souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 148: minstrel in the gallery

"he brewed a song of love and hatred;
oblique suggestions and he waited.
he polarized the pumpkin-eaters,
static-humming, panel-beaters.
freshly day, glowed factory cheaters;
salaried and collar-scrubbing..."
-"minstrel in the gallery", jethro tull

Lucky for Sam and Alex, they caught the art shop in the heart of town right before the doors closed for the night. She needed those smooth, waxy colored pencils in order to do the trick, especially since she had that thick heavy drawing paper on hand; given she left her journal back at the apartment in Hell's Kitchen, she decided to buckle down for a travel journal, something to keep with her whenever she went any place.
But in the meantime, she decided on a portrait of that black woman with a wreath of roses about her chest in her honor, even though her mother never said her name once; even though she had a little bit of experience with her drawings of Joey, she knew she had to take it a bit further with this one. Alex suggested she use a blender for the drawing as well, even though she knew the edge of her finger could serve the purpose; but then again, she knew that Scarlett would want to display this drawing in the gallery once she returned home to New York City.
"Suddenly this trip just got a whole lot better," Alex told her once they returned to their room. 
She took her spot there at the desk by the window and she spread out her drawing pad before her. That fresh smell of brand-new paper wafted over her and she took out a fresh new hard graphite pencil for the beginning sketch. The woman turned to the side with a piece of her kinky black hair spread over a part of her face.
Alex took his seat right next to her for a front row view of the drawing for himself. She fixated on the smooth pencil strokes before her. The wax was bright and colorful and left in its wake the smoothest stroke of dark brown. The shape of her face took on that of a heart and her skin was to be as silken as a cup of blond coffee.
He folded his arms over the top of the table and he leaned closer to her for a better look at the whole drawing. Sam held onto the pencil by the end so she used the side of the wax for the shading underneath her jaw and all around her neck. The darkest of black skin, the blackest of the night around them, only for her to be contrasted by the pure whites of her eyes and the sheen on the tip of her nose. She ran the waxy pencil over her skin several times to ensure that she had filled in all of the white parts of the paper underneath her face.
Alex got up at one point and he opened up the curtains for the lights on the street down below to enter the room. He returned to her and that time he moved in closer so his face was right up next to hers: even though she paid more attention to the drawing before her, she could smell his cologne, still there on the side of his neck and through the roots of his hair, as well as the coffee on his lips and the faint aroma of donuts on his fingers as well. At one point, she held back so he could take a better look for himself.
He nodded his head at the sight of the woman's head and shoulders.
"Could you pass me the solid black, please?" she asked him in a kind voice.
Alex reached into the box and took out the black pencil, and he handed it to her by the pointed tip. Sam looked at the back end of the pencil and then she lifted her gaze to his face and those deep eyes. Those bright blue eyes, as blue as the waters of Crater Lake, that of which stared back at her from their deep sockets and from underneath his dark eyebrows. She looked on at the tip of his nose, so full and prominent and dignified. Nothing like Joey, with his sunbaked tan like that of an Iroquois sunrise. Alex was as dark as the night around them, as dark, hypnotic, and volcanic as the bottom of Crater Lake. It helped that he began to grow out his bangs and push them back from his brow so she could better see into them.
Sam licked her bottom lip and, as she clamped down on the thought of kissing those lips again but while sober that time around, she took the pencil from him. She returned to the drawing before her to begin drawing the woman's hair from the root outward.
If there was anything she could take away from live drawing Cliff and Joey, both in class and in a hotel room somewhere in upstate, it was that pure black never appeared anywhere on a person's body except for in the hair. Joey's curls had that black base but she always had a bit of color on top of them to give them some more depth. But she decided to throw out that rule and make her hair mostly black.
She had that blood that ran through her: she may as well seize that opportunity before her. From the roots out to the very tips of the curls and then back again, she made that hair solid black.
"You want a bit of yellow or orange to go with this?" he asked her in a low voice.
"Hang on a second," she told him.
