The city was a blur of rain soaked neon beyond the window.
He had left the gallery shortly after his collapse, finally unable to support his own weight and rendered more unstable by the shock of the newly unveiled painting. He had felt everything go beneath him, and fallen forward. If Daphne had made a move to keep hold of him, or to cut in and break his fall, she had failed. Yet he didn’t think he had seen a flicker of movement from her, nor from anyone else. If anything, the sea of people in front of him - despite having their backs to him - parted silently, letting him crumple forward into the ground.
He had cried out, the ignominy of it all passing overhead and behind, settling into the darkness behind him along with his pride. Right then there was only him and his pain.
And darkness.
How long he had lain on the ground amongst those designer shoes and heels that glittered like stars in the night, festooned with jewels, he didn’t know. Right in that moment he was a lost child, a thing washed up on the shore. To be glanced at in horror and ignored. Families pulling dogs and children away from the sight of this pitiful wreckage. Right then he was less than he ever was. At the bottom of a great stair case, however far he had climbed up previously. That’s all it broke down to was it not? Life? We start at the bottom when we can’t even climb the first riser without help. We grip the railing and begin to pull ourselves up until we can walk. The higher we climb, the further from the bottom, then the farther to fall back down. The greater the risk of injury.
He had fallen.
Somewhere above and beyond the sea of bodies, Lon Raschold was still talking, a break before Mamoulean took over the mantle, no doubt describing to the assembled onlookers the significance of such a piece, and what it would mean for the artworld. How it would make waves, and once more - in typical d’Marcan style - disrupt the status quo. Never mind that what was once shocking was now seen as rote and almost quaint. This newly unearthed piece showed a more extreme side of Trent that could not be ignored.
Adam heard all this, and tried to marry those words with the painting he had seen before his collapse.
Eventually he had been helped to his feet. Two members of hired help in their impeccable attire had pushed their way slowly, gently, politely through the mass. They had not said a word, presumably instructed not to interrupt the unveiling in any circumstances. The helped him back into the foyer and down on to the benches. He noticed that Daphne had not followed him, yet he found that he simultaneously did and did not care. Not then. He just wished to leave.
They asked him what he wished to do, and he said nothing bar four words, gripping his chair from where it still lay beside the bench and setting his face firm.
“Call me a taxi.”
They asked him what one. He said he didn’t care, whichever one they could find the number for first. All pretences gone. No one was there to see him leave anyway besides the paid staff, and they wouldn’t care either way. They were just there for their pay. Which was a better reason than him. He still didn’t know why he had come. He would be having stern words with Iris Fleet the next time they spoke. She had pushed him into this. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t willing. He was happy wallowing in his misery. She didn’t owe him anything, and he didn’t need it. He wanted to go back to that misery. He wanted to go back to wallowing. He had nothing to prove to anyone. He had tried all that. When he had been higher on the staircase. When he was still ascending. He had been successful, he had a family that loved him. He had a reputation. He would never attain that again, and he surmised that he was probably alright with that, if it meant he could go home and never be disturbed again.
They did as he was bid and he had only a short wait. The room beside was still filled with the alternate monologues of Raschold and Mamoulean, the crowd silent in their
infinite
rapture, the painting and two men holding sway over them all.
As he waited, he glanced around the foyer once more, now that he could see it’s contents clearly. Ivy draped down from exposed beams in the ceiling. Real or not, he didn’t know. The green sinewy mass above writhed over the beams and light fittings, down and encircled around the chandeliers, climbing down the corners of the room. He thought he saw it move.
Then a polite cough. His taxi.
He had gone with no ceremony nor so much as a glance towards the room.
Now here he sat as the vehicle slowly made it’s way across town. The driver, a man of similar age to Adam, accent slightly more raw, closer to where Adam’s once had been, ha asked him where he had been, if he had a good night. Adam demurred and kept his answers trite and noncommittal until the other man got the message, instead putting the radio on to whatever sport had taken place that day, and nothing more was said.
He gazed out at the rain soaked neon.
Asking himself now the question that should have been asked a long time ago, since the accident. Things had stopped making sense then. Was that not the reason why his marriage broke down?
was it not the argument.
They had lots of arguments. Particularly as the foundations of their union buckled under the weight of what had been piled high atop them. He had moved out. No. That wasn’t right. She had moved out. She had taken Violet and they had gone. Not content with another part of the city, or country. To France. To France to do whatever it was she now did.
Something about Violet. Why do I feel…
Leaving him and that house which he couldn’t sustain on his salary alone. He had left. When. Two years ago. Sold the house and she had taken most of the money, for their daughter.
Is she okay? Why do I feel that she isn’t?
Leaving me to move into this shithole apartment.
Then he had worked for Jane producing shit work for third rate thrillers. Then came Tom Manillo, and he had thrown it back at them. Had he really done that? He groaned. He had. The fucking drink was interfering with his thought processes.
Only it wasn’t that. How else do you explain arriving at the exhibition when you entered the apartment of your neighbour?
Had he been drinking enough to do himself lasting damage? Had he been drinking when he was married?
A flashback of trips to the bottle bank. A boot full of bottles. What looked like a months worth accumulated in only a few weeks. In fact, that was bullshit. A few days. It wasn’t just him. Amber drank along with him. He wasn’t that reliant on alcohol.
Yet you finished every bottle of wine she opened after she went to bed.
He screwed his eyes shut. He wasn’t himself. Things were happening to him but they were out of sequence. He needed to ground himself. To find some clarity.
That painting though. That wasn’t real. Was it?
