17

Zala Lechnen fell asleep in Lee’s arms. Curled up on the sofa with her hand still clutching a wine glass, her reddened eyes had closed and her mind floated into a dream world.

They had been watching television in silence. Lee was tired, and just as he was contemplating a strong cup of coffee or a couple of caffeine pills, he noticed a change in Zala’s breathing. It was heavier, sedate. Her body had also fallen limp, practically fusing with his.

Maneuvering slowly so as not to wake her, he shifted and gently rested her down. He took the glass out of her hand and put it on the floor before grabbing a soft cushion, which he propped underneath her head. He stood back, looked down at her, and smiled. She stirred gently in her sleep, moaning softly. Knowing she would wake in a few hours, Lee made his way upstairs. The large house had one guest room. It hadn’t been used in a year and had rarely been used before then. It was musty, cold, and stale. He would give Zala his own room and spend the night in there.

He stripped the sheets in his room and picked up a few unsightly objects—a stray sock, an old sweater that hung from the door, caffeine pills on the nightstand and codeine pills in the drawer. He also closed the curtains, opened a window, and switched on a bedside lamp.

He switched off the main light, checked and admired the ambiance, and then headed for the ensuite, which he quickly checked over. He removed a damp towel from a radiator that didn’t seem to be working and repositioned the bath mat and the toiletries.

He popped his head into the guest room. The double bed in the center of the medium-sized room was covered with boxes and clothes. The window to the room was blocked with a black blind, drawn and shuttered, hiding the room from the outside world.

A slice of light had managed to find its way through the blind, cutting through a small tear in the material. The ray of sunshine was like a dagger of light through the dark room, coming from the top of the window and stabbing downward toward the door. A million specks of dust floated inside the beam, refusing to settle on any of the already dusty surfaces. Reaching underneath the blind—fearing that light may spontaneously combust the room if he peeled apart the oppressive shutters—he opened the window, allowing the room to breathe. He checked the floor, patted the bed down, and then left.

He spent the next few hours in the bright studio, his hand working frantically on a blank canvas, his mind a whirr of creative thought. The sounds from the outside world couldn’t penetrate the double glazed windows, and he had left the studio door open so he would be able to hear any movement from downstairs. He was ready to greet and comfort Zala when she woke.

His mind was still tired. His eyes struggled to focus. He also had trouble keeping track of his thoughts, so he banished them completely, letting his subconscious paint the pictures while his conscious sat idle.

He thought about Zala and Riso but, as with the death of Jennifer, he preferred not to linger on those thoughts. He had liked Riso; he was a kind, gentle man with a big heart and a posture to match. He was the ultimate friendly giant. His death was untimely. Days earlier, Lee had found himself pondering about the early demise of the giant Austrian, but he had banked on a heart attack being the culprit.

A battle had raged in his fatigued mind when Zala spilled her sorrows. His lust had fought his morals. Riso’s demise would bring him closer to Zala and would give him the chance he needed to be with her, but the part of him that bonded with Riso, forming a happy friendship, countered the morbid, merciless lust.

The light in the studio grew dimmer and dimmer as his objectless painting progressed. The outside world turned an eerie gray and the light of the fading sun struggled to break through the tall windows. Lee snapped out of his sedated trance, stopped his painting, and stared out of the windows. The house next to the Lechnens’ was bright and welcoming. Lights of orange, yellow, blue, and red flickered or remained constant out of four upstairs windows. The house was active, vibrant, alive, and against the disappearing sunlight, it looked like a pleasant safe-haven. Warming to the heart.

The Lechnens’ house was a different scene altogether. It had a colder, less approachable look. It looked out of place. None of the lights were on and all the curtains had been left open. This, coupled with the tragedy that had befallen the homeowner, turned the building, and all mental images that accompanied it, into a wintry nightmare.

Staring at the bleak house, Lee could feel the imagery suck the happiness out of him, replacing it with a somber sense of tragedy. He wondered if that was how the neighbors saw his house, and how they had seen it since Jennifer’s death. Because even though it wasn’t empty, it was just as bleak, cold and lifeless. Gradually, all the streetlights flickered on, but the fluorescent glow did little to aid the sorrowful image and Lee dragged his attention away.

He looked at the mess he had created on the canvas and frowned, tilting his head this way and that, trying to decipher its chaotic code.

“What is it?”

