Page 40

chapter

twenty

Battle of Who Could Care Less – Ben Folds Five

CAMPBELL

The photograph gracing True Art’s back wall was stark and glorious, surging Saharan dunes stretching to the horizon, shimmers of heat traveling off the print and surrounding him, even now.

The sky shone in shades of lavender and violent peach, burnt yellow at the edges.

The day Campbell took the shot, he’d been alone except for a turbaned guide who spoke little English and two fragrant camels, his tripod strapped to his back, his feet sinking deeply into sand the color of tangerines—a molten sea thick enough to melt into.

The setting had been magnificent, awe-inspiring, pain and pleasure on a grand scale.

One of the loneliest moments of his life.

Until now.

He raised the glass of Syrah to his lips and took an absent sip. Glass number four, and he was truly starting to appreciate his effort .

Fontana was locking him out, shutting the door on their relationship.

Or rather, changing the nature of it.

She inquired about his class at the children’s center when she ran into him in town, offered to pick up Kit when he had a conflict, reminded him of the school’s Thanksgiving party when it appeared he’d forgotten.

She played the concerned family friend well, her interest sincere but impersonal, when he wanted to drag her into the nearest quiet spot and force her to listen to what he had to say.

I love you. I miss you. I’m not perfect, and neither are you.

Campbell scrubbed a hand over his face. Not that last one.

He hadn’t figured out the exact wording yet, but it would be good when he did. It simply took him longer. Poetry wasn’t his game, photography was.

The air still bubbled like a pot when they were together.

Nothing had disappeared. He felt powerless, something no one, not even his father, had ever made him feel.

He got hard when she was within reach, his heart hammering into a violent rhythm he wasn’t sure was healthy at his age.

And the masturbation schedule hadn’t diminished, either.

His misery wasn’t just physical. He missed their discussions about books and music, gardening and travel, their shared laughter across a dinner table, the way she surprised him into being someone he hadn’t thought he had it in him to be.

He took an angry sip.

Love fucking sucked .

Even more than having half the Sahara stuck between your teeth, coating your lips, eyelashes, and nostrils. Sand in every crevice, until you wondered if you were ever going to get it out.

His cousin, Justin, came to stand beside him, shoulder bumping in the way of brothers, which they were .

“We have an offer on this one already, and I’ve only had it up two weeks.

Going into that new boutique hotel in Greenville.

” Justin saluted the image with the open bottle he’d been carting around for the last hour.

“Take that, bastards who thought a gallery couldn’t exist successfully in a small town.

I sold the suits two paintings, too. I don’t think they realized it’s just my side gig. I’m not even sure they’re very good.”

“They’re good and you know it,” Campbell murmured, his vision starting to blur.

Justin burped and thumped his chest with the bottle, leaving Campbell to question just who was getting who home.

“I said to myself, ‘Your cousin is a famous photographer, and you’re an architect who paints, so open a gallery, my good man. The other brother, a part-time furniture maker, will craft the bar.’”

Campbell glanced at Justin—a familiar half-assed smile racing across his cousin’s face, inky hair too long and flopping in his eyes, jeans with the knees ripped out hanging on his hips.

A tattoo of a snake, one that looked recent from the slightly red edges, circled the flexing muscle of his right forearm.

He looked the part of the wayward rebel, a character from an S.E.

Hinton novel, when he was anything but. An architect at an international firm in New York, he was on the fast track to partner.

A suit himself Monday through Friday, tats covered, though Campbell decided not to point that out.

He worried, though, because every time they talked, Justin was in his office, the tantalizing wail of the city spilling through the phone. Eighty-hour weeks seemed to be the norm—morning, noon, and night.

Although he couldn’t say much, because seventy-hour ones were his.

“Tunisia, right?”

Campbell took a lazy drink, rolling the edge of the glass across his bottom lip.

“Ksar Ghilane. Loneliest goddamn place on Earth. And the most beautiful.” He laughed roughly and polished off his wine, sure he’d had too much when the dunes in the photo shifted before his eyes.

“Ain’t that the way it goes? The best and worst wrapped in the same package. ”

Justin gulped straight from the bottle without missing a beat.

