The Big Run-Off (Holden Burke #1)

Seven

On the furthest corner, encased in thin walls of glass and steel, was the arts centre. There was a general milling of well-dressed figures standing inside, and the white electric lights inside were creating a bloom through the glass that made the entire corner look like a giant light bulb. I slipped inside as congenitally as I could; the people in front of me were dressed, if not better, than certainly cooler than I was—a sea of beanies and scarves and trilbys and expensively cheap shoes. They were younger, too, by at least a decade, and prettier, and had as frigid an atmosphere of young art snobbery then I'd ever expected to find myself lost in the company of. It was hard not to think of myself as a walking, talking sore thumb on two feet, but I puffed my chest and stiffened my shoulders, and moved through the coolheaded crowd with as few ruffles as I could.

They were all looking at a collection of abstracted colour splotches along the wall. I was trailing along quietly, listening in on their impassive comments as I passed: 'I did something like that in my spare time, but I never thought it was important enough to submit...' 'It's intelligent, but where the hell's all this thought when he's the one to pick up the bar tab...' 'I think it's pretty derivative, right?—I mean, it's just like a Christopher Macdonald Ross but with none of the social relevance. And none of the sexiness, either...'

I could see more figures camped on a second floor landing, up a thin rail of stairs. I wandered up and looked in on a a small collection circled around a wall at the back. Sheyenne was standing among them, looking on, and I could see the tip of Darcy's black beanie in the middle of the attention. He was standing next to a painting, under the bright glare of a system of overhead lights.

I moved closer and tried to find a better look in between the backs of heads. The painting was of a young man, thin, white, apoplectic-looking, and entirely nude. His bony body was sprawled across the canvas in something of a celebration of starkness, and with his pale grey skin hidden under a splashing of strange textures and assorted roughnesses.

Underneath it all, I could sense the cat-like rise of a smile in the model's thin lips, under the shaggy shock of his sandy hair, and I realised that it was the image of Anthony Ramsey. Darcy was smiling too. At least, I thought so; his face was so set in priggish coolness that if he was smiling it was in nothing but a smug kind of way. At the side of his work, of Anthony Ramsey encased in paint, he looked like a fisherman standing in prideful celebration next to the corpse of a Great White.

Darcy was fielding questions. He spoke about how the painting was about, 'the directness of the human form. The meaning of the naked form in a direct way.' His voice was low and serious.

There was a murmuring among the onlookers. I wandered to the other side of the landing and took a glass of champagne from a table there to better blend in. I took a sip and coiled my lips. When I wandered back, the demonstration had ended and Darcy was wrapping up by speaking to a few other clumps of young people in cool clothes and even cooler demeanours.

Sheyenne was standing away from him, waiting in a loose and semi-bored posture.

'Impressive,' I said to her.

She spun around. 'Oh, yes. Yeah. He's great, isn't he?'

'Are you an artist as well?'

'Me? Oh, no.—I mean, I haven't tried. I might. I've thought about it, but I couldn't do anything like Darcy. I'm majoring in sciences, anyway.'

I made a sound. 'Sounds interesting. Are any other of your comrades here, Sheyenne?'

She briefly passed a nervous glance around the balcony. 'I don't think so. They're busy, I guess.'

'Spreading democracy, no doubt.'

She blushed.

'I'd really love to talk to one of your compatriots, I've come all this way, you know. Do you know an Anthony Ramsey?'