Intaglio Dragons All The Way Down

chapter 25: Fallout



It was nearly ten o’clock when the plane set down, though it took them almost an hour to get all of their baggage and load it on a trolley. The group piled into Suzanne’s hatchback to head into the city. Chim told stories, embellishing them all the way that only he could.

Cole sat in silence.

He was irritated by their laughter, infuriated by the easy banter. There was too much going on inside him. Too much he couldn’t control.

Rage.

Ava reached over to take his hand but he pulled away, staring out into the wet darkness. The city streets were slick with rain, a perfect companion to Cole’s dark thoughts. He clenched and unclenched his fists, fighting to rein in his temper. The calm of the vacation had been destroyed by Nina’s revelation.

‘The affair was just the start... There’s far more to the story...’

By the time they reached downtown, Cole’s body pulsed with the need to hurt someone or himself. He needed to get out of the car … the laughter… the companionship… Ava.

Suzanne slowed down as they neared the building where the shared studio was located.

“I’m just gonna pick up a couple things since we’re here,” Suzanne explained, pulling the car to a stop, and tugging the emergency brake. “I hope you guys don’t mind the—”

Cole was out of the door before she finished.

“Thanks for the ride back,” he growled, storming away without looking back, “I’m outta here.”

Chaos erupted. Chim yelled for him to wait, Ava argued to be let out, Suzanne asked what was going on. Cole ignored them all. He headed away, crossing the busy street in a half-jog. He could hear Ava calling, but he dodged the oncoming traffic, heading toward the main thoroughfare. There were any number of questionable bars there. There would be an easy place to find a fight.

He’d done it before.

Cole had been walking for a few minutes when he located the right locale. It had dingy, dirt-covered windows, loud heavy metal music buzzing the grated door, and a neon sign flashing “op–n.”. Cole was just about to duck inside when he heard pounding footsteps behind him. He smiled coldly as he spun around, hands rolled into fists, wondering who else was looking for a fight tonight.

He stopped in his tracks. It was Ava, and she was furious.

“Where the HELL do you think you’re going!?” she snapped, striding forward until she was chest to chest with him.

She was breathing hard from running. Bright pink blotches coloured on her cheeks. It struck Cole that he’d never seen her so angry before.

“I needed to take off,” he ground out, face stony. “You know why.”

Her fingers rose to his chest, poking hard. His temper rose – abruptly focused on her – and he pushed the monster back down under the surface. He couldn’t let it out… not here… not with Ava!

“You don’t have to do anything!” she shouted.

Cole sneered.

“You don’t understand a f*cking thing,” he snarled, turning back toward the bar.

She was at his side before he’d gone two steps, grabbing his arm and pulling him roughly to a stop. She was really strong when she wanted to be... but he didn’t think about this for long, because he was too full of fury.

He needed a fight to release it.

“You do NOT get to run off on me, Cole Thomas,” she bellowed. “Not now! Not after all of the SHIT we’ve dealt with!”

She was in his face, breathing hard. Cole tried to turn again, but she grabbed hold of his wrist. This time she didn’t let go. His eyes flicked down to her hand, the muscle in his jaw jumping quicker and quicker.

“Don’t,” he warned. Ava’s hand on his wrist infuriated him in ways he could not explain. Not even to himself.

“Don’t what?” she hissed, pushing into his space so that they were standing only a hands-breadth away from one another. “Don’t care? Don’t say anything? Don’t touch you?” She was red-faced, her voice bitter. “Since when do you get to give ME the f*cking rules, after all the crap you’ve pulled, huh?”

Cole watched her, ready to react. If he’d already been inside the bar, his hands would’ve been ready to throw the first punch. But this was Ava, and that had changed the rules. A tiny voice inside him screamed at him to calm down. She stood on the rainy street, waiting for his reaction. He could see it in her face and posture. Her hand was still clenched tight around his wrist. She expected him to try something.

“I want an answer!” she yelped, her voice breaking sharply.

Like a splash of cold water on a raging flash fire, a number of things were abruptly clear. First, that her hand was shaking where she held him. Second, that her lower lip was quivering as if she was about to cry.

She was scared.

At the realization, his temper dropped down to a steady blaze. He didn’t move or change his stance, but suddenly he was listening.

“This isn’t about you!” he barked.

He wanted to be out there where the lines of bars and one-night hotels lay… to drink and fight and cauterize the gaping wound in his chest with the physicality of pain. He wheeled on Ava.

“I’m just f*cked up... okay?!” he roared, the sound echoing loudly off the brick wall behind him. “I’m just so goddamn MAD at everyone and I…” he shook his head, not knowing how to make sense of it. “I don’t know how else to DEAL with this right now!”

She nodded, her lips pursing.

“Yeah, I get that.”

Cole’s temper still burned, fury and disgust and resentment wrapping around him. The rational side of him was telling him to listen to what she was saying, but the pain was too deep. He glanced at Ava’s hand on his wrist again. She still hadn’t let go.

“I’m just so f*cking mad.” Cole rasped. “Just pissed off at...at everyone! Okay?!?”

“At me?”

He frowned.

