Keys to the Kingdom by P.K. Gallagher (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📖

empty sky filled with black clouds. The only source of vibrant color in the picture came from the little boy. The painting was called Self Portrait.

“I don’t understand,” the girl said. “I get that the use of color highlights the inner fire and determination of the boy and that he feels held back and controlled but this road goes nowhere. Why bother pursuing it? And it looks nothing like you. Why did you name it that?”

He looked away, thinking to himself, It looks exactly like me. When he looked back at her, he shrugged. “It’s a story,” he said. “You have to read it for yourself.”

She looked at the painting. “And the ending?”

“Is for you to decide. What do you want the bottom line to be?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled, looking over at him. He felt strange being smiled at that way. He automatically distrusted it but it was unlike his mother’s smile or Tanya’s smile. It lacked the conniving condescension of Tanya’s and the calculating manipulation of his mother’s. But a smile from a woman was a smile from a woman, and that was not to be trusted. It was very pretty though. “Happily ever after?” she suggested.

Erik felt a smile creep up on his face but then forced it back. As soon as you let your guard down… “That’s always nice,” he said.

They stood there letting the silence stretch between them for a moment as both stared at his painting until he heard the question burst from his lips. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Adrienne Ivers,” she said, smiling. “I was wondering if you were going to ask.”

“And why’s that?”

“Isn’t that the normal progression of things? ‘Hi my name is blank. Nice to meet you blank, my name is so and so, would you like to carry on a conversation?’ You know, that sort of thing. Those pesky societal norms, I just can’t seem to shake them.”

“Eschew conformity,” Erik drawled. “’The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.’”

“Emerson?” Adrienne asked sounding impressed.

Erik nodded. “The pretentious blowhard had a few good quotes in him.”

Adrienne laughed and Erik wished she’d stop. It threw him off every time. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t win. Too mainstream?” To Erik’s look, she explained. “I entered the grant completion too. I just lost.”

“Oh really?” He grinned. So she’d lost to him, had she? He was on a roll: getting away from his mother and father, disproving Tanya, and now beating out a beautiful woman. At this rate he might actually build his self-esteem back to a workable level.

“You don’t have to look so happy about it,” she protested, not sounding exactly angry though. She paused. “Actually though, that’s part of the reason why I’m here.”

Erik froze. He knew it! So she did want something from him. Of course. How had he even allowed himself to think otherwise? He folded his arms. “What is?”

Adrienne bit her lip, for the first time looking a little nervous. “I was wondering if you could give me some advice on my art. You know, how to make it better and what not.”

The smile that came across his face was a cross between a smirk and a leer. Oh the audacity of she-bitches. “How old are you baby-cakes?”

“Seventeen.” she said. “I’ll be 18 in a couple of weeks…” She was wary now, whether due to the look on his face, the tone of his voice, or the nature of his question he couldn’t be sure.

“Tell you what,” he said, pulling a pen from his pocket and scribbled his number and address on the pamphlet he still held in his hand. “Once you’ve turned eighteen, you can come to my place and…pose for me. You do that and I’ll give you advice on anything you want.” He’d handed her her pamphlet and then headed for the exit, expecting to never see her again.

Erik looked up from the pamphlet and at Adrienne. It had been over a year. “Ah,” he said. “I remember now. Come to take me up on my offer?”

“As flattering as it was to receive it,” she said, “no. But I had hoped you might consider giving me advice anyway.”

He rolled his eyes. Still wanting something from him. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, still making no moves to let her in. “You can’t get something from nothing.”

She gave him a look that was too impatient to be a good pout. “Even if I come bearing gifts?” She reached into her huge bag and lifted out a plastic one with Wang II Chinese Restaurant printed on it. Erik’s stomach grumbled. He needed to go grocery shopping but had refused to go out in the storm.

“…I suppose a little advice wouldn’t hurt.” He stepped aside and let her in.

 

“You’re actually really lucky,” Erik said before popping a piece of sweet and sour chicken into his mouth. They were sitting in his living room, Adrienne sitting delicately on the edge of his arm chair eating with chopsticks, Erik sprawled out on the love seat using a fork. “It’s been more than a year since I gave you that address. I very well could have moved. And what would you have done if I turned out to be some pervert.”

She gave him an amused look. “But Mr. Sinclaire, you are a pervert.”

He grinned wickedly. “Oh that’s right. I am, aren’t I? You know what I meant though.”

She nibbled thoughtfully at her Lo Mein. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a moment. “I was thinking about a comment one of my professor’s made about my art and you popped into my mind. It was the strangest thing. I suddenly felt like I just had to talk to you. I tried to call but it said the number had been disconnected.”

“Yeah, I changed it about six months ago.” Erik’s curiosity was peaked now. “What was the comment?”

