“I’m in luck.”Blake chuckled, ducking his head in a poor attempt to hide his flush.“I just so happen to have good company, too.”
They cut through 8thStreet and onto J, strolling past the massive, glittery campus of the Golden 1 Center and the curved jade roofs of the Chinatown buildings.Traffic roared by them as they traveled, raising their voices to speak over the growl of motors and the bleat of horns.By the time they reached Crocker Park, the noontime sun was beating down on them and Blake guided Marin through the cool, green shade of the elm trees, eager to escape the heat.
The Crocker Art Museum rose over the canopy, a complex in two contrasting parts.First, The Crocker Family Mansion and estate: a luxurious, sprawling affair, the main building a cream-colored Italianate trimmed in powder blue.Second: the attached Teel Family Pavilion at the side of the building.It was a sharp glass-and-steel modern marvel composed of curves and acute angles.
“This is where I wanted to take you,” Blake said, gesturing towards the museum.
“Oh Blake,” Marin replied, sounding a little breathless.Combined with his flush from their summertime walk, he looked almost dazed at the sight, his smile enchanted.He reached over to squeeze Blake’s hand.“Even the outside is beautiful.”
“Come on.”Blake smiled, lacing their fingers together and guiding Marin across the street.“This is where my foster dad used to take me when I was younger—there’s a painting here that I really wanted to show you.”
After purchasing their tickets, Blake bid Marin to close his eyes, leading him by the hand up a flight of stairs and into the mansion proper, promising to show him every piece that the museum had to offer once they were through with their initial quest.
Blake guided Marin straight to the floor above the mansion’s ballroom—the space known as The Oculus—where the center bannister paneled in dark, rich wood peered down upon the interlocking mosaic of the ballroom’s flooring.Honeyed light poured from the upper floors, illuminating the gilded frames of the paintings displayed upon the walls and setting the room aglow.Hands gentle upon his shoulders, Blake situated Marin before one of the paintings, dropping his chin to his shoulder.
“You ready?”he asked, already grinning with anticipation.
“You’re really building the suspense.”Marin was smiling as well, blindly reaching up to lightly pat Blake’s cheek.“I’m ready.”
“Okay.Open your eyes.”
Marin followed Blake’s instruction and the tiny intake of his breath was all the confirmation Blake needed about his feelings.
Framed in gold and ebony before them was the same oil painting that Blake had recalled while watching Marin swim the night before.Blake’s eye was immediately drawn to the yellow sun obscured by the peach clouds before his gaze fell to the translucent, gemlike cut of the waves.He thought that if he reached out, he could feel their cold slice against his fingertips, touch the fizzing seafoam upon their crests.The men clinging to the disembodied mast in the foreground were soaked in darkness and backlit in the glow of the distant sun, reaching heavenward for salvation.
“A recreation ofThe Ninth Waveby Ivan Aivazovsky,” Marin read from the accompanying placard in an entranced voice.
“This is my favorite painting.This was always the first thing I wanted to visit in the museum whenever I came,” Blake explained.“Watching you swim last night… I was immediately reminded of it.I… I bet you already know about it, but there’s some sort of subgenre or theory or something called the sublime.It’s like the…”
“The beauty and terror of nature,” Marin smiled, his eyes aglow.“Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Not to say you’re terrifying or anything!”Blake cut in anxiously, but Marin was still marveling at the painting in contented silence, unperturbed.He reached out to grip the wooden railing in front of him with his spare hand, fanning the fingers of his other hand over Blake’s cheek.
“Blake.To be compared to something so beautiful,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment.When he opened them, he flicked them over to meet Blake’s gaze.In the luminosity of his stare, the golden glow of his skin, and curl of his smile, he looked every bit like the sublime being he was.The coy gravitas he exuded cast a chill down Blake’s spine.“How could I not be touched?”
They stood like that for several more minutes in a comfortable silence, admiring the terrible inevitabilityy of nature struck through by the golden promise of hope.
14
Blake and Marin returned to the library later that afternoon to find Celeste face down next to the microform machine and Noel scrambling to make up for the difference in manpower.
“No dice?”Blake asked.
Celeste peeled their face from the counter, groping at a Post-It note next to them.“Unless Ariel here is eighty-three-year-old Edith June Monroe who hit her head in the shower in 1999, or thirty-year-old Vince Angelo who died of a gunshot wound to the head in ‘97, then no.”
“I think I would remember being an eighty-year-old woman,” Marin mused, bringing a thoughtful finger to his chin.“What about you, Noel?Any success?”
Noel shook his head.“Sorry, I wasn’t able to find anything relevant.”He turned away from the computer screen.“How did your day go?”
“Well, it turns out this one is a walking encyclopedia of art history.”Blake chuckled.Marin glowed with pride.“We were at the Crocker Art Museum for hours.I don’t know how you store that much information in your head.”
“But nothing about your personal life?”Celeste groused, propping their chin up on their palm.
“Unfortunately not.”Marin closed his eyes with a morose sigh.
“But I think we can safely assume he has some sort of college education?”Blake supplied, doing his best to be helpful.
“Unless you remember where you went, that isn’ttoohelpful, now is it?”Celeste snapped, turning back towards the massive pile of microfiche that they’d accumulated beside them.