“How far boss?” The dulcet tones of the taxi driver cut through his reveries and he brought his attention back to the window, focusing for the first time on that rain soaked neon, giving it clarity (just not the kind he sought). He took a moment to get his bearings. The sky was orange, the clouds low, reflecting the light from the streets back down at him. It brooded just above the toothy protrusions of the Flats in the distance, looking over him and promising of hidden violence. He found himself shuddering, missing at once the previous life he had taken for granted and thrown so freely away after his accident. If he was being honest with himself - and perhaps it was this Adam’s purpose which ever one it happened to be) to be that person - then he would say that he was merely descending into the where he deserved. He had carved a small slice of hell for himself and there he should stay.
“Where I belong” he muttered as the Flats drew nearer.
“Sorry mate, didn’t catch that. I don’t come to this part of town often you see. My satnav is busted as well so I’m flying a bit blind here.”
“Not far,” Adam replied, louder to be heard above the rampant football commentary. “If you take a right here, and I’ll keep you posted.”
“Gotcha.”
The taxi driver did as he was bid and the car pulled in to a wide street lined with parked vehicles on either side and high Georgian townhouses.
Funny how things change, Adam thought. There would have been a time that I would have looked down on anyone living here. Now I’m looking up to them. Maybe it’s time I sorted myself out. What did that arsehole critic say. I wonder if it’s too late. Maybe I could phone Jane back, see if this contract is still available, or maybe just start painting again and -
The painting.
He had forgotten. How could he have forgotten?
Walking too much on unfamiliar legs. Weakness and he was unsteady. Daphne had guided him into the unveiling room and Raschold and Mamoulean had been there, like two proud parents, their ruddy faces flushed with their expensive booze. The assembled mass of sycophants in hushed apprehension, their own vein cracked noses and rheumy eyes shrouded in darkness, awaiting the coda to their already indulgent evening. The curtain had been pulled back and there it had been. He had seen it before. It was his dreams rendered in oil. It was -
“Is it this turning or the next one?”
The wide Georgian street had gone, replaced by a large black railed fence and darkness beyond. He arched over the seat to the other side. He didn’t recognise the buildings there, but this was definitely the Park.
“If you keep going and take a right at the next junction. I think that’s me street.”
“Gotcha.”
He felt in his jacket, realising that he needed to pay for the taxi and hoping that the driver would take his nearly maxed out card. If he didn’t, he was going to be in shit, unless he had cash in his wallet. He hadn’t seen a banknote in about a year.
Feeling around absently, the painting flooded his senses. If it was a d’Marcan original, then something was going very badly wrong. It was the staircase. He had seen that staircase before. That staircase. This wasn’t a hidden staircase in the darkness at the base of a portrait. This wasn’t
my staircase don’t forget about my staircase
the underside of the bridge, hidden in shadow and spiralling down towards the river bed, was something
like a staircase
something painted in as an afterthought, or something hidden to be found like a children’s puzzle book. This was the focus of the piece. Not just the focus. It was the purpose. It was the journey. It was everything. He recognised it immediately, but he didn’t know how that was possible. He didn’t know how he could have dreamed something that his former fellow student had painted before he
passed over
disappeared.
He had simply seen it before. That was the answer. It was a not, in fact, something that had never been seen before. This was just Lon Raschold being Lon Raschold. Drumming up intrigue and inflating the prices of his most prized and sought after artist. Adam had seen this painting, as much as twenty years ago. At a previous exhibition. At the first exhibition. It had seeped into his subconscious where it had festered there, like a spider in the corner of a room, fat with eggs. When they hatched, what poured forth simply ran through his mind and peppered his fragmenting thoughts with the same imagery. He had been dreaming about d’Marcan’s work. It was that simple.
“Is it here?”
The Park was still on the far side, the buildings on the other still unrecognisable.
“I think it must be the next junction. Sorry. If you go right there. We can’t be far.
He thought he heard the taxi driver mutter something under his breath. A curse perhaps. Adam didn’t care. He was paying for this. He was damn well going to be taken to his door. The football commentary still blared out from the radio, yet he must be getting tired, as he momentarily tried to follow it and realised that he couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
Wallet.
He continued to fumble in his jacket and took out a small stiff envelope. About the size of a greetings card.
“Fuck me.” This time there was no mistaking the consternation in the driver’s voice. Adam peered through the from window. Red light. Some kind of construction work taking up their side of the road. Two other cars ahead and white lights filling the rear of the taxi meant more pulling up behind. “Just my luck.”
Adam tuned him out, instead looking over the envelope. The combination of the light from the traffic behind, the streetlight above and the red glow from in front meant he had no trouble making out what was written on the front, in plain unadorned script.
FOR ADAM
He frowned, struggling to recall where he had come by the thing he held in his hands, before a recollection of leaving his flat, finding it jammed in the door. Yes. The envelope was creased and marked down one side where it had been held in place. The taxi remained unmoving, the engine purring.
Adam ran a finger beneath the flap, gently tearing the envelope open and removing the card from within. It didn’t look quite right so he held it up so that the headlights from behind were illuminating it more clearly. A cloud of glitter fell from it like a waterfall in starlight. He let out a sharp laugh that sounded more like a bark, causing the driver to turn around sharply, his face looking inhuman in the shards of discordant light. Adam only saw this out the corner of his eye, yet the card had drawn his attention almost completely.
This all has to be a joke, he thought. Either that or I’ve simply lost my mind.
There was a handdrawn picture on the front of the card. Crudely drawn but instantly recognisable. A man standing beside a woman, a small child between them. More glitter stuck to the front of the card. Words in crayon beneath the smiling figures.
haPpY DadDys dAy
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