by Geoff Gouveia

Behind the register, he rearranged the bake case. His head worked inches above the refrigerated pastries. They smelled sweet but not like the Chilean manjar he craved. The chocolate that glued to his fingertip was not one of the decadent alfajores of Argentina nor were the berries that sat atop the cheesecake as purple as Brazil’s açaí. He kept conversations with the postres in their different languages, eager to stay sharp in spite of the distance. A year abroad gave him a new lens to look through - the sweets were no longer nutrition but a means of refreshing his vocabulary.

Faint roses wafted through the air. The fragrance hovered near the bake case and then fleeted. He thought it emanated from the bake, running his nose along the side in one continuous deep breath. Only sweet flour and sugar frustrated his longing for the scent. He remembered a time when he loved the smell of roses.

From the corner of his eye, out past the front facing croissants and Danishes, a woman in cheetah-print flats prepared to order. Bowlegged her curving calves stood powerful in their stubborn and unique orientation. Another barista assisted her while he clapped the metallic tongs in his reshuffling of freshness toward the front.

A cappuccino with honey, please.

Though his head never left the interior of the bake case, the legs and order gave her away.

She gathered her wallet back into her purse before making eye contact with him.

It’s good to see you. He says.

Good to see you, too. Wasn’t expecting this when I walked in. You’re working here again? When did you get back? 

Yes, this is temporary. Just got back from Chile, spent some time up the coast filming-

Still filming?

Yes, filming. His yes was firmer than his filming but he guarded himself in a hurried follow up. I’ve got a meeting with a producer tomorrow.

The familiar somber competition began between the two, much quicker than he anticipated. What are you doing now?

I’m working in the city at a law firm.

He nodded his head at the chance to redeem the conversation. Nice, you’re finally a lawyer. You always said when we were togeth- 

Sorry no I wish. Never took the exam, I’m the front of office.

Oh he said to an unsurprising realization as if Oh were in itself the only applicable answer.

He made her drink while she attempted to escape into her phone, the glass screen too small of a trap door to take her away. Her drink smelled bittersweet when the espresso vaporized into the honey, the miel competing against tiger-striping fresh coffee.

He tried not looking at her by staring at the cappuccino cups that warmed themselves atop the bar. They were shiny and he smiled at the first year they were together. Her lotion, when she applied it, emitted roses and the curved legs were soothing to the touch. This is her, Mom he introduced and was nervous when she made a joke with his brother, this is us, Mom.

The cups, reflecting the light, moved with his head and he peered past the reflection into the hollow shells as the last year they spent together flooded into his mind.

I want to travel he beamed at her one day. He thought she’d smile and ask questions but her answer, albeit a question, wasn’t what he needed: oh yeah? No confidence behind the answer, no serious consideration for the idea in the look she gave him. Aspirations were his armor and security was her medication. The distance increased between them when he told her about his intent to film for a living. Her response shattered his heart’s heart, the tiny heart inside where the creativity hides on miniscule fragile shelves surrounded by the thick-skinned muscle heart. The answer weaseled small enough through the veins and seeped into the room where it hid inside of him. Her answer was how will that work. He said aloud I’m not sure but to himself, it won’t with you. 

When he placed the bebida on the bar for her to grab, she grabbed it with a hesitant, forced smile. The fake smile, the one she gave to people who didn’t deserve her time or attention any longer. The go-away smile. He wished she gave him the smile that made him want to stare at her three years prior. The you’re mine smile. Her choice solidified his year-old decision in the way only confirmation can. Confirmation washes over a heart like a warm bath, leaving it cold when the liquid recedes, wondering if the water will ever heat again.

Look, I have to run but maybe she started and then her phone rang and finished the attempt to salvage a conversation, a life together. The trap door sucked her in and he watched her leave on purpose, paying special attention to her left hand as it swayed empty without jewelry. It looked emptier than it did before he had put a ring on it, the same ring that paid for his plane boleto to South America.

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by Geoff Gouveia

“Are you coming to my wedding?” I ask as I rifle through my stack of canvases. Outside the window of the small office we meet in a gray covering smothers the parking lot.

“I believe so. I have to check with Patricia, make sure she is doing alright.”

“That’s great, Professor Thompkins. How is she? I’d love to have you both there.”

“Thank you for the invite and the concern. She’s had better days. Lets talk about this piece right here.” Thompkins gestures with a long finger at the blue canvas. The oil paint is not dry and the smell of linseed oil settles amongst us like a familiar guest.

My hands fold in a fidget over themselves again and again in my lap. I clear my throat and start with sideways eyes to avoid confronting him straight on. “About that... I can’t say I like this piece. I lost it when I was painting.”

“You ‘lost it’?”

“Yes, lost it,” I reply while staring at the peaks and valleys of blue oil paint. “I had a vision, you know? I wanted the man to be seated, to be content. I started to zero in on him and the perspective warped. I didn’t stop, though, I kept painting.”

“As you should.”