"Making it intentionally dark I see," he said with a little nod of his head and a little smirk on his face.
"Might as well," she explained, "it's a dark day down in the City of Angels right now. Justice wasn't served and we have to do something about it somehow." Once she had swirled in enough black into the hair, he then handed her the goldenrod yellow as well as the vermilion orange. Rather than sweep over the curls with them and use the blender several times over, she used only a small bit of those colors. The tip of the blender spread the colors about the black just enough, exactly what she wanted for the drawing.
"Could you pass me the pink, Alex?" she kindly asked him again, and he picked out the pink pencil for her. He then hesitated.
"What do you say?" he asked her with a raise of those dark eyebrows.
"Please?" she retorted. He then handed it to her and she rolled her eyes at him.
"You did it the first time around," he pointed out in a singsong voice.
"I'm aware," she scoffed with a little gyration of her head. She held the wax pencils in one hand and then she sketched out the little flowers around the headshot.
"Did your mom tell you what her name was?" he asked her, and she shook her head at that.
"No, she just said that they killed a black woman and also beat the hell out of a man," she recalled. "I'm sure we'll have her name at some point, though."
"Hang on a second," he spoke out of the blue right then and there. He set a hand on her right wrist to stop her right in her tracks, even with his gentle grip and his smooth skin.
"What's that?" She raised an eyebrow at him.
"If you've got some black blood in you," he started, "what do you do about your hair?"
"What, my highlights? I'll just grow them out. They'll go away and back to their original darkness."
"Oh, good!" He let go of her and leaned back in the chair out of relief. "I was thinking about that just now, like oh man, Samantha's got those blonde highlights on her head. She's gonna have hell of a time trying to explain it to people."
"My mom told me that there will come a time where we're able to talk about that sort of thing," she explained as she continued on the sketch of the flowers: little chrysanthemums and lilies that were to be bright pink and soft red, complete with that touch of goldenrod for the leaves and the stamins. Alex never left her side as she finished the drawing at a quarter to midnight, and at that point, her eyes burned with her looking at the paper for so long on top of all the driving that they had done up to that point.
She signed her initials at the bottom of the paper and he nodded his head at the sight of it.
"Are you going to put this in the gallery when you get home?" he asked her.
"Absolutely," she replied. "I might make another black face for the gallery, too, just because I know I can do it now and also because I feel it to be for the better of things."
"You're damn right it's for the better of things."
"Now, you know what? I can take this whole thing even further," she declared, "especially if one of my majors is going to be in fashion. If I can draw black and Native American skin, I can draw all manner of skin now."
"Oh, yeah, be able to fit your clothes onto all manner—of—bodies—" Alex raised his arms over his head and stretched his back and his shoulders: his shirt lifted up again and she caught an even smaller sliver of skin on his waist, right over the waist of his jeans. Sam couldn't hold it in for a second longer and she threw her arms around his little body.
The sudden feeling of her arms around him sent him aback and he almost fell out of his chair.
"Sorry, that just—tickled," he confessed, and he shrugged his shoulders; a slight blush crossed his nose and his little cheekbones. Sam put away her pencils and she propped the drawing up against the wall.
"Are you mad at me?" he asked her.
"Why would I be mad at you?" she asked him.
"'Cause I jerked back from you while you were hugging me," he explained.
"I'm not mad at you," she told him, and then she showed him a smile. "Never."
He peered behind him to the clock on the nightstand.
"Oh, shit, it's almost the top of the hour," he told her.
"Which hour?"
"Midnight. You wanna turn in for the night?"
"Please. We've got to head back up to Crater Lake tomorrow."
"Why, 'cause I gave you that piece of volcanic glass?"
"Yes. And it's also because I might go into earth science in the future, too. I have to get to know these things first before I go any further. I hope it's not too much trouble."
"It's no trouble at all," he told her with a sweet smile on his face.
"Did you bring your guitar with you, by the way?" she asked him.
"I didn't, no. Well, because I figured it's because we're heading out on a road trip that I wasn't going to need it with me." He paused. "Why, did you want me to play a little something for you?"