“No... Yes! I don’t f*cking KNOW, all right” He shook his head in frustration. “God, I just have all of this... rage... I can’t even think straight. F*ck!”

She nodded, stepping closer. Her hand on his wrist stayed, but the other hand went to his chest.

“It’s okay to feel that way, you know?” She grimaced. It was almost a smile, just devoid of happiness. “I get that, Cole... I really do.”

“No, you don’t,” he retorted.

She frowned, eyebrows pulling together in annoyance, voice rising.

“Yes, actually, I do!”

He looked down at her, his body warring with emotions. Ava was there, and he couldn’t bring himself to shove her away. She stared up at him.

“So what do I do then?” Cole asked.

She exhaled shakily, fingers dropping from his wrist to hold his hand tightly.

“Let’s go paint.”

: : : : : : : : : :

Ava power-stapled a swath of canvas to the wall of the studio with unsteady hands. Cole stood just inside the door, jittery with the need for release. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, hands clenched at his side. His face was closed and dark… furious. Ava could almost see the waves rising around him like the heat off pavement in the summer, as if his ire was slowly released in the frustration of the repetitive motion.

This was the side of Cole that scared her, but she wasn’t leaving tonight. Not this time.

The makeshift canvas covered one entire wall, the raw linen stretched as high as she could reach. If the two of them had been five years younger, she would have suggested spray-painting a building, but she’d had too many close calls lately... and she wasn’t risking it with Cole's mood. If the police came, she was almost sure he wouldn’t run. ‘He’d TRY to start a fight,’ an inner voice warned. Ava knew, with certainty, that Cole didn’t care about the consequences of his actions right now... and that worried her.

It reminded her of her younger self.

Pulling open her black painting kit – a large metal toolbox – Ava scooped up tubes of acrylic paint. Oils were too slow-drying for this process. Cole needed something immediate and intensely pigmented. ‘Paint sticks!’ her mind suggested. She nodded to herself, grabbing a handful of them too.

She spread them across the shelf of the easel and on the nearby table. Two of them rolled and tumbled to the floor, another following seconds later, but Ava didn’t notice. She was filling a coffee can with water from the sink at the back. Returning to the studio, she slammed the can down onto the table, water sloshing over the edges.

With one last look at the supplies, she turned to Cole. He was still scowling, his mind somewhere else. Lifting his fist, she pulled open his fingers one by one, pressing the handle of a brush into his palm.

“Paint it out,” she instructed, eyebrows rising.

Cole's lips curled like a dog about to attack.

“I’m NOT a painter like you are!”

There was challenge to the snarled words, and insolence. It irritated her. She tugged the brush from his grip, grabbing a paint-stick and slapping it into his palm.

“Fine, Cole,” Ava muttered, refusing the bait. “Draw, then! I know you can do that!”

He stared down, face darkening.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he growled.

Ava dragged him to the canvas.

“I don’t f*cking care WHAT you do,” she replied angrily. “I just need you to start. Do anything, Cole. Just do it. Make something. PAINT!”

He stood before the blank canvas, body taut with anger. Unmoving. Ava leaned in, her words harsh. Letting her own fury come out in the sharp hiss of her words.

“Just start,” she taunted. “Destroy it, Cole! Make it dark! Cruel!” Her voice rose, growing angrier. “Do whatever the hell you NEED to do! Just GET. IT. OUT!”

He’d been scowling at the wide expanse of unprimed fabric while she talked. She saw the wrath just under the surface of his control, rising like flood waters. Dangerous... she took his wrist, holding his fist and the paint-stick next to the wall. Hovering it over the canvas.

“F*ck off!” he barked.

Ava leaned in, her lips in a cruel smile.

“What’s pissing you off, Cole?” His eyes met hers. “Is it your dad? Nina? …your mother?” Ava paused, stepping closer still, breasts bumping against his chest, her intonation almost sexual. “Is it me?”

“Stop it!” Cole roared. His face was flushed; he was breathing rapidly.

Ava smirked icily.

“So how angry are you, Cole?” she taunted. “Show me...”

Like a dam breaking, he was suddenly in motion. He tore his hand out of her grip, her nails scoring his arm. As she watched, a line of expletives smeared across the canvas in a single broad stroke. Fury and rage spilled out into words and obscene scribbles as the minutes passed, the rage given voice in the dark. Ava stood beside him as he worked, watching as he was pulled into the process. Disappearing under the black surface.

Cole moved with surprising speed, his anger rising up out of him in waves. Ava handed him new medium as he used up the old. She switched him to paint when Cole could no longer cover large enough areas with the narrow lines. His actions became bolder. The storm was unleashed.

“More black!” Cole demanded, reaching back to her.

Ava loaded another brush with acrylic, standing back and watching as the pale canvas altered and changed under his assault. It was fascinating and horrifying... she was seeing the physical representation of Cole’s demons emerging onto the wall of her studio. Pain. Fury. Hatred. Fear. All growing into a larger whole, blurring together to form something more.

