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Galleries always felt sterile when transitioning from one exhibit to the next, the in-between time when the walls were bare and all you were left with was the plaster. Allied Arts was no different. It sat on Cornwall Avenue, close to Chase’s apartment building, with one wall of windows that looked out onto the street, gray carpet, and walls hungry to be covered with large canvases in well-chosen frames.
Aaron stood there trying to imagine his paintings hanging on the walls and tried to wrap his head around the idea that anyone would potentially want to buy his work. It seemed ridiculous to him. The things he painted had been for him alone. A type of therapy that had never meant to belong to another person.
He looked over at Andy, speaking with a tall middle-aged woman in a cantaloupe-colored sundress and artistic jewelry made of manipulated metals and beaded stones, discussing the details of the show. This was an opportunity for the both of them, and it made Andy happy, and despite everything he wanted to see his friend happy.
Why she wanted to do the show with him, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps she wasn’t confident that she could carry an exhibit on her own and he was the only other visual artist that she knew, or maybe she wanted something to balance out her sometimes jarring but always captivating photography—but he couldn’t understand where she thought that balance would be achieved when it was his abstract web of dark colors and nightmarish brush strokes that she was relying on.
Maybe it was none of those things. Perhaps she simply believed in him and his art and she wanted to give him the opportunity to shine. In the end, why she had asked him didn’t matter. He had already agreed to it and so he was at her mercy.
They hadn’t spoken on the ride over to the gallery. Aaron hadn’t had anything to say to her and she either knew she had crossed a line, was too oblivious to it, or she didn’t care—but whichever it was, she didn’t speak either.
He had been pissed at her for how she had behaved right before they left the house, and he didn’t like seeing the satisfaction on her face when they had left. He could tell that she had tried to hide it, but in the corner of her mouth was a slight smirk, and her eyes looked at Aaron as if she had secured a prize-winning Arabian that had just won the Kentucky Derby and would go on to do so again.
Andy made her way towards him now, a bright smile on her face and acting as if she hadn’t been a complete bitch towards Chase and Amanda.
He turned his head to look at her. His back was pencil-straight as he stared at those blank walls, and when his eyes fell on her she stepped back ever so slightly.
“Well?”
“They’ll keep the place open until eleven at the latest, but no longer.” She looked him in the eyes, and Andy gave no indication that it registered for her how upset with her that he actually was.
“Okay. And wine? Cheese? Charcuterie? Are they going to provide these things or do we need to do that?”
His tone was impatient. He was trying to get past her recent behavior and how their relationship had seemed to sour, but all he could think about was wanting to get back home and be with Chase and Amanda. He still didn’t know what to make of everything, and leaving them alone together was eating at him.
He had never known where he really stood with Amanda Willis back then and he wasn’t sure where he stood with her now. Would she respect his relationship with Chase or would she try to poison the well? He didn’t want to be so suspicious—so untrusting—but he had never really had any practice. Trust was something gained and given over the years in an exchange of relationships—friendship or otherwise—and not having any of those things until he moved back to Bellingham and into Christy’s house, had made it impossible for him to trust, because he simply didn’t know how.
“Yes. They said they’ll provide those things. We don’t have to.” Andy smiled reassuringly and flipped her burgundy curls behind her shoulder, and her familiar sterling silver ankh caught the light and stood out against the mocha of her skin.
Aaron sighed. “Well, okay, let’s go!”
He turned and began to make his way to the door located in the front hall. He was desperate to get home and sort out for himself everything that was happening.
He had just reached out for the door handle when Andy grabbed his arm, suddenly pulling on him and forcing him to turn around to face her.
Aaron ripped his arm from her grasp and his eyes burned with silent rage. “What?”
“We need to figure out who’s going to have what wall, and where we want to hang our pieces!”
“No, we don’t! We can figure that out when we come to set up.” Her face seemed to contort, twisting in anger as her brows furrowed and her eyes scowled at him.
“No! God, it seems all you care about is being with Chase, and now this Amanda chick; I mean, what about me?”
Who the fuck is she kidding?
