For the Love of Art Pt. 04

A/N: Any ill feelings towards this chapter and its direction are well-deserved. Here's your trigger warning: there's a sprinkle of graphic nonconsent/horror. Part of the reason I submitted then took it down was because of the inward confliction on whether I should censor some things, cut them out entirely, or just say fuck it. Obviously I said fuck it. Enjoy!

*****

Trust. It was a concept more sacred than love itself. It was the core of all emotions, the safety-net our minds fell back onto.

I felt nothing but vacant space behind me, horror vacui woven in its finest shade.

What's wrong, Grace? Just tell him. You can tell him.

Simplicity came in strides, half measures, and it could only be crafted by those of simple minds. Those who kept from spinning terrors in the corners of their head. As I stood there, Mr. Ryne filling the threshold of the doorway, I was beyond seeing him as something terrible, rather he was everything terrifyingly beautiful. Everything I wanted to believe in.

His eyes on me, I feared the sense of freedom to be dark. To demand then and there he tell me who the woman in the photo was. To be openly jealous of the past. To unconditionally sink myself into the unnerving portraits in the basement.

The only thing stopping me was him. If he had wanted me to know either discovery, he would have told me.

Two could play the game of secrets.

I mastered the nervous smile, endeavored upon my habit of wrapping my arms around my middle. I was the colors of frail he knew me as. "It's been a long day. I guess I'm still trying to get past the talk with my mother."

"Is that what we're going with, Miss Larson?" he asked no sooner than I'd spoken.

Confusion was trapped on my tongue as he stalked in close, fingers brushing over my forearms. I was half expecting them to wrap around me, pull me close so that I might fully experience whichever brand of displeasure crept from lips slowly forming a smile before me.

"Lies don't look good on you."

I gave him no satisfaction of an outward reaction, even if inside I became reaquainted with fear. One day spent in his company had me falling in line with his ways, much like an eager pupil to their flawless master. Except, the takeaway assimilation was by no means anything to be proud of. I was learning the game of deceit.

"I have to shower," was my only standing response.

"Mm," was his.

We regarded one another, both our lips sealed tight, thoughts locked away in our heads. Some things didn't require words. He doubted me, distrusted. It was a statement authored by his silence, the way he stepped back, refraining from challenging my words. Good, we were on the same page.

Then, with one last sidelong look that cavorted down my spine, he was gone.

I watched his shadow recede down the hall, down the stairs. The dim hands of the bathroom's light was my lasting company. For a long time, I didn't move. I wasn't in control of the replay of events. The gallery kiss, the unnerving portraits, the photo nestled in the book, word from my family, what had just been done in the kitchen . . . My next breath was an unstable rattle entering and exiting.

I hated it. I hated the triangular slant of light stretching from the bathroom. I hated the chosen forlorn bronze of its shade, how it spilled softly into the bedroom, allowing an obscure visual of plush gray duvets billowed over a California king. I hated the melancholy reach of this home, and the way it forced me into introspection.

The lives of those around me were often meaningless. I didn't make friends easily. I was too quiet, inside and outside, and I knew it. I embraced it, because never did I have a reason to be loud. To draw attention to myself. Relationships were demanding. Friendships were exhausting. Why put forth an effort for a social lifestyle when the byproduct was so enervating? Often, people confused my apathy with respect. The quieter I was, the more acquaintances around me whispered their secrets and trusted me not to spill, or, like Becky, didn't bother with a computer password because she regarded me in a deferential light. Today altered everything.

Because today I cared.

The longer I stood, saturated in the dark blue smell of Mr. Ryne and his history, the more frustration conquered me. The sea of unknown, its waters rose higher with the rain of my imagination, increasing the itch to unburrow more, to coax his mysteries into the light and decide for myself exactly who it was I found myself pining after so wholesomely.

My decision was made, possibly inevitably. I needed to know.

I stepped out of my reverie, studying the black empty hallway a moment longer. Nothing could be heard aside from the complaining howl of wind and snow careening outside.

This time would be different. The discovery of the portraits and photo had been accidental. Blameless. But this?

