A Surprising Encounter

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this cycle is “someone falls in love at a museum.” Phil Yeats wrote this week’s story.

In September, 2021, he published The Souring Seas, the first volume in a precautionary tale about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change. The second volume, Building Houses of Cards, appeared in May 2022. He’s now published They All Come Tumbling Down, the third volume in his The Road to Environmental Armageddon trilogy. For information about these books, or his older soft-boiled mysteries, visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

 

A Surprising Encounter

by Phil Yeats

 

The young man sat on a bench in the comics and graphic novels gallery of the Museum of Eclectic Contemporary Art. He was hunched over a large sketch pad on his knees and drawing furiously. Every minute or two, he’d look up at the page from a famous artist’s adult comic book that was projected on the gallery wall before returning to his sketching.

A young woman stood watching him from the only entry to the gallery. She approached him from behind and peered at his sketch. “Not here learning by copying a master’s work?” She said.

He responded by drawing a speech balloon above the second of three drawings across the top of the page. They were self-portraits of the artist at work in the museum gallery. The first drawing had him busily sketching with a female figure, obviously herself, standing in the doorway. The second had her standing right behind him. 

She watched as he filled in the speech balloon. ‘Interested in his intense, colourful style, not the content of his story.’

The third drawing was unfinished, but he sketched in the second figure, now sitting on the bench beside him, as she did just that. 

He moved down to the blank central part of the page he was working on and added two much larger head and shoulders portraits of the two of them staring at each other. He completed the portraits of the surprisingly recognizable pair of lovers in less than five minutes.

She stood and pointed toward the door. “I must see some of the other exhibits, but if you want, we could meet in the café by the lobby when the museum closes in about an hour.”

He held out a business card. It said in an elaborate script ‘Museum of Eclectic Contemporary Art’ and on the next line ‘Alberto Da Costa, Impresario’.

“My father,” he uttered after much stuttering and stammering. He turned over the card and pointed at himself before giving it to her. On it, he’d written a single word. ‘Julio’

“I’m Marie,” she replied. “See you in an hour.”

He’d returned to his sketching before she’d taken two steps.

Two hours later, Julio looked up and noticed the fading light entering the gallery from skylights in the ceiling. He’d added three more self-portraits with speech bubbles across the bottom of his first sheet, and on a second, a full-page portrait of Marie. He’d only studied her face for a few minutes, but he knew the detailed drawing had captured her essence perfectly. Julio sighed, thinking he’d never see her again, but it was for the best. Making conversation in the café would have been too painful.

He packed up his drawing equipment and closed his sketch pad and headed for the exit. In the lobby, he waved good night to Garcia, the night watchman, and approached the lefthand door, the only functional one at this hour.

Then he saw her, sitting in the almost empty café, with a pot of tea and a scone she hadn’t touched. He sat at her table and opened his sketchbook to the page he was working on when they met in the gallery. He pointed at the three drawings with speech bubbles at the bottom. The right-hand one said ‘I’m essentially non-verbal, avoiding conversation whenever I can’. The middle one said, ‘articulating words and sentences is too difficult, too frustrating, and everyone makes fun of my efforts’. The third one said, ‘so, you see, having tea can’t work out, but I appreciate you trying. Here’s a little something I made for you’.

When she looked up from the page, he handed her the portrait he’d drawn in the last hour. She smiled. “This is beautiful, and so accurate. You must let me buy you coffee or tea, whichever you prefer. You needn’t say anything, just sit there and draw, or listen to me natter. What will it be, coffee or tea?” He pointed at her teapot, and she jumped to her feet. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

He wondered while he waited for her to return where this could be heading. She wasn’t a ravishing beauty, but pleasant looking, and obviously not an antisocial loner like him. So what was he doing making her a drawing that he really slaved over, trying to make it perfect? Any thoughts of an enduring friendship were bound to end in failure.

She returned with his tea and another scone and began nattering away about herself and never asking questions that would need a complicated answer. He managed without too much stuttering to make a few two- or three-word comments at pauses in her narrative.

They left the café and walked along a busy shopping street. When they approached a small Italian restaurant he was familiar with, he turned to her. “W-would y-you like to s-s-top here for d-dinner?”

*****

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/