The building stood in the centre of town, but it stood far enough from the street that it effectively stood in its own pocket of solitude. There was a high wrought iron gate and a courtyard to navigate before the man got to the foyer and he mused that if the owners spared the money for renovation the likes of him would never be welcomed here.
He walked through the large glass doors, glass weathered to a frosty opaqueness, and past the enquiring eyes of the manager. He took the stairs and made his way to the first floor.
The fluorescent light flickered overhead in a cycle of rebirth and death and the man smiled to himself. He picked his way down the hallway glancing at the number plates as he passed. He paused and consulted a note he had on a tiny square of orange paper. The flicking light illuminated an oval plastic number plate, and the man noted the chips taken out of its faux bronze finish.
It read “14” and the man paused a moment to arrange himself before rapping his knuckles on the worn wood.
He waited, patience one of the cornerstones of his profession, and then unhurriedly rapped his knuckles against the wood again.
“One moment please…”
He knew it wasn’t the thin wood of the door that had made the woman’s voice seem so distant, it was a voice he’d heard so many times; it was the voice of someone who the world had passed by, a life disregarding with less than a sniff.
The door opened a sliver, an eye peering through it. Inside the room was lit dimly by two bedside lamps. The light barely offered him the vaguest sight of the woman through the narrow view between door and frame. Overhead the florescent light flickered and within each lit moment he caught a view of sad eyes that may have once belonged to a beautiful girl.
He offered his card and the eyes looked at it warily; a moment later the door opened, and the man walked inside.
The room had been arranged for his arrival; the one bedside lamp had been moved away from the bed and placed next to a chair that had been positioned to face the bed. The man sat.
He watched as the woman closed the door and then, after a moment’s nervous hesitation, she locked it behind her. She did not look at him as she walked over, with conscious effort he averted her eyes, but the man did nothing of the sort. His eyes took in everything hungrily, obvious, and un-bashful he watched her as one would a particularly interesting scene in a favourite film. He watched the sway of her hips and the line of her arms; he watched her eyes as they avoided his own and her lips as her tongue moistened them nervously.
She moved to the bed and glanced at him. The glance was so quick a less observant man would’ve missed it and he smiled. She sat on the bed’s edge, and he studied her.
“I need to explain…” She said in the same quiet and defeated voice that had greeted him.
“There’s no need.” His replied, he kept his voice gentle and spoke in little more than a whisper.
“I want to…” She insisted.
He glances at the bedside light on the small table next to him; beside it is an unopened bottle of whisky. He cracked open the seal and poured himself a drink.
“Okay,” he said, “please explain…”
The woman sat primly, her hands folded on her lap and her eyes downcast. Behind her the second lamp, the one still beside the bed, had been lit and its glow illuminated the warm pink of the wall behind her.
The man sipped from his glass and listened.
“I used to paint such wonderful pictures; I could sell then and was often asked to paint portraits. I was good and happy, and the world was such a big place with so much to see in it…”
The man sipped his drink and contemplated. He looked up from his drink back to the woman, after a few moments more he spoke.
“And you’ve seen it all?”
Her nod was almost imperceptible.
“I saw the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon when I was a child. When I was a teen, I spent time in Paris as I travelled across Europe; I’ve seen it all…”
The man wanted to lean forward, he wanted to place his hand over hers but the distance between them was too great.
“If I had written my life…” She continued.
“It would be different…?” He asked.
“No,” she admitted, “that’s all how it… would have been.”
The room fell into silence and the man placed the glass back on the small table beside him before sliding from his seat onto the floor in front of her.
He felt the course worn carpet through the knees of his Italian made trousers and he felt the heat of her hand as he took it in his own. Startled, she looked at him for the first time and he felt her hand twitch as if she wanted to pull it from his grasp. Her eyes were wide, and he thought he could see tears waiting to fall.
“How was it…?” He asked in the same half whisper. “How was it really?”
For the longest moment it seemed as if she wouldn’t answer him, but patience was a cornerstone of his profession; so, he waited.
