Bravado's House of Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

no. I was at a coffee shop arguing politics with a rival of mine when the word spread. The bastard came and went, his camera capturing what events he could. I had to dash to my room and get my canvas.”
    She cocked her head to the side. “Your friend captured this on film, and you decide to capture it on canvas?”
    “Yes, I know,” he said. “Wholly inadequate to the event, but it is what I know to do.”
    “I think it captures the scene splendidly.”
    They stood together, watching the crowd slowly converge on the cathedral.
    “Do you mind?” he asked. “My paints are drying out, and I can’t afford to waste them.”
    “No, please. Continue.” She waved her hand toward the cathedral. “If you don’t mind me watching.”
    He smiled. “It would please me to have a woman as fair as you watching me paint.” He turned toward the canvas, knelt and lifted a small jar of paint from a valise at his feet. He used a small silver blade to daub out a bit of yellow onto the board and mixed it with the paint already there. Once satisfied with the consistency, he carefully scraped the remaining paint from the instrument and replaced the stopper into the jar. He pulled a brush from the valise and stood. He stuck the fine hairs of the brush into his mouth, twisting it a half turn as he extracted it, creating a fine point. Then he tipped the brush into the bright yellow and turned toward the canvas. With a deep sigh, he slowly drew the brush upward from the uneven spire, creating a splash of light which erupted from the center of an empty square.
    She watched him, mesmerized by his creation—admiring the deftness of his strokes, the surety in his hand. The emergence of something from nothing, a miracle of creation in oil and fiber—it stirred something within her.
    And with that, her muse burst forth.
    “Like the sundering of a lover’s embrace
    The lady erupted over the crowd
    Leaving the body hale
       And the spirit renewed.”
    She stumbled as the words trailed off, the sky a spiral of chartreuse and gold. She felt his strong hands catch her, heard his voice through a cottony wall of murmured prayers. “Oh, my fair one,” she thought he said. Then the world went black.

    This city’s drab winter threatened what little of her muse remained. And the drab people in their drab clothes did the same.    
    Agnes grieved for Mexico City in the months after they left. She missed the bright colors, the bright people, the lavish meals and high ritual.
    Naturally, her mother had been sleeping when the painter brought her home. Her father was working. The housekeeper had not thought to ask the young man his name. The physician called it heat exhaustion and she kept to the shade for three days, but those days had been glorious, her pen moving over page after page, some deep part of her triggered by the remnants of visitation or the firm hands or the mad, swirling sky of the painting. For the rest of the summer, Agnes wandered the plazas and cafes around the cathedral hoping to find him, perhaps to thank him for bringing her home, perhaps to thank him for finding her muse. She didn’t know for sure. Regardless, he was nowhere to be found.
    When summer ended, she returned to Boston with her parents but did not return to college. Her father insisted that she take a year to think through her choices, given her early withdrawal and poor marks at Wellesley. Autumn in New England bled into a winter in New York, the close of the War to End All Wars punctuating the season with relief.
    “Champagne, Miss?”
    Agnes turned to the server with his tray of fluted glasses, smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
    He moved on and she watched him go, then watched the crowded room, eyes moving over the gowns and tuxedoes as New York’s upper crust mingled with the intellectuals. Her father had insisted she attend though she would’ve preferred remaining in Boston for the holiday.
    She stood at the edge of the party now, listening to