Chapter 23 #2
All of it stored safely, waiting for the right moment to release.
By the time the opening ends at 10pm, twenty-three pieces have sold. Over five hundred thousand dollars in one night.
We slip out before the final guests leave, disappearing into the Tokyo night.
Back at the apartment, Roxy collapses onto the couch, her eyes bright with adrenaline and triumph.
"Five hundred thousand dollars," she says to the ceiling.
"I know, right? That’s insane money. Well done, baby."
"Thanks. I can’t believe we sold all of that in one night."
"Yeah, it’s only gonna get bigger."
I cross to her and pull her into my lap. She settles against me, her head on my shoulder, and her hand resting over my heart.
"We won," I say quietly.
"Yeah. We did."
"I want to go back."
"To where?"
"Utah. Where it started. The roadside where you first saw me."
I pull back to look at her. "Why the hell would we go back there?"
"Because we've come full circle and I want to see if it feels different now."
"Different how?"
"I dunno, just to see how it feels, knowing how far we’ve come."
"I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this," I say.
"Really? Oh baby, you know I love you. When can we go?"
I look at her excited face. Is there anything I would say no to when it comes to her?
"After Tokyo, before London."
"London?"
"Petra emailed yesterday. A gallery in Shoreditch wants to show your work. Opening in six weeks."
Roxy's eyes light up. "The road continues."
"It’s the longest fucking road ever."
She slaps me in the chest.
“Asshole. You love the travelling.”
“No, I love being with you. That’s it.”
"I love you," she whispers.
"I love you too."
So, we are going full circle. Back to where it all began.
We fly into Salt Lake City three days later and rent a car.
The drive south is familiar and strange at the same time. The landscape of red rock and desert hasn’t changed; endless sky, the kind of emptiness that makes you feel small and infinite at the same time.
But we've changed. A year ago, we were running. Hiding and barely holding on.
Now we're James and Roxy Brennan.
"You remember exactly where it was?" Roxy asks as we drive.
"Yeah. Mile marker 47 on Route 12. Just past the turnoff to Boulder."
"You remember the mile marker?"
"I remember everything about that day."
She reaches over and puts her hand on my thigh. "Me too."
We drive in comfortable silence, the desert stretching out on both sides. The sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and red and purple. When we reach mile marker 47, I pull over onto the shoulder.
The roadside looks exactly the same. Red dirt, scrub brush, the endless expanse of Utah wilderness. The spot where Roxy was drawing the dead fox. We get out of the car and stand there, looking at the landscape.
"It feels different," Roxy says quietly.
"How so?"
"Like we're different people."
"We are."
She walks to the exact spot where she was sitting that day, where I first saw her drawing roadkill and recognized her as a kindred spirit.
And then she stops.
"Dom."
Something in her voice makes me cross to her immediately.
There, on the side of the road, is a dead fox.
Obviously not the same one that was there last year, but the same kind of animal, the same kind of death. Fresh, maybe a day old. The body still intact, the fur still beautiful despite the brutality of whatever killed it.
Roxy stares at it for a long moment.
Then she starts laughing. Not hysterical laughter or even nervous laughter. Just pure, delighted recognition of the universe's perfect timing.
"It's a sign," she says.
"It’s fucking creepy is what it is."
"It’s the universe giving us a callback."
"Or just coincidence."
"There's no such thing as coincidence." She pulls out her phone and starts taking photographs. "This is perfect. This is exactly what I needed."
I watch her work as she pulls out her sketchbook, the same sketchbook she was using when we met. Worn and stained and filled with drawings of truth.
She sits on the ground, cross-legged, and starts to work. I stand watch, scanning the road for cars, for witnesses, for anything that might interrupt this moment. But there's nothing. Just us and the desert and the dead fox highlighted by the setting sun.
Roxy draws for twenty minutes, her hand moving across the paper with absolute certainty. When she's done, she holds up the sketchbook to show me.
It's beautiful.
The fox rendered in charcoal and graphite, every detail perfect. The sadness of death made sacred through art.
"This is going in the second portfolio," she says.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Full circle. The roadside where it all began. The same subject. But now it's not just documenting time, it's art. It's celebrated and worth twenty thousand dollars to someone in Tokyo or Berlin or London."
The second portfolio is now complete. Twenty-six pieces. Berlin, San Diego, LA, Tokyo and now Utah.
She stands and crosses to me, the sketchbook still in her hand.
"We made it," she says.
"Yeah. We did."
"London in six weeks," Roxy says.
"I can’t wait."
"And then?"
"Paris. Berlin again. S?o Paulo. Wherever the work takes us."
"The road continues."
"Always."
"You know the theories keep multiplying. Every Reddit thread, every art forum, every gossip site, they're all trying to solve the mystery and one day they’ll get close."
"Let them try."
"Maybe they'll never figure it out. Because the truth is simpler and more twisted than any of them imagine."
"What's the truth?"
She looks up at me, her eyes reflecting the last light of the sunset.
"That we killed a man and killed our names. That we stand in gallery openings listening to people speculate about us while remaining invisible in plain sight."
"And?"
"And that the darkness we were running from became the thing that saved us. Because we didn't hide from it, we lived it, cherished it."
We drive back to Salt Lake City in the darkness, the dead fox photographed and drawn and immortalized. Another piece for the second portfolio. Another moment of our crazy made special.
At the airport the next morning, we board a plane to London.
The security checkpoint is routine. Our IDs scan without issue. James and Roxy Brennan, traveling for business. Gallery opening in Shoreditch in six weeks.
On the plane, Roxy pulls out her laptop and opens the folder containing the second portfolio.
"When do we release this?" I ask.
"Six months. Let the first portfolio finish its circuit. Then we start again."
"Same strategy?"
"Exactly.”
We started on a roadside in Utah, two broken people recognizing each other's darkness. We returned to that same roadside a year later, transformed and triumphant and completely free.
The dead fox that started everything became art and the road that saved us continues forever.
Roxy's hand finds mine and I lace our fingers together.
"London, baby," she says before kissing me as the plane climbs higher, and I can taste the future we're creating.
Everything is now complete, a full circle.
Now the road continues.
And we're never looking back.