Page 9 of The Leaving Kind
Then he poured himself another whiskey and carried it into the living room, where he flopped onto the couch and picked up the remote. After surfing through the front-page offerings of three different services, he decided to continue watching Star Trek: Voyager. He’d finished Next Gen about a month ago and had debated the merits of DS9 and Voyager for all of sixty seconds before going for the latter. B’Elanna Torres was easily his favorite Star Trek character of all time; not only could she fix anything, she wasn’t afraid to express herself.
He toasted the screen. “Here’s to you, B’Elanna.”
But his focus wasn’t up to the challenge of whatever the Hirogen had planned for this intrepid band of explorers. Instead, Cam’s thoughts kept drifting back to Raymondskill Road. First to Melanie. He’d enjoyed helping her. Turned out her degree was in social work, and she reckoned she could read people pretty well. She’d determined he was mostly harmless.
She wouldn’t define the mostly for him.
Cam smiled at the TV. Sipped his whiskey.
Melanie had the summer to herself and planned to fix up the house. If she could get a job within a reasonable distance, she might keep it. Social work didn’t pay a lot. Owning her own home would allow her to take positions she might not otherwise consider while she continued to study part-time.
Cam couldn’t imagine getting two degrees. He didn’t know anyone who had one. Well, he supposed Oliver had a degree. And Victor ... What did Mr. Victor Ness have a degree in? What did he do, aside from float around his home, getting lost in all those odd and extra rooms? Did his robe get caught on furniture or in doorways? Snag on the stairs, perhaps?
Maybe he was ... What was the term? Independently wealthy? If Cam had wealth, he could stand to wander around in his underwear and a robe. He’d get bored pretty quick, though. And a day of wandering, tugging his robe free of tight corners, wouldn’t wear him out half enough to sleep at night.
Cam drained his glass and reached for the bottle. Poured himself another round.
The real question was: Would he be visiting Victor again tomorrow?
Or maybe the question was: What would be his excuse for stopping by?
He could say he had another customer in the area. Melanie was expecting him to drop off some organic weed killer for the tangled mess choking the garden. He could drop some off for Victor too. As an apology for trespassing. And because Victor could use some in those front beds. Could use a little Preen, too, under the mulch. Or maybe he’d prefer weed cloth. Friendlier for the environment, even if it did encourage mold.
Maybe not around the house, but on the other side of the patio?
His glass was empty again.
On the TV, people were screaming. He’d missed half the episode.
Cam grabbed the bottle and portioned out another mouthful. Then he tipped himself sideways on the couch and closed his eyes. A sweet face, too young, too innocent, too familiar, fluttered behind his lids, jacking his pulse rate up. As always, the concussive boom of an explosion followed. Waves of heat and noise. The stench of human wreckage. The young face wavered and became covered in blood.
Gasping, Cam pushed the images aside. Trees. Think of trees.
Trees and flowers and the smell of the forest after rain. A big red house. A man in a flowing robe. The cloth sparkled, light straining through, and Cam saw blue and teal and green. Heard the call of a peacock, the shrill caw and an answering warble.
Then he was drifting, falling, wrapped in someone. Warm. Safe.
Then he was asleep.
Victor jabbed his brush at the blank canvas in front of him and smirked at the resulting daub of paint. “Acrylics one-oh-one, folks. We put the paint on the brush and the brush to the canvas. It’s that simple.”
Except it wasn’t. Not today. Even the gray light pushing through the heavy cloud cover outside was enough to sting his eyes and spark painfully off of the crushed glass inside his head. Every time he turned, his neck crackled. His back hurt. The swelling in his knee had subsided, but the bruise was ugly, as though a giant hand had wrapped around the joint and squeezed. His tailbone throbbed.
He felt as though he’d lost a fight. The worst of it, however, was that the damage was self-inflicted; every single flare of pain, including whatever was up with his head.
“It’s the wine, Victor, dear,” he grumbled.
Vodka would have been kinder. He’d have passed out sooner. Woken up less hungover.
Victor squinted at the canvas in front of him. His brush hand had drooped to his side. Holding it up had become painful because his arms also ached for no discernible reason whatsoever.
God, he was a mess.
It had only been two days since he’d tossed his heart out onto the front lawn, though. Not that Tholo had entirely owned it at that point. Still, the incident had to leave a mark, and it certainly had.
With an overly dramatic sigh (one that sent a twinge down the spine to his coccyx and back up), Victor swirled the brush through the jar of water beside his palette and laid it out on the paper-covered table to dry. Then he sighed again.
He had a single spot of paint on a canvas. Best landscape ever. Perhaps if he invited the audience to squint? He could encourage them to look for the world inside that one brush stroke. Infer this was his new style. It was about time he tried a new direction, no?