens his arms to receive the arrival of himself.
“You didn’t neglect us!” one artist blurts.
The artists’ room finally comes into focus.
We’re in a competition for Alistair’s attention.
If we make him happy, the gifts continue.
If we lose favor, it all comes crashing down.
He designed the game, set the table, invited the players, and now he moves between them, swaying his hips and touching each artist as he examines their work.
“This… is not what I’d imagined,” Alistair says, and the room’s attention turns to an older gentleman.
He’s fit for his age, the only other artist with shoulder-length hair like mine, though his has flecks of gray. The rest of the room is years from that, and another piece of the game is exactly as I predicted.
“I—I can do something else,” the man stammers. “What would you like? Anything?”
“The artist dips his brush into his own soul. Is yours empty? Or so pliable it bends to every passing whim?”
My stomach churns. There’s nothing I can do. If I step in, I lose my chance at finding the inner circle and helping the rest.
“I, uh… not to any whim,” the man says. “To… to yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Alistair says. “No.”
The older man’s shoulders cave, desperation folding him smaller. “Please,” he whispers. “Please, I need more time.”
“Ugh.” Alistair grimaces.
“One more month,” he begs.
But Alistair’s finger wags, the same motion that called off security in the park. Now it summons one of his jacked guards into view from the doorway.
“Get out,” Alistair growls. “This is pitiful.”
Red-faced and shaking, the artist unhooks his work from the wall and carries it out the door, taking the last proof he was ever here with him.
Alistair tilts his head and approaches Kael.
Okay, kid. You’re on your own.
“Alistair!” Kael says, with good energy and the obvious move of going in for a hug. “So glad you came down. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Kael. I was just telling someone about that piece you did with the coffee cup.” Alistair’s smile sharpens as he looks at the blank canvas.
“This is…” Kael starts, voice bouncing as his shoulders rise toward his ears. “Very different.”
“Obviously,” Alistair says, eyes narrowing.
“It may look blank,” Kael says. “And it is. But it’s also asking the viewer to appreciate what’s within the void. The woven cotton, the looms, the lumber. It’s stretched close to its breaking point, just like…”
Alistair is not impressed.
“Well,” Kael says, “like modern art.”
Amusement flickers across Alistair’s face, and he giggles.
“It’s a new movement. Futurist Illusionism,” Kael says, his shoulders dropping.
“It is something.” Alistair’s laugh fades. “Future… what did you call it?”
“Futurist Illusionism,” Kael whispers, a critical break from character. “I thought it would be… funny.”