"I was thinking that... since we're here in Oregon and due south of Seattle, that you could whip out a little bit of that alt rock stuff for our girl here."
"I honestly wouldn't know how to do that without a reference nearby," he confessed. He then stood to his feet and he peeled off his shirt.
"Oh, my goodness," she gasped, complete with a hand to her chest.
"What? Hey, if you can draw black skin and you can look at my naked body, you can look at my body from the waist up."
"I just—wasn't expecting that," she pointed out.
"And I'm not mad at you," he retorted, and he burst out laughing at that. He slung his shirt over his shoulder and he doubled back to his bed.
Sam stood to her feet and she walked into the bathroom just to wash off the residual wax from her hand. She gazed on at her own dark brown eyes, the eyes through which the African continent shone through. So much she had to dig up about her family now. So much to figure out about herself from that point onward.
She switched off the light and she returned to her bed, but then she turned to him on the neighboring bed. Through the dim ambient light from outside, she could see he lay there flat on his back with his hands tucked underneath his head and with his eyes closed.
"Are you still awake?" she asked him.
"Mm-hmm."
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip again and then she stood over him. He opened his eyes and gazed up at her through the darkness.
"What's up?" She fetched up a sigh and she put one knee on the edge of the bed next to him.
"Ah, you wanna snuggle?" he teased her.
"Please," she begged him, "if it's not too much trouble."
"It's never too much trouble," he assured her in a low voice. "As long as we don't go any further than this."
"We won't, trust me. I've done a lot in the past few days that all I want is to do this." She lay down next to him, and he put his arm around her. Sam lay her head upon his chest and she paid close attention to his steady breathing paired with his gentle, slow heartbeat. A part of her wished she had enough energy to go further than that with him, but she couldn't. Instead, she closed her eyes and she fell asleep right there next to him, albeit a dreamless sleep.
She awoke to the feeling of his body having rolled out from underneath her. She opened her eyes and she saw that he had rolled over onto his stomach and with one arm out before him.
Sam sat upright and she gazed down at his bare back as well as the seat of his pants.
He not only had a lovely body from the front but he had a nicely shaped rump, even when docked in dark denim. She pictured him a pair of black leather pants, or something to accentuate his back end; she thought about giving him a nice pat there but then he rolled over again, that time onto his other side. He bowed his head into the pillow and his hair spread over his whole face.
There was no way he could be comfortable, given his upper body had rolled over onto its side, and his hips were cocked out a little bit, and his legs were twisted in the bed sheet before her.
Given she had a dreamless sleep, she wondered if the mysterious man in her dreams was in fact him.
She wished she had her journal with her, but then again, she had that one which she had bought the night before. Her travel journal to take along to any place she went off to outside of New York.
Careful not to awaken Alex, she slid off of the bed and onto the carpet, and she crept over to the table. She opened up the mouth of her handbag and she picked out the journal from its hiding place. It was a smooth dark brown book with a leather backbone and a sepia bookmark attached to the top: she could hide it in her purse and whip it out whenever she could steal a moment. She even bought it when Alex had his back turned to her at the cash register in the shop and she quickly tucked it into her bag when they had returned to the car.
She figured that it would be something private and fixated on the thoughts she never shared with anyone, especially since her very first journal served as that. But at that point, it had long gone. If she was to hang around Alex more and more, she needed a place to put her private thoughts, especially when a few of those thoughts involved him.
It was still early, but with not a lot of time before they could run down to the lobby for breakfast, and thus she could quickly sketch out the figure of the mysterious man once more. But since it had been some time since she had last seen him in full apparition, she needed a reference. She lifted her gaze from the fresh new pages to the slumbering young man before her.
The way his black hair spread over his face and the way his body was curved, especially right around his hips and his waist.
A quick rough sketch of his body on the paper. She knew that he could roll over again at any second and thus, she left the curves and contours of his body unshaded. Her new muse, down in the scratchy graphite on that heavy drawing paper, and she hoped that he would never see it for a fleeting glimpse.