Aaron tried to restrain his anger, to swallow it down and bury it deep inside. He didn’t want this to turn into something more than it needed to be, though, in the end, Aaron was sure that the things he needed to say were long overdue—but he wasn’t going to get into any of it right then and there in the middle of an art gallery full of people.
“Today has been a really fucked up day and I would just like to go home and rest! It has nothing to do with you, or Chase, or Amanda; hell, not even with this stupid fucking show! I just need to lay down for a while.”
He was lying to her. It had everything to do with Chase and Amanda. He wanted to be with them, and connect with them and perhaps learn what he could about Bailey Nguyen. Things he didn’t know. Maybe he could learn things that would help to let him go.
There was someone or something out there that could reach out and touch them and that thing had everything to do with Bailey and that day in the bathroom. If this thing were some kind of beast forged in hell to bring them all together and exact revenge, then he needed to know as much as he could.
And if it was Bailey himself; having survived the bathroom, perhaps waking up in the ground and digging himself out—half-crazed and lost beyond comprehension and eager for revenge, waiting nine years in some cave or hovel—then he needed to understand him as much as possible.
It would have been a ferocious lie to say that Proctor hadn’t had the biggest impact on his life, that it hadn’t shaped him into the person he was now, nine years down the line.
“Fine, whatever! Who gives a shit? I don’t.” Andy threw her hands up in the air, dismissing him and his explanation.
“Andy!” His phone went off in his back pocket. “Fuck!” He pulled it out quickly and placed it to his ear. “Yes?” he said into the receiver, his tone indicating to whoever it was on the other end of the line that he was being called at a bad time.
“Murderer... I’m gonna gut you like a pig....” He froze. There was that voice. That voice that was Bailey and that wasn’t Bailey, familiar and alien all at the same time. “It’ll take them weeks to put you back together again....”
“Fuck you, you stupid fuck!” He hung up the phone and clutched it tightly in his left hand. He wanted to squeeze it until it broke into a thousand pieces. He wanted to get away from the Voice and the Shape and from Andy and this art show. He wanted to be home inside his bedroom with the door closed and the windows shut, locked away from the rest of the world and all of its questions.
“Who was it? Was it Chase?” she asked gleefully.
He looked at Andy and shook his head. He was starting to slip into the past. His arms began to throb and his skin felt as if it were starting to crawl and his scars burned, begging to be licked by the blade one more time.
“Well then, who was it?” Her voice was impatient and Aaron could see the genuine look of concern begin to replace the hopefulness on her face.
Across his mind was the memory of cracked bones and splinters of ivory glittering in dim light, while dark blood and membrane pooled around his feet as he stared at the body and looked at his hands, unable to conceive of what he had done and what had brought them to this place.
“Death.... It was Death....”
She wanted to ask him more, to discern what he meant by Death. He could see the questions—see them written on her face like words on a page—he could see that she was desperate for answers.
It rang once again.
“Hello?” He expected that same voice, expected to be taunted yet again.
“Hey, baby....” The voice was familiar and comforting. It was Chase Sheppard and his voice was good.
“Chase. Hey, what’s going on?” He tried to swallow the sound of his crying, to choke back the tears and refused to give any hint to his boyfriend that something was wrong.
“Oh, I’m just here at the house—your house—getting Amanda set up in her new room. Are you coming home soon?”
There in the earth. There he was with flesh flaking away, and becoming nothing more than dust. Leaving nothing more than brittle bone and a skeletal smile, as he called to him from beneath the earth and beckoned Aaron to join him.
He looked at Andy and then made his way back to the door. She could follow or not, it was up to her, but as far as he was concerned, he was done for the day.
“Yeah, right now.” They were outside, making their way back to the bus depot. The late afternoon sun felt good, warming his skin and making it feel at ease. The urge to cut was fading, replaced with the process of getting home and all of the steps that that involved, from walking to the depot, depositing the money, taking a seat, and then walking home from the stop. All of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other tasks between where they were and walking through the front door.
“Oh, great! Then I’ll see you shortly.”
Aaron looked at the cars passing by as they waited for the crosswalk and gave a nod.
“Yeah, see you soon.”