Galatea

by Tilde

A relationship fic told from the point of view of

Galatea

by Tilde

thetilde@geocities.com

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Spoilers: None. You can imagine this sometime during the second or third season. Your choice.

Disclaimers:

The characters and situations of the television program "Charlie's Angels" are the creations and property of Spelling-Goldberg Productions and Columbia Pictures Television, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

However, I retain the rights to the plot. You may download and distribute this story as long as my name stays on the by-line.

Rating: R (for implied sex, nothing graphic… sorry!)

Summary:

A relationship fic told from the point of view of Kelly's boyfriend.

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I love watching her sleep, this warm, dusky woman. Even now, with her back turned to me, I derive a certain voyeuristic pleasure at the sight of the languorous angles of her spine. In sleep she is vulnerable, unguarded … open in a way that she would despise if she were conscious. Her breath speaks of a golden eternity, and everything it touches seems to be kissed by promise. Foolishly, I place my hand in its path, and the feel of it is as intoxicating as she is. Straddling the border between ticklish and arousing, her breath caresses my skin.

Every now and then she stirs, her eyebrows seeking each other's company in vexation. Sometimes she cries out in her sleep. Never a name, not even anything that could be considered a word; only a small sound, so plaintive it touches me. I reach out for her, to hold her, to cradle her in my arms… to attempt to assuage whatever emotion runs rampant in her dreams. She only turns away, as if I had disappointed her in a way she couldn't articulate.

I am left watching her back, her even breathing, her hair on the pillow and on her soft shoulders smelling of a vague and elusive sweetness.

If you have ever felt lost or betrayed by the passage of time, if you have ever felt jaded by the loss of something you had thought was constant, if you have renounced your fate in a "someday" or a "forever", then watch the woman you love sleeping beside you. Imagine that, completely without warning, she will wake up and stretch her grateful arms to the sun. Imagine watching her stretch every morning, for the rest of your life.

If you have ever felt that love was simple, if you have ever thought that — once it was found — affection, tenderness, and desire could be maintained indefinitely; if you have ever been certain of a relationship; then reach out for the sleeping woman beside you and realize that she has no knowledge of your existence. That in sleep she returns to an unnamable bliss without you. A happiness you neither provided nor can partake of.

If you have never felt confused and yet drawn to the object of your ambiguous devotions, then sleep beside Kelly.

Kelly.

Her very name makes me shiver in anticipation. The sound of her voice makes my soul leap, and the cadence of her heart matches the ticking in my chest. The fierceness of her love, the sheer strength and expanse of it, strangles the flow of words and of thought. The walls she builds around herself, those flippant verbal molotovs she throws into the spokes of our conversations, the stubborn insistence and manipulation that will either break or bend you to her will… they drive me to the extremes of frustration and even to hate.

I can only sigh, hold her when she lets me, be there when she needs me, and sometimes… just sometimes, have her nestled in my arms as she is now.

I kiss the limbo between her nape and her shoulder, where the morning sun crosshatch delicate shadows. She stirs slightly, as if shrugging off a fly. I wrap my arm around her waist and mold my body closer to hers, and she turns in my arms, her face now only one word's distance from mine.

How strange that my life has come to this… sifting through a myriad of meanings and memories, searching for the right word to bridge that immeasurable space between her life and mine.

Her eyes began to open to the early light, they fluttered slightly. Then her hand rose up suddenly, blocking the unexpected sight of me, so close, so soon.

My despair must have been plain, as she tried to amend her tell-tale reflex by placing her hand on my cheek.

"Hi." I whispered, the hurt still crouching in my throat. "Remember me?"

"Hmm… vaguely." she smiled, her eyes amplifying the humor. Her voice was low and sleepy. "What time is it?"

She reached beyond my shoulder to take my watch from the night table. A sense of impending loss made me draw her closer.

"It's too early." I said. "You can sleep in a little more."

Her lips touched mine in a kiss so tender, brief, irrelevant. She sat up and rubbed her eyes wearily. I ran my fingers through her hair, untangling the sleep from her curls and letting them flow around the banks of her shoulders.

I loved looking at her, her skin the color of soft cream, a tube of white gouache mixed with a dollop of lemon yellow. The dip of her waist could only be mimicked by a French curve. The muscles on her back should be drawn on parchment with red chalk, the way Leonardo made his studies, with captions carefully written backward to preserve his secrets. Secrets that endured like the Mona Lisa's smile.

"Stay." I said simply, caressing her back.

"I can't Alan." she replied. "You know how Bri hates to be kept waiting."

I smirked. "Just tell her you spent the morning in bed with a terribly irresistible man."

"As opposed to spending it with a terrible one?" she asked, half in jest.

I sat up and turned to face her, trying to keep my tone light. "Have there been a lot of terrible men, Kelly?"

She blinked in surprise, and I could imagine the struggle seeping out of her precisely drawn lines; the door to her soul slamming shut with a solid, clanging, finality.

"No one I couldn't handle." Kelly said with an abrupt shrug. She bent over to pick up my shirt and put it on. At once, I felt strangely bereft, as if reality had intruded once more and was about to bring her into a sordid, possibly dangerous world.

Apparently unaware of my anxieties, her arms reached for the ceiling and I heard some vertebrae crack as she stretched. With one hand she gathered her hair, pulled it free from beneath the shirt and let it drape over her back.

In the light from the window she gleamed like a translucent and ethereal goddess. The waves of light created a breathtaking silhouette through my white shirt.

"Don't move." I said, hurriedly picking up my sketch pad and charcoal pencils. Her laugh was deep and throaty as she saw me scramble about my bedroom floor, unmindful of my nakedness.

"Alan, I have to get going."

"And I have to draw you. Don't move." I repeated, pulling the charcoal pencil across the pad in an imitation of the curve of her arm.

"Alan…"

"It'll only take a minute." I insisted. "You can show this to Bri and blame me for being late."

Kelly angled her head so she could make out the outlines on the pad.

"Er… I don't think so." she said lightly. "Not this sketch."

I grinned. "And why not?"

"Alan!" she laughed. "I can't show them that. It's…"

"Erotic, isn't it?"

"Shut up." she said, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Are you done?"

"Yipes. That's one of the things you don't want to hear in bed."

She slapped my chest playfully. "Can't you be serious?"

"When I am, you freak out." I reminded her.

"Oh, yeah." She shook her head. "Just promise me you won't exhibit this one."

"Sure." I replied. "I'll put up the other ones where you're not even wearing a shirt. That'll bring in some buyers."

She gasped. "What? When did you start drawing me in the nude?"

I grinned at her. "Every man has his hobbies."

"I'm serious." she said, whacking me on the shoulder. "I mean, we haven't really had enough time to… well… not often enough, anyway. I'm always so busy."

"Yeah, tell me about it." I said in complaint. "No wonder Charlie likes to maintain anonymity. Doug and I would beat the stuffing out of him if only we knew who he was ."

Her eyes flickered from a dark deep green to obsidian. "You know that we have to see every case through. Sometimes that means I have to work all night, or go out of town, or study for days to develop a believable cover. Charlie doesn't set those standards, I do. I have to be the best at what I do. You know that. It's just my job. It has nothing to do with you and me."

"It has everything to do with you and me." I said softly, gripping the pencil too hard. The fine line I had wanted was now an unholy smudge. "Look, forget it, you'll be late."

I tossed the pencil to one side and closed the pad with a snap. "Go take a shower. I'll make us some Eggos."

"Ooh, you're such a gourmet." she laughed.

I simply nodded and pulled on my boxer shorts. Yawning, I waddled out to what passes for a kitchen in my apartment. Inspecting the fridge, I deemed the milk fit for consumption and opened up the box of waffles.

I approached the toaster with reverence. If it died on me now, Kelly would have my head. She always complained about how my appliances became temperamental at the worst possible times. My utter lack of mechanical knowledge didn't help matters much either.

Silently, I contemplated placating the toaster by putting in one Eggo at a time. If Kelly saw me she'd snort in derision at my barbaric superstitions and throw in the waffles. I decided to be brave and risk it.

While I was waiting for the distinct PING from my toaster, I started going around my apartment, picking up things that Kelly would plan on taking to work. Soon the table was set, the toaster was kind, and the Eggos were sitting quietly in their plates, when I heard the bathroom door open with a crack.

"Alan?" she called.

"Just a minute."

I closed my duffel bag and gathered her things in my arms. Positioning myself at the appropriate blind spot, I waited for her.

"Alan, I just need my watch. I put it with the rest of my jewelry on the—"

My back turned away from the door, I held out my hand, the watch and earrings already nestled in my palm.

"Oh. Thanks."

I waited another minute.

"Ooh, Alan. My toothbrush is in the overnight case in my bag, near the airbrush." she called out in a loud voice.

Smirking I held out my hand again. "It was beside the turpentine. And the green Crest is in the medicine cabinet. I got you some the last time I was at the supermarket."

A muffled thanks came over the sound of splashing water. I smiled indulgently. "What, no moisturizer? No make-up?"

Clad only in my towel, she stepped out of the bathroom. Eyeing the stack of toiletries beside me, she raised her eyebrows in an elegant query.

"This is why you take so long to get ready, you know." I observed. "Why don't you just drag your entire bag into the bathroom with you?"

"Probably because I'm so used to just grabbing all my stuff…the way I do at my house." she retorted.

I traced the curve of her collar-bone, extrapolating the line to its logical conclusion beneath the towel. She slapped my hand away playfully.

"You walk around naked grabbing your stuff?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she smiled.

"You do these things while I'm not around?"

"Alan," she grinned, "if you were around, I'd be grabbing something else."

I smiled and pulled her into an embrace. Her kiss was intoxicating, it always was, and my hands moved to untie the towel. She broke the kiss and stepped away from me. My arms loosened but did not release her.

"I'm going to look like Chewbacca if I don't set my hair and blow-dry it."

"You could roll your hair up into cinnamon rolls," I chuckled. "I know I've got some crazy glue here somewhere."

"Alan… I'm going to be late."

"I know." I said softly, letting her go back into the bathroom. I forced some lightness, some degree of enthusiasm, into my voice. "Think you'll get an interesting case today?"

"You mean, am I going to get an out-of-town case today." I heard her begin to brush her teeth. I waited for her to finish, slightly annoyed that her investigative habits were intruding on us so early in the morning.

"I don't know, Alan," she said, tapping her toothbrush against the sink. "Charlie screens all the cases… at this point anyway. Give it a couple of years and things will change. We'll have some say in them."

"You mean you'll have some say."

Her smile was wide, her ambition like a saint's halo in medieval stained glass.

"I know we haven't had enough time to ourselves lately," she said, suddenly turning serious. "But maybe we'll luck out. Sometimes we get a three week stretch of process serving and background checks."

"Sure," I scoffed, "and maybe I'll redo the Sistine Chapel. We can summer in Italy."

We polished off our breakfast and made our way out of the building. The day had long since stretched its arms and was now beating down on the California pavement. The sky was filled with raw, bunched clouds. Her yellow Mustang exhaled the heat of the morning as she opened the door. The baked air from the car was dense and torpid, Kelly paused before she risked sitting down.

Shielding her eyes from the sunlight, she looked crisp. Focused in a exacting telephoto lens, the lush forests of her hair were in direct contrast to her sedate clothing. Kelly stuck her hand into the car tentatively, testing the temperature of the air. She sighed in resignation and sat down.

"What time is your first class?" she asked, her lithe legs crossing the distance between pedals and seat perfectly. She was wearing jeans that left no curve to the imagination and a blue pencil-striped shirt, beneath which you could just make out the edges of the pistol she had tucked into the small of her back.

I hated that thing, and she knew it. I hated the fact that she needed to carry it around, that she used it so comfortably, and wore it like a second skin. Most of all I hated the fact that all sorts of lunatics and rapists had guns as well, and had less compunction about using them.