He fetched up a sigh and he rubbed his eyes. Her heart skipped a few beats at the sight of him and then she tucked the journal back into her handbag next to her. She kept the bag open to make it look as though she was looking for something.
"What's going on?" he asked her in a broken voice.
"Oh, I just woke up," she told him. She grimaced at the sound of lying to him, but then again, the alternative was telling him that she had sketched out his body while he was asleep, when he didn't want for that to happen. He just looked so vulnerable, and so soft, and so delicate that she couldn't resist drawing his body and using him as a model for her dreams. Alex ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his tired eyes, and then he turned to the phone on the nightstand. He sat up and dialed the number.
Sam didn't dare ask him whom he was calling as she put her shoes back on and she headed out of there and into the hallway: she turned the latch and rested the door on that so she could push it open without having to rely on the key.
She padded down the carpet to the stairs and she ambled into the lobby for two cups of coffee and two full plates of breakfast, especially since it was right when the buffet opened up for the morning. As long as the secret of the journal never got out, then she would be okay to continue drawing him in secret. She reached the end of the buffet line and placed pieces of sliced fruit next to their muffins and then, with the help of an older gentlemen, she made her way back upstairs to the room.
Alex set down the phone and he turned around for a look back at her. She handed him his cup of coffee, in her free hand, and then he took the plate on top of her own for himself.
"I reckon we can go home now," he assured her with a wink. "Greg said things are kind of tense but there's nothing of that stature there in the Bay Area."
"I'm worried about New York, though," she pointed out as she took her spot on the edge of the bed across from him.
"Absolutely. All of your great art tucked away in that gallery, too. I really hope Scarlett has a clamp down on that sort of thing."
"Charlie assured me that she's the best so—she more than likely does," she assured him as she sipped on her coffee.
After breakfast, they climbed back into his car and headed back up towards Crater Lake, complete with a quick stop at a rock store in the little town of Chiloquin right before the turn-off. With the study of the earth, there came the lore of Pele, even with Alex's reluctance. It was only fair to her once they reached the rim of the lake once more and placed the piece of matte black basalt down on the cold ground below their feet. That vista point before them looked out to the face of Wizard Island as well as the scraggly pale formation known as Phantom Ship. If ever another underwater eruption happened, the rock would tumble down the side of the slope and into those bold blue waters.
"There's a place in—Germany, I think," he started as he folded his arms across the top of the guard rail, "where couples go to and they carve their initials into locks and put it on this chain link fence."
She showed him a little smile.
"What, you want to carve our initials into that rock and set it back down on the ground?" she teased him, and he shrugged.
"Doing this just reminded me of that," he explained. "After the whole thing with Zelda and Testament, I don't think I'm up for that sort of thing as of yet."
"Take your time," she told him. "I know I'm going to." They fell back into silence, silence except for a little bird in a nearby tree and the gentle lapping of the waters down below.
"Five years, you said?" she recalled. "Five years from now if we're not going anywhere career wise."
"Five years, yeah. Five years from today, you and I go off to school together."
"Where would you like to go to school?" she asked him.
"I dunno yet. I really like New York—I feel so connected to that city all because my parents are from there and I have friends over that way, too." He turned his head to her and he peered over his mirrored lenses at her.
"You've got plenty of friends out here, too," she pointed out.
"Oh, yeah." He returned to the vast sheet of blue waters before them: there was a bit of a breeze that day and as a result, little crests formed in the waters, especially all around the island and the rock formation. There was a patch of water near the island that seemed darker than the rest of it. "It's just—the connection that I feel, though. I want to go home. I want to go to a place that feels like home to me."
He returned to her, and once again with a glimpse over his lenses at her. "Where do you want to go school?" he asked her.
"Don't know yet," she confessed. "Probably that new university that's on Long Island because it's not just a straight up school but I hear they've got a good art program going at the moment. Problem is it's on Long Island."
"You've done that commute before, though, haven't you?"
