Page 103 of Bare
Rory was quiet, the quiet of someone taking a thing in rather than building a response.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Neil said. ‘I need you to hear that. You asked. I agreed. The painting is…’ His voice caught. Steadied. ‘The painting is the most extraordinary thing anyone has ever done for me or about me. And I walked out because a woman in a scarf tilted her head.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
‘That’s exactly what happened.’
‘No.’ Rory turned in the seat. His knee hit the gearstick. He tried to speak. Couldn't. Tried again, and the first attempt came out wrong, too sharp: ‘You don’t get to…’ He stopped. Pressed his palms against his eyes. When he dropped them, the anger had rearranged itself. More careful.
‘What happened is that you spent thirty-three years being told that being seen is dangerous. And tonight fifty people saw you. The one I painted. And your nervous system did what it’s been trained to do.’
The accuracy. Six months of studying Neil’s face and Rory could read the wiring underneath.
‘I ruined your opening,’ Neil said.
‘You left for twenty minutes. Nobody noticed except me.’
‘You noticed.’
‘Yeah.’ Rory’s mouth pressed flat. ‘Of course I noticed.’
The silence wasn’t comfortable. Nothing like the sofa evenings or the dark phone calls. The weight of two people sitting with the hurt and couldn’t be fixed by either of them alone.
‘I’m not going to ask if you want me to take it down,’ Rory said.
Neil looked at him.
‘I was going to. Walking over here, I was rehearsing the sentence. If you want it down, it comes down. I meant it. I’d pull the best painting I’ve ever made off the wall and put it in a cupboard and never show it to anyone. For you.’ He paused. ‘But that would be me doing what Malcolm did. Deciding you should be hidden. And I won’t. Not even to make tonight easier.’
The sentence dropped into the car like a stone. Neil felt it below the ribs.
‘So what do we do?’ Neil said.
‘We sit here. You shake. It passes. Then you decide.’
‘And if I can’t go back in?’
‘Then you can’t go back in. But the painting is on the wall and the show runs and people see it and none of that changes anything between us. The painting is mine. The choice to be seen is yours. Those are separate things.’
Neil’s hands loosened on the wheel. One finger at a time. The leather warm from the gripping.
‘Go home,’ Rory said. Gentle. The gentleness cost him. The effort showed, the control required to say go home when the man wanted to say come back inside. ‘Ring me in the morning.’
He got out. Closed the door. Walked back towards the gallery, the loading dock entrance, the light spilling out, the hum of people who didn’t know that the evening’s actual event had happened in a parked car.
Neil watched him go. Good shirt. Square shoulders. The walk of a man returning to the room where his work hung and his partner didn’t.
He drove home.
The flat was dark. Freddie at Gemma’s. The lock caught on the second turn; the old friction, the old sound. He checked it once. Checked it again. The second check wasn’t habit. It was regression. The body reaching for the oldest comfort available.
He didn’t sleep. He lay in the dark and thought about the painting and the woman in the red scarf and the half-centimetre that had been louder than anything he’d ever said.
The following day. Seven a.m. The gallery didn’t open until ten.
Neil parked in the same spot. Same street. Different light, morning, grey-gold, the April blossom bright on the pavement.
He’d rung Rory at six-thirty. Rory, who didn’t ask questions, who communicated primarily in silences and the occasional word, had said: ‘I’ll tell the security lad. Door’ll be open.’
