Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (26 page)

“So, um… I
figure, since I know your parents now, you should probably meet my dad,” she
said.  Cole ran his finger along the side seam of her jeans,
smiling. 

“Yeah, I figured
I’d meet him.  He’s here in a couple days, right?”

“Well, the tour
ends on the twenty-eighth...” she said, picturing the calendar on the wall of
the kitchen, “but he doesn’t actually leave Sydney until the next day. 
Add in flying time, and he’ll be here late on the thirtieth.  So I was...
uh... wondering if you wanted to meet him before we head out for New Year's.”

“We can cancel
if you want,” Cole said, “go out another time.” 

His fingers
reached the top of her jeans and began to follow the seam of her sweater up
under her arm.  Ava giggled, twisting sideways.

“No, don’t
cancel,” she answered.  “He’ll be too tired to stay up late, but I want
you to meet him anyway.  It’s... important to me.”  She glanced over
at him, then back to the highway.  Her face was apprehensive. “Is that
okay with you?”

“God, Ava,” Cole
laughed, moving as close as the seat belt allowed.  “After the fallout
from my family, I’m surprised
you
want me
to meet him.” 

She laughed, and
Cole went back drawing the line up her sleeve with his fingers.  He moved
under her armpit, over her shoulder, then headed back down her right arm. 
She squirmed but didn’t pull away.

“I... um... I
want to tell you a few things,” Ava said, voice dropping. 

Cole paused, his
fingers resting on her soft inner wrist.  He traced circles and
waited.  She sounded serious.

“All right.”

She smiled,
glancing over at him.

“It’s nothing
bad, Cole... don’t worry.  I just don’t want to send you in without a
little... preparation.”

“That’s probably
what I should’ve done,” Cole confessed with an embarrassed laugh.  Ava
winked.

“Yeah, well...
that would’ve helped, but I think it turned out okay.”

He grinned and
tugged at her right arm until she let go of the wheel.  Her hand lay
between them on the bench seat.

“So my dad’s a
hippie,” Ava began, her voice becoming matter-of-fact.  “You should just
know that going in.  Just accept it.  He really
is
that
weird.  It’s not just some show, or something pretend.  It’s him.”

Cole let out a
bark of laughter.

“What the hell
is
that
supposed to mean?”

She glared at
him in annoyance.

“Sorry,” Cole
said, forcing himself to stop laughing, calming his expression.  Ava
sighed, her eyes going back to the road. Cole began to trace down her wrist toward
her hand, following bones and muscles whose lines he knew from figure drawing
classes and sculpting.

“I’m not
kidding, Cole.  It’s how my dad is,” she said tartly.  “He’s an
amazing person, but he’s not like... well... other dads. 
He’s
different
.  That freaks some people out.”

She looked at
him nervously, and Cole squeezed her fingers in response.

“Hey.  I
don’t care.  It’s all good...  tell me about him.”

Ava smiled.

“Well, I told
you a bit about him before.  He’s a Buddhist, if anything, but he’s cool
with all different kinds of ideas and theories on life.  Believes in
reincarnation... past lives... psychic abilities... that we need to learn from
our mistakes.” 

Ava paused,
wondering how much to say, but this was Cole, so she kept going. 

“Dad’s just kind
of an interesting guy.  Very open-minded.”  She laughed as she stared
at the highway.  “God, you should hear him and Marcus talking.  It’s
like they’re the same person at different ages....
hilarious
when they
argue!”  Ava grinned.  “And do
not
believe my dad when he
starts claiming he was a saint in university.  He
wasn’t
.”

“Sounds like my
kind of guy,” Cole said.  “Chim’s great.”

Ava nodded.

“There’s other
stuff too...  He has this way of...” she frowned, wondering how to phrase
it.  “... of
reading people…
knowing things about them that he
shouldn’t be able to tell.   I don’t know how to describe it better
than that.  He’s just really good at understanding what makes people
tick.  He dabbles in tarot cards, palmistry, tea-cup reading... all of that
stuff that makes most people kind of... uncomfortable...”