"Sex."

"What?!" I yelped.

"Now that I have your attention," she smirked, "I asked you what time your first class was."

"Oh. OH. Uh, ten." I said. "And another at two."

"Great. Get in the car." she said, reaching over to unlock the passenger side.

"Where are we going?"

"You can come along to the office with me and hitch a ride with Doug." she explained. "I really don't understand why you don't get a car of your own."

I cleared my throat and made a show of emptying my pockets.

"Well, yeah, aside from that." she smiled. "I could teach you how to drive."

"Oh, I just bet you could…"

She cocked an eyebrow at me in an amused and unspoken question.

"While you and Kris were vamping at the disco last week, Bri told me exactly how well you can drive a car."

She grinned. "Don't worry, my drag-racing, hot-rod days are over. Although I would love to ask Charlie to get this model with a stick-shift."

"What for?" I asked. "Isn't the automatic transmission more convenient?"

"I'd have more control."

Kelly drove up the ramp to the freeway and sped up, boxing out a pick-up that had wanted to pass her. She sped up to a cruise speed of about 55 mph and continued as if nothing had happened. "Jill and I have been begging Charlie for cars with manual transmissions since we started working for him."

I gave a low whistle. "Manipulation in stereo. The man is probably stone deaf."

"Better deaf than broke." she laughed. "I'm sure Charlie's glad that Kris didn't take after her in that arena. Kris will argue you to the ground before she even resorts to…"

"Whining?"

Kelly grinned. "I was going to put it nicely."

I found my mouth echoing the arc of her smile. "What happens when all three of you want something?"

"I don't know about Charlie, but Bos caves in right away." Kelly said. "Imagine: Kris's fervor, my shameless tactics, and Bri's unshakable logic."

I put my hands up in surrender. "Speaking of Bosley's Harem…"

"That's Charlie's Angels."

"Whatever, as long as you're mine." I said lightly. "You are going to be here for the show, aren't you?"

Kelly pulled into the Agency's street and parallel-parked behind the Cobra II. She turned off the engine and paused to look at me.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

I shook my head, as if to clear it of the frustration that fogged up my vision.

"Alan, it's not that I don't want to be there. I do. We all do. You know that." She pleaded. "I just can't say for sure whether or not the case will last until then."

I got out of the car and took my duffel bag from the back seat of the Mustang.

"Alan…"

"Whatever." I said curtly. "If you're there, you're there. If not, too bad."

"Please." Kelly said, locking the car and placing her hand on my arm. "Don't be this way…"

"No, no, I understand." I said, throwing up my hands in defeat. "If I wasn't understanding about your hours and your job you'd be forced to dump me, wouldn't you?"

"What?"

"How convenient for you, Kelly. I'd be yet another lover who just wouldn't understand…"

She gave a little gasp, her eyes pulling tight at the corners, as though someone had taken hold of her hair and yanked it upward so that her scalp stung.

"What is this chip on your shoulder all of a sudden?" she said tersely. "What does it matter how many men I've had? I'm with you now."

"Are you?" I asked. The daylight was starting to sting, its rays thrust at my eyes like rapiers. I narrowed my eyes to keep her in focus, straining to see any hint of emotion that would cross her face, any answer her features would provide. She only took a breath and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Kelly," I sighed. "I don't care about your other lovers, I don't care about Charles Townsend and his wonderful agency. I care about you. I was under the impression that you gave me more than a passing thought."

"This is what I do, Alan." she replied quietly. "This is what I'm good at. I love working here. Being a private eye… it's part of me. I don't really want to do anything else, at least, not right now."

"Did I say I wanted you to quit working?" I said. "I didn't ask you to run away with me, live in a trailer, and bake pies for the rest of your life. I know you love your work as much as I love mine. I just wonder why your job always takes priority."

"It's different." she said huffily.

"Damn straight."

"Alan, I save lives." she declared. "I make a difference."

"And I don't?"

"Look, I'll try to be there."

"That's not good enough anymore, Kelly." I said.

Kelly looked taut, pulled in every direction. She let out a harsh breath. She was like a priestess trying to divine an answer that would placate me. "I don't want to make you a promise I can't keep."

"Why not?" I retorted. "I've become so used to it."

"You're acting like a spoiled child."

"You're indifferent and flippant about the things I care about. Like our relationship."

She bit her lower lip in vexation.

"Don't belittle what I do, Kelly. Never scoff at my work or my feelings for you." I said, slinging my duffel bag over my shoulder. "I can only be pushed so far."

I walked to the door of the office. I heard Kelly let her breath out in a rush of exhalation. Then the cadence of her footsteps told me she was following me up the path.

The office of Townsend and Associates was sleek and functionally furnished. The first floor housed a prodigious library filled with case files and books on everything from organic chemistry to art history. Every phone book ever printed was neatly catalogued in Bosley's handwriting and stacked by state and date.

The actual office was on the second floor, a wide oak desk and comfortable chair dominated the room. This was complemented by a set of couches plushly upholstered by the swankiest interior decorator in the city. The room was dotted with art objects from the Far East and the bar was stocked with the best liquor. There was even a fireplace and a convertible movie screen on top of the mantle.

The entire office evinced a feral power and cunning mastery wedded to an aristocratic tact and diplomacy. It was hard not to feel slightly wary of the strength that came from this room. I'm sure clients took refuge in that strength, but it only seemed to heighten the lopsidedness of my relationship with Kelly.

I had opened the door for her and she had breezed by me without a word. True to her prediction, Sabrina was already seated at the desk, her nails tapping fretfully against her glass of orange juice. Kris was seated at the bar, yawning as Doug poured her some coffee.

"Hey…" Bri said in greeting, unable to stifle a small yawn.

Kelly smiled at the other two women and sat down on the couch. Her brow furrowed as she asked where Bosley was.

"Search me." Kris said with a shrug.

"Is that an invitation?" Doug teased, he leaned on the bar and smiled at her suggestively. Kris only rolled her eyes and hopped off the stool. Standing on tip-toe, she gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Why so glum?" she asked. "Tense about the exhibit?"

I forced a smile. "Sort of."

"You know," Sabrina suggested, "my ex-brother-in-law has a decent band. You could hire them to play during the exhibit."

I bit my lip. Bri and I had been friends in high school, but I had lost contact with her when she was at the Academy. We'd become re-acquainted at court. I had to do some editorial cartoons for the LA Times and she had come out of the first hearing for her divorce. I would have thought that I could recognize her anywhere, considering how close we had been, but a sharp sadness jabbed at her features. A sadness that had become familiar to both of us.

Knowing how strained her relationship with her ex-husband was right now, I immediately felt touched by her offer to have anything more to do with him.

"Just give me your brother-in-law's number." I said.

"Don't be ridiculous." she snorted. "You have enough to worry about, and besides, he'll give you a discount if he knows you're a friend of mine."

"You okay about dealing with Bill?" Doug asked, picking up on my thoughts.

Sabrina's eyes met mine and I shrugged, letting her know that I didn't want her to do anything that would make her uncomfortable. She smiled and shook her head.

"Don't be silly." she assured me. "It's no trouble at all. Just a couple of phone calls."

"Well, okay." I said. "Thanks."

Doug slung his arm around me. "With your paintings and photos, my food, and these lovely ladies as bait there's no way your exhibit will bomb."

"Bait?" Kris repeated.

"Would you rather Alan use me?" Bosley's gravelly voice came from behind me. He tried to strike the pose of a flamboyant pin-up at the doorway, but only succeeded in looking like a flamingo with rheumatism. The girls' laughter filled the room. I couldn't help but smile at the sight of Kelly's lustrous eyes and the gentle way happiness shook her. I loved watching her come loose and alive, her cautiously erected barriers tumbling with each laugh.

I placed my hand on her shoulder, and she returned my gaze. Doug kissed Kris goodbye, and I wished for the umpteenth time that Kelly wouldn't mind me doing the same. I heard Sabrina ribbing Bosley about being late, but the memory of the skin beneath Kelly's shirt captured my undivided attention.

"Think about what I said." I whispered, squeezing her shoulder. Kelly nodded slightly, her hand coming to rest on top of mine. I felt the urge to touch the cupid's bow of her lips, but the shrill ring of the phone ushered Mr. Townsend in and Doug and I threw ourselves out on the street.

He shook his head with a humorously resigned look on his face. "Need a ride?"

"Yeah, thanks." I said, slinging the duffel bag on my other shoulder.

We walked to his black jeep in silence. The old Isuzu looked great under a new coat of wax, but a practiced eye could see that it was on its last legs.

"You should retire this car…" I remarked.

"Are you kidding?" Doug replied. "No. She's still got a few miles in her."

I shrugged. "You should think of getting a car more appropriate to your lifestyle. It's not like you can't afford a new one. Maybe a Porsche?"

"More appropriate to my lifestyle? I like that," he smirked. "Sounds like something a reporter for People magazine would say."

I chuckled and climbed into his beloved jeep. Doug would never buy a sports car. He was still the same solid, honest, earthy guy I knew in college.

"So what was that all about?" he asked.

"All of what?"

"You know," Doug repeated, turning around in his seat to back out of the parking space, "that thing in the office with Kelly. You two weren't exactly chummy this morning."

I snorted in derision. "It's not as if we're bursting with passion whenever we're together."

Doug glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. He opened his mouth to speak, but exhaled the sentiment away.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "You just have this habit."

"What habit?"

"You keep reading too much into the things people say." he said bluntly. "Sometimes people don't have an ulterior motive, Alan. There doesn't always have to be a deeper, intense meaning. What you see is what you get."

"That's what I'm afraid of." I admitted.

"You don't like what you're seeing?"

"I don't know what I'm seeing." I stated. "She's like… she's like this damned chameleon. She smiles at me but she won't let me in. One moment she's lying on my bed, in my sweatshirt, reading the newspapers… and I get a sense of her. Then I meet her at her house after a session at the firing range, her breath is fogging up the picture window, and she's brooding…she's totally different. "

"Quit trying to figure her out, Alan." Doug commented. "You'll wreck everything if you try to pry apart what makes her tick. I told you. Just leave it alone."

"I just want to know who she is, what she thinks, how she feels…" I said.

"Oh, please." Doug said. "You want control."

"No, I don't."

"I don't believe you. And neither would Kelly." Doug said. "Would you just stop being such a wimp? This sensitive artist thing is going to kill both of you. You should be thrilled. You've gotten what you wished for…"

"What?"

"A woman who's got baggage that matches yours." Doug chuckled, but quickly turned it into a cough when he realized I wasn't laughing.

"Just because you've found yourself the idyllic relationship doesn't mean everyone else's problems are simple." I said with some heat.

Doug ignored the barb and kept driving. "Just cool it. A woman likes to be invited, not invaded. She's not going anywhere. You've got lots of time to get to know each other."

"Really?" I shook my head. "Sometimes I wonder… she's away for days and she never calls. She comes home and she's got bruises on her ribs or wounds on her arms… I think: how close did she come to getting seriously hurt this time?"

Doug pressed his lips together in terse recognition. "And the limited explanations don't help either. Kris skins her leg jumping out of a dumpster, gets the flu crawling through a concrete pipe, sprains her ankle jumping from a two-storey building…"

"At least Kris lets you take care of her." I said shortly. "I'm beginning to feel like a glorified dildo and first-aid kit."

He looked at me quietly and turned into the next exit.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Benny's." he replied. "I'd better put a cue and a beer in your hands before you go off half-cocked and do something you'll regret."

Doug Lansing was part-owner of Benny's, one of the buzzy, unpretentious bars in West Hollywood. By day it was typical California restaurant: sharp, white, clean, flashes of primary color, pale wood floors, lots of light, and long rather than high. Preppie college students, the occasional has-been, and one or two nihilistic TV luminaries deigned to grace Benny's at lunch, eating off three-toned beige stoneware plates.