Adrienne scowled and bit into a piece of shrimp with a ferocity it did not deserve. “He told me my drawings were formulaic and lacked sophistication of both subject and skill.”

Erik winced. “Ouch. Wait, that made you think of me?” He grimaced inwardly. That’s what he got. He needed to stop putting himself out there like that with this girl. He already knew she wanted something from him so there was absolutely no excuse for him behaving as if she was a friend and this was just hanging out. He’d give her what she wanted, just like he always did, and then she’d be gone. That’s how the story ends. “Thanks for that,” he said, “Your ability to flatter rivals your apparent ability to draw.”

Adrienne frowned at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I thought of you because your art is the exact opposite of that.”

“…oh.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“What do you mean ‘do what’?” she asked in frustration. “Every other word that comes out of your mouth is an insult. If you want me to leave, why don’t you just say so instead of trying to badger me enough that I do it on my own?”

“I-I don’t want you to leave exactly,” he said floundering. Did he? No one had ever asked before. They just left. He cleared his throat, trying to get himself back under control. “I was just doing you a favor.” The attitude was back. “You, like most people, are only talking to me because you want something from me and most people feel bad about that until they realize I’m a total asshole. Just trying to help you sleep at night, angel-puss.”

Adrienne shook her head. “That’s a load of bull. How are you going to tell me what I am or am not here for?”

“You said it yourself; you’re here because you wanted advice.”

“You’re some kind of an idiot Sinclaire, you know that? Yes I wanted advice, but I also came for it in the middle of a tropical storm.”

“And that makes me the idiot?”

“Are you always this much of a douche or is it just with me?”

He looked away for a moment and when he looked back, the disdainful expression he typically wore was tinged with sheepishness. “Pretty much always.”

Adrienne sighed. She’d come here for several reasons but arguing with Erik Sinclaire was not one of them. “That what makes your art so great?”

Erik shook his head and sighed. This girl tired him out. And for some reason she wasn’t going away and he didn’t exactly know how to deal with that. “No… Do you have your art with you?”

She wiped her hands off on a napkin and reached into her bag again, this time pulling out a sketchbook. She handed it to Erik who began flipping through the pages.

There was an abundance of landscapes, a few still lifes, a series of nudes, and some animals.

“Your professor lied to you,” Erik said. “There’s no shortage of skill here as far as drawing goes. The problem is your drawings are dead.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s no life to any of them, no soul.”

“I don’t follow. Most of what I draw is landscapes anyway.”

“Just because it doesn’t get up and move around doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a soul,” he said. “Why is a painting of a red dot on a white canvas art? Because it has some meaning to someone. Soul. What were you trying to tell your viewer with these?”

Adrienne fished for the words. “Well I wasn’t trying to tell anything per se… More like capture the beauty of my subject. Immortalize it.”

“There’s more to the beauty than just the subject itself though,” Erik said. He indicated one of her landscapes. It was a field in fall with leaves littering the ground and a single solitary tree off to the side. “Take this one for example. Nature is never completely still. The wind might be stirring the leaves. A field mouse might be making a trail in the grass. A bird might be in the sky. Something. Something is always happening. I don’t typically do landscapes or still life myself but my goal is always to tell a story, to let my viewer walk away with something. Beauty might capture the eye but it only does so much to hold the mind.”

Adrienne watched him fascinated. As he discussed the art, he became a completely different person. The abrasive smartass yielded to an artist who loved what he did. How cliché. Why the tough act, she wondered.

“I’m not saying all this for my health,” he drawled. “Are you even listening?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “Go on.”

He snapped the sketchbook shut and laid it on the coffee table. “That’s about it really. The rest is up to you. Find some inspiration and run with it.”

“What inspires you?”

“People typically,” he said carelessly. “Humanity.”

“A person inspired Self Portrait?”

He rolled his eyes. “What is it with you and your infatuation with that painting? It’s almost creepy.”

“Self Portrait is my favorite,” she snapped. “You have a problem with that?”

“Self Portrait is a very private—” He stopped. It had been on display at several galleries in several different exhibitions. It couldn’t be that private. His reasons for painting it were though. “You ever feel like there’s something or someone holding you back or like things are going so badly that there’s no way some higher power isn’t manipulating the situation for its own sick amusement?” he asked her. “Or that you’re struggling for a goal that just isn’t possible to achieve so really you’re just struggling toward nothing? And yet you can’t bring yourself to stop because if you do, you’re just stuck where you are with no hope to escape? Those feelings inspired Self Portrait.”

Adrienne looked at him in wonder and sympathy. “Your feelings?”

He didn’t answer immediately and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to when he said, “Yes. But not just mine and not just those feelings. I painted it to organize my thoughts but if someone looks at it and sees an entirely different meaning, a meaning that’s relevant to them,