I closed the bedroom door and, feeling every bit as ignoble as the situation called for, I turned the lock. Dimitri Ryne's room was mine to exhume. Now was a matter of whether or not he kept anything worth uncovering within the room he laid his head at night.

In the event he decided against his earlier decision to let the matters rest and come back demanding to know everything, which I didn't think he would, I headed into the bathroom to turn the shower on. At least have him think I was underneath it, not snooping. Surprisingly, everything was disturbingly neat, down to the even stacking of heavy white towels, washrags, new toothbrush and loofah settled on the lowered hood of the toilet. Unsurprisingly, the shower was absolute black marble with an overhead stainless steel rainfall showerhead. I sighed, and after a minute of searching for the shower's handles, only to find out they were digital buttons, I spent another minute trying to figure out how to turn the thing on.

In the end, when the modernized bathroom finished challenging my outdated intelligence, the shower was up and going, a sleepy haze of icy water disguising me.

I pushed the hair from my face, the loose curls immediately falling back into place. I would just search the closet, I told myself, mindful of the running water. But when I found cynical rows of the exact same brand of black button-ups, black and gray pants, black belts, and three varying footwear selections, my hope of uncovering anything in a room so barren dipped below normal pessimistic expectations. I expanded my search to the bed, underneath it.

Nothing. Positioned directly across from the foot of the bed was a backless lounger, set up against the wall. There was nothing behind it, nothing beneath it. The thing was as gray as his duvets.

That was when I noticed the oddity. I loved art. I kept it all around me. My laptop, my dorm room, my phone. Anywhere I could commonly be found, some medium of flexed creativity could also be spotted.

Such wasn't the case with Mr. Ryne's bedroom. His walls were empty. The room's vibe upheld a contemporary persuasion. Sharp angles. Bland. Colorless. If not for the potent cloak of his scent, I'd have thought an entirely different man slept within the walls around me.

Beside the bed, something hummed quietly. A closer look showed me a glossy, spotless wine cabinet with an electric icebox. It was fully stocked. This man . . .

Unmotivated now, standing clueless at the center of the room, I was prepared to give up, shower, and say my goodnight, but something caught my eye across the room. A dresser nestled off in the far corner, residing in shadows thrown by the curled boughs of the trees outside.

When I walked towards it, the same ominous nausea filled my stomach to the brim as when flipping through the portraits below. It was a portent, thick and sweet wave. The dresser was hardly illuminated by two lapis dome skylights installed in the gentle sloped ceiling. It stained all the dresser's contents blue. A brown hairbrush now violet, an already blue hardback Webster's darkened, new and long white candles now a pale blue. They were ordinary accessories, which made it all the more unordinary.

I bypassed the top drawer, where he had assured me the shirts would be. I skipped to the last, as it made sense the contents would follow a linear order of categorizations. What lay inside was a mix of things, momentarily stunting the haunting in my chest and leaving behind the residual components of confusion. Just barely, I made out the colorful expressions of a summertime sundress. Blue and yellow water lilies decorating the laces, the midsection was pleated with gold fleurs de lis markings. In the dark, it was mesmerizing. Nearly enough to keep my eyes from straying to the manila envelope resting beside it, on top of black silk. It had to belong to her. Clare LaMonte.

Tossing a cautious glance to the door, I searched for my phone to use its light, only to realize I'd left it down in the kitchen, having been sidetracked and whatnot. And this was one of many reasons I could never pursue a career in detective work or any other field requiring good memory recall: I'd forget where I left my own skin if it were possible.

I kept the groan down, knowing it was much too late to go skipping downstairs to retrieve it. Queasy bathroom light it was. Snagging the envelope, I closed the drawer and crept softly across the room, unsure how noisy the floors were bound to be. The bathroom had long since chilled, the still going showerhead having run cold and colder. My paranoia flicked the locks to the door, where I then sat down against its back, crossed my legs and went to town.

The face of the envelope was blank, but the crease and weight of its stomach told me a book of sorts lay inside. My luck hadn't been tarnished just yet: the envelope was sealed by a brass fastener and not a peel-and-seal or gummed inconvenience.

