*****************
It’s all right, Ma;
I’m only bleeding…
Bob Dylan
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"I'm colour blind, metaphorically speaking."
The quote kept echoing in Toby's mind; and the picture of a recovering, pale and emaciated Chris Keller, sitting on a straw chair outside a little stone house, probably his house, his eyes hooded, looking exhausted, a weary smile on his lips haunted his nightmares. Blood flowing everywhere and Leslie going limp in his arms, asking for mercy with his own voice... He woke up covered in sweat, biting his lips, drawing blood to stifle his screams.
Nightmares that had spared him for 10 years. Intense, urging him to ask, find out, demand, shake the man until he was forced to explain. Kill.
Then ‘I'm colour blind, metaphorically speaking’, Keller had told the journalist of some American magazine, and his fucking picture was on the cover in every store, mocking and taunting, even in Beecher's waiting room, fuck! I'm colour blind and the wonderful colours of the place I'm living in mean nothing to me; I'm unable to paint blue and yellow and green and red.
You can't paint red, motherfucker? Too much blood on those hands, maybe?
Toby was shaking; standing in front of his desk, locked inside his office, looking at the picture, unable to take his eyes off it; Jesus he was alive, he'd missed him. Relieved, Toby? Not even. Here's the man who killed my friends, killed my Leslie and he's sitting in this chair, wearing only a pair of jeans and a sleeveless shirt and so alive it hurts. It's said he left the hospital too soon, and a nurse comes to his place once a day to check up on him; would she still come if she knew?
You're eaten up by hate, Toby. Just tell everyone he's the man and prosecute him, get him fried; that's what you want deep down in your guts. See him die, see the light vanish from his eyes.
But…
Keller pretended he knew nothing about the man who’d attacked him in his own gallery, nearly killed him, left him for dead; he didn't have time to see him, had no idea of *who* he was, couldn't imagine any reason for lacerating the paintings, must’ve been some freaking psychopath. The police had given up fast enough.
A psychopath. Fucking liar. Toby had to sit down.
But that's what I am; I stooped that low. Now I'm as guilty as he is; what does that make me? Fuck.
If it means you're found guilty too, imprisoned too, will you still go to the court, Toby? Ruin your life, Gen's life, the kids' life?
Of course you won't. Of course I will. I’m the innocent one, after all; I’m the victim.
He went to his father, threw the magazine across the desk and pointed at the picture.
"It's him. The man who didn't shoot me, the man you were so sure he'd never existed. Look at him; this is the picture of a killer."
*************************************
"Finish the job, Chris."
Ryan's voice in the distance, so far, another universe, another life. An ocean of pain between them.
"I can do it for you; hire someone for you from here, do the job, rid you of him, once for all. Fuck, the guy’s crazier than we are."
Chris shifted and sighed.
"How are you?"
"Same old, K-boy. Sort of ‘as happy as can be in a 10 feet cell’. But the place's fine; experimental stuff, we're free to go around during the day. And there's Gloria."
O’Reily had told Chris about Gloria before and that love sounded fucking wicked to him, but if it could improve the Mick’s wasted life...
"And I received the money. Thanks."
"It's the least I can do. You’re in, I’m out."
"We had a deal on that, K-boy, we knew the risks from the beginning, both of us. I lost my brother that day, I lost freedom, you lost yourself. Maybe I'm the happiest of the whole. You would've done the same."
Yes, probably. They'd always worked that way together, since the beginning. Keep your fucking mouth shut, never rat on the members of the gang, if you’re caught the gang will take care of you. He would've done the same. He'd helped find a lawyer, and Ryan O'Reily's sentence had been commuted. Now he could do nothing better than send money and keep in touch. He didn’t want to wonder how strong the connection was between O’Reily’s silence and the amount of the checks he sent him; didn’t want to doubt. Finish the job? Sometimes he had regrets. Maybe he should’ve let the fucking state fry Ryan.
“I have to go, K'boy. If you change your mind…"
"I'll call again."
"Finish the job, Keller, or the rich prick will get you in the end."
“Gimme the name. The guy’s name. I need it now.”
“ Beecher . Tobias Beecher. Get rid of him.”
Chris put down the phone and reclined in his chair, trying not to let the pain pervade every cell of his brain. He had to work; work was the only thing that mattered.