The voice startled him. He quickly turned on his chair. Zala stood in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, her shoulder leaning against the wooden door frame. Her eyes stared past Lee’s shoulder at the fresh painting.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “I didn’t hear you …”

“I have quiet feet,” she said softly, her voice tired. “And you were too busy looking out the window.”

Lee nodded. He couldn’t see Zala’s features from the front, but the glow from a hallway light framed her in an angelic silhouette. “I wasn’t really painting anything,” he explained. “My mind is a blank. I was just …” He turned toward the painting and stared at it momentarily before turning back. “Doodling, I suppose.”

“Are all of your paintings like this?”

“No, this is just a one-off.”

“Good because it’s …” She checked Lee’s expression before settling on a word she deemed inoffensive. “Strange.”

“It’s horrible, you mean.”

“I never said that.”

“I know, but it is. I wasn’t concentrating. I was waiting for you to wake up. I didn’t want to watch television or anything in case I disturbed you, so I came in here.” He motioned toward the painting. “This was painted to pass time.”

Zala stepped forward, out of the framing light. She studied the walls next to the door and slapped a hand against them. “It’s dark in here.” She found the light switch and snapped it on. The light from the small bulb bounced off the white walls and exposed every niche of the open and expansive studio.

Instantly her eyes were drawn to the walls, a contorted look of awe, wonder, and amazement spread across her face as she admired the newly hung artwork covering the walls like wallpaper.

Lee followed her open-mouth gaze as she strolled around the room, keeping a steady distance from the paintings and side-stepping along, appreciating each one in turn. “I never did show you my work, did I?” he muttered.

Zala merely shook her head. She seemed lost in a trance, still admiring the wall of the studio where morbid canvases of painted dreams and delusions hung. “They’re amazing,” she said after a short awe-struck silence.

“You sound surprised.”

“What’s this one?” She stopped in front of a small canvas, painted with many shades of red, orange, and black. It was a slurry of gothic morbidity, a vibrant canvas that immediately captured the eye and the imagination.

“A sunset,” Lee said placidly. “A dying sunset,” he clarified.

Zala walked closer to the painting and lifted her hand to within inches of it, tracing a shape with her finger. “It’s amazing.”

“Thanks.” Lee was starting to blush. Showing off his art made him unreasonably uncomfortable. “I painted it a few days ago.” He watched Zala move her face closer. “I watched a program about the death of the sun and well … I took it literally.” He let his self-conscious gaze fall upon the vibrant painting. It depicted a surreal sunset with the dying sun fading in the heavens, bleeding out its life across a dead landscape.

Zala moved on. “Do you give them names?” she wondered.

“There’s not much point, I’m the only one who sees them.”

Zala finished with the left wall. She crossed the room to study the many paintings that Lee had thought of as pointless. They depicted random and dull things: views, landscapes, magazine covers. Zala stared at them with the same amount of approval.

“You have an amazing ability,” she noted.

“Thanks,” said the blushing artist.

“They’re so alive and exciting.” She found a painting of the view from the studio windows, which depicted the Lechnens’ house in the forefront. She walked closer to clarify her point. “Some are a little shabby, I’ll be honest,” she said as she quickly skipped past a bland landscape with a fiery sky. “You must paint quickly. How long did it take you to paint each of these, on average?”

“A few hours,” he said with a shrug, delighted that Zala, like Jennifer before her, was impressed by his work.

She finished studying the second row and turned her attention toward Lee. She opened her mouth to speak but paused, her eyes on the wall behind him.

Lee was confused at first but he soon realized what had drawn her attention. His heart sank. He had devoted the wall behind him to his pictures of Zala. A wall of devotion that he’d completely forgotten about in his fatigued state.

Zala, her mouth still slightly open and her attention fixed, walked past him, closed the door to expose the wall fully, and then stood back to admire. Lee didn’t dare turn around. He was mentally cursing himself and wondering which excuse, if any, he could use. In seconds, her view of him could transform from talented painter to twisted stalker.

For interminable moments, the room was silent. Lee slowly spun around on his chair and broke the silence. “Jennifer,” he muttered in a soft tone. Zala was studying a group of pictures to the left of the door. “They’re all pictures of her,” he lied.

“You were right, she does look like me.” Zala sidestepped across the rows of portraits. “You loved her a lot. It shows.”

