An Artist's Touch - Part Four Continued...
“Jack?” Kate’s voice is joyful and surprised as she looks at him, startled to see him sitting in the corner of her favorite coffee shop. Jack looks up from his laptop and finds Kate winding her way through the maze of tables, cup of take-out coffee clutched firmly in her hand. He looks tired and perhaps even a little sad but he smiles upon seeing her, trying to be friendly. She can tell he’s not entirely happy to have run into her though.
She’s always been very good at picking things like that up.
“Kate, hey.” Jack stands up as she approaches, setting his hand on her arm and leaning to kiss her on the cheek, albeit a bit awkwardly. Kate does the same, standing on tiptoe to land a peck on his right cheek as his lands on her left. “How are you?”
“I’m good! Great, actually. How are you?”
“I’m good,” Jack replies about as convincingly as someone answering the door for the cops when a criminal has a gun secretly aimed at their head. Kate nods, her own smile faltering, but she presses on.
“What are you doing here?” Jack glances toward his computer and then looks back to her, sighing and rubbing the back of his head with his hand before dropping it down and sticking it into his pocket.
“Uh, just catching up on some paperwork, just some general housekeeping, you know…” he shrugs. “Got sick of being cooped up in my office on my days off.”
“You’re allowed to take that out of the hospital?” Kate grins and steps toward his table, picking up a manila folder. “Got any fun cases, any crazy weirdoes?” Jack chuckles.
“No, nothing confidential or interesting in there,” Jack explains as Kate realizes it for herself, discovering nothing but routine hospital forms required for Jack’s own insurance information. “Just doing the yearly paperwork.”
“Ick.” Kate drops the folder back down onto the table. “Nice laptop.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay if I sit?”
“Sure,” Jack gestures graciously to the seat across the table and waits for her to sit before sitting down himself. Kate sets down her coffee and unhooks her beat-up messenger bag from over her shoulder, letting it fall to the ground by her feet carelessly.
“Paperwork aside, what you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in Seattle this weekend.”
“Seattle?” Jack raises his eyebrows and then shakes his head no, wondering how she even knew about it. Kate is puzzled.
“James said you had a convention or something…?” She prompts him like maybe he’s forgotten he had some place to be.
“I was supposed to go but I didn’t.” Jack tells her. “I sent someone else in my place.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“Long story.” Jack mumbles and glances out the window, squinting into the bright sunlight. He looks back to her, another fake smile gracing his face. “What about you? What are you doing here?”
“Getting coffee,” she grins and taps her cup and Jack laughs sheepishly.
“I know that…I meant in this neighborhood. I thought the diner was quite a ways from here.”
“Ah, but my favorite bookstore isn’t. And this place has the best coffee in the whole city.” She takes a sip and sighs happily. “So, Jack…you come here often?” This earns her another smile, this one real.
“Yeah, actually, I do…wonder why we’ve never seen each other before.”
“One of those things, I guess!” Kate shrugs it off, not about to spend too much time wondering over something so trivial. Jack’s hours are so strange, it’s not exactly a mystery why they probably never happened across one another. “I’m actually heading over to that bookstore now. What do you say you stop being all responsible and come browsing with me?”
“Browsing?”
“Like I have extra cash for books,” Kate scoffs. “I try to read as much as I can of a book before they yell at me. They’re probably going to throw me out someday soon.” She giggles and stands up, bending over the table and reaching over Jack’s laptop, hitting ctrl-s to save his document and then snapping the lid shut. “Let’s go. I’m putting an end to this. It’s Saturday, no more work.”
“Kate-“
“I won’t take no for an answer, Jack,” she warns in a sing-song voice, picking up her own bag and nodding her head toward the exit. “Get up, you’ve got books to browse.”
Jack gives in more easily than even he expected to because in truth, he could use the cheering up and is getting a little tired of feeling so upset. Ever since James had reneged on their plans, three days before they were set to go, he’d felt lost and confused in only the way James can make him feel lost and confused. He had grown so hopeful after James had agreed to go away for the weekend that he had started to believe things were finally progressing, that maybe James wanted something more too.
But it quickly became clear that James had something on his mind. On Tuesday, when he had called Jack and said that he wasn’t going to be able to go on the trip, or even see him at all for the rest of the week, excuses made for both, Jack couldn’t say he didn’t see it coming.