Taking a look around, he thought how much he loved this place. With his bare hands he'd made a house out of an old crumbling sheephold. At the time he'd just been a young American wild guy who'd landed here by accident; he'd used the money he'd got left to buy a rocky parcel for almost nothing –no water, no electricity, a half-dry dwell and settled down there, knowing he'd never return home. He'd resumed painting; he'd been good at that in high school, had gone through some meaningless "art therapy" in prison.
For years he'd lived on nothing, really, helping people out, drawing portraits of tourists for a little cash. Now he was a local figure; hell, he'd exposed in several well-known galleries all around but he was known for living a very secluded life, far from civilisation most of the time. He was successful, made a lot of money and it was some weird accomplishment for a man whose life had stopped 13 years ago, when he’d heard the gunshots outside and fled, stumbling across the dead bodies, running through the streets, deaf with the noise of explosions that were killing his best friends - motherfucking cops always where they shouldn't be; thought they worked to protect people but it was all a lie, all that they were protecting was a rotten society where you were nothing when you didn't have money.
Now he had money, and he was dead inside.
But he was safe, he had been since the day a man from the French administration, holding out his hand, had told him “Congratulations, Mr Keller, you’re now a French citizen.”
He’d shaken the man’s hand and walked out, sat down on a wooden bench in front of the sea in the freezing cold of winter; and cried with relief.
******************************
"Do you believe the French government will extradite one of its most talented artists, just so we can fry him because you think he's the one who killed Leslie 13 years ago?"
A hand slammed the wood of the desk, hard.
"I don't think he is; he *is*."
"From what I know, the French administration has a very clear position on that; they don't extradite someone who’s likely to get killed.”
“I know that.”
“Then you know too that in order to convince them, we’ll have to ask a judge to negotiate a commuted sentence, and when he's here – if he's ever here, I'm not sure you get him convicted because that man, O'Reily, he won't testify."
"I'll talk to him, convince him."
"You already tried that, he said you were mad. Toby, get real, please; Gen's pregnant again, you're a father and a husband, you got a job, your own testimony will be easily shattered by any good lawyer…"
Toby had already slammed the door at that point.
It didn’t take long for Gen to make the connection; Keller’s story had been in a lot of magazines, he’d been questioned by American journalists about the attack; the day, the place, the time matched perfectly; the pieces of the puzzle eventually fell in place, memories flooding her.
Jesus, Toby, what did you do?
She’d noticed how agitated Tobias had been before boarding the plane; she remembered asking him what was wrong. “Nothing,” he’d said, avoiding her gaze. But he’d lied, she was sure about it now.
When she found the strength to question him, he sat down heavily on the stairs that led to their bedroom and buried his face in his hands.
“Don’t lie to me, Toby, please.”
He kept silent for a moment, sighed and raised his eyes to watch her; she sat beside him, her shoulder touching his, their fingers entwined.
“See, until that day, I could rely on a minimum amount of certainties. I’d imagined someone who’d been both my tormentor and my saviour; it was a fantasy meant to soothe a deep feeling of guilt because I was the only survivor of this unfathomable slaughter; I was convinced I’d dreamed, the man wasn’t real. But when I saw him, recognized him… I was back 13 years ago and it was… unbearable. I’d been right for the beginning and all the walls I’d built to protect me, the walls everyone had helped me building fell down. I was helpless, exposed, threatened; it was like waking up after 13 years of sleep to find that the nightmare was still here”
Toby sighed, at loss of words for once and looked at Gen, her furrowed eyebrows, her sorry expression; he was glad that she didn’t say anything.
She’d met him ten years ago, he was still haunted and dark but month after month, she’d grown attached to him, his kindness, his shyness; he was different from the other boys, sensitive and careful. She’d fallen in love; she’d refused to acknowledge that sometimes he drank a little too much, sometimes he was a little lost in his dreams, sometimes he was just absent, most of the time he wasn’t very passionate; she’d thought she’d get him to love her.
“You don’t love me,” she said, and knew she was right “you do your best I guess, but this isn’t love. You use your family to go on believing everything’s normal…”
“Nothing’s normal. As long as I’m alive; as long as that man is alive, nothing will ever be. And yes, I love you, love the kids.”
“Then I guess you should leave the past behind you and assume your responsibilities.”
“I won’t be able to take on anything until that man is brought before a criminal court and sentenced to what he deserves.”
“You don’t sound like the Toby I know and love.”
“Maybe you don’t know the real Toby, maybe you wouldn’t love him.”