The painting gives no relief to my shame in presenting it. Thin wooden strips hold together an easel that supports the painting on a thin wooden bar. The fragility of the scene weighs heavy on my back. I don’t see a painting - I see a failed attempt. I see a missed mark and a lack of redeemable qualities. My eyes shift from the blue to my lap, my question to Thompkins beginning in a faint voice.

“Even if it isn’t what I want?”

“George, you have to paint. It isn’t about intentions. You either paint or you don’t. There is no middle ground.” Thompkins held his face close to the canvas while his finger traced in the air the pattern of the brushstroke.

“Very Cezanne, no? The brushstrokes… Bang! Bang! They hit the canvas. Good internal rhythm but they don’t help the piece. It comes off as childish.” Thompkins begins his critiques with momentary praise and ends with a crash.

My eyes roll, but not at Thompkins. I know he is correct. The problem all young artists have is in knowing your paintings are wrong but not knowing why. When you peer at something for hours on end, it melts in your mind. It becomes nature and nature is never questioned. No one asks Why is that tree there? It is and has always been. But painting is not nature, nor second nature, and Thompkins had been teaching me this for two years now.

“I keep making that mistake. I start well. The piece is in my head and I know what I need to do. I begin and for the first fifteen percent, the piece is exactly what I wanted. Then I lose it. The finished product is something I never intended. It never comes out how I wanted it to.” The blue strokes hold my gaze. They are short and hurried, the mass tangles at the bottom before spiraling upwards. The composition centers the piece but the asymmetry of the colors throws the weight at an awkward slant. I knew I missed the mark when the trail went cold during the final hours of painting it. I brought the piece here to see if Thompkins could pick the scent back up.

“You paint with emotion,” Thompkins begins the hunt with closed eyes. “You are not calculated, yet you do not consider yourself experimental…” His voice trails off as his hands raise into the air. With eyes closed and hands like a conducting maestro, Thompkins searches his own mind in analog form. His eyes open and his head nods with a simple truth. “Sketch the piece beforehand, twice.”

My mind flashes back to my studio, the moment before the piece begins. Back to the ambiguity of the white canvas and the uncertainty of the first brush stroke. Painting with a heavy hand hides fear, but underneath the brush strokes are white canvas, and still deeper, anxiety about triumphing over thought. Thompkins revelation is simple, but like all truth, it pierces through to the core. Success isn’t an end product, it is a process.

“Painting is not a lottery. The only mark of a true artist is one who paints every day. Nothing more, nothing less. We will talk in a few weeks, bring your next pieces then as well.”

My head rises and falls, still distant in my studio, as the pieces slide back into my grip. Dainty fingers hold the edges, careful to preserve fresh oil paint on the surface. As my palm grasps the cool brass door handle, I stop in mid turn.

“Thompkins?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“At what point in your career does the piece in your mind make it to the canvas?”

Thompkins closes his eyes in the slow fashion of a pondering man. The walking wisdom literature, he is calm and never reacts on my pace. The words are visualizing behind his eyes. Inside of my chest, the rib cage struggles to make room for both my heart and the holding of a breath in anticipation of the answer.

“What makes you think that ever occurs?”

The chest pressure subsides and the spell breaks, silence snaps and shatters a worldview. As I complete the turn of the handle while juggling the canvases, my smile overpowers the February gust.

“See you in a few weeks, Thompkins.”

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Thank you for reading this story. This is the first part of a four part series. Tap here to read part two.

 

 

by Geoff Gouveia

The crowd at the bar orbited round the bartender, a conductor in front of a pulsing full orchestra. Those holding drinks edged to the perimeter after looking to the conductor, sucking back when the gravitational pull of the alcohol emptied. Pairs spiraled off together though from afar the choir became one, swaying and contracting, rising and expanding in unison.

Away from the bar, on the quieting outskirts of it, the tables sprawled against the wall. Booths for duet couples talking, singing close together with small lit lamps above their personal recording studios. Further off from the crowd, a figure sat silent in the dark. The light above his booth was not on but an iPhone painted his chin light gray blue. A ghost storyteller in the dark, the electric light halted against hard cut edges of a jaw. The light faded as it reached the top of his head, contrasting him against the wall in the faintest of muted grays.

George noticed the blue-lit jaw first. A square jaw that reminded him of someone he knew in the past, a familiar jaw he made fun of in college. The jaw in his mind returned fire against the mole on the top of George’s head because everyone had something. The memory back in college had a jaw that sat perpendicular to the long cigarettes it smoked straight in the middle of flat lips.

Was that him? George squinted through the dim light.

The man was still, very still, against the noise of the crowd. He sat with indifference to the activity, looking up only when the phone light dimmed. His thumbs scrolled against the empty glass phone, the quiet activity alone against a rising musical scene.

Back in the choir mass, a woman’s blonde hair bobbed away from the bar, a refilled mojito in tow. Alone, holding his rum and coke in hand, George pressed the drink to his face in combat against the body heat of the exaggerated attendance. When he sipped the drink through the tiny red straw the rum coated his tongue like velvet before the sweet syrup of Coke refreshed his palette. When the woman approached him with swirling mint leaves in her clear cylinder, he kissed her on the cheek and then yelled into her ear.