Cole turned her
hand over and began circling the pads of her fingers.

“Do
you
believe in all of that?” he asked quietly.

She peered at
him before turning her attention back to the road.

“Well, I don’t
know about
all of it...
” Ava said warily.  “I mean, I’m open to the
idea
of past lives and all that
...
and some of it I totally
believe – my Dad can be
really
accurate with tea cup readings.  In
fact, I’m going to get him to do mine when he gets back.  But there are a
lot of things in life I just
don’t know for sure...
and I guess I’m okay
with that.” 

She was worried
that, somehow, this was going to change things.  He was still smiling,
waiting for her to go on. 

“But yeah,” she
said softly, “I believe in most of it.  I mean, there are things in life
sometimes that just seem to
fit
.”

“Like us,” Cole
said. He lifted her palm to his face, resting his cheek against it. 

Ava smiled,
heart thudding.  This was half of what scared her about Cole… that he
could feel it too.

“I... I felt
like I already knew you when I first met you,” she said.  “This connection
I couldn’t explain.  I still feel it now, just stronger.”  Ava’s face
shifted, the guarded expression moving into mischief.  “I remember you
telling me that after the opening,” she said with a smirk, dropping her voice
to a sexy drawl. “It was a great line, Cole.” 

He placed a kiss
against her palm, then brought it down to the seat, twining his fingers with
hers.

“I keep telling
you it wasn’t a line.  I’ve never said that to someone before.”

She couldn’t
keep the smile off her lips.  Cole leaned closer, his voice low.

“I actually knew
as soon as I talked to you outside the class that day,” he said solemnly, “when
we talked about Donatello.  Something just clicks when we’re
together.  I haven’t felt like that since—”

His words
stopped, swallowed up by something else.  Ava glanced over at him. 
Cole's face warred with some dark emotion, pain hidden just under the surface.

“Since..?”

He swallowed
hard, throat bobbing.

“Since Hanna,
actually.”

Ava let her eyes
slide back to the road as she squeezed his hand.  There was a lull in the
conversation and then Cole spoke, though his voice sounded more hollow than
before.  Emptier.

“Hanna and I
were really close growing up, and when she was around I just felt...
safe
.”

His fingers were
tight against hers, as if she anchored him to this moment.  Ava waited,
unwilling to break it, wondering what Hanna Thomas must have been like to instill
this kind of undying love in those around her.

“God, I miss
her,” Cole said brokenly.

Ava smiled
sadly, her thumb running over his knuckles in comfort.

“I can tell.”

: : : : : : : :
: :

They spent the
next day catching up on the daily grind of real life.  Cole was back at
his place doing laundry and cleaning.  Ava was in her studio
painting.  Cole had agreed to pose for her and she had every intention of
making him follow through.  She grinned, remembering the conversation as she’d
dropped him off.  He was nervous about posing nude... but Ava refused to
back down.  As she’d pointed out, with Marcus and Suzanne gone, the studio
would be completely hers for the next week and a half.  It was the ideal
opportunity. 

She’d decided
that this new painting was going to be a study in musculature, and Cole Thomas,
naked
, would be the perfect model for that.  The frame needed to be
built, the canvas stretched, and the raw fabric primed before she could begin.

That was her
goal for the day. 

It took her all
afternoon to get the frame completed, but Ava was determined to finish the
canvas so she could paint when she returned.  As early evening darkened to
night, Ava was still upstairs, blasting music, large gesso brush in hand. 
She had just dipped the brush again, working the heavy medium into the last few
patches of raw canvas, when she heard someone coming up the stairs.  She
grinned, excited that Cole had decided to join her. 

“C’mon in,” Ava
shouted without looking up.  “The canvas is just about done.  Anytime
you want to strip down and let me start sketching, I’m ready.”

