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Show white space:
“I don’t care” she turned slowly to him one last time, searching for a glimpse of concern mirrored on his charcoaled face. His windswept hair had lost her attention long ago, but the sky behind him suddenly caught it again. Maybe she did care just a miniscule amount. He still said nothing, just looked deep into her eyes. They had been through so much together.
He had first come to her on the long flight from visiting her best friend in Durban. She had had to leave right after the reception, but after so much time spent planning, sending out invitations and counting RSVPs, Elisabeth was glad to leave Nichola to enjoy her new life. Nichola’s man was a dynamic adventurer who seemed to always be looking forward to conquering the mountain in front of him. Apparently he was worth over a million dollars. Nichola had had so many guests to thank, and Elisabeth didn’t trust herself when South African wine was so readily available. Thus, after greeting a few former friends, she had changed out of the ugly dress that Nichola had chosen for her and taken off.
She had been planning on sleeping early, to get herself back on Melbourne time, but he had been persistent. Even after giving up on sleep, she could feel his eyes on her as she caught up on her grading. He had been drawn by her fingers, he told her in a conspiratorial whisper. She had scribbled her name on the corner of the sheet of paper, thinking she would never see him again. The next week though, as she sat on the terrace of her favorite café, his face appeared across the table. She smiled at the memory. In Australia he seemed more down to earth, less stiff and flat. His eyes smiled more in the December sun.
Sitting in the barren loft, she noted the discrepancy between then and the present reality. She had tried, she really had. She’d tried to take the time that she knew he was worth. When that hadn’t worked as well as expected, she’d tried forgetting, avoiding, hinting, but she just couldn’t erase him from her life. So she had committed. She had dropped other engagements so they could have the quality time together that he deserved. In the beginning at least, she’d been captivated by him. She felt inspired after their afternoon adventures. Her friends didn’t understand, but then again, neither did she. She had always been the solid, practical, science and mathematics type. None of this romantic artsy stuff. This had been Nichola’s area of expertise. Maybe after living together for four years, and seeing her many exploits, she had picked up some technique through osmosis.
Nichola’s life philosophy was to show white space. An early trusted mentor had told her this after observing she seemed to crowd everything she touched. Nichola had written it out in calligraphy and hung it above the bathroom window, saying it reminded her to breathe, to say no to some commitments, and to let whoever was in front of her have a say, too. To some, the unorganized style looked unfinished, but it had freed Nichola from her perfectionist tendencies. Without learning that lesson, she would not have met Will, who would not have invited her to his studio that fateful night. She would not have been inspired by his daring creativity and would never have been able to tour with him. It was serendipitous the way that everything had fallen together for Nichola.
Maybe that was what Elisabeth needed, to give the soulful dark eyes some space. She sighed disappointed. He still hadn’t spoken to her. She stood up and walked across the room and said softly “I need some fresh air. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone”. Maybe things would look different after a walk along the river. She locked the door behind her, its not like he was going to do it.
Show White Space. Was it already too late? Was the creased forehead permanent? What was she going to do?
She was going to breathe. She crossed her arms and then realized her hands were filthy. Her new beige blouse had two dark handprints neatly above both elbows. Figures. She looked at her hands, unsure at the next step to take. Inspiration hit. If he wasn’t going to turn out the way she had always envisioned, well, he was going to have to deal with a new post-modern identity. She laughed; it came out slightly more maniacal than she had intended.
She practically pranced home, marched across her solitary apartment in the late afternoon sunlight to the place where he sat. She reached toward his perfect hair and smeared it up into the sky. Birds became jewels in his new poof that even Marie Antoinette could be proud of. She then reached for the towel for her hands. After wiping them carefully, she stared again, then reached for his shoulders, she blurred them into the trees, then stood up too quickly. She tripped over an end table on her way to her bedroom to grab the pastels too long unused. She smelled the chalky dust as she opened the box Connie had given her many years before. Grabbing the first two or three she touched, she rolled them between her hands. The forest green dropped to the ground and shattered. She set the pastels on the table, then reached for her soon-to-be masterpiece, and continued the destruction. Smearing ochre, sunset red and the traces of green all over his jacket, any traces of dignity were obliterated. After a few minutes of chaos, a method and pattern emerged in his patchwork jacket. Marie’s hairstyle was given ribbons of midnight blue and light grey. It flowed up and around the top of the paper. From the floor, discarded sketches looked on approvingly.
His chin. His chin was still too serious. He needed a shave. And to be less square. With the red-orange, she crafted him three new chins, each of which was followed with its own mouth expression. The mouths were in a brighter shade of orange, the label of which had fallen off during the first piece she’d ever seriously attempted, her freshman year of college. She giggled a bit to herself, neither thinking of how long it had taken her nor of how this portrait would be worth twenty times more than Nichola’s million when it was finally bought by the National Gallery forty years later and the two contrasting firsts were hung side by side, “heralding the inauguration of a new artistic era” according to the Daily Telegraph and clipped to the refrigerator unobtrusively surrounded by grocery lists, report cards and cutesy magnets
When she was done coloring in, over, around and through her formerly-fastidious charcoal work, she stood a few feet back. Too much she thought suddenly. The whole point of her inspiration had been Nichola’s advice. She grinned as she grabbed the rubber square on the windowsill and erased the heart out of her muse.