By night, Benny's was filled with undying, sun-kissed silver-screen denizens. Benny and Doug kept the transition between light and darkness smooth, and no matter what time it was, they made sure that there was always enough alcohol to wash an elephant.

In the back room they had a pool table. Many an actor's career had been made or broken in the course of discussions over that green felt. Benny generally stuck to keeping things going in the kitchen and the bar. Doug's easy charm, his talent for mixing drinks, and utter disinterest with everything in Hollywoodland, made him the ideal host at the back room. His skills as a pool shark didn't hurt either.

I took a swig from the bottle of beer Doug had given me, and watched as he sent the cue ball racing into the perfect triangle of colored balls, scattering them on the table and sinking the 12-ball.

"This is your idea of comfort, beating the crap out of me?" I asked, a little tipsy from the two other beers I had.

"I've only won three games." he said sarcastically, taking aim at the 15-ball that was positioned near a side pocket. "You saying I have to let you win now?"

"It would be nice to start winning at something." I replied. "Hey Doug, does Kris ever tell you about their cases?"

"Nope." he said, striking the cue ball a little too far to the left. Doug stood back and let me pick out a solid ball. "Kris and I don't talk shop. It's easier that way. She never asks about the gossip at the bar, and I don't ask about any sordid crimes. If work does crop up, we just discuss it in general: where they have to go, what it was about, if she has to testify… that sort of thing."

"So what do you talk about?"

"Food." Doug laughed. "Music, old movies, family, basketball, each other… I don't know, we never seem to run out of things to say to each other. "

"Good for you."

"Aw, come off it. You can't seriously believe that Kelly is only interested in fucking you."

I paused, taking careful aim so that the cue ball would hit the rail and nudge the 5-ball into the corner pocket.

"Well," Doug asked, "isn't that what you're saying?"

I sank the 5 and surveyed the table. "I don't know what I'm saying. Sometimes I look at her, and my chest feels tight. I know this sounds crazy, but I watch her sprawled on my bed stuffing handfuls of this popcorn-potato-chip mixture she likes to eat out of a plastic bag… and then she notices I'm staring at her and she smiles…"

"And you have to get out more often…" Doug said, rolling his eyes.

I smirked. "Oh right, this from the man who says that he wakes up everyday loving Kris Munroe."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose in embarrassment. "Cheesy, I know, but hey, at least I said it. Have you told her?"

"Naturally."

"In detail?"

"In great detail." I repeated.

"In too much detail? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

I gave him a withering look. "It's so goddamned obvious. I mean, what do I have to do? Rip my clothes off every time I see her?"

"Not pillow-talk you moron," Doug said, "I meant have you told her or made her feel that you love her when you're not in bed?"

I gave him a look like razor across lip. "Exactly how big of an asshole do you think I am? Of course, I tell her I love her. She just never says anything back."

"Well, maybe Kelly's not as wordy as you are. That doesn't mean she's toying with you."

I closed my eyes in frustration. "It's not that. I could take it if she were just naturally quiet. She claims I don't understand her and that I should get to know her better, and then she clams up every time I ask her about something important."

Doug looked thoughtful as he sank two more striped balls.

I leaned against the cue and continued to rant. "I know you think I'm paranoid and sentimental… but it's like she can get out of bed, go out into the world, and not look back."

"Other people would call that discipline." Doug observed.

"But to act as if nothing happened?"

Doug missed his shot and I leaned over the table to reach the cue ball and tap it toward the 1-ball. He took out another bottle of beer and opened it with a satisfying pop. Pulling up a bar stool, he watched as I pocketed the ball and prepared for another shot.

Doug grabbed a stool and lit a cigarette. He exhaled slowly and turned to face me. "You don't have a patent on loneliness, Alan. You're not the only one who's paranoid. Maybe this is all the intimacy she can handle right now."

I sighed and flubbed the shot. "On an intellectual level, I know that. I just wished I knew, really knew for sure, that I just wasn't just another guy."

He shook his head. "If you were just another fling, why would she have to protect herself?"

I had decided to take my students to the LA County Museum of Art on Miracle Mile, where several Vermeers were on exhibit. The paintings were on loan from the Louvre, a gift from the French for the duration of the fourth of July festivities.

Perhaps it was the coming three-day weekend that made my class of fine arts undergrads more rowdy and asinine than usual. Even the brighter students seemed to be bouncing off the walls, and my head was beginning to ache.

After discussing Vermeer's technique half-heartedly, I told them to spend the next hour looking for two paintings with similar subjects but differing styles. A three page paper would be due after the weekend comparing the two paintings. There were groans all around.

"What's more, ladies and gentlemen," I added, "One of those paintings must be a Vermeer."

The class broke up into groups of twos and threes, leaving the gallery no doubt to look for more "exciting" works. The spacious room was suddenly filled with a blissful silence. The building's air-conditioning was working full time, the corridors and other galleries brought only diffused echoes of the outside world, and the lighting was perfect.

I sighed as I sank to the bench in the center of the gallery. I found myself in front of Vermeer's painting of a girl at her music lesson. It had been executed at the height of the artist's prowess.

The Dutch artist was one of the few masters who had truly harnessed the power of light. Every color, everything that could be seen, all that we labeled "reality" was nothing but what the poet Goethe called "the deeds of light." Light was nature's paintbrush and Vermeer had been obsessed with capturing the same effect.

The light gave shape to the furniture, dimension to the floor, texture to the cloth on the divan… and at the same time the light dissolved them in reflections of themselves. Vermeer handled the light so subtly that he seemed to capture split-seconds of eternity.

There was such a clarity to his paintings. A tranquility and a concentration that was hard to verbalize. The light was an unerring record, compelling in its intensity and stillness. Everything seemed tangible, reachable, quantifiable. The ordinary moments of life forever immortalized in a painting that approximated the quality of a modern movie still.

But this painting, the Music Lesson, was even more intriguing than his other work. Vermeer's canvasses had such a lens-like precision, such photographic intensity, that it made you feel like a voyeur. As if you were intruding, a part of their lives, but still separate… a visitor, perhaps… or an outsider.

The striking sense of intimacy, its beautiful simplicity, its peace… these had drawn many people into the painting. But it was the ambiguity between the man and woman that mesmerized me now. The simple brush strokes and soothing colors illuminating an intricate web of feelings and fears, of unseen deceits and uncommunicated desires.

The perfectly rendered window and the horizontal beams of the roof provided an assuring symmetry. The diagonal pattern of the marble tiles on the floor drew my eyes deeper into the picture. The woman playing the clavecin had her back to me. At first it seemed as if the only way to gauge the relationship between the man and woman was through her body language and the distance between them.

Yet her face was reflected in the mirror above her. The real and reflected heads were not consistent. The mirror shows her turning to the man, as if to indicate assent or approval. The real head seemed to be looking down at the clavecin's keys, as if to indicate preoccupation or rejection.

Some scholars theorized that the man with the stick was not actually a teacher marking time, but the woman's lover who had just come from the street. The couple stood in front of me, in an almost perverse frozen perfection. Vermeer had meant to capture the viewer in perpetual suspense, thinking that at any moment the woman would laugh, or play, or move towards the man, or leave him.

"That's always frightened me," a familiar female voice said from behind me, "the way he froze people like that. Like something out of the Twilight Zone."

"That's an interesting idea." I replied coolly. "But what's a Twilight Zone but another person's reality? A different reality. After all, reality is the name we give to the way we interpret the world."

She moved to sit beside me, her white linen suit seemed out of place, too elegant for the museum. Too good for just me. She nodded towards the Music Lesson. "Really, professor. This is his reality? All this detail and… exactness?"

"This was the Renaissance, everyone believed in a tangible world, a world that could be explained."

"No wonder you like his work so much." she said, flashing her perfect white teeth like scintillating knives. "He thinks like you."

I shook my head. "I enjoy his work because it's real to me. I think that's what's important about art. That it's real to someone, that it matters…that it speaks to someone. It isn't… an imitation of life."

"Like our marriage was?" she said, seasoning her smile with a dry laugh. Each "ha" seemed punctuated, cut short. I always hated the way she laughed.

"Exactly like our marriage." I said quietly.

Reality mirrored art. The tranquil interiors both charged with moods. Every action had meaning, every object could be symbolic.

I sighed. "Sylvia. What do you want now?"

"Oh Alan, we're both adults now," she replied, "let's be civil."

"You started it."

"I always had to start it," she said.

"I'm too tired of talking to you every month to be civil." I responded. "Let's just dispense with the charade, shall we? Why are you here? How did you find me?"

"I don't have to be a so-called detective to find you," she said with a smile. She looked like a benevolent crocodile. "I also don't have to be sleeping with you to know what attracts you."

"Like this exhibit…" she continued, "so typical of you, Alan. You're so predictable. That's why your painting's don't sell."

"What are you doing here?" I asked, seething.

"I'm slumming. Wondering when my starving artiste, soon-to-be ex-husband will sign the papers that will make me a free woman."

"You mean you're doing charity work now?" I asked, wishing I had drunk martinis instead of beers so that I could produce the perfect dryness. "Since when did you start giving it away for free?"

"At least I don't charge as much as that slut of a PI you're dating." Sylvia spat. "Give me a break. A female PI? We all know what sort of privates she investigates."

"You know, Sylvia, you've given such great head all your life, it's no wonder you've got nothing in yours."

She backhanded me. It didn't hurt much, but I did end up wishing that Donald hadn't set such a large diamond into her wedding ring. I grabbed her wrists and held them down on her lap. To anyone else, we would seem a tender couple, talking amongst the paintings.

"What do you want, Sylvia?" I asked through gritted teeth. She seemed momentarily frightened and the piteous look she gave me almost made me let go. Then her eyes took on the glint of steel they always had when we fought.

"You haven't signed the papers."

"Of course I have." I smiled. "After all, you're much too good for me. I wouldn't want to keep you from your paying customers."

"If you've signed the papers then they're somewhere in your filthy apartment." She said shortly. "Now get your hands off me before I accuse you of assault."

"Me? Assault you? You're the one who backhanded me, dah-ling." I said, imitating her accent perfectly. "Why not get big bad Donald Dah-ling, your accountant from hell, to try and beat the crap out of me? Isn't he going to protect his property? I'm sure he pays well enough for your services. Your fabulous future-in-laws and his trust fund would see to that. You are a costly, if dubious, trinket."

If I hadn't kept my grip on her hands my other cheek would have been stinging too.

"Take your hands off me."

"Only if you promise to leave." I said, looking her in the eye and making sure she understood that there would be no compromise, no negotiation on this score.

She laughed. "You don't take anyone's promises, Alan. Least of all mine."

I smiled and loosened my grip. She rubbed her wrists and looked at me, my brown eyes met her gray ones. Eye to eye, head to head, we assessed each other. I heard my students begin to return. It was close to the designated assembly time.

She smiled. "I trust we won't be continuing this conversation?"

"Not if you stay on your side of the tracks." I sneered.

"Excellent." Sylvia said, twirling on her heel. "Have that cunt you sleep with hunt up the papers. That's what she does, isn't it? I expect them to be at my lawyer's by Friday."

There's always a woman. In every story, every life, there was always a woman.

I thought I knew them, understood them. The way they talked without really saying anything definite. I thought I was fluent with the syntax of their deceit. Sylvia certainly was.

We had met in high school, she sat beside Sabrina in Algebra. Sylvia Carson was pure meltdown. She came from a long line of steel money and was one of the wealthiest scions in the state. Sylvia's trim body in her white cardigan inspired ten or twenty thousand youthful erections. I was convinced that in her arms I would find the purpose of my entire existence.

Sabrina, of course, not being what you could call conventionally-beautiful in high school hated her guts. Oh, not in a petty, envious way but on purely moral standards. Even then Sylvia had no concept of remorse. She would date whoever she wanted, sleep with whoever she wanted, and use whoever she wanted.

