“I thought you were my aunt.”
“Not by blood.”
The picture was becoming clearer to me now. “She trusted you. You turned on her. You turned on both of us.” The anger rose up in my chest, and I wanted to lash out at her.
Melissa was silent. I thought she might fire something back at me or demand that I stop asking questions, but she simply sat there and waited for me to work through it. She understood that I needed this and maybe she did too.
“I’m sorry, Martin,” she said at last.
“You should have told me what you knew. Before now.”
“I didn’t even know where to begin. And I didn’t want to make it worse.”
“I hurt him, Melissa. Just like I hurt her. He felt my anger. He said he was choking. What if he knows what I did to him?”
“He’ll forgive you, Martin.”
“Maybe I’m bad for him.”
She sighed. “Maybe you are.”
“I don’t want to be bad for him.”
“Then don’t be, Martin. Just be you.”
I had tried, for sanity’s sake, to avoid thinking about Andre, but I decided instead to think only of him, to give myself permission to yearn for him. Only when I freed myself was I able to find inspiration again. Not surprisingly, all my paintings were of him.
Andre’s body as a desert landscape. His abs were ripples in the sand, the curve of his neck was a sloping ridge with his chin pointed heavenward, mouth open, an expression of ecstasy. A single cactus erupted from the ground and dominated the landscape.
Andre’s back with his arms spread wide, grasping at the sun.
Andre on the dance floor with a hundred others, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis, moving together like one undulating animal. A feast of flesh with a rainbow of skin colors and body types. A modern-day Saturnalia.
I painted these and many more, some more abstract, but all of them linked to Andre in some way. Once I’d found my inspiration, I painted like a madman, working at the restaurant just enough to keep my job, showering only when necessary, eating in front of my canvases, imagining Andre there with me, remembering something he did or said, waking from a nightmare to find myself alone and his side of the bed empty, holding his pillow to my chest, but not for too long or else my own scent would overtake his.
One night, while working on one of my last paintings, I received a text with a single word, my name.
Martin
It had to be him. I set down my paints and texted back.Andre?
I stared at my phone, waited for a response, prayed that he would. Seconds felt like minutes felt like hours. An eternity passed by, and I tried again.Andre, is that you?
The paint on the canvas was drying, but I didn’t care. I stared at my phone willing a response until my eyes burned. With the small chance that it was him, I poured out my heart to him, ending with,I just want to know that you’re safe. Please call me or text. I’ll be up all night.
I waited for his response, I ached for it, but the phone was a black hole. I tried calling, but got nothing except a recording that the phone wasn’t set up to receive messages. The last thing I texted to him was simplyI miss you.
After that I called up Melissa, demanded that she find him for me. My voice grew more desperate the more she deflected until I shouted, “Just tell me where he is!”
Silence.
“I have to know if he’s safe, Melissa. He could be lying in a ditch somewhere. He could be homeless and hungry.”
“He’s fine,” she said shortly.
“How do you know that?”
She sighed and said nothing.
