Page 220 of This Bitter Sweet Temptation
But this gallery is her first public show. Her debut, a double feature shared with the return of the legendary Hera Egg.
After the New York debacle, plans changed.
She agreed to loan the egg out to a smaller local museum in Portland first to help promote tourism.
Now, she stares at it with wide eyes like she can’t quite believe our luck.
Screw Cleopatra of Egypt. She’s younger than Alexander the Great and she’s taking the world by storm.
I’m so fucking proud of her.
We stroll the room. So many people recognize her in that stunning red dress and start gushing.
Family names roll past, people I’m just getting to know. Ethan and Hattie Blackthorn. Margot and Kane Saint with two kids who are already thick as thieves with Kit.
Big names in the art world, too.
I don’t know them from Adam, though I looked at everyone who bought tickets, just to be on the safe side.
A man never buries his instincts. No Russian mafia in sight.
“You’re doing great,” I whisper, leaning down to kiss her. No one here knows or cares who I am except for the fact I’m obviously her man.
As long as they understand that, it suits me just fine. So does seeing her looking soradiant.
Let her shine.
Let her have the night of her life.
I’m happy to stand back and watch and when the time is right—we’ll see.
When I pull back, her eyes are glowing.
“I can’t believe it’s going so well,” she whispers. “Maybe dreams do come true.”
“They do when you put in the work,” I remind her. I couldn’t count the late nights and sixteen-hour days as she’s worked on the displays and with the restoration team.
So many pieces with the international crowd coming in.
Still, it’s like what happened in New York set her free, like transferring a plant from a pot to open soil. Or maybe it’s what happened after, when I took her home and moved her stuff into my room, and we sat Kit down and said we’d try to make a thing of this.
Or maybe it was her old man finally going into rehab and cleaning himself up. I could see the strain Gordon put on her, the way she hated seeing him wasting away, poisoned and bitter.
Some wall around her broke in that second.
All the pieces on the wall and mounted to small podiums in this room means something. Even to me, and modern art still feels fucking indecipherable.
It’s not all her textured wall pieces, though. She’s included some pencil sketches. A couple tasteful nudes, both female and male.
A winding river.
Fiery fall foliage.
Landscapes, real and dreamlike, colorfully haunted.
I see Kit’s silhouette painted in dusky blue. No name ID, of course, but I know my daughter. She did that one while my little girl was working intently at a canvas.
All these little fragments of her life committed to living memory. Despite being on display for all the world to see, it doesn’t feel like I expected.
