Neil delivered The Egg and Faded Memory on Saturday morning. He offered to help Carl hang the paintings, and Carl agreed.
They hung them both up side-by-side in Carl's hallway. They looked bigger on Carl's wall than they had in the coffee shop and in the art space.
"The Egg doesn't look so bad here," Neil said, staring at his painting. "I almost don't hate it."
"Why do you hate it at all?" Carl asked. "Is it just because of the memory of your breakup or some other reason?"
Neil sighed. "I painted this while I was depressed. I hadn't been able painted anything in ages because I was so depressed, and then one day, as I was making breakfast, I looked at the egg in my hand and it had colour! I was seeing colours again!So I stopped everything I was doing, and went to paint the egg before I lost the feeling. There wasn't any real meaning to it. I was just really really happy to be able to see colour again. And each time I looked at it, I remembered how great it felt to be out of that depression. But all the guy I was seeing at the time saw was garish colours. That eventually became a problem and we broke up. After that I couldn't stand seeing this thing in the house."
"I understand."
"I knew you would." Neil smiled. "That's why I sold it to you."
Carl laughed.
"What about you?" Neil asked. "Is there a partner or polycule?"
"No," Carl said. "I was with someone for five years, but we broke up right before the pandemic."
"Oof. Bad timing."
"Yeah. But it was a long time coming. And it was inevitable."
"Why was it inevitable?"
"He wanted kids and I didn't. It was inevitable and irreconcilable."
Neil nodded. "Definitely."
"Yeah. We almost got back together during the first lockdown because we were both lonely and we really missed each other. But then we agreed that there was no real future for us, so we stayed broken up."
"That's rough."
"Yeah." Carl looked at the egg. "What are you doing this afternoon?"
"Nothing important. I have the day off."
"You want to stay for lunch?" Carl asked. "I was going to warm myself up a frozen pizza."
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things - FIRST DRAFT
Fiksi UmumA first draft of a mess about a guy, a pandemic, and an empty office. It's about missing things. One of the things that's missing is a plot. As I said, this is a first draft and it's here for funsies. At some point it'll be taken down because I'll w...