"Why you guys would want her oohing and ahhing about everything you do is beyond me." Sabrina used to snort.

I never did make a habit of taking her advice. There were other girls, sweeter girls, more sensible and level-headed, definitely smarter girls. But as every horny adolescent knows, you can't fuck a brain.

When Sylvia and I hooked up together in senior year, I shared the surprise of the entire graduating class. True, I wasn't hard to look at, but no one would've ever mistaken me for a linebacker. Then again, I wasn't the bongo-playing type either. I was one of those kids you always forgot was around. Sort of middling in every way. I wasn't even the best student in my art class. Mostly I drifted in and out of my classes, trying not to embarrass myself too much. After school Sabrina and I would take off, neither of us wanted to get home till after both of our families were done having dinner. We played chess, we played poker. We watched movies. We talked about doing something with our lives that would "make a difference." The two of us were horribly square.

When other guys started paying attention to Sabrina, somehow discovering as young men do, that she was blooming into a nubile young woman, I kept a wary eye on them. I was jealous of the time my only confidante spent with those bums. They probably thought she was some bleeding heart liberal, but were willing to put up with any nonsense just to get in her pants.

Then she went out with Louis McClelland, cool cat, prom king, certainly destined for the Rose Bowl. Louis had a reputation for not understanding the word "no". When he misunderstood Sabrina's very definite cries in the back seat of his Chevy I threw my one-hundred-and-twenty pounds of manliness on him and bashed his head in his locker several times before someone pulled me off.

I was lucky. I had the element of surprise. I also won myself a reputation that would have rivaled any romantic hero's. The biggest stroke of luck however, was that I had won Sylvia Carson's respect.

I treated her like a goddess, and as a proper supplicant, was torn between defiling her and deifying her. This combination of lust and shame overlaid by my hapless servitude must have turned her on. I could tell her interesting things, why shadows fell the way they did, what a blue moon really was…

She taught me to dance, to sing, to fit in with everyone else. I lost my virginity to her on a spring night when the cherry trees were in bloom. We must have been in love. It seems so long ago, but I think we may have loved each other once. After all, we did get married.

"Alan, have you been drinking?" a familiar voice asked.

Sabrina Duncan stood outside the little office beside the art room the high school had so kindly furnished for me. A fat dossier was tucked under her arm.

"What makes you think I've been drinking?"

"Well, you usually say 'Hi' when you see someone in the hallway instead of walking right by them."

"Sorry. Just preoccupied."

I unlocked the door and allowed her to precede me. She made it a point to come close enough to smell me and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"You have been drinking!"

I nodded tiredly. I removed some of my student's work from the only other chair in the room, and motioned her to sit down. I put the pile beside another stack of artwork I'd been meaning to grade. Collapsing into my chair, I placed my duffel bag on the floor and stared at her.

"What brings you here?"

"I have to take art lessons." Sabrina replied. "And I heard Mr. Pierson was the sexiest teacher on the planet."

She waved the topic off and glared at me. "More importantly, what in the world were you thinking? You can't go to class drunk!"

"I am not drunk." I attested. There wasn't even a trace of a slur in my voice. I touched my nose with my eyes closed. "I only had three beers. One an hour, with some really greasy fries and some prime rib. I'm digesting everything perfectly. There's no need to worry."

"I think there is," she said softly.

"Oh come on, Bri." I complained. "You have more than one drink a day."

"Yes, I do." She agreed. "But always by choice, never out of need."

Sabrina's eyes pierced through the cloud of annoyance that had formed around me since I left home. "It's not the drinking per se that I'm worried about. It's the reason you're drinking."

"Look," she continued, "I know it's none of my business, but if you and Kelly are having problems—"

I gave a hoarse laugh. "How are you so sure that something's wrong between me and Kelly?"

"I've known both of you too long to miss the signs," she replied. "Besides, you only ever start drinking this early when it's about a girl."

"There's always a woman." I said, repeating my former thoughts.

Sabrina nodded. "There always seems to be when it comes to you."

I tapped my nose pensively. "You know me too well."

"Well, I haven't called the cops yet." Sabrina smiled, and offered me a breath mint. "I haven't had lunch yet. Care to escort me to the cafeteria?"

I gave her a look of intense horror. "You brave, brave girl."

"Is the food all that bad?" Sabrina asked.

"No," I replied, "but I don't think you want to subject yourself to teenage pick-up lines."

She pursed her lips and gave me a rueful smile.

"I'm serious," I continued, imitating one of my students. "Hey baby, you wanna see the back seat of my car?"

She rolled her eyes and changed the subject. "I'll try not to retch. We'll grab a sandwich and a soda—"

"We?"

"Yeah. You can watch me eat."

"Oh, joy." I said, clasping my hands to my chest.

"And then while you're preparing for your next class, I'll do you a favor and straighten up your room." Sabrina said, looking every inch like her mother as her nose crinkled up in disdain at the dust and disarray around her. "I'm surprised Kelly hasn't taken a rag and some Lysol to this place. It's filthy."

I shrugged. "She's never been here."

Sabrina looked at me curiously. "Never?"

"Never." I repeated. "She's been too busy."

"Ah," she said knowingly.

Before I could ask her what she meant, the din of four hundred high school students drowned out all thought. I pushed the swinging doors of the cafeteria open, and some heads — student and faculty — followed Sabrina as she got a turkey sandwich and a Dr. Pepper.

Back at my cubicle, she took genteel bites out of her sandwich and stifled a yawn as I tilted my chair back and meditated on the nondescript beige of the ceiling. "Why're you here again?"

"I have to pass myself off as an art teacher by tomorrow. Something nasty is going down at this prep school in Palo Alto and we've been hired by the board of directors to solve their…problems."

I grunted to signify polite interest. I wished Kelly could tell me these things.

"What is that melodramatic snorting supposed to mean?" Sabrina asked.

I had to laugh. I stopped looking at the ceiling and pulled open my desk drawer. "It means I have something for you."

"Really?" Sabrina asked, leaning over the desk and peeping into the drawer. "What? That horrible tie? I think it's already dead Alan, but I could shoot it for you just to make sure."

"Hey, I happen to think it's me!" I said, putting on the paisley monstrosity.

"Alan Pierson, if that's you, you need years of serious therapy."

I fished out a piece of oslo paper triumphantly. "Aha, here we go. I've been meaning to give this to you. I found it in my old sketchpad when I was sorting the junk to take here and the junk to leave in New York."

Sabrina took the letter-sized paper and her eyes widened and gleamed. Running her fingers over the drawing silently, she shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I'll never get used to how talented you are." Sabrina said, the sincerity in her voice making my ego sing. "Look at this. It's like a photo. How in the world do you do that?"

"It's nothing." I said sheepishly. "It's all in the shadows. What's there and what's not."

Sabrina kept shaking her head. She held the charcoal sketch up to the light. In it a young Sabrina, her shoulder-length hair strewn in every direction, her face taut with concentration and ambition, looked out from the page. I had drawn her on top of her horse in that last summer before she moved away. The cross-country show-jumping course had always been her event, and she had made it a point to train for it every year.

"Whatever happened to Beauty?" I asked.

"Mother sold him when I married Bill." Sabrina replied softly. "She wasn't too thrilled about having two cops in the family. I guess she always thought he was a bad influence."

"For once, your mother was right." I said, taking out an empty plastic tube for the sketch and offering it to her.

"Hey," Sabrina warned, raising her hand to stop any further discussion, "clean your own kitchen before you meddle with mine, Mister."

"Where did you dig up that old chestnut?" I asked.

"Oh no," she said. "We are not going to change the subject."

"Moi? Change the subject?"

"Please, you're as complex as a plastic cup." Sabrina said, starting to arrange the piles of papers on my desk.

"I'd have to second that." Doug said, suddenly appearing at the door.

"Don't you ever knock?" I asked in mock-exasperation.

"No." Doug replied. "Sabrina, you should have seen him at his Figure Drawing class at UCLA this morning. They were doing nudes."

Sabrina smiled at him in undisguised curiosity.

"He was like Nixon preaching honesty. It was all very Freudian." Doug laughed. "You should have a shirt that says: 'take my advice, I'm not using it'."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said, glaring at him. I had probably been too engrossed this morning to notice that he was still hanging around. I sighed. Doug made himself comfortable on my desk and began to regale Sabrina with the secret screams of my unconscious.

"He said: 'Don't judge, just draw' and 'Weak drawing is often the result of not looking properly at the subject'."

His hearty laughter had mellowed into a smile you could mine for irony. "And here's my favorite… 'Don't be so frustrated. Just keep looking and keep drawing.' You had a gorgeous model, by the way, Alan. Where'd you find her? Should Kelly be jealous?"

I groaned. "Did you have a reason for coming down here?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Doug grinned. "I have an idea about how you can pay for all that food for the exhibit next week. I've talked to Benny, and we've decided that you can design our logo."

"You've already got one." I observed.

"It stinks." he said matter-of-factly. "It looks like something out of a bad UFO hoax, with matching little green men."

I shrugged, rubbing my tired eyes.

"Look, just do something tasteful but modern. It'll be on the neon sign outside and on the napkins and menus." Doug said. "You'll cut down the original catering quotation by 40%."

I grinned. "Now that is the best news I've heard all day."

"Nope." Doug replied. "The best news you've heard all day is that I'm determined to get you out of this funk. You're going to get yourself spiffed up, and we're going to go out on the town."

"I don't know…"

"Come on. We'll pick up some Cuban cigars and live it up." Doug coaxed. "It'll be like a moving frat party."

I sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Well… let's go." Doug said expectantly.

"Uh, sorry to put a damper on your plans, Doug." Bri piped up. "But Alan needs to give me some art lessons."

Doug gasped. "I knew it! Alan, you two-timing swine!"

Sabrina looked at Doug and then shifted her gaze to me.

"Old joke." I explained.

"That's what he always said he and his girlfriends were doing." Doug said helpfully.

"Ah." Sabrina nodded in understanding.

"Anyway, you can drop Alan off at Benny's can't you? In return for the lessons?" Doug asked.

"Yeah, sure."

"Great, I'll see you later." Doug said, giving Bri a peck on the cheek. "And Alan…"

"What?"

"Do us all a favor. Burn that damned tie."

Sabrina finished organizing my papers and turned to a pile of sketches and canvasses she had left on the floor and gingerly placed them on the shelf behind my desk.

"He's quite a guy." she said, nodding at the door Doug had just passed through.

"Yeah." I replied. "He's a character, alright. He's always been… insistent. You just had to have fun. Class clown, good friend. That's basically what everyone had to say about him in college. But he has a serious side too, he just doesn't show it very often."

"He and Kris make a good couple." Sabrina observed.

I nodded. "Doug needs some stability. He's been burned pretty badly. Dating was such a holocaust for him. You know the crowd he runs with… they're too fast, too superficial. He likes to have fun, but he needs to have some meaning in his life."

"Don't we all?" Sabrina replied.

Our eyes met, and I hurriedly placed an empty paper in front of her. I took a tech pen from my pencil caddy and handed it to her. She looked at me in confusion.

"A pen?" she asked.

"You doodle all the time when you're talking on the phone." I explained. "Let's start from there."

"Can't I just lecture on Art History, great painters, form, color, how each artist puts himself in his paintings, how they reflect mood and personality… you know?"

"No, you cannot bullshit your way through it. You have to know how to draw too… even the basics will do." I explained. "How can you teach art if you have no idea what you're talking about?"

I placed my hand in front of her, palm up. "Draw my hand."

She groaned a little, complaining that she wasn't any good at this, but proceeded to sketch the whorls of my fingers. I watched as my hand took a two dimensional shape.

"Okay." I directed. "Now you have to shade it. Highlights at ten o'clock and shadows at four."

