Page 81 of Café Diablo

The zone.

The flow state.

The cradle of creation.

Or take it down a notch and call it the simple love of painting.

It’s passionate and powerful at the same time, as if all my opinions and fears are washed away and it’s just me and my feelings and the colors I’m painting. Some people are intellectuals about art, but I’m pure instinct. Years of training and muscle memory, yes, but also pure heart and pure breath.

That’s what being with Edwin feels like—life breathing inside you, inside us. Simple, if we’re willing to be brave enough to truly be present.

My tiny house is full of paintings and all of them are of Edwin.

None of them are an actual picture of him, instead they’re abstract, but they contain something he’s given me, something I see in him, something that hovers in and around us. From lust to fear to tentativeness, to the canvass that stands in front of me covered in gold leaf and reflecting a piece of rapturous joy I didn’t even know this world could hold for me.

I want him to see these. I want him to see how I see him, how Iknowhim, how beautiful he is. I shared my feelings with him, physically, when we were both wrapped up in the power of our love making. I need him to see how incredible he is. How, despite the crap his father is pulling—he’s powerful.

Loveable.

Worthy.

33

Ned

To say Olivia’s tiny house is cramped is an understatement. She has obviously watched too many fantasy shows and lives like a hobbit. I tell her as much, which causes her to practically climb my leg to reward me for my temporary stumble into geek-dom.

But it’s the art in her studio that makes me stop and stare. It’s everywhere. Her tiny space is indeed 98% art studio, and 2% no room for my head and elbows. I literally have to duck under several beams because I’m too tall.

I stand at the back of the space, in front of an abstract piece that’s sitting on her easel. Olivia nibbles on her pinky, standing barefoot and wearing more paint on her skin than the shorts and tank-top she’s been painting in.

“What do you think?” she asks nervously, nodding to the work that covers every surface.

I’m speechless.

I don’t know how to explain to her that I can’t tell where she ends and her work begins. The vibrancy of Olivia is on the canvass. The colors and the light and her unbound love of life—it’s on every paper and panel. The paintings feel like her laughter, and her sassiness, and her beauty. I mean, it’s all abstract colors and lines and shapes, and I can’t explain it—cause I don’t understand art—but I do understand that this isher. Her heart, her passion, her love filling up this tiny room. It all seems to envelope her and become her, like the two of them are extensions of the same essence.

I want to say something, but “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful,” seems trite and unworthy of all this expression.

My eyes fall on the painting propped up on the easel. Most of it is white and in the center are two wound-like slashes of color—pink and crimson. Only, they aren’t violent; instead, they’re like bruises in the skin that open up like eyes and show a cut of gold beneath them. It’s as if sunshine or joy peeks out just behind the layers of paint, that there’s pain but also so much richness that comes with it.

I stare at the painting for a long time in silence with Olivia watching me. Normally, I’d make a joke or say something about my lack of understanding when it comes to art, but this painting—this one is different. Ifeelthis one. It strips me bare and makes me feel naked. I don’t know how a painting can do that, but it does. It looks right back at me as much as I look at it.

It makes me think of my father and the last two days and all the shit that’s come crashing down when I thought I had everything under control and managed. My father is an open wound in me, like this painting, and I don’t know how to work through everything I feel about it. But beneath the surface is this stunning strip of gold—like a promise—a tiny bit of hope.

And part of that hope is this woman who painted it.

It’s Olivia.

I tell her about my day. I explain that I’ve chosen to start over with my own practice, and about how raw and emotional the conversation with my father was. I point to her painting and tell her how it feels just like that.

“Did you paint this today?” I ask quietly and she nods, her elbows covered in flecks of white paint and gold leaf. “I don’t know how …” I trail off, continuing to stare, not able to parse what I want to say. I’m caught, like a piece of me is in the painting. “Can I buy this one?” I ask, and something in the center of my chest squeezes. I’ve neverneededto own a painting before, not in the way that I feel I need to own this, as if she stole some part of me and I need to recapture it.

Olivia lifts up onto her tippy toes and kisses my cheek. “It’ll cost one kidney,” she says softly, referencing those ten minutes I was supposed to bill her for when she came to my office. I laugh, but then a surprise knot of emotion catches in the base of my throat.

“I’m serious,” I say, turning to look at her and she smiles kindly.

“I know,” she nods, running a hand up the side of my face as if she can see all the emotions that this painting has pulled out of me. I wrap her in a kiss, drowning myself in the smell of jasmine and oil paint on her skin. “You don’t have to pay for it. You can have the painting,” she says, when we separate, her fingers still digging into my hair and massaging my scalp.

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