He packs up his laptop quickly and follows Kate outside. She is waiting for him at the corner, her chestnut brown curls glinting in the sunlight, her smile rivaling the sunshine in sparkling brightness. He wonders if she’s always this happy or if he’s just happened to meet her on days when her world is looking up. Whatever the reason, he enjoys it and feels the need to be near.
“To think, you traded Seattle for this,” she says sarcastically, holding out her arms to embrace the beautiful weather. “Just think of all the grey skies and storm clouds you’re missing, Jack!”
“Well, I wasn’t going for the weather so I suppose it doesn’t matter much,” Jack comments, readjusting the strap of his computer case on his shoulder. “But I guess I can see why James didn’t want to go.”
“You asked James?” This is news to her.
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No, he didn’t mention it. And he didn’t want to go? Free trip? Come on!”
“Oh, well…it was actually more like he couldn’t go. He said he had this meeting at a gallery this afternoon that he couldn’t miss. Someone who is interested in repping him?” This doesn’t ring any bells with Kate and Jack can see it written plainly all over her face that James hadn’t told her about that either.
Kate glances at her watch and then looks up at Jack.
“What time did he say the appointment was?”
“Three. Why?”
“Oh, no reason. Just wondering.” The look on Kate’s face strikes Jack as odd or unsettling, he’s not sure which. But he gets the definite sense that she knows something that she is not telling him. Jack had never believed James completely anyway and now he knows he had been right to doubt his excuses. “Should we go?” Kate points across the street toward the bookstore and Jack nods, smiling tightly.
Kate walks a few paces ahead of Jack, her mind racing ahead of her feet so fast that she nearly trips and falls. Jack manages to keep her from stumbling and she smiles gratefully, wishing that she didn’t know the truth that could crush him.
So she smiles and laughs and pretends and pushes it toward the back of her mind, holding it from her thoughts until she is no longer in his company. He doesn’t deserve to be lied to but she tells herself that she might be able to stop him from being hurt if she keeps it from him until she talks some sense into James.
Nearly six hours later after trolling the bookshop, seeing a movie, and getting dinner with Jack, she climbs up the final flight of stairs to James’ loft , the anger and disappointment she had been repressing all day long coming back to the forefront with every single step upward. By the time she reaches his front door, she pounds on it so hard that it echoes down the stairwell with a mighty reverberating boom. The door opens sharply, James at the ready with a scowl.
“Are you a fucking idiot?” Kate shouts at him and pushes past him, letting herself in. James stands at the door silently for a second and then pushes it closed with a shove.
“Well hello to you too,” James replies. “Where the hell you been?”
“Where’ve I been?”
“You were supposed ta be here hours ago, remember? You were supposed ta be sittin’ today.”
“Oh was I?” Kate repeats everything back as a question because she’s too pissed to think of anything else to say. James narrows his eyes at her.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” She advances toward him, dropping her bags to the ground, a couple of books falling out of the newly acquired plastic one and tumbling onto the floor. “Forget to tell me something about Jack’s trip to Seattle, James?”
“Excuse me?”
“Jack asked you to go with him. And then you back out and ignore him for a week? Lie to him about some made-up meeting with an art gallery?”
“Freckles, this ain’t none of your business.” James growls, turning away from her. He runs his hand through his hair, frustration coming on quickly. “And how do you know I didn’t have a meetin’?”
“Because at three o’clock today I was supposed to be sitting for you, remember?” Kate snaps. James’ shoulders slump but he glares at her, annoyed.
“So I lied. Big whoop. Ain’t nobody got hurt. I just didn’t want to go is all.” James states. “I lied so Doc wouldn’t get hurt.”
“Right. Well you did a piss poor job of it.” She retorts. “You think he doesn’t know, James?”
“Well, obviously he does since you told him.”
“I didn’t tell him. He knows just the same, though. Maybe not that you lied, but that you didn’t really want to go. That you don’t want anything from him besides the sex. You’re low, James. I never thought I’d say this to you, but you’re fucking low.” Kate walks toward the window and then walks back, shaking her head at him over and over again.