“Where are they?”
He dipped backwards and let her return the volume.
“I thought they were over to the left.” Mint escaped her drink into his nose.
“I haven’t seen them in a bit, Katie. We should make our rounds before we head out.”
“Head out? We’re celebrating!”
“I know, I know. But I’m tired. Besides, there’s only so much of an engagement you can celebrate.”
“Oh, come on. Just a little longer.”
“Fine, fine. While you were getting the drink, did you see him?”
“Who?”
“Jaw-remy.”

The swirling mint leaves stopped and the smile from her face flattened. The ice chilled through her hand and into her voice.

“Really? How did he find out? Why would he come here?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where did you see him?”
He spun her delicate shoulders round and leaned to the right of her neck. Her skin smelled, like it always did, of vanilla.
“Over there, in the corner...well he was there. Or maybe it was someone else?”
“I hope it wasn’t that coward Jeremy. What’s his problem?”

His wife stirred her cocktail, the ice clinking below, well below, the music of the crowd. George felt the subtle sound inside his chest, the source coming near the metronome that regulated their relationship.

“No I can’t be sure. He was sitting over there and now it’s empty. Where’s Ray and Alexis? I hope Alexis didn’t see him.” Even when he spoke about the new couple, he couldn’t get his mind off his wife’s vanilla neck. He smiled at her though she frowned, distraught over the situation. In his mind, the matter with Jeremy and Alexis had finished. What had happened, had happened. He’d much rather dwell on taking a small bite out of the sweetness Katie’s neck emitted.

“She’s talking over there, near the bar.”
George shifted his eyes towards the direction of Katie’s finger, stopping when he recognized the bone-straight brunette hair. Her slender neck held the hair above prominent collarbones before sliding into a slim shoulder frame, packed tight by years of silent emotional burden. Tonight, Alexis’ posture elevated, she looked ready to begin another duet after taking time away from the stage. When she spoke with her hands they didn’t look as thin, unhealthy thin, as they had when she first dialed the police three years prior. Now they looked strong and nimble, artful and dedicated like those of a violinist. This was the first time George had seen Katie interacting with others as if she had given a performance moments prior, basking in the light of acceptance and love and support and fresh possibilities.

“She’s happy. It’s good to finally see that in her.” He mused to his wife.
She sipped her mojito and lost her frown. George loved how small her eyes were when she smiled.
“Yes- you’re right. Let’s make our way over there and say goodnight.”

They wound through the crowd, Katie pulled George by the wrist between talking members. Around them the music pounded in different beats according to the status in the relationship. High-pitched trumpet squeak laughs came from nervous first time dates that stood near soft, melodic jazz smiles from comfort-seasoned marriages. Terse, harsh worded snarls from pipe organ relationships drawn out and ready to close bumped against light, effervescent searching flutes, eager to start a winter fling. George heard the surrounding nonsynchronous music but the pull on his wrist kept his pace constant; Katie drove the rhythm like all good percussionists.

Arriving at the destination, they hugged while the music near Alexis drowned out their congratulations. George looked at Katie’s lips. He knew they wanted to mention his sighting, but she held back like one who protects a small child from knowing the ruining truth. Alexis could not pick up on the subtle cues from Katie’s face, the celebration clouded her mind with new beginnings. Katie and George kissed Alexis’ cheek, smiled and then exited. The brisk December air chilled their breath and stung their arms in a silent attack. Their ears stung as if headphones ripped out from them, the sudden muted reality of the outside world deafening them. Looking into his wife’s eyes, George felt a pulse, and his head bobbed to a rhythm they had set years ago in a park after eating ice cream.

George hugged his wife’s shoulders and helped her towards the car. Without the support of the crowd, her walking swayed. She laughed about the stumbling, laughed loud because she always laughed loud when her face flushed and the alcohol pumped through her veins. George’s eye closed at the corner as his grin lopsided. He looked left and saw a figure smoking under the stop sign at the end of the street.

The evening air was crisp and transparent and everything the smoke was not as it held above the figure in a spiral that began from a right angle set cigarette. A hand reached from near his waste to ash out his cigarette, a hand that looked clunky in the distance. The blocky hand was one that attempted to play an instrument and gave up, a hand destined to ponder silence after inept actions. George helped his wife into the car, careful to close the door not on her leg.

Katie leaned back into the seat as George drove towards the stop sign before turning. She lifted her head to adjust her seatbelt and slapped the window with an open palm.

“That was Jaw-remy!”

George nodded in agreement as the silence that memory creates expanded in the car. Katie looked back in the rear view mirror as the car picked up speed. Above the red sign the smoke rose like lonely petals from a lover’s flower stem in reverse. When Katie spoke, the words tumbled soft as notes from a piano as the alcohol gave her hidden truth.

“Don’t ever cheat on me, George.”

She stared out the window. George grabbed her hand and lifted it towards his cheek, warming the flesh with hers. He breathed deep the vanilla, widening his eyes as it blitzed his senses. The silence in the car disappeared as the beats of their hearts drummed faint thumps, soft consistent thumps.

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