Once Upon A Mr. Goody Two Shoes

Chapter 39

Few weeks ago, in Paris...

Mrs. Andrew could be seen haggling with the milkman about the rising milk prices. He could see Otis, her supposedly-spoilt son sneak out of Ness's window, the neighborhood's good girl and back into his own house. Mr. Andrews, who had yet again forgotten his car keys went back inside the house to get them. Mrs. Woodward looked at Mrs. Andrew and her bargaining scene with a scrunched nose and an occasional eye roll from the vegetable vendor's stall, where she was picking up fresh greens for the day. She would be gossiping with the Indian Mrs. Sharma, the one who lived across the street, about the 'miser Mrs. Andrews was', had she not been off to a vacation to her homeland.

He saw all of this. He predicted most of it. He was Marco. Forty-year-old Marco Simon. The established painter with two paintings in the National Gallery, who lived in a remote, almost country part of Paris, who kept looking at the mayhem outside his house to find a muse but failed to do so every single day.

He woke up to see the first wisps of the sunrise, hoping he could be inspired. He sat all morning until the sun was well and truly up, when he knew he wouldn't have anything else to be inspired by. His canvas sat blank before him, mocking him day and night. He felt disconnected, unattached. He ran his hand through his brown hair which now sported streaks of grey hair. He took the brush and splattered paint on the canvas. Brown. His first stroke of the day. He was hoping he would be able to go with the flow today. As he was about to continue, a decidedly youthful voice interrupted his movements.

"Father! Here, there is someone who wants to meet you," he looked up to see his eighteen-year-old son enter inside, with a grin on his boyish face, looking impeccably neat in his checked black and white shirt and jeans, as opposed to the white paint-stained shirt he was wearing.

A girl followed him in, light on her toes, her doe-like brown orbs first catching his attention, and then his breath. He straightened himself almost instantly, and he couldn't help but notice the startling similarly of the color of her eyes to that of the paint he had splattered on the canvas.

Taira felt she would drown in the moment and never be herself again as his eyes landed on hers, staring at her intently, dissecting every single color in her, as if she wasn't simply a pale human, but a cascade of his paints; a single look didn't do justice to her. She had to be looked upon longer, more diligently. Her eyes travelled to the brown on the canvas, his brown hair, and it was one of those moments where everything fell in perfect tandem, as if nothing was amiss in life. But the moment didn't last long before she noticed noticed the grey streaks within the curly mass of his brown hair, the white canvas around the singular brown stroke and straightened her posture, as if that would free her from her former thoughts.

"Dad, this is Taira. Taira, this is Marco Simon, my dad and the painter. She's a businesswoman," Taira tried to object when Adam said that, but he paid her no mind. "I got to know her last year, when her company had sponsored the exchange student program to India," he smiled at her and strode ahead to his father. "I know you don't teach but she is a special friend, please consider her. She's very eager to learn," he whispered to him, a wishful look on his face.

Marco was never the one to be impregnated in anything, not even his own rules. He always explored every muse, every attraction, everything and everyone. So it wasn't long before he accepted her and asked her to visit in the evening.

He had become a father when he was twenty-two years old, certainly young by his standards back then. He did not have a stable career then. Adam's mother wasn't a big part of his life, they both weren't a couple now, they had never truly been, per say. She was always busy with her career and her visits were occasional. But both Adam and Marco respected that.