Then nothing could keep him away from his obsession; he grew more and more nervous, and indifferent and dark. Gen had told no one what she suspected, but she was no longer able to share Toby’s bed. She was discouraged and scared by Toby’s mood shifts. When he decided he’d leave for a month or two, travel, try to make up his mind about what he had to do, fear and relief coiled in her mind at the same time. She was afraid to lose him, and afraid to keep him; afraid that he was putting his life and his family in danger by staying and scared that he would do the same by leaving. The only thing that still kept him home were the kids –he wouldn’t leave them easily, skipped work to spend more time with them, played with them much more than he usually did.
One morning, though, she woke up and he was gone. He’d left a note to say he loved her and that he’d call on a weekly basis. He’d left all his papers for her, and his will. She cried through the morning and the whole day, tried to call him on his cell phone, heard it ring near her and realized he’d left it on the kitchen table.
**************************************
Chris Keller was sitting in front of his easel, leaning forward, his stained fingers pressed to his lips. His mind focused on the canvas. The light red paint he used to cover the whole surface with was now dry. No one knew about his technique; everybody kept blabbering about the muted tones and this way he had to convey every colour through grey and beige but they didn’t know the amount of care he put in every detail, every touch, the superstitious and meticulous progression that led to every completed painting. Red paint and under the paint, words written with a black pen –now invisible. “Tobias Beecher nearly killed me on August 8 th 2001 . Fuck him”. He used a different message on every painting, and changed the paint from red to blue –the colour he bore in mind but never showed.
He sighed; during his three months in the hospital he’d been afraid to lose his talent, afraid that when he was out he’d become unable to paint again. He’d spent hours sitting under the shadow of the porch of his house, trying to gather his courage but the pain and the exhaustion made every thing a Herculean effort.
And now was the moment he’d delayed for weeks, as he wasted his time in Claire’s arms. She was his nurse, young and tough, she didn’t mind taking the hard walk up to the house. He’d spent a lot of time talking to people in the local cafés, avoiding the moment where he’d have to struggle with himself and get back to work.
His hand began to work thick layers of beige, prepare the future perspective, the depth that had made him famous, but in his mind he was painting infinite shades of blue; blue sea; blue eyes he met in the mirror everyday, changing shades of green and black playing in them; dark blue shadows playing over the body of the women he fucked; luminous electric blue of Beecher’s eyes 13 years ago, so blue, the desire to live in them so intense, he’d let him live, shot the floor just inches near him and left. Months ago they’d been blue with anger and hatred and rage. What would be his next move? Would he try to get him extradited? He doubted that, anger and pain didn’t find much relief in justice, it had something to do with the desire of red blood, of watching someone agonize under your eyes. But who knew, after all? The guy was a fucking lawyer, wasn’t he?
He painted until the light was too low, ate a little, went to bed early, didn’t stay out to stare at the stars and let the emptiness wash over him.
It took him three weeks to finish the thing, working on it all day until his back hurt. When he was done with the painting, when the painting was done with him, he thought of breaking the soft tones with some shiny red. Blood was a romantic idea but he knew well enough blood wasn’t good for painting, turning to black as soon as air tainted it, so he decided he’d use red India ink and spent hours trying to figure out what he wanted, the right amount of red, the right shade, the right place. In the end he rose and stepped back to have a better view, leaned against the stone wall of his house, the bottle in his hand. Memories of pain and cold metal piercing him roused a sleeping anger -he flung the bottle across the air, red ink spurting everywhere, on the tiled floor of the terrace, the table and the painting eventually, red droplets running down the canvas, here and there trapped by a thicker spot of paint, escaping in tiny rivulets that ended their course on the wooden stained easel.
Yes. Just like blood.
It took him a long time to wash his hands, and the tiles, and the table but then he was filled with such a feeling of elation he would’ve cried and he felt the urge to move, run, drink, talk, meet Claire at her place, fuck her senseless, let go of the tension, the disgust, the fear.
He locked the house and left, down the steep slope of the hill, not even a path, wedging his feet against stones. It would take him half an hour to reach the quiet village below. In the distance the sea was shining like a silver mirror, sun bright in the cool air of February; mimosas blooming all around him, bright yellow on the blue sky were a breathtaking sight and the trip down would be sheer pleasure.
Then as he turned left he saw a silhouette below, making his way up to him with the cautiousness of someone unused to the place, unsure, but determined. He was able to make out long blond hair, and tanned skin. Probably the man saw him too because he stopped too. They were too far to see each other well, but they didn’t need to and they resumed walking.
They met halfway.
“I need answers,” Toby said “and I brought wine.”
Tbc…