Pieces

23. Weakness

"I don't understand. Why would he lead us here?" Antonio's words echoed my thoughts, as we stood in front of a slightly old brick building, across from their school. It was a little over lunch hour but I was too intrigued by what lay before us to remind him that it was time he head back to class.

Turns out Antonio really had gone to school for the day, which I was grateful for, because if he hadn't, I was sure I'd have been lost in an alley somewhere right now. When I'd left the hospital with the map and the boxes, I hadn't really thought the whole thing through. I'd momentarily forgotten that I didn't know my way around town and while Marc's map helped a little bit but it was too vague for me to really be able to connect the dots. After I'd gone half mad after running around different areas and ended up at the beach for nearly an hour, I'd decided to just call Antonio, not caring much if he were in class or not. He wasn't.

He'd driven all the way to pick me up at the beach and as we drove back to school, I'd filled him in on what I'd found and while we'd both been excited about our new discovery and the possibility of there being another piece, the peculiar building dampened our hopes. It had been abandoned for a while now and though it was right across from school, nobody really paid much attention to it before. The most Antonio knew about the building was the fact that it was used for a number of events and was quite famous when Uncle Joe had just been starting up his restaurant, which was when his own parents were in college and that there was word around town that they'd been thinking of tearing it down for a while. However, Antonio's own father, The Mayor, had never mentioned anything of the sort.

As of late, there hadn't been much life around it. It remained closed for most of the day and was rarely unlocked only to be cleaned and taken care of every once in a while. But even that was becoming too much of a pain and the sweepers were demanding a rise in the pay. All that could be said of the building was that it was doomed. That all sentiment or life that once existed within it's walls was now long gone and rotting away into thin air. It was more of a nusiance now rather than an assset. It wasn't quite attractive so it wouldn't pay as a sight for tourists either.

So why did Marc lead us to this building? Surely, there had to be a reason.

"May I help you?" A voice behind me caused me to jump. I turned around to see a tall, muscular guy in his early twenties looking back at me. His black hair fell lazily in a mop across his forehead, which shone with sweat in the afternoon heat. He wore a lazy smile, his deep brown eyes half closed, as if he'd just awoke from a slumber.

Antonio cleared his throat, then stepping towards him, asked, "You work in this building?"

The guy simply nodded in response.

Antonio gave him a once over, disbelief sparking in his green eyes. "What do you do here?"

The guy sighed. "I'm the guy you sign up for events."

"Events?" I questioned. "But hasn't this place been shut down?"

His gaze flickered towards me. He threw me a lopsided grin. "Not so much shut down as it has been forced to." He said. "Well, so what's your event? Mostly people nowadays only use this place for exhibitions and as a gallery for photographs and paintings and handicrafts. However, if you have a particular programme in mind, we could set up a stage and make some changes..."

Antonio and I exchanged a knowing glance. The gallery.

"We'd like to hold an exhibition to display our late friend, Marcus' paintings. Perhaps you knew him?" Antonio said, a hint of excitement slowly creeping it's way into his voice.

He frowned but shook his head. "But if you're interested, I can show you the hall." He said, as he fished out a key from the pocket of his yellow shorts and walked past us to unlock the door to the building. "I'm Nathan Collins by the way." He said. Pushing the door open, he looked at me and winked. "But you can call me Nate."