The canvas on the wall slowly filled with released rage, the texture of the words fuelled the raw flow of emotions. Ava glanced at her cell phone, shocked to see that two hours had passed. The streets outside were silent and empty, raindrops steadily slapping against the windowpanes. It was well past midnight, but Ava didn’t interrupt the process. She’d gone through this too many times herself. Instead, she watched in awe as Cole’s words morphed into hatch marks and then finally into renderings... shapes drawn in searching lines coming out of the canvas toward her.

Another hour passed.

Coming back from changing the can of water, she realized, with a start, what the image was. There were two people struggling to cling to a broken piece of wood as waves crashed around them. Ava stood in place, swallowing again and again as bile rose in her throat. The figures were cut and bleeding. The waves threatened to drown them both.

Cole’s arms moved ceaselessly across it, adding colour and detail: blood running down the limbs, water soaking the clothing, dragging them under. There was something she recognized about the image... something impossibly familiar. Only one thing had changed.

‘Last time, I was the only one in the water …’

At the canvas, Cole reached backward, groping blindly for a brush. Ava was too lost in horror to notice. He grabbed the tube of paint from the easel, squeezing it directly onto his fingers, rubbing it directly into the canvas. A glimmer of light appeared over the dark blues and greys, pulling the image into relief. Two people – a man and a woman – were caught together, grappling with impossible forces. Fighting hard to stay afloat.

‘That’s me and Cole...’ Ava realized in shock.

A frisson of fear ran up her spine. This was her dream… the one where she died. She knew, somehow, that the winged woman – the figurehead of the ship – was nearby. But this time, it was going to come down on both of them. They were both dying in this image.

“No… it can’t be,” she whispered in terror. “He’s supposed to make it to shore.”

Her words were drowned out by the rain on the windows, the thrumming of the roof above. Cole painted like a man possessed. Unstoppable. The image emerged from the darkness, highlights deepening the illusion of depth, the watery grave that surrounded them. A quote from Renoir popped to mind: “I’ve been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black.” The canvas was leaden with it.

Standing next to the easel, his clothes completely destroyed by paint, Cole altered his approach again. He rubbed pale skin-tones into the grain of canvas, obscuring the written words, pushing them under the surface of the water with acrylic glaze. The liquid character of the painting splashed over the edges. The speed of his fingers edged toward care. Violence was tempered by detail. Cole moved the male figure’s hand so he was grasping the woman next to him. The water surrounding them was changing.

‘We’re not going to make it…’ Ava’s mind announced.

Ava noted the subtle change as Cole’s anger began to recede. She could see it in the way he moved. He no longer was attacking the canvas, but selecting colours now. He switched back to brushes, the edge of a split lip and the purple swelling of a black eye appearing in careful strokes. A crimson line of blood dribbled across a cut cheek like a flower on snow.

Ava swallowed hard as the image shifted into focus. ‘That’s definitely the two of us...’ she thought as Cole smeared his nose in the image, breaking it in the process. ‘But Cole’s drowning with me...’ The man in the self-portrait was struggling to stay afloat, his hands wrapped tight around the image of Ava. His face was torn in anguish, body flagging with exhaustion. There was a hint of beauty under the destruction. Tenderness appearing on occasion.

‘Dying together…’

It made her want to cry.

Ava wavered on her feet, eyes darting to her cell phone again. She realized in shock that they’d been here all night. Cole was painting even now, though his arms had slowed, and he paused, panting tiredly every once in a while. Outside, the sky had lightened to a greenish blue, promising the coming of dawn. Stumbling to the couch in a daze, Ava pulled off her shoes, slumping down on the cushions, her mind buzzing with lack of sleep. Cole worked on; he turned around at one point, surprised to see her watching him.

The image – larger than life – had transformed again. Their embrace – a death grip – as they went under the water, no longer held rage and exhaustion. There was comfort in death. Ava noted that Cole’s painting style was much more representational than her own. She watched in awe as he shifted the curve of the lips on his self-portrait, so that he was half smiling, as the water rose to cover his face. Pain on his visage, but relief in the expression.

‘Together, at the end.’

As if reaching a pre-defined point, Cole stopped, his body going perfectly still. He stood before the canvas a long time, anger finally dissipated. Fatigue and relief were visible in the relaxed lines of his posture, his body close to collapse. Exhausted, but whole. He dropped the brush into the water-filled coffee can, turning back to where Ava waited.

She smiled, lifting her hand, gesturing him to come near.

Cole joined her on the low couch. Ava lay down near the back, pulling him close. He faced toward her, his paint-stained hands between them, together as if in prayer. She tightened her arms around him, her face next to his on the crumpled drop cloth. Cole caught her eyes as she relaxed, and for the first time in hours, he gave a weary smile.

Ava reached out, petting his hair, then running her fingers down his back. He didn’t speak, though he groaned tiredly. Her fingers brushed his forehead, rubbing away a smudge of paint. Cole’s body was limp in her arms, weak after the lengthy process. She recognized this from her own nights of explosive anger as she waited for his breathing to finally slow. Her hands moved over him again and again in comfort. Her eyes were riveted to the canvas on the far wall.

‘It’s over…’ her mind announced.

Finally Cole slept.