"Oh, yeah. From the Bronx all the way down to the tip of Manhattan, usually to visit Aurora but also to go school. I always took the subway and I never had to pay much because I was a student. Sometimes Charlie came and drove me and Marla home, and Belinda always rode her bike."
"Nice long bike ride," he remarked, and he rubbed his hands together. "Another reason why I feel more at home with New York is I want to feel the passage of time."
"We get the passage of time here in Oregon," she said.
"Oregon and the Northwest, yeah—California, not so much. You know, in California, you get the nice day. And then the day after that is a nice day. Then the day after that, the day after that, the day after that... and the next thing you know, they stop being nice days. I'm sure you know about that."
"Absolutely. When I was down at the house in Lake Elsinore, it was like every day melted into each other so it's almost hard to believe that I had stayed there as long as I have. It makes you wish for seasons."
"Exactly! Up here, it's springtime and I can see that with these rich blue waters down here below us as well as the valley over here—" He gestured to the left, towards the Willamette Valley. "Whereas, we saw how brown everything was down south."
"I also just think of how it is in Carson, too," Sam recalled, "and sometimes you get winter time in the middle of June."
"Yeah, we deserve the seasons," Alex quipped with a slight snicker. "You and I, we deserve the seasons and the feeling that time is passing." He stood up from the guard rail. "So, when do you wanna head on out and back to the Bay Area?"
"Well, I only paid for two days in the hotel, so—we can head on back there right now, we can check out early. You wanna go down the slope here and check out the Island here, or do we want to head on back to Klamath?"
"I kinda want to go back down the road again just because I don't think the raft thing down there is open. Did you see a music shop down there?"
"I don't think I did," she confessed. "It'd be worth a look, though."
They headed back to the car and drove back down the mountain, back through that dense forest towards the valley floor. Another hour and they returned to the hotel for check out time: she kept her handbag closed even though he awaited her back in the car.
Within time, they headed back to the highway and snaked back through town on the lookout for a music store of any kind.
"There's a place," Alex declared as they reached the southern end of town: indeed, it was a small white building tucked back away from the street, but the windows remained dark despite the broad daylight over them.
"They don't look like they're open, though, Alex," Sam pointed out as they rolled up to the curb. He lifted up his lenses and shook his head.
"Remodeling," he groaned.
"It's okay—I'll try and get us back to the Bay Area before the next one closes," she assured him.
They drove out of town and back to that little place Merrill before the state line, and back down the road. Mount Shasta followed them all the way back down through the desolate landscape, even when they left Weed and took the Interstate once again. It was that time around when Sam spotted Shasta City right at the base of that cold, quiet volcano.
"I see that being a nice little day trip, though," he said.
"What's that? From Klamath to Shasta?"
"Oh, yeah. All the way through the hills like that."
"Having the four seasons all around you all the way down, too," she cracked, and he shook his head at that. It would be another hour before they rolled into Redding and back into the northern end of the valley. Alex wasn't as hungry that time around, much to her surprise. She thought about asking him once they stopped for fuel in Vacaville again, but she figured that it was because they were familiar with that road that time around.
They were also headed back to the Bay Area, the home of all of those aforementioned nice days that blended into each other.
The fog bank greeted them once they drove back into the valley and Sam was eager to show Ruben the drawing that she had made. She was also eager to climb out of that car since she only had six hours of sleep the night before and she had driven them for a couple hundred miles on top of that as well. Her eyes itched and burned with the monotony of the road before them. Then again, it would be quite the story to tell to Ruben when she saw him again.
The exit for Marin Heights showed up on the side of the road and she was quick to merge over to the right.
"I think," he started again, that time in a low voice, "once I had a position with a new band somewhere, I'll start visiting New York more."
"Really?" she asked him.
"Yeah. Just visit, you know. Just know what I'm getting myself into if push comes to shove."
"Well, remember, my porchlight's always on," she assured him. They took the road off of the freeway and into the hills outside of San Francisco.
"I do love the Pacific Northwest, though," he said.
"I do, too! I say we retire up there."
He burst out laughing at that.
