Transitory by Tobias Carroll

Author:Tobias Carroll [Carroll, Tobias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Psychological, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9798987747162
Google: DVke0AEACAAJ
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Published: 2023-10-14T18:30:00+00:00

In college, Geoff was led to painting. With naked eyes he watched paint dry upon the canvas slowly, a perceptible quickening that becomes alchemy in his eyes. Mornings in Katherine’s loft, a signet ring worn by her grandfather now part of the attire she called her own. She sometimes spoke of the years and archives of the Hadfield family, a thousand miles from Geoff’s own kin. Geoff was led to painting and came, on some level, to embrace it.

“You always liked green,” she said one day. He had laid the canvas on the table in front of him and had his eyes inches above it. Geoff was washing the canvas in green, layers of deep green; he had heard her say color field one day. The image that formed in his mind came from an archetypal psych-rock record: waving pre-fractal fields and an overabundance of purple. Staring down at the canvas, he saw strokes and impressions that might have suggested grain to someone, someone other than him, but nothing else. “Field,” he offered. And again, “Field,” with a nod.

It was the afternoon, three on a Friday. Geoff arrived there after his class, today’s session having to do with Guelfs. Katherine had left the lights off, and the late March sunlight drifted in and suffused the room. She sat in the corner sketching. Fifteen minutes for a cheekbone, then the cheekbone discarded, starting again, half an hour this time. Pencil and charcoal on grand sheets of off-white. He’d bought the canvases on the table himself, sampled supplies from her stockpile until he’d felt properly informed. Half campus thought he was in the art program, and the other half had thought so until they asked. You’re in what? They said, never failing. No shit. Voices trailed off, evaluating just how interesting this made him.

She worked at recalling anatomy; he simply arranged colors. It’s coloring, she’d said to him one day. It’s coloring the way a child would. He paused for breath and said carefully, Are you sure you mean that? And she’d said no. And later, apologized: I hadn’t realized how that must have sounded.

Layers of acrylic atop canvas: sometimes a shell. Cover the other side, too; why not?

Eighteen months together as the sun shone through the dirty windows and they worked. He stopped for a beer, and she stopped for one five minutes later. “Green fingers,” she said to him. She had this wicked grin on her face: She pulled off the wit that he never could, spoke with a halting malice that made him smile instead of wince.

Geoff said, “Yeah” with a quick glance down at the digits in question. Katherine walked slowly to the couch, beer in hand, and slumped down in it. “Hell,” she said. “I’m done for the day. I’m done.”

“All right,” he said. He took another sip from his beer. “I’m going to do a little more of this. I was thinking of maybe seeing Hal’s play at nine.”

She’d been looking down into her bottle. “Okay. Yeah, okay.

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