The lesson went slowly, not because Sabrina wasn't skilled or attentive, but because she was such a perfectionist. Soon several sheaves of paper with my hand were strewn on my desk.

"Okay, stop for a little while." I said.

"I haven't got it yet." Sabrina replied. "It's okay. I'm not tired."

"Yeah, but I am." I shook my hand this way and that to wake up the nerves in my wrist and restore blood flow.

Sabrina gave me a sheepish grin. "Hey, I can't help it. Besides, you have lots of rough drafts… like these."

Sabrina took out a weathered blue sketchpad. I pressed my lips together as she flipped through it. Dozens of unfinished Kellys stared up at me. Some pages only had her eyes or the tips of her fingers. The momentary tenseness in the delicate line of her jaw, the intricate details and empty spaces of her eyes, the concentration that radiated from her like the rays of a sun, the shyness and the longing… the memories that stayed with me for days, all were captured in pristine condition. The sketches were eerie and immediate even to their artist.

"You should really finish these." Sabrina said softly. "She'd love them."

I shrugged.

"So, what's the score?" She asked, closing the sketchpad.

I held my wrist, twisting it in several directions. A distinct snapping noise came from my ministrations, and it comforted me. "Huh?"

"I said, what's the score?" she repeated. "I know you. Both of you argue to win."

"It's not a contest, Sabrina."

"Isn't it?" She asked softly. "What's the problem?"

"Doug thinks I'm the problem."

"What do you think?"

I remained silent, thinking how tedious it all was, how banal my complaints would seem to her. Sabrina sat there, waiting for me to talk, not budging a hair till I said something.

"It…bothers me…that she's skittish." I finished.

Sabrina nodded. "You're not exactly making it easier for her, Alan."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that ever since Sylvia…" she made quick gestures of indecision in the air. "You've been clingy. "

"I don't understand." I said.

"Oh Alan, lie to me, but not to yourself." Sabrina said. "You drive people away. You ask too much of them, too soon. Don't make the same mistake."

"I'm trying not to." I reached out to grab both sides of the desk. My voice had risen slightly, and I took a deep breath to tamp down the frustration. "I'm trying not to make the same mistakes. That's the entire point."

"But you've been trying too hard. You're strangling her." Sabrina whispered, placing a comforting hand on mine. "Don't live your life thinking that every woman is going to disappoint you the way Sylvia did."

I arched my eyebrow a notch. "Look who's talking."

Sabrina removed her hand abruptly, and I was about to apologize when she spoke again. "I guess I needed to hear that."

"Maybe we both did." I amended. I took the sketchpad and opened it, searching for the drawing I had begun this morning. Tracing the line of the tricep that had widened into a smudge, I felt bereft and melancholy.

"When did it get so complicated, Alan?" Bri whispered, uncannily echoing my thoughts. "Was it because nobody told us that marriages could fail?"

I shook my head. My parents marriage had been an incomplete thought. Just a succession of nights staring out at each other through markedly different lives and beliefs. It was almost merciful when my father was killed in Vietnam. I think my mother took her first breath when she heard about it. I had resolved that my marriage would be different. That I wouldn't let it fail.

"I hate failure." Bri said, again thinking along the same path. "I always have. I've always driven myself to be the best. Now what has it gotten me? Of all the things to fail at, marriage must be the most painful and the most humiliating."

I sighed. The movies of the 50s had given us an impossible ideal to live up to in the turmoil of the 60s. No one had told us that there was a fine line between "to have and to hold" and "to have to hold." None of us ever stood a chance, but Bri had managed in the aftermath. She always had, and she always would. It was the one unchanging thing, the constant… Sabrina's dependability and quiet strength. At least I had always thought so, now I wasn't so sure.

"Are you and Bill okay?" I asked. "Really?"

She began to nod her head, to banish my worries… but she stopped and sighed instead. "Sometimes it's easy to forget, isn't it? But other days… once I look around and everything reminds me of him. Once Bosley was wearing Bill's brand of cologne, and I felt…"

"It haunts you." I agreed. "She haunts me too."

"Sylvia?"

I shook my head. "Kelly."

"You're in love with her." Sabrina stated.

"I know."

"Does she?" asked Bri.

"Of course." I said, a little cranky. "Why do you and Doug always ask the same things?"

She ignored the question and posed one of her own. "Does she know why you're being so…"

"Paranoid? Annoying?"

"Whiny," she finished. "Did you tell her about Sylvia?"

I had been pinned down and I knew I had to answer honestly or be silent. I chose the latter, not even daring to look Bri in the eye.

"You should." she said simply. "You should tell her everything."

"I can't." I said, amazed at how quiet the whole world had become. "I wouldn't know how or where to begin."

"Tell her anyway." Bri replied. "If you don't, you'll walk around with an emotional erection for the rest of your life."

Apparently, Doug's idea of living it up translated into club-hopping till the sun came out. We must have had every shooter ever known to man. Zombies, Kamikazes, Sex on the Beach, Blowjobs… you name it. When we had finally crashed at Benny's at four in the morning, I felt stupid and knowing at the same time, just as I had in college. Then I threw up, and just felt stupid.

As usual, we had ogled girls and tried to outshoot each other at pool in between drinks. For someone who ran a bar, Doug had a relatively low tolerance for alcohol… relative to me that is. He had lost about a hundred dollars to me in 8-ball and was now passed out on the only couch in the back room of Benny's.

"If he pukes on the leather, he's going to have to buy the exact same couch." Benny said. "I like that thing. Lots of close encounters… you know what I mean?"

I nodded and vomited on his Italian loafers.

I wondered, as I rode a cab home, if Doug had hustled me. Doug had always been the better pool player. It had taken me a while to realize that he had also always been the better friend. I wondered if he had thrown the games. I wondered if I was as self-absorbed as Bri and Doug said I was.

I sighed and paid the cabbie. Stretching my arms to embrace the world, I tilted my head back as I stood in front of my apartment building. The buzz of alcohol was in the back of my teeth and the cool tones of daylight had begun to diffuse evenly through the world. It looked as though sudden rain had cleansed the air and left raindrops gleaming in the cracks and crevices of the building's brick facade.

I wanted to draw the flutter of each curtain, to paint the way each pane of broken glass skewed the reflection of the clouding sky, the dried leaves sitting precariously on the window sills, the intricate patterns of condensation on the glass.

I wanted to draw the light. I wanted to be the light: shining into everything, passing through barriers or being reflected off them, illuminating the waking world. Giving dimension, structure, peace in the knowledge that the world was solid, real, and explainable.

I lurched up the stairs to my apartment, and fumbled with the key at the doorway. The sight of Kelly's prone form on my couch made me stop in my tracks, dropping my duffel bag to the floor with an ominous thump.

Ever the light sleeper she bolted upright at the sound, ready to face any intruding presence at the door and defend my stock of linseed oil and magic markers.

"I was beginning to worry." Kelly chided me softly, apparently too sleepy to vent the worry she claimed she was feeling. "Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't know you'd be here."

"Didn't Sabrina drop by the school yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Well, didn't she tell you we were leaving today? We had eighteen hours to get into character."

"Something like that." I drawled.

Strange, subtle emotions flickered over Kelly's face that I couldn't read. I felt the strain of my own secret hinges and leaned toward her. Kelly stared back at me, as if memorizing my face, and then wrenched her gaze away.

"I thought something might have happened." she said, her face reddening, her mouth an embarrassed grimace. This wasn't easy for her to say. She waved an arm awkwardly at her own words, wary of my intimacy. The sharp images of my sketches, those portraits of Kelly that looked nothing and everything like her, came flashing into my mind.

I closed my eyes and leaned on the door's frame, the facets of Kelly were spinning and strobing in my head. I felt her cool arms encircle me and guide me into the living room, her leg kicked the door shut behind us. I lay down on the couch, flat on my stomach and cursed myself for going out when I could have spent time with her.

But then I felt glad, glad that I had kept her up. Glad that I had kept her wondering. I realized that I was wishing she would get angry. Suspicious and jealous, shrill and demanding, anything but silent. Anything but indifferent.

I heard her puttering around the bathroom and the kitchen, possibly looking for something to sober me up. I made an effort to sit up and managed to find a take-out menu and the worn out nub of a number two pencil. There was an idea in my head like too many cups of coffee.

I called her name. I must have sounded plaintive enough or desperate enough, because she appeared at my shoulder almost instantly. I wanted to whisper softly into her ear, but the alcohol slurred the meaning.

"What?" she asked, coming closer to me.

"Draw my hand." I repeated. Draw my hand, Kelly. Put on paper what you can't put in words. Draw my hand.

"Draw my hand." I said again.

Kelly tilted her head, as if pausing to assess whether this was part of a drunken game or not. I repeated the request as sincerely as I could, trying to impress its importance with every syllable.

Slowly, she took the pencil. It ranged across the paper like a child's first steps: hesitant, then resolute, then hesitant again. At first I couldn't understand what she was doing, but then I saw the intersections and curves of the lines of my palm. Kelly was engrossed in an odd, chaotic pattern of crosshatching when I leaned my head on her shoulder. The last thing I remembered seeing was the outline of my hand, and the facelessness of my fingers.

It was noon. The take-out menu lay on the coffee table, and my hand's twin bore a caption: directions to take two glasses of tomato juice and a "real" breakfast written out in her precise handwriting. There was no indication of when she would be coming back, only an admonition to take better care of myself and the mysteries of her signature.

She was gone. Again.

I sighed and studied my hand on the menu, the effect of the red Chinese characters signifying sweet and sour pork and roast pigeon cropping up against the horizon of my palm. The long-ridged bones that fanned from my wrist were still faceless, no shadows or lines hinted at sadness, anger, subdued joy, or the possibility of laughter. Only the intersections remained, the life line and love line in a fierce battle for territory. Their shadows were intense, and the Chinese characters brooded in their wake.

I wondered what it all meant.

There was nothing left for me in New York after Sylvia left. Everything had changed. It was as if someone had come into my life and rearranged everything so that nothing was comfortable. Nothing was snug.

I was left standing in an apartment. The eviscerated space would laugh at me, mock me. My life had changed. I could not move forward, I certainly couldn't go back, so I had to turn aside.

Although I had lived on the East Coast my entire life, nothing would ever be the same here. My father was dead, my mother remarried and living in St. Louis. Sylvia was prowling the city. I decided to get as far away from all that pain as possible.

I moved to LA.

If New York was the big apple, then LA was the big nipple. The LA most people thought existed: Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the Sunset Strip; it was all an illusion. People think of soaring incomes, extravagant architecture, and chauffeur-driven poodle trips to the pet salon.

There is LA, the place. And there is LA, the worldwide symbol for movie-money wealth. Contrary to popular belief, the trees did not drip with money and the streets were not paved with gold. Sure, the raw beauty of the girls in Hollywood overpowered everything else and made you want to possess them… at least until avarice clouded their eyes.

The truth was that most people out here were all front and no back, like the sets and indifferent stage hand had painted. I suppose most Angelenos are used to it. Doug certainly was. I shacked up with him till I could earn enough money to get my own digs.

His apartment was south of city hall and west of Rodeo Drive. A hop, skip, and a jump away from ICM, CAA, and William Morris. The Big Three, the reps for anybody who was anybody. I knew this because Doug had gotten me a date with some air-headed starlet who had pontoons for breasts. I met her at one of the agencies, I forgot which, and we used her car.

That was the first and last date I went on with anyone remotely connected with show business. The sad thing was that to Doug, she was the only person who was even slightly interesting to talk to. At the time we were an oddity: two red-blooded, flamingly heterosexual men caught in the sexual revolution with standards. Not that they were even all that high. You couldn't fuck a brain, but you couldn't love a pile of silicone and plastic hooked on crack either.

