The Persistence of Memory

Chapter One

As I stare hard at the Morley prize-winning artist's miserable film, I realise with some clarity that I'm basically the little child in The Emperor's New Clothes. I don't get it. Everyone else around me seems to be getting it, while I just stare at it, blankly. It does nothing for me except make me want to cry. Though since I always want to cry these days it's entirely possible it's not all the film's fault.

"So you look like you're concentrating really hard," an accented voice says from my right.

Startled, I look around, and then up a fraction at the tall form standing next to me. He isn't looking at me, he's looking at the crumbling shed, and it gives me a chance to absorb him.

Tall, with a lean and compact build, his profile is of a neat well-kept light brown beard, a very straight nose, and lightly tanned smooth skin. His hair is a messy mop of chestnut brown, a shade darker than his facial hair. On first inspection, he's certainly not unattractive.

I glance back to the shed. Except it's not a shed anymore, it's an electrical pylon on what looks like the outskirts of the ugliest town I've ever seen. Strewn with broken buildings. Wide-open crumbling urban spaces overgrown grass, and haphazard graffiti, it could be war-torn Sarajevo for all I know.

Yes, this is definitely one of the most depressing things I've ever laid eyes on.

"Yes, I am concentrating hard. On being anywhere but here," I say, which causes him to chuckle softly.  The depressing video installation is called 'Anywhere but here'.

"Ah. Thought I spotted a foreigner," he says with a smile in his voice. His accent on second hearing is definitely Irish. Low, soft and almost melodic. I'm not great with accents; all celt accents sound the same to me which is probably racist or something, but his is strong and distinct, meaning it's Northern Irish. The only one I can ever tell apart. The only one I've never found particularly attractive until right this moment. When I look at him again he is looking at me.

Oh.

My breath falters slightly as we make eye contact. His eyes are... something else. Large and deep, and a kind of blue-grey colour that actually sparkle under the bright gallery light. It makes the corneas look like moving water. They might possibly be the only thing that this light doesn't make look a million times worse. As he stares at me, his pretty, neat mouth is quirked up in a sardonic half-smile.

"Sense a kindred spirit did you," I ask, smiling back. His smile deepens and he nods slowly, bringing a hand up to brush it over his facial hair. A little long for my liking. Normally.

"Something like that. You looked a little... lost," he narrows his eyes on me curiously. Do I look lost?

I smile politely, feeling momentarily uncomfortable under the weight of his eyes. I look back at the pylon. It's still a pylon. But there's a dead bird now too. When I glance up away from the image I see that some of the other pylon viewers are looking over at me curiously.

When I look round at Irish again he's still watching me with a half-smile, half-frown on his face, as though I have a difficult maths question written on my forehead. There's something in his stare, something I don't quite understand. He opens his mouth to say something, but quickly decides against it and turns abruptly back to the screen.

Folding one arm across his chest and resting the other on top of it, he begins to scrape his fingernails across his mouth thoughtfully as he studies the film. I notice he has nice hands for a man. Something I've always appreciated in the opposite sex. His fingers are long and elegant, yet somehow still masculine, and are topped off with neatly clipped fingernails.

"So I take it you don't like it then?" he says, cocking his head to the side to study the thing harder. I don't have to look back at the screen to confirm. So I don't. I keep my eyes on him. He's becoming easier to look at the longer I stand here.