“Tryst.” It comes out as a whispered promise. A secret he will never tell.
“I get it, Mas,” I offer soothingly, yet the words ease none of the pain for either of us. “I always thought she was bright. Perhaps the smartest thing she’s done was to walk away from both of us,” I offer with a hint of humor neither of us appreciates. I tap the inside of his knee, drawing that hollowed face back up to my level. “Mason, I understand Bri leaving is a thing. But I also understand why. I hope you will extend the same courtesy to me. You know I love you, and probably always will, but right now, I can’t stomach the sight of you.I will work out my notice, and not a moment longer. I quit too, Mas. I’m done.”
The thawing snow and frost are easing from the plowed streets, letting the gray concrete carpet reclaim the landscape. It’s a color I’m distinctly familiar with nowadays. It was the way I described how I felt to my therapist at my first appointment. What color would I describe my life as right now? Darkest fucking black there is, if there was such a tone. After unpacking that black would fit more with death, I settled on a gray so dark; charcoal. Char because it’s an apt fitment to the months of shit I’ve dealt toward people I both hated and loved, torching everything dear and close. Coal because it’s what I see when I face myself in the mirror in the morning when I’m required to rise, shower and groom, and begin each day with routine. Despair and depression can often manifest over time, creeping up on you like a disease. First, you decide to stay in; then you decide to stay in and not get dressed. Then you are staying in and not dressing, so pajamas seem like a good idea, until you’re two weeks in and everything smells.
The teams of lawyers carving up Mercer Group are nothing but parasites picking over a fresh kill. Michael only communicates with Magnus through counsel and wants his hefty chunk of the restructured trust once all companies are sold, and to walk away. I echo his sentiments. Oddly enough, for two opposing stalwarts with the delicate gossamer strands ofconnection, we were united in our instructions to sell, all communicated via counsel too.
Helen is in the final stages of finishing up, a U-Haul already booked to migrate her life to a house up the road from her daughter and grandchildren, Amanda and Simon. In all her time working with me, or with Michael and Magnus prior, no one had bothered to take more than a passing interest in her children or extended family. I didn’t know her maiden name, or college alum, or favorite food. Sabrina did. Sitting mere feet apart, one desk tastefully adorned with photos and a small kindergarten painting, the other with plush flowers, a beanie bear and photos of extended family, and that hairy horse dog whose name I’d confused with a nickname for her brother. A desk never reclaimed by its owner. When Trystan and Helen both suggested they pack it up and return Bri’s personal items to her, I’d baulked. I’d dug in my heels and protested, sure that of the three of us still here, I knew her better. That she’d wander back in one day with those heels click-clacking down the corridor, greeting everyone by name with a smile and wave. Then she and Helen would share soup after she made Trystan and me a green smoothie, as life had been before. She needed time to simmer down and adjust. That was all until it was, until it wasn’t. Sabrina never returned.
The email had arrived in my inbox, copied to Trystan and Helen. There, in black typeset on a white screen background, was her resignation. With it came a finality I was hiding from, and once I opened that email, there was no difference of opinion as to when Bri would be back. She had broken the contract. She had walked out of Onyx One with only what she had brought into it. She had erased herself from my life as if she had never been there in the first place.
Helen reflected a moment before I acquiesced to the box in her hands and watched as each plush flower clip was unpeggedand placed with care, each photo pulled from the tack keeping it in place, to join others in the box. Trystan cried. In an office he would sit in for mere days longer himself. With elbows resting on this ornate desk, head cupped in his large palms, he openly sobbed for long moments.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Mercer. Your coffee, sir.”
“Thank you, Helen. I appreciate everything you do. Will you and Trystan please join me in my office? Bring your tea in.”
“A meeting, sir?”
“No, no meeting Helen. I’d just like some company this morning if that’s alright.”
At that precise moment, Sean and Trystan appear with large, bulky boxes in hand. Sean places his down and opens the door, gesturing Trystan through before following him with his own. “These arrived for you.”
They place them on the table while Helen hovers nervously in my periphery. I, too, had balked at the customary flowers and fruit basket. Anyone in my family at this point would courier a live, poisonous asp, so who sent this black matte parcel wrapped with so much care? Striding over with the antique silver letter opener, I slid it under the taut ribbons and taped seals. Packing crates reveal themselves, the way precious art is sometimes moved between auction houses and buyers. The envelope simply says MM. I tug the opener under the seal and reach in to pull out a card that sees the opener fall from trembling hands onto the carpet.
“If you want us to go, we can?—”
“No,” my voice falters. “Please stay.” With Trystan’s help, while Helen sips tea, I pull the frames from the packaging, tears threatening hot and heavy behind my lids. Breathe, breathe. In, two, three, four. Hold, and out, two, three, four. What color best describes what you are experiencing today, Mr. Mercer? The last time we met, you went with charcoalgray. Is that still the same? My therapist’s words play on a loop in my mind, overthrowing any memories with… her.