Apparently, glasses were optional. “Your photographs are remarkable, Camp. Truly. You had it right, knew what you wanted to do, to be, from what, thirteen? You started with that piece-of-shit camera John Nelson gave you. Remember that thing?” He laughed and dragged his wrist across his mouth. “Man, the pictures we took.”

A dart of affection pierced Campbell, unexpected and, because he was at a fragile impasse, unwelcome. “The Nikon. Yeah, every shot showed film at the edge. Couldn’t fix it to save my life. I must’ve taken that thing apart a hundred times trying.”

They stood in silence—a calm sea, tranquil and relaxed—nothing like the crackling expanses that existed between him and Fontana. Of course, he and Justin were both half-drunk. Or fully drunk. That could have been the reason for the slowdown.

“Where’s the kid tonight?”

“Sleepover. I’m picking him up in the morning.”

Justin peered down the neck of the bottle as if an attentive stare would summon more wine. “Wanna talk about what’s eating at you?”

The penetrating question got Campbell moving, circling the gallery space as if he hadn’t already inspected every piece as an investor.

There were topics he wanted to avoid, and topics he really wanted to avoid.

He shocked himself by throwing one of the really-avoids out there. “You ever think about moving back?”

Justin stalled mid-stride, arm lowering to his side. He tapped the bottle once against his thigh. “Sometimes, sure. When the city is beating me down. Or work is.”

“I don’t know…” Campbell paused before a sculpture by his high school art teacher that was actually quite good. He wasn’t sure what it was , exactly, but he liked it. “I don’t know if I can do it.” He lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “Embrace this place again.”

“The mill still something you want to mess around with?”

Campbell drew a pained breath, the scent of paint a solid presence in the room. He remembered then that Justin had a small studio out back. “Had to go there, didn’t you?”

Justin threw up a hand in surrender. “Hey, cuz, at one time, you talked about nothing but revitalizing that crumbling beast. We had a plan, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Campbell whispered, thinking of Justin’s architectural drawings, ones he still looked at more often than he should. “I remember.”

“I’m just tossing it out there, Camp, telling you I’m still in if you are.

Might be a good way to get them back. Dallas, especially.

A phone call with shit exploding behind him last month.

How was I supposed to react to that? One comment about his job being unsafe, and he tells me he has to go.

Little fucker’s so hard to reach. Always has been.

” Justin shook the bottle with a sigh. “My fault, all that old baggage. Boy, did I torpedo that relationship.”

“I practically begged him to come home for a break the last time we talked, maybe four months ago. Meet me in Europe on a shoot, whatever. I’d come to him.

He won’t listen. The youngest of us, absolutely, but not a kid anymore.

” Campbell tilted his head, studying a painting he didn’t think could be considered art.

He hoped it wasn’t Justin’s. “But the mill? I can’t manage anything of that scope remotely. ”

Justin nodded from the hip , the movement too exaggerated.

Definitely blotto. “I’m having trouble managing this tiny gallery from New York.

No way you could handle a bigger project.

You’d have to be”—he made a stabbing motion toward the window—“right here. Or out there, down the road, a spit and a holler.”

Campbell’s gaze shot toward the streetlights flickering to life along Main Street. People strolled the sidewalk, going to dinner, to families, to people they loved. Who loved them.

He looked for Fontana and her swinging sable ponytail everywhere he went, which was beginning to royally piss him off, because she wasn’t looking for him back. He felt like a kid playing hide-and-go-seek, afraid someone was going to jump out at any moment when, in reality, there was no game.

He was, as always, alone.

“You think I can’t let it go.”

“Nope.” Justin walked to the door and flipped the lock, the sound of metal sliding into place echoing through the room.

“You’re the one who thinks you can’t. The gallery is my way of not letting the past control me.

The mill could be yours. The Rise. Those ugly-ass cotton fields you love so much.

Just let yourself love them. Take it in like a fresh breath.

Own it.” He dimmed the lights and adjusted the shades, looking every bit the owner-slash-artist in residence.

“Your attachment doesn’t have to have a damn thing to do with him, Camp.

Just like my fondness for Promise—if that’s what I’m calling it—doesn’t have anything to do with my father.

They weren’t noble men, admitted. But they’re gone.

And we’re here. I’m not living my life for or about him ever again. ”