I'm glad Irene isn't home. I want to sleep, not talk to anyone. What I feel is too complicated for words. I get into bed, only I dream about bicycles and accidents. I fall and I'm trapped under something, something heavy, and I can't get away. My body startles and I wake up.
To get my mind off Tae, I take out my sketchbook and sit on the bay window. I turn on my phone and there he is, straddling the motorcycle, his face serene and composed, his chocolate brown hair blown away from his face.
Jungkook.
I wouldn't say his name outside, out loud, but here in my room with no one around.
Jungkook. Jungkook. Jungkook.
I say it again and again to see what it sounds like to my ear, to try it on my tongue - Jungkook. Jungkook - as if the more I say it, the more he becomes mine. It suits him, but why? I brainstorm with myself. Associations? Guide. Golden. Leader. Driver. Explorer. Initiator. Independent. It works. It's perfect for him. The alternatives are laughing out loud. Boring names. Common ones. Seoyoon, Yoona, Minwoo, Donghyuk, Jiwoo, Seohyeon, Jinyoung, Youngjae. He wouldn't have any of those names. He couldn't.
He isn't like anyone else.
It work at transferring the face in front of me to paper, never mind that his eye are hidden behind sunglasses, as if he doesn't want me to see or know his eyes and his soul. The shape of the head first, then the mouth, which is easier because he the 'ideal' lip shape, has a defined cupid bow with a thin upper lip.
How would he kiss?
I put the pencil down. how much of himself would he put into it? I dream of kissing him for hours, feeling him next to my skin and burying myself against his warmth, inhaling his sweetness like a drug I can't take enough of. I think about seeing his eyes flood with longing and watching his face come alive as we kiss harder and harder. We'd spend the night on the beach inside a tent, zipped into a sleeping bag. My initiation. My innocence offered up to him and no one else.
A saying: la petite mort, the little death.
When we read about la petite mort in a book about literature, Sulli and I laughed so hard we were in pain. it's the euphoria, or altered state, you're left with after reading something astounding, it quoted. Then we looked it up. We saw what it really meant: the spiritual release after organsm.
"Omo omo omo omo!" Sulli burst out laughing.
° ° ° ° °
Now I sit staring at the waters, hugging my sketchbook, my eyes burning, my throat dry with longing thoughts. Thoughts of him flood my mind, taking over. I'm like his robotic toy, remote controlled.
A car beeped brings me back to reality.
Focus, I tell myself. I keep on drawing. The aviator glasses on the bridge of his nose. That impenetrable, unstartled coolness. His body armor.
The harder I try try to sketch him, the worse it looks, as if hard work is at odds with inspiration and creativity. Everything is wrong. it looks nothing like him. It's awful, terribly, stupid, and embarrassing. I'm not an artist, I'm a kindergartner and a fake. I have no talent, so why am I pretending?
You have to struggle to make art, Suzy.
But Yoongi isn't twenty, he's eighty. Will I have to struggle that long? Seokjin, an handsome Calico, sidles up and sits next to me. he looks at the picture and yawns.
"You're being kind."
Trust your eyes, they tell you, only mine aren't seeing. It doesn't help that the picture in the camera is tiny and hazy, worse than a fleeting image on a surveillance video. For some freaky reason I wonder if the problem isn't the cell phone picture, it's that some elusive quality of his can't be captured, which makes no sense, but maybe it comes with living in a house with ghosts and suspecting that everyone in the world may have a supernatural presence.
I rip the papers from my sketchbook, and crumple them. I try again and again. I can't get his face. I can't see it. I don't know it. How can I capture something I've never been close to for more than minutes? Even then I felt lost in a dream. The picture is useless. Did I really think it would help me to know his face? That's like trying to come up with the formula for the chemistry between two people attracted to each other.
I fold a sheet of paper into a plane and shoot it across the room. It crashes against the wall and fell to the floor.
What I need is a close-up, otherwise I'll have to park myself in front of him, and how likely is that in this lifetime? I throw down my notebook. I want to punch something.
Flashback to months ago. Me on the couch of a therapist. I went to her after they told me they were separating. My parents' awesome idea, not mine.
She'd look at me, a searching half smile on her face. "What are you feeling, Suzy?"
I was sitting on her couch, at arm's length from a tissue box. The whipping tick of the clock on her desk, the only sound in the room.
I had leaned forward, about to explode. Go screw yourself. I wanted to scream. That's what I'm feeling. I felt like putting a fist through her door as I ran out. Why was it her business what I was feeling? And anyway, what possible good would come of me telling her what was inside my head? Could she change my life? Was talking about it going to make everything suddenly better? I met her patient stare.
HATE ME, DON'T PITY ME, I'd wanted to yell. I showed up for one last session.