Quickly, but with intense care, I turned the manila upside down, its insides slishing out between my legs. Varying material lay before me. A black and white composition book stole my attention first. Never in my life had I come across one of them that wasn't marked on nearly every page, and going by the heading on this one, 'Memories and Things', I had a feeling the streak wasn't about to end anytime soon.

The title was sensitive enough to make me wonder if maybe he'd forgotten its existence. Or someone had misplaced their good karma and I'd stumbled upon it. It would certainly be about time.

That idea was put to rest when I turned to the first page and saw what looked to be an essay. When I took the time to read it, each sentence spiking my paranoia of Mr. Ryne returning, I was disappointed with every last word. Because it was boring. All of it. It reminded me of the printout seminars the campus would lure kids into reading and attending. It covered the basis of material learned freshman year, from pictorial space to void construction of darkroom techniques. I'd been hoping for more telling photos or revealing love notes of nights she may have cherished with him.

This beginning obsession had me wondering just how much Mr. Ryne was to blame for the portraits of me in his art gallery. My curiosity of him, this invasive action I was reducing myself to . . . I was but a different brand of stalker. I should have felt demoralized by this, but instead I felt empowered. What was one sin in a sea of millions? That reason had me flipping to the next page and skimming.

I may have skimmed another if not for a peculiar sentence. It was striked out, then scribbled over but still legible. Before it, Clare had gone great lengths to really draw out the works of shadow and light photography, but the tone of the excerpt altered now. It became strangely inspirational as opposed to its former technical formality.

'Don't be afraid to take an absolute dive into the shadows. Capture that photo your art teacher warned you not to. Capture the world in black and blue.'

It wasn't so much the motivational script that piqued my interest, but three words alone. Absolute, dive, and shadows. Downstairs, in the binding where I'd discovered the photo, had been the sticky note with a web address I strained to recall. What I did remember was all of those words being relative. If I had my phone, I'd have looked it up, though it would probably be a bunch of blog posts promoting film and photography. What more, there was that line again, 'in black and blue'. She had written on the back the photo how she was loving Mr. Ryne in black and blue. Retrospective philosophy rang heavy here, but my comprehension remained latent on it.

At the bottom of the page, things took a turn. As though a mental breakdown had been in play.

'I'm kidding myself. My site is dead. The photos flatlined. The business is gone. For his sake, he'd better fucking hope it stays that way.'

This was the revealing stuff I'd been looking for, the form of gossip that had me checking the lock on the bathroom door—again—before hurrying to read on.

'If ever you do find this, Dimitri, know that I'm so sorry for what I did and what I'm about to do. I hope you forgive me someday, the same as I forgave you 365 days of the year. You, a heartless man undeserving of forgiveness after what you did to us. What you did to her.'

Wait.

No, no. I flipped to the next page, and the next and the next. All blank. That couldn't have been all! I couldn't make sense of the words, but the cliffhanger had me furious.

What he did to her. What the hell did that mean? What did he do? And to who? What photos? A billion and one things zipped through my head. Not one of them were pleasant.

I sat back, tired, frustrated. No time to speculate. Stashing the book back into the pouch, I moved on to the next items. Multiple standard envelopes. Outdated post stamps sat in the right hand corner. All of them were addressed to a forgettable city in Oklahoma. All were written out to Clare LaMonte.

I'd been wrong. Maybe the manila belonged to Mr. Ryne, the journal being Clare's. The envelopes were sealed irreversibly, crisp and straight as though hardly a day out of the package. I stashed them with the composition book—I stilled.

Beneath the envelopes was a slightly larger one, unsealed. What I found inside was another one of those bridges that led to infinite questions. Green. Lots of green. There was what could easily be five or six grand, all Franklins. American bills. This too was addressed to Clare. He was going to send a her a load of cash?

I shivered to think of what stopped him. If only they were dated . . . A shake of my head, I quickly returned it to its home before I grew dizzy digesting it all.

Next were two passport books. Inside were pictures of the faces I remembered. Clare's and the little girl's, Cassidy LaMonte. The picture of the girl appeared similar to the one downstairs and it was taken in '09. She was born in '02. So she had been around seven in the downstairs photo. Which made me wonder again how prehistoric Mr. Ryne's timeless image was.