“I was pregnant at fourteen and the father was…”
She fell into silence, her lips moving but no sound finding its way out of them.
“Unpleasant?” He prompted.
The woman nodded.
“I never painted, I never travelled.” She paused and took a deep breath; he knew that she was fighting back tears now. “I never saw anything or went anywhere. My son was born and my life… ended…”
Gently, with the care one would take with a priceless and irreplaceable artefact he turned her hand over. He inspected it with the careful intensity of a jeweller inspecting a diamond and then ran his fingertip over the lines of her palm.
“This… Is your lifeline… Right there, you can see…” He glanced up at her, her eyes were wide, and threads of moisture ran from them to her chin. “You can see that it keeps going…”
She slipped her hand from his and stared at her palm. The man rose and collected a second glass and filled it. He held it out for her, but for the moment she ignored him.
He watched as she followed the lines on her palm as if she had never seen them before, he leaned down and brushed his fingertip over the lines again, pointing them out.
“Life… Head… Heart…”
She looked up at him.
“Here.” He said, offering the glass to her.
She took it and peered into the half a glass of amber fluid, and then quickly downed it’s in one. She looked up at him and he down at her. Her eyes moved over his face and for the moment he is content to stand in silence.
“So, who am I?” He eventually asked her.
“I don’t…”
“Who do you want me to be?”
She looks away; the nervousness returning.
“I don’t know…”
“That’s okay, we have time.”
The man turned and returned to his seat, this time perching on its edge. He picked up his discarded glass and refilled it.
“Why did you never paint?” He asked.
“I tried, people smiled and said pleasant things about it but afterward it’s as though it never happened. I was brushed aside…”
“Brushed aside, eh?”
He smiled and she gets the pun and laughs a little laugh back. For a moment, her face is painted with a smile and the man saw a glimpse of the beauty inside her; beauty hidden by her pain.
“There’s no point…” She said forlornly and shook her head slightly, uncertainly. She peered into her own empty glass and then offered it to him; silently he refilled it before continuing.
“To painting or to life…?” He asked.
She shrugged in reply and stared into the half-filled glass.
“When I was older, I tried again, even my son was the same.”
“The same…?”
“He…” She sighed and her nose wrinkled in momentary distaste. “He smiled and said all those things you are supposed to say; but it was like talking to an attendant at a fast-food drive through.”
“Where is he?”
Again, the woman shrugged.
“He’s… living… somewhere.” She waved a slightly unsteady hand to indicate the world, or life; or existence itself.
“Let’s put this out of your mind.”
He knelt on the carpet in front of her again, the movement slow and they find their faces level. With one hand he brushed her hair from her face while his other rested casually on her thigh.
“Who are we?”
He moved closer as if to kiss her and she visibly flinched.
“No… I, I can’t… I’m sorry.”
The man sat back on his heels, his one hand still resting on her thigh. He paused a moment, his face unreadable.
“Are you certain?”
Silently she nodded her head and for a moment they paused in a parody of a proposal. He began to watch her once more and again she avoided his gaze. She didn’t see the subtle shift in his eyes, she didn’t see the pleased smile, and she never would.
The man stood and moved to the door.
“Wait!”
He stopped and turned to see her holding her hand out to him, a small wad of banknotes in it. His eyes move from the money clutched in her small hand to her eyes; eyes that were older than her years.
“For your trouble…” She said, and the man smiled.
She felt his cool skin, soft as velvet, and he brushed his fingers over hers. Gently he squeezed her hand closed, the note still caught inside. He spoke again in his near whisper. “You had the courage to contact me, and then you had the courage to reject me. So, if it isn’t courage you lack, what is it?”
He paused a moment longer, then released her hand and turned again to the door. She looked down and saw the corner of a note poking out between her fingers and, when she looked up; she saw the door to the room had swung closed.
The woman returned to the bed and sat a while in contemplation; silhouetted by the dim lamplight of an anonymous room.