Lee nodded, feeling relieved. His eyes drifted along the rows of pictures to the end one, the biggest one. It was the one he had painted of Zala while she was sunbathing. The Lechnens’ house was in the painting, standing tall behind the sunbathing goddess. He wouldn’t be able to explain his way out of that one.

Before he could think of an excuse or a reason to pull Zala out of the room, her wandering eyes fell upon the painting and her legs followed. She stood directly in front of it, stared for what felt like hours. She spent more time looking at that one piece than she had all the other paintings in the room. Lee watched wearily, staring at the back of her head and hoping she wouldn’t think him perverse.

“Amazing,” she concluded, pulling away from the wall of paintings and standing alongside him. “You have a gift.”

Lee waited for a but. He waited for the questions and comments, but when none came, he simply said: “Thanks.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t show me earlier. If I could paint this well, I’d want to show it off to everyone I met.” Her eyes spun around the room again.

Lee was lost for words. He wondered what she thought of the sunbathing girl, whether she realized it was her or not and, if she had, why she hadn’t said anything. She bent down and planted a soft kiss on his forehead before raising her head and lowering her eyes to meet his. A sadness lingered there, a look of pity almost.

“Are you hungry?” she wondered.

“A bit.”

“What do you want to eat? I’ll cook us both something.”

“I’m not …” He trailed off uncertainly. “Whatever you want,” he said, noticing a twinge of happiness on her face. She was still sad, but she was all cried out.

“You do have food in the cupboards, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll go and see what I can do.” She turned to leave, stopping in the doorway. “If I were you, I’d scrap that.” She gestured toward the messy canvas. “Clearly you can do better.”

“Will do.”

He watched her leave. Her trousers hung loosely off her waist and flared out around her socks. She trod on them with every step as she walked across the carpeted landing. He listened to her soft footfalls on the stairs and waited for her to fully descend before he sighed to himself in relief.

He looked at the sunbathing painting. There wasn’t much detail in her face. Lee hadn’t really seen much of her face that day—the top half had been covered with hair and large-rimmed sunglasses, the bottom half had met with the glare of the sun—so most of the detail had gone into her sun beaten body. She may have not recognized herself as the centerpiece of the painting, but she surely would have recognized the house and the garden. The left side of the picture even showed the driveway and a partial slice of the silver Mercedes.

He shrugged the thoughts away, stood, and walked over to the large windows. He clasped his hands, raised them above his head and stretched, yawning deeply.

A black car, visible thanks to the moonlight and the radiance from nearby street lights, grabbed his attention. It was parked to the left of his driveway, opposite the Lechnens’ house. He immediately tried to focus his eyes on the person sitting in the driver’s seat.

He wasn’t sure if the car was the same one he had seen the night before. He hadn’t seen much, after all. But it was parked in the same spot and its grayed-out shape and dark contours matched the vehicle from the previous night.

As he strained to catch a glimpse of the man behind the steering wheel, a light suddenly burst on inside the car. Joseph jumped. The driver of the vehicle, wearing a full suit of black, including a black baseball cap and sunglasses, was staring right at him. He was looking up, his pale white skin ominous against the gray light.

A storm of fear and worry built up inside Lee. They continued to stare at each other. None of them moved. Lee didn’t even dare twitch.

The man in the car slowly raised a gloved hand and pointed it at Lee, his finger aimed at him like an accusatory gun. He continued to watch as the hand moved to the man’s neck. Holding there like a knife, the man made a swiping motion across his pale skin before he pointed back at Lee.

An incoherent, horrified mumble escaped Lee’s lips. Anger and fear welled up inside of him. The urge to turn was more prominent than ever. But, before he could avert his eyes, the light inside the car flicked off, the driver’s image now a block of pixelated blackness.

Lee took a step away from the window. His heart pounded inside his chest, his hands sweaty, his whole body agitated. He continued to stare out of the window, hoping to catch sight of the man again and maybe offer a few hand signals of his own, but the car quickly pulled away, disappearing down the street.

“Fucking weirdo,” he spat, still standing at the window. “What the fuck was his problem?” he muttered to himself as his heart continued to race and his mind struggled to grasp an explanation.

He walked back to the easel, stared at the messy painting, shaking his head in distaste. Taking the sheet of canvas, he ripped it up into eight separate bits and dropped them into a waste paper bin. He then cleaned the palette of paint and washed the brushes thoroughly before heading out of the room, by which time the memory of the man in the car was just an annoying niggle stabbing suggestively at the back of his mind.