"Retire? You're actually thinking of retiring?"
"You don't want to?"
"No way! I want to keep on playing and performing until I can't. I want to keep going with it all until my fingers are too tired and callused to keep up with my mind. Don't you want to keep on going with art until you can't, either?"
He took a glimpse over at her and she did with him. It was true that she felt art in her bones but then again, after she heard that sentiment from him, she began to wonder if it was all real.
"It's something you feel very passionately, isn't it?" he asked her, slightly concerned.
"Absolutely," she replied.
"I don't really wanna see you retire from that, Samantha. You stop your job and you stop going to school, but don't stop being an artist. If you have a brain and a heart and you're alive and breathing, you're an artist. It's how you handle it is what makes you great." He nudged a lock of hair behind his ear.
"You know what?" she started as they wound their way up the hill. "I am gonna keep drawing. I might change careers, but I'll always go back to drawing, though."
"That's what I'm talking about!" He clapped his hands together at that. They reached the crest of the hill and she spotted Ruben's house there. She also spotted a different car in his driveway.
"Who's this now?" she wondered aloud. She parked there at the curb and she climbed out first. She recognized that inky black hair as it streamed behind his head. He turned around and showed her his full round milky face and those dark eyes. He showed her a sweet little smile and a friendly wave.
"Hey, Sam!"
"Hey, Eric!" she retorted back to him, and she opened her arms for him. His body as soft as ever, and it helped that he wore that soft pleated white leather around him.
"Where've you been?"
"Oregon! Alex and I went up to Crater Lake twice and hung out in the southern part. I made a new drawing, too, would you like to see?"
"Oh, yes, please!" Eric rubbed his hands together and she led him to the back door on the driver's side. But he rounded the front end and Alex rolled down the window to greet him.
"Hey, little man, how're you doing?" Eric asked him with a bit of concern to his voice and an extended hand.
"Doing better than I thought," Alex replied in a low voice, and he gave a friendly shake in return. Sam picked out the drawing pad from the back seat and rounded the back end to meet up with him.
"I'm still just—I'm shocked by what happened," he confessed, and Alex shook his head at that. "I still can't believe Aurora forced me to do that to you."
"Hey, what's done is done," he pointed out. "I'm just having to find my way out here in the unknown with what I've got."
"Chuck and I are hoping that she'll leave soon so you can come back, but—we're gonna be holding our breath, though."
"It's okay, Eric," Alex assured him again, that time with a chuckle. "Really, I have to be the very best 'me' I can right now." He turned his attention to Sam and the pad in her hands. "Oh, yeah, show him that drawing."
"We heard about what's going on down in L.A. right now," she explained, and she opened it to that first page. Eric gasped and brought a hand to his chest.
"Wow! That's—that's fucking beautiful."
"When I get back to New York, the first thing I'm doing is putting this up in the gallery," she promptly replied. "It'll be a nice little story and change of pace for us all."
"Oh, definitely."
"Where's Dad, by the way?"
"I think he's home? He told me to come on over to talk to him, but I didn't see his car—oh, there he is."
"I gotta check my messages, anyway," Alex muttered, and he unbuckled his seat belt.
The three of them headed into the house, where Ruben greeted them at the front step with his arms open for them. He was at a loss for words with that portrait in her hands, such that he confessed to her that he wanted to share it with everyone at headquarters. All the while, Alex kept the phone up to his ear as he checked on his answering machine. His face lit up at one point however and he nodded at Sam and Eric with a bit of excitement.
"What's up?" she asked him once he stepped over to them.
"Exodus want me to come audition for them," he started. "Also, I think I may have landed a spot with the Spin Doctors, of all bands. They need a guitarist."
"The Spin Doctors, they do that song 'Two Princes', right?" Ruben asked him as he handed him and Eric cups of coffee.
"Yeah! It'd be a nice little change of pace for me, too." Ruben handed Sam a cup of coffee herself, and then she raised it towards Alex for a toast.
"To life and luck," she declared.
"To life and luck!" Eric echoed her as they brought the four cups together.