Two Loves

Chapter 17

ISAAC

Water drips from my brush unto the floor. It was certainly really dumb of me not to prepare the utensils earlier, but what can I say, perhaps I am dumb. Lady Crowley will arrive soon, and I still have to prepare the canvas for her portrait sitting. I really don't need any distractions right now.

The doorbell rings.

Cursing, I set down the brush on the easel and leave the studio. Why is this old spinster half an hour to early?

I check my reflection in the hallway mirror - I must at least look a little charming, since Lady Crowley will definitely lack charming conversation, thanks to Cym's idiotic exit. Most likely she stumbled out of the door, got wasted in some pub, dallied with some poor girl and has now fucked up both her relationship with Ada, her job and her constitution. Not that I'm bitter. It's entirely her fault.

Alright. I ruffle my hair into something that - I hope - looks like a Romantic artist style that just says that I am too intelligent and dreamy to look civilized, take a deep breath and turn the door-handle.

"Good morning, Lady Crowley, what a ple- Oh."

My head is shoved into flowers. No, to be exactly, the flowers shove themselves into my face, because the person holding them was again leaning against the door and is now, that I am opening it, again almost falling into me.

"Whoops." Atticus laughs and lets my shoulder he grabbed to not fall to the ground, out of his grip. "Good morning."

I stand there like a pillar of salt. "You are not Lady Crowley."

He stops in the door frame. "That -- is correct" he says. "Does that disappoint you?"

"No!" I answer, a little too fast. "No, I mean - what are you doing here? Not that I don't want to have you here - no, not have, uh -"

He kindly interrupts me. If he's going to do this through grazing his thumb over my underlip every time I say something dumb, I might as well do it more often.

"I wanted to see if you are well, you know, after yesternight and just -- I don't know, make sure that you are not slowly dying."

Oh. "And you brought flowers."

"Err-- yea!" He awkwardly lifts the bouquet of brightly yellow flowers up to me, and, half-chuckling adds "No hyacinths this time."

I already took them to inhale the reticent scent, but as soon as he mentions the goddamn hyacinths, I am reminded of one important detail. "But I guess narcissus also has an inappropriate double-meaning that I am too dumb to understand?"

Atticus tilts his head. "Well, you know the story of Narcissus, I guess..."

I hold the flowers a little further away from me, as if they were a ticking time-bomb. I won't place another lewd message in my studio, not when an old lady who can certainly decipher it is about to visit.

"Yea", I answer. "I would rather not repeat it. Besides, you are the Narcissus of us both, I can just claim the title of Echo."

Atticus looks down as if he should be embarrassed, and by God, who allowed him to go to bed at two o'clock in the morning and still look this handsome? If it is a God-given ability, then the Lord definitely wants to provoke a "Do not tempt me, father".

"As you wish", he says and leans in closer. "But if you were Echo, the reflection would not have had any power over me. Why should I look at my own face when I'd rather look at you, my little Arcardian faun... Hey, do you know that your ears get pink when you are flustered? Too adorable."