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I muttered a goodbye and stepped out of Mulligan’s into the gray afternoon. I’d woken that day with an odd burst of optimism. The dream of Ambri was as sharp and visceral as ever. Visions of him in his elegant suit, his beautiful hands sliding up my thighs, crowded my thoughts. He was alive in my mind in a way nothing had been in months, and I had a silly wish that he was real. To talk to, to alleviate my crushing loneliness, to maybe touch him this time and be touched…
But he wasn’t real. The only way to keep him was to paint him. I’d figured after my shift at the pub, I’d use my tips to buy some oils and paint him in full color. Maybe I’d have something good. Maybe I’d make a sale…
Now, I was unemployed and couldn’t afford paint. I’d have to find a new job, or I could sketch at Hyde Park, but at ten pounds per portrait, I’d have to have ten clients per day, every day, just to stay afloat. The crushing weight of failure seemed even heavier, mixed with shame that I was feeling epically sorry for myself.
On the street, I checked my phone for a message from Vaughn, knowing there wasn’t one. The me of a year ago would have been appalled to be counting on someone else anyway. Now, mental exhaustion sapped my energy and colored my every thought, so that the idea of painting Ambri seemed silly and indulgent. Childish, even.
“Shut up for fuck’s sake,”I hissed at the destructive thoughts. The couple yesterday were agog over the Ambri sketches. That was something. I wasn’t completely hopeless.
Yet.
I got back to my flat and sketched the demon version of Ambri until my hand ached, leaning into the work and leaving the negative thoughts and depression behind for a few glorious hours. When I was done, I had three full-size sketches that I thought might fetch a decent price at the park. Sketches of him in his elegant suit but with a black-upon-black gleam in his eyes. Pale skin, feathered wings, and an arrogant smirk that was all too human. I traced my finger over the line of his jaw.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
I tucked the sketches into my bag. The smaller, thumbnail sketches of his hands, the arch of a wing, a gleaming black eye…those I cut out of my sketchbook and pasted to a sheet of cardboard. Samples of my work to draw customers in. ThenI stepped out into a late afternoon that was as cold and gray as ever, threatening rain, but with a tiny glimmer of hope burning in my heart.
Foot traffic through Hyde Park was light, but to my relief, the demon sketches were snapped up almost immediately. I’d priced them at twenty pounds each which I thought was risky, but every buyer told me I was underselling my work.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said one guy, admiring a sketch of Ambri with one of his beetles resting on his outstretched hand. “You’ve got something here.”
I thanked the guy—and the gods—for the bills in my wallet that hadn’t felt so thick in weeks. For a few brief moments, I was free of the bone-crushing stress and dark moods that had been plaguing me lately,
By dusk, I’d done nearly a dozen portraits and was thinking about calling it a day when three lanky guys in windbreakers, two with beer bottles in their hands, sauntered over, laughing and speaking in thick Manchester accents.
“Oi, mate! What you got here?” one asked, gesturing at the thumbnails of Ambri. “You working on some kind of comic book?”
“Uh, no, it’s just some stuff I thought up,” I said lamely.
“Not bloody bad,” said another, peering closer. His gaze was glassy with booze but cunning too as he pinned me with a look. “You got any left?”
“No, I… No.”
“Sold out, did you? What else you got?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “I do portraits. Ten pounds—”
“Hear that? He’ll draw yer pretty mug for ten quid, Ollie,” another chortled, jostling him.
I hunched in my coat, feeling like my ten-year-old self back in elementary school, being picked on by the big kids at lunch. The guys huddled, talking and snickering amongst themselves, and then shot me a wave.
“Maybe next time, mate!”
“See you around!”
I sighed with relief as they meandered off…and cursed my lack of caution an hour later when they cornered me as I walked to the bus stop. I was shoved up against a wall between a Boots pharmacy—closed for the night—and an abandoned hair salon. Two men held my arms pinned while the third rifled through my jacket.
“Don’t, please…” I gritted, struggling even as my heart crashed against my ribs like a wild animal.
“Please,”mocked the guy with his hands in my pockets. He came up with my wallet—fat with today’s sales—and cleaned it out. “So polite.”
He balled the bills in his fist and then punched me in the stomach. Another blow came from the right to whack me in the face, knocking my glasses to the ground. I heard the crunch of glass, then again—louder—as one of the guys stepped down hard, grinding the lenses to dust. Another punch; I felt my teeth slice my lower lip and blood spattered the sidewalk. The guys holding me let go and I crumpled to the ground, curling in a ball in a feeble attempt to ward off the blows and kicks that came from all sides.
Eventually, the rush of blood in my ears receded like low tide and I realized I was alone. Pain wound around every part of me. I sat up slowly. Blood dripped from my mouth, my nose, from a cut above my eye. I gingerly inhaled. My sides ached but no broken ribs. I hoped.
For long moments, I sat against the wall and stared at the empty ally in the falling darkness. They’d taken my sketchbook, and my wallet lay like a dead bird, open and empty, on the grimy walk. What I’d earned that day would’ve paid for two weeks’ rent. A fleeting thought that I could paint more came and went—the frames of my glasses were bent and twisted, lying in what was left of the lenses.
I examined my feelings on the matter and discovered I had none. No despair, no anxiety, no fear. I was somewhere below them all, and that should’ve scared me the most.