I got a job with the LA Times through Doug's connections. By day I would draw editorial cartoons, by night I would help tend bar at Benny's. On weekends I'd get restless, I'd usually be out on the streets, looking for something to draw.

Hollywood and Vine, Venice Beach, they all seemed to be a mecca for subjects but I got tired of drawing eccentrics, posers, and Jim Morrison acolytes. I spent more and more time at the courthouses.

The only thing that can beat a courthouse for human drama is a hospital, and since I could hardly loiter around a hospital I spent most of my time drawing people at court. Faces bowed by grief, hands obsessed with revenge, eyelids closed in prayer for restitution and justice… I drew them all.

It was while I was preying on these unknowing people that I happened to take my sketchpad and pencils to a massive stock-fraud case. The woman on the witness stand captured my attention.

Pearls caressed her slender throat. Her back was straight, her face was turned toward the lawyers. Her hands were on her lap, her fingers holding conference with their brethren. Her legs were crossed at her silky knees but not at a provocative angle. She looked alert, sleek in her black suit, like a panther waiting to spring.

I was drawn to her, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. It was synchronicity itself that Sabrina was not only in the courtroom but would have no trouble introducing us.

I took the hand she proffered after introducing herself as Kelly Garret. Her grip was strong and I found myself spitted by her eyes. Sylvia had eyes that were two soft and rounded, now concealing, now revealing. I couldn't trust eyes like that. But Kelly's were deep and dark, like a thundercloud. You could be held without desire or despair for all eternity in eyes like that.

We stood there for a moment, in an almost adolescent awkwardness. I tried to make polite social noises, but my palms were sweating and I was sure everyone could see the electrons writhing between us.

Sabrina and the woman named Kris had, in the infinite wisdom all women possessed, maneuvered us into a small diner near the courthouse.

In the sunlight filtering through the diner, I could see her sherry-colored lips, hair tinted by the sun and wind, her face delicate and fine-boned, her breath smoking the window on this cold spring morning.

Conversation came surprisingly easy after the first few obvious questions about jobs and interests. She liked to dance, I liked trying to dance. She loved Warhol and Edward Hopper, I wanted my paintings hanging beside theirs. She loved to cook, I loved to eat. We both loved Audrey Hepburn (although for totally different reasons), Zinfandel, and listening to the LA philharmonic or a big jazz band. Neither of us could believe that I still didn't have a car.

Talking with her was like being in an open convertible on a freeway; autobiographical sentences swerved and veered off. We never reached the center of anything, but it was an enjoyable ride.

We must have talked for an eternity. I don't think either of us had talked to anyone in a long time, not anyone of much sensibility, anyway. We liked to talk to each other so much that we managed to beat the awkwardness.

"Now that you're convinced that I'm not some crazy…" I had said, trying to phrase the question properly. She was smiling. Sabrina and Kris had long since gone and the moon was high in the sky.

"I've been convinced?" she asked, one eyebrow elegantly creasing into an arch.

"Well, if it'll take a little more time, how about having dinner with me?" I asked, my mouth dry.

"Doesn't this count as dinner?"

I let out a laugh and the tension ebbed. "You're not making this easy."

Kelly's shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug.

"You haven't been taking your eyes off me," she observed. "I could have picked your pocket nineteen times by now."

I must have been staring at her as if she were something cold to drink. "Only nineteen times? Tsk tsk tsk, what an amateur. I've already stolen your car."

She laughed, and I laughed with her. It was a warm, hearty laughter that was wonderful because it was honest. This woman wasn't laughing politely or faking interest. It wasn't even a great joke, and she laughed with me.

I wanted to walk with her then. I thought the most pleasant thing at that moment would be to walk in the evening drizzle, close enough for an unconscious brush of fingers. I cursed LA because it wasn't a walking city the way New York was. I cursed the fact that I didn't have a car and I didn't know how to drive, so I couldn't take her home.

"Listen, this was nice," she said as she got up and placed her business card in my shirt pocket. "I'll see you again."

"When?"

"Sometime."

"Anytime."

I called her the very next day. I had bribed Doug with visions of clean bathrooms and dishes for a month in exchange for seats at the Hollywood Bowl to watch Tony Bennett. I packed a picnic basket with the best Zinfandel I could find, and the best food at Benny's. I lifted the receiver, dialed her number, and her voice slipped inside my ear. I asked if she'd care to bring a warm blanket and join me.

Amazingly she said yes.

We picnicked in the park near the amphitheater. Kelly had a green scarf that seemed to hit me in the face no matter which side of her I walked on. It made her laugh so I didn't mind at all. We watched the people come and go, one or two couples were also killing time before the concert. Others were walking their dogs, talking to their lovers, watching their children… we made up stories about them. She was good at making up stories.

A pleasant sensitivity had built in my chest, almost a warmth… something that had nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with her. It was quieter than any sensation I had ever known. I felt alive. The city, for all its faults, seemed to glisten in the sunset.

Clouds crept between cliffs of burning skyline. In the distance we could hear the low roar of evening traffic out on the Hollywood Freeway. She sat beside me, tilting her head like a tulip to the dying sun. I leaned forward gently and tried to kiss her. She let me for a moment then drew her head back.

She straightened her head so suddenly that I was forced to look her full in the face. I have never in my life met such a direct look, in such an uncompromisingly honest face.

I remember hoping that she wouldn't find me wanting. I remember her lips, full and firm, and the sweet taste of them. The first shock of recognition when my mouth covered hers. The recognition that both of us enjoyed that first, chaste kiss.

Tony Bennett was at his best, he sang "Old Devil Moon," "It had to be you," "Autumn Leaves," "Dream a little dream of me"… Then at some point he segued into "Isn't it Romantic", by then the Zinfandel had long since been finished and was keeping us warm under the blanket. As the orchestra soared with Tony's voice, Kelly closed the imperceptible space between us, rested her head near my neck, with her nose touching my chin.

I snuck a look at her and her eyes were closed. I had been trying not to pay attention to her after the first kiss, knowing that if I started staring at her I would pay a lot of unwanted attention.

My right arm was around her shoulder, her left arm around my waist. I suddenly felt so fiercely protective of her, this woman who closed her eyes when the violins sighed.

She was still humming bars of music we pulled up in front of her house. I had insisted on seeing her home and catching a cab from there. Kelly had looked at me once more, very straight. It was a look that asked if I was going to feed her steak and try to fuck her before she had even got it digested. I guess she decided I wasn't dangerous and I momentarily felt insulted.

Her house was a cream-colored bungalow with an almost immaculate garden. She saw a weed and bent to pull it out with one stroke. She commented about grabbing them before they spread. I was still mesmerized by the swell of her breasts and the shape of her ass and her thighs as she bent down.

I stayed in the foyer as she used the phone to call me a cab. We sat outside in a little swing she had installed on her front stoop while waiting for the cab. The smog and haze were beginning to dissipate and the stars peeped out. We whispered the names of the evening stars as they opened in flower above us. She told me she had always loved the stars. They were the one thing that had stayed constant in her life. Always the same sky. It reminded her that what happened to us on earth is lost in the endless shine of eternity.

"I could never leave LA again," she told me.

"It's home." I replied.

"I suppose so," she continued. "I love this city, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, the way a car or a house on a street is."

"What are you saying?"

"I…" she paused. "I love it because it doesn't belong to me. I belong to it."

In that moment I wanted to belong to her and know she loved me. I took her hands in mine, and whether they shook from the cold or from desire I'll never know. But she tilted her face up to mine and I kissed her, smoothing the hair away from her face.

I was going to pull back, thinking that I might have overstepped my bounds, but she opened her mouth and I knew I had fallen for her like a suicide from the Pasadena bridge. I knew the first moment when I tasted the soft, sweet rush of her breath and felt her arms around me.

I suppose heroin addicts felt this way the first time they used— pleasure from the exquisite kick of it all but fear of becoming a total slave to something they can never again control.

My hands went to cradle her face, while hers had rested on my shoulders. I took her bottom lip between mine and tenderly began to explore what she offered me. I felt her sigh and hold me closer.

I don't think I've ever been kissed with such gentleness, with a growing desire that both of us were scared to acknowledge. She broke away first and the breeze seemed icy and cutting on my lips.

Kelly lowered her eyes, and my thumbs caressed her cheeks which were now reddening under my hands. Her calves were lying across my lap and her hands were resting on my chest.

"Does this mean I can see you again?" I asked hoarsely.

She gave me a tentative smile and looked toward the street, as if she could summon the cab through sheer will power.

"It's late," she said softly.

That was the first time I came up hard against Kelly's wall of self-discipline— a discipline born of hiding herself from herself. She extricated herself from my embrace and stood, turning her back on me.

"Have I done something wrong?" I asked.

"No," she said, so softly I almost missed it. "You've done everything right."

I rose and stood behind her. She was looking into middle distance, looking at nothing, and her arms were folded across her chest. Slowly I unwound the scarf from her neck and placed my hands on her hips, molding her body closer to mine. She let out a gasp which turned into a small, sharp cry as I moved her hair away and placed my lips on her nape.

I wanted to stay like this. My hand holding away her hair, my mouth lingering at her neck, her body soft in my arms. Then she turned in my arms and we found ourselves staring at each other. We stood there, close enough to kiss, the frigid air stealing our breath. One hand was now cupping her ass and the other resting on her slim shoulders.

It took everything I had not to take her right there, to make love to her on her front porch, hearing her cry out like that, to hear her call out my name. Somehow I knew I wanted more than a few slender nights: sweaty couplings on my bed, and then the slow end, the boredom and pettiness. Lovers in my arms pulling farther and farther away from me, as I lay indifferent. Or plunged in despair.

I told her right then that I wanted more than that. She looked frightened by my words, wary of my sincerity, and distrustful of the naked longing and new-born loyalty. That look was still on her face when I climbed into the cab.

Kelly had been gone for days. Doug was solicitous of course, in his rough and insistent way, but how could I explain to him that I couldn't find Kelly? She had been hiding so long that she was lost, and even if she wanted to break out of herself she wouldn't know where to begin.

I took comfort that I had finally figured it out. I understood her now. I could cope with this. I could make things better. If all went according to plan and she attended the exhibit, Kelly and I could have a serious conversation without her clamming up because she suddenly realized that she was vulnerable .

Invoking any and every god, I prayed she would show up.

The take-out menu had taken up permanent residence in the back pocket of my slacks. Her drawing of my hand was a metaphor for herself: drawn tight and close, distilled and intense at the center, fading into obscurity at the edges.

How could I explain to anyone what our problem was? Kelly and I would make love, she would hold me inside her as I shook, stare out at me through narrowed eyes, determined that I would never find out who she really was. We battered ourselves against each other and kept our invisible doors locked.

Something had to give. Soon. And I didn't want to be blind to it, to be caught unawares, this time around.

I missed the warmth of her body as it almost touched mine. I missed her small yawns in the morning. I missed the pulse of her breathing. I missed her smile and the crumbs of potato chips that would litter the bedclothes when we spent the night vegetating in front of the TV.

I had begun moving the things I had decided to exhibit, Doug set aside some time to help me take each painting into the gallery myself. I had to hand it to Doug, he had such patience… he calmly and quietly moved each painting in an odd version of directed musical chairs until I was satisfied.

Today I was going to place the photos I wanted to exhibit. They had each been blown-up and toggled to my liking. I paused at the one picture of Kelly I had deemed safe to exhibit.

She was sitting in my living room… looking so much like my mother and father who were compatible only in their secret lives. She looked like my parents, sitting with a great unspoken divide between them that swallowed me whole as a child. Locked in their own circle of silence, they had made no demands on each other… now I wondered if I could break the pattern they had cursed me with. Sylvia. Kelly. It didn't matter. My life would turn out the same.

