Page 3 of Dark Ink

“Who?”

“My Raglan Road girl.”

Me and my smouldering joint were left alone on the sidewalk. It burned down to my fingertips. Burned me. I let it. Let it hurt.

She was gone and my father was dying and if the phone hadn’t interrupted the song, I would have been fine. She would have been fine.

But now I had to self-destruct.

I needed to find her. I needed to catch her like she caught me.

A snare weaved for me. A snare weaved for her. My Raglan Road girl.

A funeral for us all.

Eithne

Eithne: [say: EN-ya]. Means “little fire” in Gaelic.

The figure taking form on the easel in front of me was that of a man walking toward me along the beach from a long way away. I tried to capture the assuredness of his gait with the charcoal in my fingers. His head was down, bent severely, like he was trying to keep out the wind or sleep while walking. I sketched the broadness of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. But his face was elusive. My strokes were steady, but he was not. He was coming closer and closer and I was trying to capture more of him, all of him, but it was so warm and the charcoal was melting and—

“Not even close to a likeness, Ms Brady.”

I jolted from my daze to just catch the unimpressed frown of my professor before he continued on to the next student. I wiped at my eyes only to realise my fingers were covered in charcoal. I bunched up the sleeve of my old sweatshirt to clean myself. Though I probably just added to the dark circles under my eyes.

“Turn,” the professor called out to the nude model on the pedestal in the ring of drawing students as I tore the man on the beach from my pad.

It felt like I’d barely focused on the middle-aged woman on the pedestal before the professor was thanking her for her time. My sketchpad remained mere scribbles and lonely hesitant lines. I couldn’t seem to grab ahold of any of her. Not her full hips. Not her breasts that sagged against her top of her stomach. Not her pigeon-toed stance that drew everything inward, as if to hide, as if to show as little of herself as possible. Nothing of her made it onto my page. But I don’t think she was the problem. It was me.

I was too tired to take on anyone else. That’s what drawing someone required: to let them in. To give them room within my soul. To find myself within them, and allow them to do the same within me.

In that moment it was just too much. I wondered if that would change any time soon.

The sad part was it didn’t have to. I’d already decided I would put my frivolous dreams on the back burner. I’d already switched my degree toward more practical pursuits, art in commercial advertising, art in communication, digital art for branding. I’d already circled entry-level job opportunities for after I graduated in a semester: steady, solid jobs. Jobs with deadlines. Jobs with cubicles. Jobs with a guaranteed income stream. Jobs that did not require of me what art that stirred my passions required of me.

It was frightening to think that I’d never get that back, that room within in, that space within me to create, to make something beautiful.

But it was more frightening that I wouldn’t be able to be there for Stewart if he needed me. And he would, I knew. Need me. It was only a matter of time.

I was startled out of my daze by a commotion at the door of the studio. Whispers travelled to me from both sides of the circle as if it had been lit on fire. I leaned to the side of my easel to see, just as all the other students were doing. When I saw him, I understood. He had lit us on fire.

Tall, wide shoulders, narrow tapered waist like he’d stepped off my paper and into real life, tattoos covering both forearms from under the pushed-up charcoal cable-knit sweater. He stood all harsh stern lines, hard jaw, sharp cheekbones, intensity rolling off his every move.

“Professor Merrick,” my professor protested. “Really this is quite improper.”

Rian Merrick—the Rian Merrick—patted the man who should have been the next nude model on the shoulder and leaned against him heavily. His grin looked almost wicked and it didn’t reach his eyes, hooded under thick dark brows.

“No bother, mate,” he said to my professor. His deep melodic voice reaching in to touch the depths of me. “I’m not teaching this semester. It’s grand.”

I watched, stunned like all the rest, as Rian told the scheduled model that he could go before Rian climbed up onto the pedestal and pulled off his sweater and the ripped black t-shirt underneath. That disappeared too. Then he unbuttoned his black ripped denim…

We shouldn’t have been surprised. But we were. Or at least, I was.

Everyone knew Rian Merrick. He was sort of infamous on campus. The bad boy professor. Known for…well, known for shite like this: barging into classrooms unannounced, taking over, and stripping down to nothing in front of his students. Or not-students apparently. During my first two years I’d tried so hard to land a class with him. But so had everyone else. Just to be in the same room as genius. To let some of his sparkle rub off on us. To see what crazy shite he’d do next. It didn’t matter now. He wasn’t teaching anymore; I wouldn’t have needed it for my degree anyway.

But I knew Rian Merrick because he won the National Gallery of Ireland’s Young Portrait Prize for his haunting likeness of Ireland’s beloved poet, Patrick Kavanagh. Then he’d won the RTE, This is Art! Competition for a disturbing metal sculpture of this man-creature who seemed to be eating himself from the inside. Rian Merrick had been Ireland’s brightest young artistic star, a genius who refused to stick to one mode of art, to one form, to one style.

Then to piss the fine art world off, he’d taken to tattooing and picked up the grand prize at Dublin’s Tattoo Convention years ago. I just so happened to have a poster of him I used to hide from my father in my closet. I was just a young dreamer at the time and he was my idol: daring, bold, talented as fuck…and beautiful. If my father knew the thoughts I had about Rian as a fifteen-year-old girl with my ma’s gold cross between my teeth and my fingers cresting the edges of my panties…

---