“Since when‘d you become Jack’s advocate, Freckles? What does any of this fuckin’ have to do with you?”
“Because Jack’s a good guy, James!” Kate yells, furious. James stops, taken aback. “He’s a damn good guy! He’s a guy who buys groceries! He cooks! Damn it, James!” She moves toward him and for a second he thinks she’s going to hit him but instead she stoops and picks up her bag of books, brandishing one of the paperbacks at him like a weapon. “He buys books for a girl he barely knows just so she can finish reading ‘em!”
“He bought you books?” James snorts. “When the hell he’d do that.”
“Today. You want to know why I wasn’t here, James? I ran into Jack at my coffee spot and we went to the bookstore and then we went to see a movie, and then he took me out for Chinese.”
“That sounds awfully like a date, Freckles,” James states.
“Would you care if it was?”
“No,” he lies. “I mean, you like him so damn much, maybe you should date him.”
“That’d be kinda hard, you jerk.”
“Well don’t hold off on my account.”
“It’d be hard because for some reason, I don’t know why, he loves you. And you’re stringing him along. You don’t got the guts to break it off and you don’t got the guts to do anything other than fuck and I’m telling you right now, Jamie, you’re screwing it all up. You got a good thing goin’ and you’re gonna lose it.”
James stares at her for a long, drawn out moment and Kate thinks maybe she actually got through to him. Until he opens his mouth.
“I told you to stop callin’ me Jamie. I hate that.”
Kate shakes her head at him, disgusted.
“I hate you.”
“How many times I heard that one.”
“I mean it, James. I’m leaving. I can’t look at you right now.” She heads for the door and James sighs.
“Why the hell you so pissed off? It ain’t a big deal! And it ain’t even your life!” Kate stops and turns back.
“Lookit, James, you’re my best friend in the whole world. I love you and that’s why I’m tellin’ you. It is a big deal. Jack is the best thing that ever happened to you and you keep going like you are, you’re going to lose him.”
“I don’t have him, I can’t lose him,” James replies.
“You did have him. You had him from the get go and you knew it. Thing is, Jamie, when you decide to face up to the fact you want to have him, it’s going to be too late.” Kate remains fixed in front of him, waiting for him to acknowledge what she’s said. James looks away, running his hand over his bottom lip. His eyes settle on the easel in the middle of the room.
“I can’t draw him.” He mumbles.
“What?”
“Jack. I can’t draw him,” James turns back to face her but keeps his gaze down toward the ground. Kate swallows hard, knowing that James is trying to admit something that he’s not fully ready to say. He doesn’t go any further but Kate steps toward him anyway, her expression softening.
“James.”
“I can’t do this.”
“James…Jack has only met me once and he saw me in a coffee shop today and we ended up spending the whole day together. He was kind and wonderful to me, even though he didn’t have to be.” She shifts on her feet, wishing James would look at her. “What’s Jack’s best friend’s name, James?”
Now James raises his head and she can see it in his eyes that he doesn’t know, that he’s struggling to remember. She hesitates before continuing, hoping he’ll stumble upon it, but he doesn’t even try.
“Marc. It’s Marc.” Kate says sadly. “Six hours with him, James. I hung out with him for six hours and I know that. You’ve been with him for what, four months?”
Kate walks to the door and opens it up, really ready to go this time. She can’t stand here and watch him throw it all away.
“The reason you can’t draw Jack is because you don’t know the first thing about him.”
“That ain’t the problem.”
“It is. Because deep down you want to know and that’s what’s missing. That’s why you can’t make it right.”
“How do you know that. You ain’t even seen the drawings.”
“Don’t need to. I know you.”
“Then you know I ain’t about to change, Freckles.”
Kate smiles forlornly, pity in her eyes.
“I know, James. That’s why I’m leaving.”
The door closes behind her gently and the loft is eerily quiet. James lets out a long deep breath and looks around his empty place, his eyes landing on what was once his favorite chair. Now all he sees when he looks at it is Jack.
Angrily he stalks over to it and hefts it up off the ground, too angry to care about how his back screams out in pain or his arms burn as he carries the awkward item out into the hallway and drops it on the landing. Without looking at it again, he turns and goes back into his apartment, slamming the door.
He can’t stand to look at it anymore.
TBC
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