Finishing the
last strokes, she looked up, grinning.  Her happiness flipped into hot
embarrassment as she laid her eyes on Kip Chambers. He was leaning inside the
doorway, his arms crossed on his chest, smiling down at her, an eyebrow lifted
in interest.

“Strip down,
huh?” he teased.  “You’re gonna have to buy me dinner first, Booker. 
I’m not that easy.”

 “Oh shit,”
Ava said, her face flooded with colour.  “I... uh... I’m sorry Kip... I
thought you were someone else.”

He laughed,
stepping inside as Ava set her gesso brush back into the container.  She
stood up, rubbing white-flecked hands against her jeans.

“Yeah, I
figured.  Though I’m a little insulted you didn’t ask me,” he said with a
wink, brushing her shoulder as he walked up to the canvases.  “Might have
been fun.”

She smiled
nervously, getting out of his way, arms crossing her chest.  Kip Chambers
was good-looking, of course but he was a goddamned celebrity too!  There
was no way she’d ask him to pose for her. The other, more likely, possibility
was that he was flirting with her, and while that was flattering, she was a
little irritated by it.  
Ava wasn’t interested!
  She
sure as hell hadn’t forgotten what she saw in the back room of the
gallery.  This was before bringing Cole into the mix.

Being with him
changed
everything
.

Chambers paused,
flipping through the canvases he’d seen before.  The steely sky and a calm
ocean.  The one that looked like a bird in a sun-bright sky.  A
colourful one of tree branches overhead and several others.  Now that he
was here, Ava found herself unsure what to do.  Kip  had a
bigger-than-life personality.  She was more used to him in a gallery space
or the cover of a magazine.  It was weird to see him standing next in her
cluttered easel.  The minutes stretched on, and he peeked back at her,
seeing her waiting, arms crossed.

“Relax.  I
was kidding, Ava,” he said with a sigh.  “It was a bad joke.” 

When Ava still
didn’t answer, he shook his head and went back to the canvases. 

“I was actually
wondering if I could see your progress with the mural project.  I’d like
to start planning my sections.  Raya’s been riding my ass about it.”

Feeling a little
more settled now that the topic was business, Ava came up beside him, lifting
the drop cloths on the panels.

“I finished them
a few days ago,” she said, pulling the paint-splattered sheet to the
side.  “I was going to call you but I was away for a few…”

She turned back
to Chambers, about to say more, but his eyes were riveted to the canvas, mouth
agape.  It was the same look
she
must’ve had seeing the Francis
Bacon painting of the destroyed head with the sides of beef, like wings on
either side. 
The angel of death
. 

Kip’s face was
horrified.

“My god, how can
this...?” he gasped, then swallowed audibly.  “This is...  I think
I...” His words disappeared.  He looked over at her in terror, then
stepped forward, his hand going to her arm. 

“Where is this
place?” he asked, voice rising shrilly.   “I know it, Ava
... I’ve
dreamt this.”

She stepped back
in shock.  Her uneasiness was back, full force. 

“I honestly
don’t know,” she admitted tremulously,  “I just paint what I feel most
times... and I think I might have been there before at some point... or saw a
picture… or maybe dreamed it...”  She shifted uncomfortably.  “…
maybe.
”

Kip stepped
closer and her eyes jumped to his face. The anguish she saw there made no sense
to her. 

“I’ve dreamed
this place too,” he said, reaching out to put a hand back on her arm. 

Kip’s face was
horror-struck, his fingers tight and shaking.   Ava quelled the urge
to wrench her arm free, even as his next words filled her with panic. 

 “I think
I’ve
been there before
, Ava.”

Kip Chambers sat
on the floor of Ava’s studio, his head in his hands.  He had been in the
same position for the last ten minutes.  Ava was desperate for an excuse
to leave, but she had no idea how to get him out.  Kip sat against the
wall, chattering with rising panic, and she didn’t know how to stop him. 
It struck her that if she thought
Cole’s
intensity was unsettling, she
had
no idea
how much scarier it could get.