Scott Nicholson - The Manor

"A historical documentary?"

"Something like that?"

"What about all the footage you've already shot, all those weeks in the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies?"

"I'll keep it in the can. I can use it anytime."

"I don't know, Paul. The grant people might get upset. After all, you signed on for an Appalachian nature documentary."

"To hell with the grant committees. I do what I want."

Paul was pulling his Orson Welles bit. Even in the dark, Adam could visualize the famous "Paul pout."

So what if Paul spent months on footage, and still had weeks of postproduction, editing, and scripting left? Those were only technical details. Paul wanted to be the artist, the posturing auteur, the brash visionary. Stubbornly refusing to sell out.

No matter the cost.

But Adam wasn't in the mood to argue. Not after the good time they'd just had.

"Why don't you sleep on it, and we can talk about it in the morning?" Adam stroked one of Paul's well-developed biceps. Lugging a twenty-pound camera and battery belt through the mountains all summer had really toned him up.

"I mean, this is like an alien world or something," Paul said. "No electricity, people living like they did a hundred years ago. And the servants, all of them still live here, like serfs around the castle."

Adam was drifting off despite Paul's excitement. "Uh-huh," he mumbled.

He must have fallen asleep, because he was standing on a tower, the wind blowing through his hair, dark trees swaying below him No, it wasn't a tower. He recognized the grounds of the manor. He was on top of the house, on that little flat space marked off by the white railing-now, what had the maid called it? Oh yeah, the widow's walk-and Adam found himself climbing over the rail and looking down at the stone walkway sixty feet below, and the clouds told him to jump, he felt a hand on his back, pushing, then he was flying, falling, the wind shook him, why "Adam! Wake up." Paul was shaking his shoulder. Paul had sat up in bed, the blankets around his waist. A decent amount of time must have passed, because a little moonlight leaked through the window.

"What is it?" Adam was still groggy from the dream and the after-dinner drinks.

Paul pointed toward the door, his eyes wide and wet in the dimness. "I saw something. A woman, I think. All dressed in white. She was white."

"This is the southern Appalachians, Paul. Everybody's white." Adam shook away the fragments of the nightmare.

"No, it wasn't like that. She was see-through."

Adam gave a drowsy snort. "That's what happens when you smoke Panamanian orange-hair. It's a wonder you didn't see the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in drag."

"I'm not joking, Adam."

Adam put a hand on Paul's chest. His boyfriend's heart was pounding.

"Get back under the covers," Adam said. "You must have fallen asleep and had a weird dream. I think I had one myself."

Paul lay back down, his breathing rapid and shallow. Adam opened his eyes momentarily to see Paul staring at the ceiling. "No drinks or smoke tomorrow, okay?"

There was a stretch of silence, one that only a noise-polluted New Yorker could truly appreciate. Finally Paul said, "I told you I'd be working."

Adam knew that tone. They'd argued enough for one vacation. Adoption, Paul's video, his drug use. And now Paul was seeing things. Adam suddenly wondered if their relationship would survive six weeks at Korban Manor.

He turned his back on Paul and burrowed into the pillows.

"She had flowers," Paul said.

Mason's hands ached. Sawdust and wood shavings were scattered around his feet. Wood chips had worked their way down the tops of his tennis shoes and dug into the skin around his ankles. He tossed his chisel and mallet on the table and stood back to look at the piece.

He had worked in a fever, not thinking about which grain to follow, which parts to excise, where to cut. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. The room had grown warmer. The candles had long since melted away, and the oil was low in the base of the lantern. He must have worked for hours, but the soreness in his limbs was the only evidence of passing time.

Except for the bust before him on the table.

He'd never attempted a bust before. He brought the lantern closer, examining the sculpture with a critical eye. He could find no flaws, no features that were out of proportion. Even the curves of the earlobes were natural and lifelike, the eyebrows etched with a delicate awl. The sculpture was faithful to its subject.

TOO faithful, Mason thought. I'm nowhere near good enough to produce this caliber of work. I've had successes along the way. But this… Jesus Henry Christ on a crutch, I couldn't do Korban's face this well if I'd KNOWN the old geezer.

But it was Korban's head on the table, the Korban that filled the giant oil paintings upstairs, the same face that hung above the fireplace in Mason's room. Most amazing of all was that the eyes had power, just as they did in the portraits. That was ridiculous, though. These eyes were maple, dead wood.

Still…

It was almost as if the figure had life. As if the true heart of the wood had always been this shape, as if the bust had always existed but had been imprisoned in the tree. The face had been caged, and Mason had merely inserted the key and opened the door.

He shook his head in disbelief. "I don't have any idea where you came from," he said to the bust, "but you're going to make the critics love me."

The love of the critics meant success, and that meant money. Success meant he'd never have to step foot in another textile mill as long as he lived, he wouldn't have to blow chunks of gray lint out of his nose at every break, he wouldn't have to wait for a bell to tell him when to take a leak or buy a Snickers bar or race the other lintheads to the parking lot at quitting time. Sure, he still had years of carving ahead, but success started with a single big break.

He was already planning a corporate commission, the gravy train for artists. He'd buy Mama a house, get her some advanced text-reading software and an expensive computer, and then find all the other ways to pay her back for the years of handicap and hardship. Best of all, he could make her smile.

Or maybe he was being suckered by the Dream Image, the high that came after completing a work. He still had to treat the wood, do the fine sanding and polishing. A hundred things could still go wrong. Even as dry as the maple had been after years in the forest, the wood could split and crack.

Mason rubbed his shoulder. His clothes were damp from sweat. The weariness that had been building under the surface now crested and crashed like a wave. Even though he was tired, he felt too excited to sleep. He took one last look at the bust of Korban, then covered his work with an old canvas drop cloth he'd found in the corner.

The first red rays of dawn stabbed through the ground-level windows. Mason's stubble itched. Back in his old life, he'd be on his third cup of coffee by now, waiting on the corner for Junior Furman's pickup to haul him to work. The start of another day that was like a thousand other days.

Mason traced his way back across the basement, ducking under the low beams and stepping around the stacks of stored furniture. He finally found the stairs and went up to the main floor. The smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits drifted from the east wing, and kitchen-ware clanged in some distant room. Mason's stomach growled. An older couple passed him in the hall, steam rising from their ceramic coffee cups. They nodded a wary greeting. Mason realized he probably looked bleary-eyed and unkempt, like an escaped lunatic who'd broken into the medicine cabinet.

When Mason reached his room, he looked at the painting of Korban again, marveling at how closely his sculpture resembled that stern face. But the face seemed a little less stern this morning. And the eyes had taken on a little more light Don't be bloody DAFT, he chided himself in William Roth's accent.