° ° ° ° °
I get on my bike and ride to town. I haven't been to Yoongi's gallery yet, and I want to see his work up close and study what he does - even use him as my model. I smile at the thought of him in his director's chair surrounded by his quirky props, most of all Jimin, just watching and waiting, wise to the world around him.
Not hard to find the gallery. only one store in town sells paintings and crafts. The door is open, but I don't see anyone.
"Hello? Hello?"
A glass counter up front has gold earrings, pins, woven bags, and wall decors. I walk past it.
In a large city, someone greets you, even takes you around. But here when shopkeepers leave for lunch or coffee, they don't bother looking up. You can walk free and if you need help, you just try back later.
I walk around the gallery. Most of the paintings are landscapes that look like they were done by beginners. It wouldn't surprise me to find numbers beneath the patches of color.
I turn to see a doorway down a small hallway to the left. The office? But it's not, it's a separate gallery room. On the opposite wall, there's a painting that's different from all the others.
It's Yoongi's, I can feel it.
It's dreamlike and romantic, a pastel of blurry clouds in a blush pink and sunrise sky, veined with faint streaks of turquoise. I want to be lying on the beach under that sky, or at least see the painting first thing in the morning.
Art changes the way you see the world, my art history teacher had said, and Yoongi's magical picture opens my eyes to the sky as a changing canvas and nature as the world's most brilliant artist.
There's another picture. Jimin. He sits tall the edge of the ocean, his coat white and brilliant as if he was brushed right before he was painted. He's supremely happy, as if he's thinking there's nothing he'd rather do than sit for Yoongi, as long as it takes.
I turn to see another of his paintings. It's haunting and complex. I can't sop staring. it's only paint on a canvas, I have to remind myself, because it seems to reflect a living, breathing soul, pulsing with life and energy.
Jungkook.
I'm not surprised Yoongi would paint him. He has an eye for beauty and any artist would be drawn to that face. Yoongi had no trouble with the shape of the head or the perfect proportions of his face. I want to reach into the canvas. I lean so close my lips are nearly touching his. I expect to feel the heat of his skin and inhale his sweet, addictive scent. The picture sends bolts of energy inside me.
What in the world is going on with me?
I turn quickly, my heart pounding, and look behind me, embarrassed. I'm relieved that no one saw.
I turn back to the picture and bathe in its beauty. Most of all, Yoongi captured Jungkook's eyes, their hypnotic quality and his disarming, open-eyed stare. Guarded, yet vulnerable, as if he looked up and was caught in a private moment. The magic is that this is a painting, not a photograph, because it offers the tiny second of truth that comes through the eye blink of the camera.
I can't afford the painting, but I hate the idea of someone owning him and taking it away so I'll never be able to see it again. I don't want anyone else to have it. I don't want anyone else to have him. I start to leave and head to the door, turning back for a last look, now from a distance. His brown eyes hold mine, following me wherever I go. His spirit lives in the canvas. I expect it to speak with the soft, seductive sound of his voice.
I look around quickly. There's no one else in the gallery. Is there a security camera somewhere? Are people watching? If they are, the camera's well hidden. This doesn't look like a high-tech gallery, though - not at all the kind of place that would spend money to hide a camera. Am I just trying to assure myself? Once the thought of what I want to do enters my head, it doesn't let go of me, I'm a little kid again ready to have a tantrum.
I want it.
Suzy, you can't, my head insists. Don't do it, don't do it. Don't be stupid. "Get over it," as Sulli would say. "Don't be dumb and throw your life away." Miss Goody Two-Shoes, my friend Krystal used to call Sulli. She loved to bait her, but she didn't care.
"You have to live with yourself," she always says, following her head, not her heart. Maybe that's why we got along so well, we balanced each other.
Only now I ignore the clashing voices and reach out, carefully lifting the painting off the wall. I slide it inside my canvas shoulder bag. It fits perfectly, as though it belongs there inside with me. That gives me justification and comfort. I look at the empty nail on the wall, the white space.
Sorry, I feel regret. Instead, I slip out of the gallery as quickly as I came in, sneaking looks behind me and walking down the street slowly and casually. everything is the way it should be.
"Suzy," someone calls out. I stop short and turn, my heart thumping hard. Who is that girl? I don't recognize her. She's waving, but then I realize it's to someone farther down the street, not me. She calls out again, only this time I realize that the name she's calling is " Seohyun."
I head to the spot where I left my bike and put on the helmet. I take a deep breaths and look around casually. Is anyone giving me strange looks?
Calm down, Suzy, you're fine.
But my heart doesn't buy it. It's still slamming. I hop on my bike and head to Irene's. As I'm pedaling home, I slow down momentarily as a loud siren closes in one me. Someone saw you, someone saw you, a voice in my head screaming, keeping pace with my pounding heartbeat. i start pedaling faster and harder, refusing to turn around. The siren gets louder and louder. In my side view mirror, I see a row of flashing red lights on top of the police car behind me and hold my breath.