Page 59 of In Frame
“Roz is in the workshop,” she added to Jason, coming over. “They’ll be out in a sec. Who’d you bring?”
“Sam,” Jason said. “He’s good with a camera. Visiting for a while. Sam, this is Lena, she’s great at design. Can I see them?”
“Oh, yeah, here, got it—” Lena found shelves, sorted through wrapped artworks and their labels, found a decently large wrapped package. “Came out fantastic. You’re such a sap. I love it. He is,” she added to Sam, “sucha sap. Romantic. Givesthe rest of us hope, y’know?”
Sam, unsure whether he was meant to respond to this—he’d only just met Jason—opened his mouth without a real plan, at which point the aforementioned Roz came in through a side door and said, “I swear you get bigger every time I see you, how’s Colby, who’s this?”
Roz was tall, tanned, in some indeterminate older-than-Sam age range, and attractive in a wiry beach-going way, sunstreaks and dust in short brown hair; they had on rainbow earrings and an outfit that suggested they’d been getting some woodworking done, over in the workshop, and they looked at Jason with both appreciation and some stern admonition about muscles versus objects of art.
Jason laughed, ran through introductions again, and said Colby was wonderful. Lena opened up the package for him to look at; they all did, for a moment. Aged paper and faded watercolor glimmered up, surrounded by graceful carved wood and shining glass; centuries long gone watched them back.
“This one was such fun,” Roz said. “Paper that delicate, and matching some of the curves of the sketches in the frame, the way we talked about…I love the way this came out. Do keep us in mind for anything else you pick up.”
The set of sketches glowed in the shop’s kindly light. Two of them were simpler: antique centuries-old ship designs, masts and rigging and cutaways to show the decks, the holds, the mechanics. Lines flowed across worn paper, building a vessel to race the waves and Napoleon’s guns; old-fashioned handwriting made notes, drew arrows, explained for the future. The third was what looked like the same ship, but hand-drawn and colored with a tinted wash: floating in a busy harbor, kissed by ocean, preparing for sail and war and the mission she’d been born for.
Sam choked on history and a love story. “That’s not—you didn’t find theactual—”
“No,” Jason put in, an earthquake of ruefulness. “None of Will Crawford’s sketches of theSteadfast—if he did any—survived. We have some of the letters—I don’t mean us personally, they’re in an archive back in England, in Bath—and some of his scientific notes, but not much. No, this is the H.M.S.Henrietta. Not all that distinguished, she didn’t ever do much, but her first captain wanted to be an artist, or at least he drew that third one himself.”
The perspective wasn’t perfect. A line or two noticeably crooked. Amateur in execution. But someone had loved that ship, his ship. Had drawn her, on a sunny day, with all the pride he’d felt in his command.
Jason finished, ears a little pink, “These weren’t even all that expensive; there’re better versions out there, other ships, better preserved. They’re not museum quality. But they are original, and we’d met that rare book and manuscript guy at Andy’s party, and when these came up, he called me, and I had to say yes. For the house. For Colby. They’re not exactly a surprise—he knows I bought them—but he doesn’t know what they’ll look like all framed and finished.”
Sam opened his mouth, closed it, and asked, “Can I take a picture of you real quick? With those? Nothing else,” he added to Roz and Lena. “Unless you don’t mind.”
“We don’t mind.” Roz beamed. “Go on.”
“Me?” Jason looked at the watercolor again, big hand brushing a foam-white frame-curlicue. The white wasn’t smooth or pure; it had faint lines too, echoing water, ink, age. “Here?”
“Talking about Colby,” Sam said. “Please.” He had his small Nikon in one hand. Slightly better in low light than his phone, though he’d still need to do some corrections. Wouldn’t matter. He could see it.
“Um,” Jason said. “Okay? What do you want me to do?”
“Just that. Hold that one. Look at it. Think about Colby.Giving it to him. Like that—” Perfect, perfect; almost perfect, at first, as Jason looked his way a bit uncertainly and then looked down.
And large shoulders softened; Jason’s thumb rubbed over wood, and the tilt of his head changed, and his smile got softer too, more private, thinking or remembering or hoping. He stood there in a local artist’s shop, a man wanting to make his partner smile, an action hero with a giant heart on display, holding an artifact made of emotion in one hand.
Sam let the background blur, focused on the crinkle of unfolded brown paper and the shimmer of the ship and the line of Jason’s gaze and the upward drift of Jason’s lips, and caught each second of simple straightforward love.
Because they’d said he could, he pulled back a little and brought the backdrop of the shop in too: Jason Mirelli outlined in art, in stories, in color, here on this LA afternoon.
Jason glanced up, and Sam caught that too: the wry quirk of his mouth, the lifted eyebrows. “Never thought I was the photogenic one.”
“You are,” Sam said. It was true. Jason didn’t have Colby’s wide-eyed adorableness or camera-beckoning aristocratic-rainbow fashion sense, but did have intriguing shapes and motions, paradoxical and fascinating. Lots of breadth and height, lots of tenderness, that once-broken nose, deep soulful gaze, more lines and textures. “Trust me.” And then he cringed, and added, “I don’t mean Colby’s not! Just, um, you are. Also. Equally, I mean.” Oh God.
Jason laughed. Muscles flexed in amusement. “Got it. Thanks. We should get going, we’ve got one more stop.” He also said thank you to Roz and Lena, handed over a credit card, collected rebundled art, and ushered Sam back out the back door. “Sorry about the errands.”
“I don’t mind,” Sam said. “Kind of fun. They’re nice.” Hemeant the people, not the errands; Jason figured it out with no hesitation.
“Yeah, they are. Lena comes into the same game shop I go to, out here, and we got to talking.” The Ferrari roared to life with eagerness. “Okay, bakery next. Then home. Where, just so you know, we don’t have a ton of furniture yet.”
“Fine by me. I can sit on floors.”
“We can do a little better than that,” Jason promised, and the car leapt ahead into California sun, catching light.
They swung by a bakery—also local, or at least not a name Sam recognized—and picked up miniature cupcakes, an assortment of impressive flavors: blueberry cream, chocolate cherry mocha, tiramisu, cinnamon dulce de leche. Jason was friends with these owners too, because Jason was friends with everyone, in a broad-shouldered calm and comfortable sort of way. Muscles on display, power evident, love of Colby also evident, everything laid-back in the same sense a lion might relax when happy. Jason would pick up cupcakes and artwork with hearts in his eyes, and would defend Colby with every heroic inch if necessary, Sam concluded.
They fit in a quick stop for coffee at a small corner-shop drive-through. Jason asked whether Sam wanted anything; Sam panicked momentarily about whether or not to accept, and settled on simple straightforward black. Jason acquired something very large and iced, with white chocolate and hazelnut, and explained, “It’s for Colby really. But I like hazelnut too. We usually share.”
