Scott Nicholson - Ashes

Karen.

Karen in the hallway, glorious, almost perfect.

The last person he expected to see, yet the right person at this stage of the work in progress.

Karen as a statue, as a painting, as the person who shaped John's life. John tried to breathe but his lungs were basalt. Karen had not aged a bit. If anything, she had grown younger, more heavenly. More perfect.

John could read her eyes as if they were mirrors. She tried not to show it, but truth and beauty couldn't lie. Truth and beauty showed disapproval. That was one look she hadn't forgotten.

John weighed every ounce of the gray that touched his temples, measured the bags under his eyes, counted the scars on his hands.

"Hello, John," Karen said.

Just the way she'd started the letter.

"Hi." His tongue felt like mahogany.

"You're surprised." Karen talked too fast. "My old roommate from college still lives here. I had her look you up."

"And you came all this way to see me?" John wanted a cigarette. His hands needed something to do.

"I was passing through anyway. Mountain vacation. You know, fresh air and scenic beauty and all that."

John glanced out the window. A plume of diesel exhaust drifted through his brick scenery. College buildings sprawled against the hillsides in the background. The mountains were lost to pollution.

John had been silent too long and was about to say something, but his words disappeared in the smoky caves inside his head.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Karen asked.

"You're not interrupting. I was just thinking about my next piece."

That meant his next sculpture rather than his next sexual encounter. Karen knew him well enough to understand.

She could never interrupt, anyway. John was an artist, and artists never had anything to interrupt. Artists had years of free time, and artists would rather give their free time to other people. Art was sacrifice.

His time was her time. Always had been. At least, it had been years ago. Now she lived two thousand miles away with no forwarding address and John had endless buckets of time to devote to his art.

Except now she stood at the door of his studio, eyes like nickels.

"Can I come in, then?"

Come.

In.

To John's studio.

With Cynthia lying in the corner, weeping blood and becoming. Becoming what, John wasn't sure.

Himself, maybe. His soul. The shape of things. A work in progress.

John tried on a smile that felt fixed in plaster. "Come in."

Karen walked past him and lifted objects from his workbench. "A metal dolphin. I like that."

She touched the stone sailboat and the driftwood duck and the rattlesnake walking stick and John watched her until she finally saw the portrait.

Or rather, The Painting.

"Damn, John."

"I haven't finished it yet."

"I think you just liked making me get naked. You painted me slow."

Not as slow as he should have. He wanted the painting to take a lifetime. She had other plans, though she hadn't known it at the time.

"It's a work in progress," he said.

"What smells so funny?"

Oh, God. She had flared her wondrous nostrils. John did not like where this was headed.

"Probably the kerosene," John said. "Cheaper than paint thinner, and works just as well, if you overlook the stink."

"I remember."

She remembered. She hadn't changed.

Had John changed?

No, not "Had John changed?" The real question was how much John had changed. A soft foam pillow in the corner was studded with steak knives.

"Did you ever make enough money to buy an acetylene torch?" She ran a finger over the rusted edge of some unnamed and unfinished piece. "I know that was a goal of yours. To sell enough stuff to-"

John knew this part by heart. "To buy an acetylene torch and make twelve in a series and put an outrageous price on them, hell, add an extra zero on the end and see what happens, and then the critics eat it up and another commission and, bam, I'm buying food and I have a ticket to the top and we have a future."

Karen ignored that word "future." She was the big future girl, the one with concrete plans instead of sandstone dreams. John's future was a dark search for something that could never exist. Perfection.

Karen walked to the corner, hovered over the spattered canvas.

No one could see it until he was finished.

John looked at the shelf, saw a semi-carved wooden turtle. He grabbed it and clutched it like a talisman. "Hey. I'll bet you can't guess what this is."

Her attention left the mound beneath the canvas. "How could I ever guess? You've only made five thousand things that could fit in the palms of your hands."

"Summer. That creek down by the meadow. The red clover was fat and sweet and the mountains were like pieces of carved rock on the horizon. The sky was two-dimensional."

"I remember." She turned her face away. Something about her eyes. Were they moist? Moister than when he'd opened the door?

She went to the little closet. John looked at her feet. She wore loafers, smart, comfortable shoes. Not much heel.

Beneath the loafers rested Anna. The experiment.

The smell had become pretty strong, so John had sealed the area with polyurethane. The floor glowed beneath Karen's shoes. John let his eyes travel up as far as her calves, then he forced his gaze to The Painting.

"Aren't you going to ask me about Hank?" she said.

As if there were any possible reason to ask about Hank. Hank had been Henry, a rich boy who shortened his name so the whiz kids could relate. Hank who had a ladder to climb, with only one possible direction. To the top where the money was.

Hank who could only get his head in the clouds by climbing. Hank who didn't dream. Hank who was practical. Hank who offered security and a tomorrow that wasn't tied to a series of twelve metal works with an abstract price tag.

"What about Hank?" he heard himself saying.

"Ran off." She touched a dangerous stack of picture frames. "With an airline attendant. He decided to swing both ways, a double member in the Mile High club."

"Not Hank?" John had always wondered about Hank, could picture him reverting to Henry and going to strange bars. Hank had been plenty man enough for Karen, though. Much more man than John.

At least the old John. The new John, the one he was building, was a different story.

A work in progress.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

She turned and tried on that old look, the one that worked magic four years ago. Four years was a long time. A small crease marred one of her perfect cheeks.

"I came to see you," she said. "Why else?"

"Oh. I thought you might have wanted to see my art."

"Same difference, silly."

Same difference. A Karenism. One of those he had loathed. And calling him “silly” when he was probably the least silly man in the history of the human race. As far as serious artists went, anyway.

"No, really. What are you doing here?"

"I told you, Hank's gone."

"What does that have to do with me?"

She picked up a chisel. It was chipped, like his front tooth. She tapped it against a cinder block. Never any respect for tools.

"It has everything to do with you," she said.

A pause filled the studio like mustard gas, then she added, "With us."

Us. Us had lasted seven months, four days, three hours, and twenty-three minutes, give or take a few seconds. But who was counting?

"I don't understand," he said. He had never been able to lie to her.

"You said if it weren't for Hank-"

"Henry. Let's call him 'Henry.'"

Her eyes became slits, then they flicked to the Andy Warhol poster. "Okay. If it weren't for Henry, I'd probably still be with you."

Still. Yes, she knew all about still. She could recline practically motionless for hours on end, a rare talent. She could do it in the nude, too. A perfect model. A perfect love, for an artist.