I uncover two meticulously detailed portraits of me staring back at their subject. In the first one, I’m at the helm of our rental yacht in the Bahamas. Salt slicked and carefree, I showed Bri how to trim a sail, how to jibe and tack, and how to knot ropes I later used around her delicate wrists as she writhed. I can almost scent the salt in the air and long to taste it with my tongue. The sky was light and perfect; the breath of wind was all we needed to glide through the water like a blade. Sabrina has immortalized a moment I was truly free, with deft strokes and subtle shading. The detail is impressive, from the way she’s used the material to show the direction of the light source across my face under my shielding hand, or the way it dappled over the lenses in the sunglasses. Even the way the yacht’s wheel is tubular steel in a two-dimensional work must have taken hours upon hours. Every whisker on my beard was drawn stroke by stroke with a focused hand and incredible skill. The stitching around the pocket of my shorts has me in awe. Sabrina held pencils in her hand and touched them to this paper.
I call this one Hope. This is the way I see you—vibrating with joy. I wanted to capture just how relaxed and easy your posture is when you are filling your cup, doing something you adore. Not working for the Mercers as a duty.
I want to see more of this man. I want you to prioritize this man the way I do. This man is capable of great things.
The other work is all somber shadows. Now I can see the inherent differences in both men, in both poses. A heavy noirblack predominates over most of the portrait, the wall, the dark couch, my suit. I’m in a pose of reflection, no doubt lost in thought after an event requiring a black-tie suit. Events I despised. While the first pose has my eyes forward, head up, and mouth open and relaxed, this pose couldn’t be more different. It’s solemn and severe, almost hauntingly so. This was a Mason Mercer dueling with internal conscience and family skeletons. This is a man in crisis, only I didn’t know how profound until I studied it now. The level of detail is of the same incredible standard, from the bezel on my Patek Philippe timepiece to the shine on the sofa, or the raked mortar in between the background brick. Both pieces are stark in their contrast, yet eerily simple in similarity.
I call this piece, Humility. I see you, Mason Mercer; the real, unadulterated you. Your brooding brow tells me you are deep in thought and sense of obligation for a company that is slowly killing you.
If sailing and trading currency fills your cup, then working for your family not only empties it, but it also thieves the cup away. Please put yourself first. Prioritize. Live, don’t simply exist. My life is forever enriched for having shared evena small part of it with you.
Happy thirtieth birthday, sir. I love you. If you’d let me, I’d like to.
SAB xo.
My knees meet the carpet, and I recognize the hand grasping my shoulder as Trystan’s. He’s telling me to breathe in his strong, measured tone while Helen is speaking into a telephone. My tie is loosened and the top button undone whilehe urges me to inhale and count. Such a basic thing to do, right? Breathe, which is essentially a reflex action and shouldn’t require a reminder, and counting. My lips move with a rote reflex. Each number forms on my lips while greedy lungs work to intake and expel air in time. Out, two, three, four. I love you; if you’d let me, I’d like to. Those words in black ink on white parchment, as stark as her resignation and as perfect as hope and humility.
She wanted to love me, and I eviscerated her to flee from the ruin of a perceived infidelity. Trystan loved me on a sliding sleeping bag in a tent all those years ago, and I’d punched him in the face to hide a love that would never be perceived as anything other than wrong or dirty. Everyone who loved me, I pushed away. Everyone that was supposed to love me pushed me away. The glaring juxtaposition of charcoal and graphite on parchment showed me just how far I have to go to remedy the situation. What once was love, now char and coal. And I was the dumb fucker who eviscerated it all.
My life is correlated into two distinct boxes. BM, before Mason, and AM, after. Everything comes back to black and white, or shades of gray. I thought I’d yearn for the carefree, peaceful days of life before the masculine man and his baggage of toxic predations, but I don’t. Far from a lesson or life mantra, like one of those stupid memes that states, “What you eat in private shows in public,” crap, I believe that both of us needed the time we spent together. Perhaps pulled like magnets into the life force of the other, inextricably wound so tight, we were doomed to snap, and snap we did, in spectacular fashion.
I realized the immersion era bookmarked between BM and AM was a time of discovery. I’d gained a wonderful friend in Trystan, not knowing that he too, was in a prison of his own making. Long, tedious days spent staring at monitors or pouring over data only to be berated afterward for an omission or error. I’d overheard Magnus Mercer talking to his son, whom he believed was a grandson, about the importance of perception and keeping things real. The sour old fuck who caused as much damage to the famous family as he did folding them into prestige and an abundance of wealth others could only envy. Magnus was more than a cranky homophobe, though. He was the devil himself, tailored in the rich fabrics he rewove all on his own. After admiring his stature on the couch, posed next to his wife for the Mercer family Christmas shoot all those monthsago, my next impression of the man was a bitter vetch of covert hatred. “Good to see you knuckling down and focusing on your work,” he’d said while nursing a scotch or cognac in Mason’s office. I was in the hidden bedroom suite, clad only in one of Mason’s shirts after passionate post-lunch coitus in the bed meant more for executive resting than assistant fucking.
“Doing what is expected,” my boss had replied.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and I can tell you’re keeping your dick in your pants, which is even better. A wise plan keeping on someone like Helen, she conveys that homely, maternal care. Not like you’re ever going to go there, is it?”
From my position at the easel, I froze with a blender in hand, one knee pulled up to my chin as I worked.