I had chosen this picture because everyone loved the way Kelly looked in it. It was so life-like, they said. Doug, Bosley, Sabrina, Kris… they had all appraised the photo and found it accurate, beautiful. I looked at it now: Kelly sitting on the couch, looking up at the last minute and foiling my hopes for a candid shot. Her eyes were distracted above the most cautious of smiles. She seemed shocked at the opportunism of my tenderness. An SLR camera with a filtered zoom lens was where my welcoming smile should have been.

I had pushed too hard, and it had taken weeks for her to open up to me again. If you could call our careful conversations opening up. Our life together made me think of a tired old couple, still trying to do the tango even when they knew that everyone had gone home long ago.

Sabrina was right. I had been relentless.

I looked at my watch and hoped that she would be at the gallery when I got there. I called Alexis, the owner of the gallery, to ask if she had seen her. It was six o'clock and still no Kelly.

Thirty minutes before the opening, I stood before my mirror, assessing myself and pulling at the collar of the suit I was wearing. There was a characteristic tapping at the door, I picked up my jacket off the couch and let Doug in.

He was dapper in his blue suit, making it look casual and relaxed. His hair was cropped short and he looked every inch a gentleman of leisure.

"You're nervous as hell, aren't you?" he laughed.

"Does it show?"

"Nah." Doug deadpanned. "I'll just tell people you're a corpse."

"I feel like a penguin in this thing." I said, fussing with the tie and the collar. I felt two-dimensional, flat, featureless.

"It's just your nerves." Doug assured me. "Get moving, the last thing you want to do is be late for your own damn exhibit."

"Isn't that the trendy thing to do?"

"Yeah." Doug replied. "That's why you're not going to do it. We'll be appallingly punctual, and it'll be refreshing. You'll be there on time and you will try to be polite."

"I am polite." I protested, following him down the stairs at a clip.

"There are going to be reporters there…" Doug turned to regard me after I groaned. "They're just a few friends I invited. It's nothing big. You'll manage."

"I don't know about this, Doug."

"Look, do you want a car? Do you want other pieces of furniture in your living room aside from a couch?" he asked. "Then you'll have to deal with these people. Be real, but don't let yourself think it's anything more than a business proposition."

Doug and I walked out of the lobby of my apartment building. His Isuzu was parked across the building and we hurriedly dodged a suburban station wagon as we traversed the width of the street.

"Whatever they say to you about your art or your looks…" Doug continued, fishing the keys out of his pocket. "It doesn't mean anything. It's all a show."

"I know. I know." I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "Did you remember to put the new painting where the seascape was?"

"Yeah." Doug replied, driving carefully. We merged with the rest of the cars on the interstate and headed for Beverly Hills. "I still think you should have placed it in the center of the hall."

I shrugged. "Let people find it. It's not really meant to be gaped at."

"Okay." Doug relented. "You're the artist."

The beat of the drum was arresting, it throbbed through the room. Sabrina's brother-in-law was the bassist and his band played an odd hypnotic brand of pop that formed a subtle undercurrent to the event.

Doug had really outdone himself. People were milling around, swathed in Yves Saint Laurent and bathed in Chanel No. 5, they looked at my paintings with a strained interest. I wondered if anything sifted through to their souls, if they were touched by anything they saw.

The gallery was getting crowded, the waiters were having trouble navigating through the sea of people and the bartender kept cracking open fresh bottles of champagne. The pseudo-intellectuals jostled for attention and one or two people I recognized from the faculty at the high school, looked on the dazzling array of people in barely-concealed awe.

Doug was in the thick of it, touring several starlets and their sugar daddies… discussing the nuance of every photo and the meaning of every brush stroke. Knowing all the while that none of them knew jack-shit about what he was talking about, Doug was still the showman, a ringmaster in the center of the circus tent.

A flash bulb went off in my eyes, in its wake a shrill noise filled my head, and when I had regained my vision the offending photographer was gone. A persistent group of reporters were at the good white wine, probably encouraged to do so by Doug, who could tell I had been drowning in their annoyingly tedious questions.

I suppose I was prepared for people dissecting my work… the razor sharp tongues of LA's art critics stropping themselves on my little pictures and defenseless canvasses. But the volume of feigned interest, the shallowness of the people who sought to purchase pieces of myself, the momentary lionization of Alan the Artist… it was all beginning to grate on my senses. I pressed my fingers hard on my eyelids, trying not to see. Trying not to know.

"I'm sorry." I heard Kelly's voice say, surprising me with the volume of this declaration. I opened my eyes swiftly and tried to focus them on Kelly. She was leaning toward me in an effort to make herself heard above the din of people and the deafening music. "We didn't mean to be late."

In a sea of shapely women dressed in the little black communion dresses that were de rigeur for being seen, Kelly was alive in a deep burgundy dress. It's delicate straps wove themselves over her shoulders and met at her lower back. The dress clung to her body the way a car hugged the curves of a road, revealing a hint of leg in the slit on the side. Her brunette tresses were swept up and pinned in place by an elegant barrette, revealing the uncharted geography of her neck. Her eyes were dark and unadorned. In the shadows of the room, she was breathtakingly beautiful.

"Kelly." I said, not knowing how to put into words how happy I was to see her. She smiled at me and placed her arms around my shoulders. Her breasts and her body were pressed against me, and I held her to me as if I were drowning.

Kelly extricated herself from my embrace and stepped away, twirling around for my inspection. She was lean, intimidating, feminine and feline in her grace.

I smiled and closed my eyes briefly, as if my eyelids were a shutter and I could take a picture of this moment… carrying it with me forever. "You're beautiful."

"Thank you." she said demurely.

I detected soft laughter to our left and caught site of Kris and Sabrina. Kris was elegantly dressed in a midnight blue cocktail dress, her long eyelashes and innocent smile were provocative beyond belief. She kissed me on the cheek and went off to find Doug. Kelly and I exchanged smiles as Kris's small form claimed Doug's attention, staking out her territory among the reed-like models.

Sabrina looked like she had been airbrushed in breeding and good taste, one of those go-to-hell Beverly Hills types with the incorruptible carriage of a lioness. Several men were gravitating to her as she stood quietly in the archway. I grinned as she embraced me, quietly congratulating me for years of study and discipline before she was swept away by offers of drinks and intelligent critiques of the artwork. Bri winked at me as she went off with a handsome green-eyed man.

I smiled ruefully. "Where's Bos?"

"You miss him?" Kelly joked.

"Well, yes. I actually do." I said. "I'm supposed to fix him up with someone from the faculty."

"Really?" she asked, her eyebrows arching in curiosity. "Who?"

I pointed out the raven-haired, nervous-looking English teacher at the bar. "Too mousy?"

"I don't think so. Anyway, we'll see what happens when he gets here… he said he'd drop by his apartment first." Kelly smiled in a slightly bewildered way. "You really like my friends."

"Yes, I do." I replied. "They're great people."

"I think so too."

"Come on, I'll show you the pieces I picked out." I gave her a warm smile and offered her my arm. We made our way through the crowd in a comfortable silence. She paused at her photograph.

"What's the matter?" I asked, worrying that I had once again invaded her privacy by putting up this picture. "Do you mind…?"

"No." she answered too quickly. "After all, it is your work."

"But…?"

"I don't know. I suppose I wish you'd consulted me first." She put her hand up in defense. "I know. I wasn't here to ask."

"Why don't you like it?" I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. "Everyone says you look beautiful."

"I know how I look, Alan." she said abruptly.

I stared at her, wondering how she could turn even this moment into a protracted battle for her precious personal freedom. She shook her head.

"I'm sorry." she said.

"Why don't you like it?" I asked her, trying to turn this into an opportunity to see into her psyche. "What's wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with it." Kelly replied, holding my hand in a sudden poignant gesture. "It's what's wrong with me…"

Before I could press her for more, she pulled me towards a waiter and gingerly took two glasses of white wine. She took a large sip from her glass, and I followed suit.

"Oh, we didn't toast to anything." Kelly said nervously. "I'm sorry. Next glass, we'll toast to your success."

I opened my mouth to speak, but she had already pulled me to the next photo, and had begun gushing about its arresting qualities. I sighed. What would happen when she found my newest painting?

In a smaller, more intimate part of the gallery, where the crowd was less dense because of the narrowness of the corridor, she found the canvas I had dashed off a week ago.

Kelly was quiet. She reached out to touch the texture of the paint, but suddenly stopped herself. Before her was an enlargement of my hand, the red paint of the Chinese characters seething and bleeding into the very atmosphere. Beneath her sketch of my conflicted palm, I had painted in a rusty old red bicycle and an equally rusty nail. From afar, it had looked like an innocent doodle; but at this distance, in these close quarters, it's force was immediate and its meaning oblique. The feelings that spawned it had come from somewhere, distilled and purified into this scrawl on a Chinese menu.

I heard raucous laughter behind us. "He can't even draw a bicycle right. The wheels are going in the wrong direction."

"He hardly does anything right, dah-ling. Especially in bed."

Kelly turned towards the couple behind us before I could maneuver her away. My eyes narrowed to slits and my hands bunched into fists. I glared at Sylvia over the top of Kelly's head with a fury I could barely keep in check. Donald, the only guy I knew who could swagger while sitting down, tried to match my menacing look.

"Excuse me," Kelly said icily. "I think you've had too much to drink."

"Well, isn't she polite?" Sylvia laughed. "Alan, I'm very impressed. She actually is as pretty as people said she was. They said she was intelligent as well, but then what would she be doing with someone who makes love like a kid?"

"Guess he pays for it." Donald drawled. "She looks like one of those affordable types anyway. Did he have a coupon?"

Kelly didn't even blink, her hand came out of nowhere and slapped him so hard his glasses flew off. "I think the two of you should leave."

"You little whore." Sylvia spat. She moved to strike Kelly's face.

I intercepted her and grabbed her wrist, she raised her left hand to slap me and I gripped that wrist as well. Donald, not bothering to recover his glasses which must have been more of a fashion statement than a necessity, attempted to come to Sylvia's rescue with a right jab to my ribs. I side-stepped, held Sylvia's wrists with my right hand and used my left to slug him in the jaw. He backed off. A crowd was beginning to gather around the mouth of the corridor.

"I am not going to play these games with you anymore, Sylvia." I said through gritted teeth. "It's over. Finished. You're nothing to me now. Not a wife. Not a friend. The papers have been signed and I don't owe you anything."

"Alan, let her go." Kelly said in a tight voice.

I pulled Sylvia close to me without releasing my grip on her wrists. She winced but still struggled to hurt me.

"Don't push me too far." I said, slowly.

"Alan, you've made your point." Kelly said, her voice forcibly calm. "Let her go, Alan. She's terrified."

They both were. I moved protectively toward Kelly before I freed Sylvia's wrists. There was venom in her eyes as Donald tried to control the damage his reputation would receive in the society pages in tomorrow's newspaper. As he placed his arm around Sylvia to guide her through the crowd, she broke away and hissed something at Kelly.

Media vultures were swarming over the narrow corridor with their flashbulbs and their prying eyes. But the only person who could have made anything out of Sylvia's parting shot was Kelly, and her eyes went wide and watery. It was as if Sylvia had dug her nails into her upper arms instead of merely insulting her.

I put my arms around Kelly and tried to pull her close to me. She turned her head away from me in anger and stalked off. I ran after her, moving through the crowd without caring whose toes I stepped on.

"Kelly…"

"Leave me alone," she said, her voice breaking.

"Kelly, I'm sorry."

"Leave me alone, Alan."

"Not this time." I said, more forcefully than I intended.

Her back stiffened and she turned to face me. She grabbed my upper arm and shoved me in the direction of Alexis's office. I fingers were still fumbling with the light switch as Kelly slammed the door behind us. The lights came on at that instant and I had to shut my eyes, so used to the dim light at the party outside.

"I'm sorry, Kelly." I repeated. "She's here to meet her new in-laws. I never thought she'd come."