The last item dumped between my lap were three birth certificates. Clare's, Cassidy's and—I'd been expecting Mr. Ryne's, but it was another of Cassidy's. Only different. One was of skyblue fibres, the other a faded, worn pink. One was registered to Canada, the other the UK. One said 'Cassidy Penelope LaMonte' born in Toronto, the other said Cassidy Dorothy Kay, born in Wales.

Then there was birthdates themselves.

One denoted July 01, 2002. The other said July 02, 2003.

Was one fake? For what reason?

An avalanche of hypotheticals had my head reeling. He had admitted he was capable of bad things, but smuggling humans had been a far cry from my assumptions. Besides, neither female appeared to be of Middle East origins. They were, honestly, as white as Caucasians came. Which led me to my next conclusion: they'd wanted citizenship in Canada, but needed Mr. Ryne to achieve that. Or maybe it was neither of the two. Clare could have just as easily been a step-sister or distant cousin who needed him to hang on to a few documents until they got sorted.

Then why all the money addressed to the woman?

I wiped a hand over my face to clear my head, then put all of the items back in the manila. This would lead me nowhere. Guessing without approaching the source himself. It'd never gotten me far in life before, but the more things I found in his home, the less I trusted truth to be the first thing Mr. Ryne to give upon my asking.

Peering into the lightless room, I listened again, but heard nothing. I raced to put the material back in the drawer, double checking that none of the clothing or miscellaneous accessories were a hair out of place.

In the end, I'd found nothing that set me a step closer to figuring out who the man downstairs was. As it went, I merely opened a door to more questions without answers.

*****

Downstairs, all lights were out, save for the ghostly snowlight cast through the vestibule's window panes and overhead fixture of the stove. In the kitchen, Mr. Ryne sat at the island, his back to me, head bent over papers, pen in hand, tip between teeth. It was another of those mundane postures that left me staring longer than I should have.

"You smell amazing," he said without looking up.

I shifted. "I smell like you."

"My point."

I rolled my eyes. "I just came down to say goodnight. And to say thank you, again, though it bothers you."

This revelation straightened him so that he could properly cast me a look of amusement. But all he said was, "Your clothes are on top of the dryer."

Ugh. "Sorry. I forgot all about them." I guess I'd gotten too comfortable sporting his too-big shirts. Did it bother me that he had put them in the dryer—worse, that he'd handled my underwear?

I skulked past him and into the laundry room. Folded, as neat as the bathroom towels had been, were my clothes. White bra on top, shameless Spongebob panties beneath. Yes. Yes, it did bother me, I decided as I grabbed the pile. For all I knew, the debatably innocent portraits in the gallery were just the tip of the iceberg. His seeing the undergarments could have added who knew what to his inspiration.

As I started back towards the assigned guestroom, I couldn't help but notice the weary slouch to come over him. He worried a brow with his knuckle, rapping the pen against the papers in thought, his eyes closed. While he was typically a man married to reticence, the resignation probed at some dormant solicitude inside of me. Even if I had my doubts about him, I foolishly gave a damn about what was bothering him.

I stopped beside him. "Everything okay?"

The look he gave me was as deflective as any. "No kiss goodnight?"

Standing there, his form solid and dark, I had the faintest temptation to humor him. Which was absurd after what I'd read. I held the stack of clothing closer. "You look stressed. What time is it?" Then I remembered my phone, settled on the edge of the island, right where I'd left it. It read a bit past eleven when I clicked it on. "It's been a long day. You were outside shoveling for hours. Without the help of a plow, I should add. Which still puzzles me."

"My mother always had us shovel, idle hands being the devil's gateway. She said it keeps us humble. It's habit now."

"That's one perspective, I guess." It also comforted me that he talked openly of his mother. One less unknown. "You just look tired, but I won't meddle." I'd already exceeded my limit of prying for the day.

He gave a small smile, and I stared at it too long. My insistent attraction was infuriating, especially under the circumstances. What I never wanted was to be that female attracted to trouble, the fly drawn to a Venus flytrap. But I was never in the habit of lying to myself. Whatever past he held, whatever darkness he harbored, just as much as I wanted to unearth it, I found the enigma riled something inside of me.