Where I would find bread, eggs, milk and a stray apple, he has imported everything, half a bakery, and a small farmers market. I know I could do a lot with this for breakfast...for breakfast?! What am I thinking? I make my equivalent of a charcuterie board and clean up my mess before I bring the oversized plate and a large glass of water back to the hallway. I haven’t heard the professor in a long time. I stand next to the small garden of gardenias once again to determine if I can see or hear where he might be in this maze.
The smell of the flowers is as intoxicating as the music I’m still humming in my head from the ride up. I’m drawn in to the esthetic again. My senses are in complete overload. My eyes are finally catching up and having their fill. I didn’t notice it before, but his bedroom is behind glass. It gives you the sense of complete voyeurism. The far wall holds an almost wall-to-wall mirror above a grand chest of drawers, while the near wall has a simple single chair which looks plush to the touch with a large flat screen mounted above it.
My nose nearly presses to the glass as I focus on the bed. Like everything else in the room, it’s oversized. You could sleep four adults in it. The thought immediately crosses my mind, I wonder if it has? Before I can let my brain and body marinate in that, a crash from my right startles me. “Fuck,” I exclaim as I try in vain to calm my rapidly beating heart. Beams of a subtle orange light glow from beneath a mystery door. I have to know what’s behind it.
My emotions are churning again in much the same way as they were in the elevator. I set the food and drink down on a bench across from the glowing door. What will I run into if I’m brave enough to open that door? I remember as a child being taught that if there was ever a fire to test the handle to see if it was hot. As I lay my hand on that handle, it’s not hot but I have the strongest sense I might get burned.
I open the latch as quietly as I can in the hopes that if I’m not seen I can leave, and he’ll be none the wiser. He likely won’t remember I’m here. The orange glow grows and is followed by a cool breeze. The air temperature behind the door is about fifteen degrees colder than the hallway I’m in. I can feel a deep chill run up and down my spine. It’s not only from the air. It’s because of the scene before me.
This whole room is like it’s from another home. The walls are ablaze with color. It starts with the sunset hues of the walls and the canvases strung across the entire back wall. There is everything from oils to watercolor. Photographs to sketches. Every medium seems to be represented. I should have assumed he was a practicing artist. The way he speaks about art is more than just an appreciation. He lives and breathes it. I can see bits and pieces of his soul.
I start my mental snapshots of the scene at the floor first. The warm wood floor is covered in a sea of pillows. There are pillows of nearly every size, shape, and color. Among the pillows I see shreds of canvas then his feet command my attention. His beautiful feet are completely bare, with the exception of dots of color in white and blood red, and they bleed together into a color I can’t describe. Fifteen minutes. He was away from my sight for no more than fifteen minutes and this is what he looks like.
I’ve only seen him completely put together, looking like he stepped out of the pages of a French fashion magazine. Right now, what’s before me is something so not that. He’s managed to change into a pair of denim jeans that radiate cool among everything else in the room. The fabric hugs every muscle in his calves and thighs with the pockets drawing attention to what I always knew was a phenomenal ass which is normally hidden to me.
I would have ogled him in silence longer if I didn’t start to notice other things. There is another empty bottle of bourbon on the floor just a kick of his foot away. The glass tumbler in his hand, that is nearly empty as well, just dangling in his fingers. How much more did he drink? Is what I’m seeing a product of multiple days of excess? The paintbrush is threaded through his fingers, which are also wound in his hair. The professor who is always controlled, completely commanding, is potentially coming undone.
He is staring at the artwork in front of him on the easel. He sways slightly right then catches his balance. With that break in form, a low feral growl escapes his lips. I circle back away from him just a bit. I’ve been around enough people on the edge to know when the volcano is ready to roar to life.
The hand in his hair begins to shake and the wooden brush snaps in two at the force. He tosses both broken pieces at the canvas with the speed of a pitcher throwing his best fastball. The motion is too great for his current state and it knocks him to his knees.
Without thinking, I rush to his side. My hand tentatively rests on his back between his shoulder blades. His skin is warm to the touch, even in the cool of the room. “Tristan?” I question, “Are you all right?” He doesn’t respond. He simply stares at his latest masterpiece. That’s when I really see it for the first time.
It’s another piece in his favorite form, the female. However, the more I look at it, the more I realize how different this one is. His tastes seem rooted in the sexy, the mysterious, the sensual, or at the very least content in spirit in some way. Those are the pieces we discuss in class at least. The feel of this work is very somber. It immediately gives me a heaviness in my heart. The feeling is so visceral I can touch it.
The pads of my fingers can tell this is what’s inside of him. Who is this woman? Is it someone he knows? Is it merely a representation of something so dark there aren’t words for it?
“Tristan?” I try his given name again. It still makes me nervous to say, but I don’t know how else to get through to him.
“Why? Answer me that.” He finally speaks for the first time since I put him in the car.
“Why what?” He lets me continue our contact. My fingers slide slightly left and right to try and soothe him.
“Tell me why she had to leave me.”
At first, I think it’s the excess of amber liquid talking, and he doesn’t really know what he’s saying. He finishes every drop in the glass before it rolls to the floor and nests itself between a couple of the pillows.
“Who is she?”
“Isn’t she beautiful?” He smiles through glazed eyes as he rocks back to his heels. “I didn’t do her hair justice. It was a gorgeous chestnut brown, not unlike yours. It waved down her back in what she teased were new age pin waves from the forties. She was obsessed with the greatest generation. She knew more than any historian. But it wasn’t about the facts for her. She was all about the people.”
I’m completely frozen and speechless. I don’t know what to say to him. It’s obvious he needs to talk so I just let him at his pace. He picks up the empty bottle at his feet, hoping for another drop. When there isn’t one, he stares down the empty neck. “It happened so fast. She was fine, and then she wasn’t. I blinked and she was gone. I couldn’t ask her to stay. I love her so much.”
I don’t know who she is, but this unknown wave of emotion crashes into me. I don’t want to make this about my feelings, but I’m jealous of the way he’s speaking about her and I can feel the weight of his sadness in my chest as if it were my loss. It shocks me. I speak without thinking. “Where did she go?”
“Raissa died two years ago today.”