"Really?" she spat. "I didn't know she existed! Exactly when were you planning on telling me that you were divorced?"

"Kelly, I had a hard enough time dealing with it myself. It was too painful. I couldn't talk about it with anyone."

"What kind of excuse is that?" she yelled incredulously.

"Your excuse!" I shouted. "Or are you the only one who's entitled to have secrets?"

"This is different!"

"Of course, now you're the one who feels betrayed! I've fulfilled your prophecy! Are you happy now?" I lowered my voice with effort and tried to unclench my fists. "You were right all along, I'm just another bastard. Now you have a valid excuse for dumping me."

"What are you talking about?"

"That! What you do! The way everything I do is one big test, like a never ending audition. You always want me to prove the sincerity of my intentions, to prove that I'll always be there no matter what shit you put me through. You always want a fucking guarantee!"

"Are you saying that to convince me or yourself?" she retorted. "You're the one who needs a guarantee, a promise that you're not alone."

"That's what love is!"

"No, it isn't!" Kelly screamed. "That's bribery! You say you love me but you really mean that you'll love me if I'm sweet and affectionate and if I love you YOUR WAY."

I gasped. A Pandora's box of emotion pummeled me with the intensity of a wave lashing against a pier. I tried valiantly to deny it, to make some sort of excuse. I looked away from her.

"Do you think I don't notice the way you look at me? How you're always disappointed?" her voice broke. "I'm not blind. I feel things just as much as you do, and I can be hurt just as easily as you can. I'm not made of stone!"

I heard the rawness in her voice but I was powerless to comfort her. I couldn't help but recoil from the intense pain she was now expelling.

"I can't love you your way, Alan." she cried. "I don't know how. All my life I've been changing for people, trying to prove something to them. I've been trying to give them a reason to stay. And I'm tired… I'm just so tired."

She took a shaky breath. "I'm tired of you hammering at me. I'm tired of you looking at me as if I'd done something horrible that only you can see. Only you won't tell me what it is because then you might have to forgive me."

I turned away from her and leaned on the large oak desk. "I'm tired too, Kelly. I'm tired of being trusted only when it's convenient for you. To be loved as long as you're not vulnerable, as long as you're not jeopardized."

I gave a hoarse laugh. Not wanting to look at her, not caring if I hurt her. "Kelly Garret, vulnerable to bullets but not to people. Intense yet controlled. Passionate but in charge. Knows what she wants but takes it only when her desires don't put her at risk. Kelly Garret, always condescending to give more than she takes, because the more you take, the more you get used to taking. Habit mutates into need. And Kelly Garret doesn't need anyone."

Tears spilled over her eyelids, and she brushed them away savagely.

"You're not in love with me, Alan. You're in love with the idea of me." Kelly stated. "You only need me to need you. You know it. I know it."

I stared at her, recognizing the truth and wishing I could shove it away.

"It's killing you, isn't it?" Kelly continued. "You would rather deal with me getting shot on the street than with me leaving you."

"Do you know why Sylvia left me?" I asked. "And make no mistake, whatever she hissed at you back there, she was the one who left me."

"Small wonder, if you were as relentless as you are with me."

"She just decided to leave. I came home one night and she declared over dinner that she had gotten an apartment. Just like that. Six years of marriage and she never gave me her reasons. There were no fights or recriminations." I said in a dead voice. "She just dropped me from her life completely. Even now, she doesn't really want me back. Sylvia just doesn't want anyone else to take her possessions. Even the ones she's thrown away."

"And you think I'm like that?" Kelly retorted. "You think I'd just leave you on a whim? This is why you've been badgering me? You don't know the first thing about me."

"Of course not!" I yelled. "You revel in your inconsistencies. You maintain these contradictions not because you can't be understood but because you don't want to be!"

She recoiled from me as if I had struck her across the face.

"What are you afraid of? Do you think you'll lose your identity if someone understands you?" I asked. "Or are you just as terrified as I am that no one will think you're worth knowing? Worth loving?"

I heard a small sob. She was sitting on the arm of the leather couch. Her eyes had allowed a trickle of tears to flow down her cheeks, she put the heels of her hands into them and bent over.

"I… I don't need you to understand me."

"You'll never need anything from anyone, will you? That's the way you've set it up." I said sadly. "It's not that you don't need anyone. It's just that you don't want to."

Kelly's honest, unpretending face turned towards mine. She was more naked at that moment than I had ever been privileged to see her. I took a breath and touched her, gently, wiping the tears.

"It's like my painting. You and I, we're the wheels of the bicycle. Both of us going in opposite directions but trying to stay together. Bicycle wheels trying to reach each other. You and me, stuck, going nowhere. Not knowing there are nails in the path because we're too busy trying to touch.

"It's impossible." I said softly. "We're drowning in the inevitable. I kept thinking of something I could do to make it work… why do you always run away from me, Kelly? What are you trying to protect yourself from?"

"You…"

"Me?!"

"You… smother me."

I shook my head. "I treat you the way you deserve to be treated."

"Like a cripple?" she bristled.

"I have never taken advantage of you. I have respected your privacy, your freedom, and your space. I have never lied to you. I have loved you unendurably. I still do. I love you in ways that give meaning and dignity to my life."

"You treat me like a cripple!" Kelly screamed, her fury washing over me like heat.

"If that's what it takes to show you that you can't stand alone… Then yes, I will treat you like a cripple. Like a needy cripple." I roared. "If that frightens the hell out of you, then good. You frighten me too."

I took a deep breath, fished out my key ring, and separated the key to her house. It burned my palm. I placed it on the coffee table in front of us, sure of what I was about to do.

"Kelly…"

"Stop it, Alan." She said in a dead voice. "Just stop it."

"I will." I replied quietly. "I have to."

I moved to face her, squatting on the floor. I took her hands in mine. It was the last tenderness we would ever share. I drew breath and began. "You look like a woman who can have six orgasms and keep herself; I can't even kiss you and keep myself. I need you. I love you, I love everything about you. You're the only one who can make me this crazy. Crazy because I am the guy who is willing to go for the long haul, and you just don't seem to get it."

It had started to rain as I stepped out of the gallery. The staccato rhythm of the drops hitting the asphalt was the only sound. Everything seemed so strangely quiet outside, without the music, without the noise of the crowd.

I walked to the curb and hailed a cab. I wanted to get away from the exhibit as fast as I could. It wasn't about me. At least, not anymore. I didn't care whether the painting's sold or not. I didn't care about anything anymore. I had no idea where I was going, or what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to think, to know what I had done and accept it.

My eyes fastened on the yellowing leaves of the spruce across the street. The rain was light, but it was everywhere. The leaves were being beaten into submission by minute drops of water.

It was getting colder. Summer was yielding to the passage of time and the orbit of the earth. Autumn was coming. It would have been close to a year since our first date. Our anniversary. Kelly and her green scarf, my breath condensing in mid-air. Just as it was doing now.

I let out a sigh, and it turned into a white vapor. Almost indistinguishable from the rain. Absently, I tried catching my own breath. I made fists around my exhalations. I held them tight, trying to keep warm any way I could.

Frustrating. The heat always seeped out, eluding my grasp.

I shook my head, almost humorously.

I took my hands out of my pockets and blew into them, trying to keep warm. My hands tried unsuccessfully to seal the warmth and comfort of my breath, trying to hold the heat inside them. I rubbed my hands together, and blew in to them again.

The only way to warm myself was to cup my hands around my mouth and keep breathing. I couldn't keep the heat in my hands by strangling it, choking my own breath. Smothering it.

Smothering.

"God, I'm so stupid!"

I felt thin fingers on my shoulder and spun around.

Sabrina slugged me across the jaw. My left shoulder hit the lamp post. In an effort to regain my balance, my ankle twisted outwards. I found myself sprawled in the gutter.

"You sanctimonious bastard." Sabrina screamed. "You are so fucking self-absorbed! Standing there, oh so smug and self-righteous. What about Kelly? Do you know how hard it was for her to open up to you even this much? She's not a painting, Alan! You can't take her apart brush stroke by brush stroke and analyze her. You tell yourself that you only want to find out what it takes to make her happy. You use it as an excuse to try and goad her into loving you. Into needing you. You were so afraid that she was using you. Kelly's not the type of person who's got it together enough to share herself with someone because she has nothing better to do. It's easy to hurt her. And that's what you wanted to do isn't it? You wanted to frighten her. You wanted to hurt her before she could hurt you. Are you happy now? You won. You won the battle that was all in your head." Sabrina drew a quick breath. "What the hell do you have to say for yourself?!"

"Bri, I know." I moved my right hand to cradle my cheek.

"What?" she said, startled.

"I know."

"Oh. Well… Good!" Sabrina replied, still taken aback.

"What am I going to do?" I said, still lying in the gutter, my face toward the constellations Kelly loved so much. "I've been so blind."

"I was going to tell you…" Sabrina said. "I didn't plan on this self-realization…"

"Sorry," I said, grimacing. "I've always had a problem with timing."

"Dammit, Alan! I had this whole sermon planned out." Sabrina said, almost laughing as I got to my feet slowly. "You are the second most frustrating man alive."

In the distance I saw Kelly come out of the gallery, alone, walking fast and hard. The stride and the drawn-back set of her body said it all. I ran toward her, trying not to slip on the wet asphalt. The rain was coming down harder now, it ran down my face. My hair was soaked. I moved it out of my face to clear my vision.

She was fumbling with the Mustang's lock. I could see her quietly cursing her ineptitude. Her shoulders were rising and falling in little jerks. It was as if she were still crying but trying to hold it back. Her hair and dress were getting wet. It didn't look like she cared.

I was two feet away when she finally got her door open, threw her purse in the front seat, and climbed in.

I called her name.

She turned to look at me. Her delicate features bore the strain of my merciless hounding. Her eyes and her nose were still a little red.

Silently, she turned away and turned the key in the ignition.

I ran up to the car and held the door open, forcing her to deal with me. Again that direct look, Kelly assessing and measuring. Kelly desperately trying not to be hurt anymore.

"Kelly." I breathed her name like a prayer. It condensed in the air.

The silence was in infinite dimension between us. It was formless and yet it oppressed. I knew that the longer it existed, the longer the space between us was uncrossed, the greater the chance that it would never leave. One footstep was all that separated us, that and a chasm of silence.

"Kelly… we have to talk."

Her eyes were dark now, vulnerable.

The rain tapped out a pattern on the roof of the Mustang. The Morse code of longing, S.O.S. Save our Souls.

Kelly reached out and pushed me firmly out of the way of the door. It closed with a sickening finality. I backed away, convinced that I had lost her for good.

I noticed a thick film of condensation had formed on her part of the windshield. I took out my hanky. It was already wet. I shrugged half-heartedly and used it to wipe the glass clean.

I waited for her to maneuver her car out of the parking lot. I don't know how long I stood there. I don't know how long the two of us stayed like that. I was dripping in the middle of the parking lot. She sat in her car. The engine was running. She was looking through the clear windshield. Her eyes unseeing, her mind elsewhere.

The rain began to let up. I could hear voices from inside the gallery, muffled by the distance. I could feel something fading away. The past swiftly annexing the present, the moments too few, and over so soon.

Kelly came out of her reverie. She turned her face towards mine. She bit her lip. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, her fingers tensed in a brief spasm. Her hands and arms still bore tiny rivulets of rainwater. Her slim shoulders looked damp. Her eyes, those subtle chameleons, were now as dark as pitch. A light flickered in them as she pressed her lips together.

It was a small smile. A tiny, tentative smile as she reached across and unlocked the door. I moved towards the open door. The front seat seemed to gleam like a beacon, like the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~ Hey, I carried this story for 9 months. Flames will be deleted instantly. Praises kept in a cedar box. For questions, comments, and violent reactions, just e-mail thetilde@geocities.com ~~~~~~~~