The Persistence of Memory

Chapter Twelve

He stares at me a moment and then nods, brushing a hand through his cropped black hair. He looks serious, and Pat was rarely serious about anything. When he looked serious I knew he was about to tell me something I probably didn't want to hear.

"Yeah, but then I spoke to her. And I think you're right - I don't think she is that happy, man." He shakes his head.  "I'm not saying it's her husband that's making her unhappy, or that getting involved with you is going to change anything. But I do know one thing for certain."

"Yeah, what's that?" I ask.

"She would make you happy," he says, simply.  "And you know what? You deserve to be happy. Even if it's just temporary and even if you're even more miserable after. You deserve to be happy, Aidan. Even for a little bit."

I say nothing right away. In fact, I feel quite moved by the statement. And he's right. His argument was based on fact and I couldn't argue with it. Eloise would make me happy. Of that, I had no fucking doubt. Being with her was the kind of happiness I'd only ever really dreamt about. Being without her was, well, my life as I know it right now. There is, in fact, a very good chance she's the only thing that had even the slightest chance at making me happy.

Not that I really know what happy is.  What it means.  Because I've no real memory of ever being happy. I've just a memory of not being miserable, and it was before that hot day in July when I'd felt her hand turn cold in mine.  Eloise made me forget all the reasons not to be happy.

"Maybe," I say. "But it doesn't matter now. She's not coming back. I've to finish the piece and have you call her when it's done."

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe she said that because it felt like the right thing for a married woman to say? The right thing to do after what she'd just done?" I say nothing. "I'm gonna bet it's not really what she wants."

"That your theory is it?" I mutter, slinging back the last of my whiskey. Yet, I feel slightly uplifted by his words. They have hope in them.

"Yeah. It is. And you know what you do to prove or disprove theories don't you?"

I raise my eyebrows, curious.

"Test them." He grins as he reaches forward to refill our glasses.

***

For the next few days, I not only lose myself upstairs in her image, but also in the hopeful possibility that Patrick might be right. That she ran away because the only alternative was to stay. He's certainly right about one thing: I need to test the theory.

But how the fuck do I do that when she isn't coming back?

The photos I took at the park on Monday are blown up and arranged on the wall in a sort of collage come shrine as I continue working on her commission. I hadn't set eyes on her since Monday but in reality, I haven't stopped looking at her. Her piece is starting to take shape, though. I can see it growing and filling out, coming to life slowly from the floor of the studio. I'd used only one colour against the white. Mars Black. Seemed apt to how I felt since she'd left. Dark. Cold. Alone. 

I still don't know exactly what it's gonna look like, but the foundations are certainly there, the bones of it slowly forming and solidifying. Whenever I circle it, I  see her in some of the angles, but then the light would hit it from a new perspective and she would disappear.

I decide to leave it to sleep for a few days.

***

The moment I walk up to the glass door, I can see immediately that the place is mobbed. Why the fuck had Nicole asked me to come down if she'd known it was gonna be like this? It's easily as busy as the opening, maybe even busier. Sighing, I push open the door and squeeze my way inside the place, scanning the crowd for the overly tanned, overly toothed face of Nicole.