Talker's Graduation (6 page)

“Look, baby. Aunt Lyndie and Doc Sutherland showed up just for

us. I haven"t had a chance to say hi—how about you go say hi for

me and take them to see it.” Brian blinked, and for a minute, it

looked like he might cry. Tate was appalled, instantly, and

determined to do
anything
to keep that from happening. “I
really

want you to see it,” Brian whispered, and Talker took his hands and

shook them a little, then kissed the knuckles.

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34

“Okay,” he murmured. “I will. I"ll go see it. And I"ll love it, I

know I will, okay?”

Brian smiled a little, and forced some of the brightness from

his eyes. “You gotta promise you"ll tell me, okay? You"re the only

one who can tell me if that piece is good.”

Tate didn"t know how to tell Brian that Tate himself was the

last
person to be able to pass that judgment. Everything Brian

made was beautiful, perfect, amazing, just because Brian had

made it. He had no objectivity—but then, Brian didn"t seem to

require any from him. But Brian needed this from him, and Talker"s

job was to give his dream boy anything he needed, right?

Aunt Lyndie greeted him with a hug that almost took his breath

away, which was funny, because he and Brian had just been up to

her house a few weeks before at the end of September. They went

every year because the leaves up near her house turned pretty

colors. Her dyed black hair was up tonight in a smooth chignon,

and she was wearing an understated little black dress that made

her look like a sophisticated matron and not an artist who had

raised Brian with a tiny income and lots of self-reliance. It didn"t

matter—she still smelled a little like pine and a little like paint, and

her blue eyes were all teary and her hug held nothing back. Her

boyfriend Craig—a big, bulky man with gray curly hair and a

mustache who said less than Brian in any given social situation—

kept squeezing her shoulder like he was trying to support her.

“Isn"t it amazing?” Lyndie said excitedly, taking Talker"s arm.

“Oh my God—do you realize I"ve
never
had a show this big? I"m so

thrilled for him! This is like… I mean, when he was a kid I gave him

everything, paint, papier maché, models, crayons—nothing took. I

even gave him modeling clay, and he just played with it, enjoying

the texture—but whenever I looked to see what he"d made, he had

already squashed it and was kneading the clay again. It was

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35

like….” Her voice trailed off, and she stopped and caught Doc

Sutherland"s eye.

Tate looked up long enough to see him grimace. “He didn"t

want you to see,” Doc said, and Talker was a loss.

“Why wouldn"t he want anyone to see?”

Lyndie cocked her head, pursing her lips like she was keeping

something bittersweet behind them. “You"d know best, sweetheart.

Has he ever had a voice?”

They were coming up on a sculpture, and Talker paused to

look at it. He"d seen it before—it started out as a building with a

sound foundation but flawed walls. The glazes on the bottom were

intentionally rough, cracked, awkward brown and pebbly. Each wall,

though lengthened, became sound, more graceful, until the top of

the building was nothing but spires and arches, as graceful as

Asgard or Rivendell, lovely and pure beyond belief. (Brian had spun

the spires on the potting wheel, Tate knew, because he"d wanted

the absolute symmetry.)

“He has one now,” Tate said quietly, and Lyndie looked at the

sculpture and gave a little hiccup. Craig"s arms came up around her

shoulders, and the big man bent his bulky body over Lyndie"s tiny

one in a gesture that was as tender as it seemed unlikely.

“It"s beautiful, Lyndie,” Craig said softly. “If that"s his soul, you

did good, you know?”

Tate was about to agree, when he felt a hand on his arm. He

looked up and almost elbowed Mark Skeezenbacher in the chest.

He held back at the last minute, but his initial reaction—hostility and

disgust—wasn"t going anywhere.

Skeezypervenbacher knew it too. “Hey, can we talk for a

minute?”

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36

“I"m here with Brian"s family,” Tate said defensively, and

Skeezenbacher frowned a little at the motley assortment of people

there.

“He hasn"t introduced us,” Mark said, and even Talker heard

the tiny bit of hurt and bitterness there. He felt petty—but still

justified—for not carrying out introductions himself.

“What did you want?” Tate"s voice was cold—but then, so was

his stomach—and the older man grimaced.

“Look, can we go somewhere?”

Talker looked back behind his shoulder to Lyndie and the

others. He"d told Doc Sutherland about Skeezenbacher"s unsubtle

lust for Brian, and the narrow look the kindly, gray-bearded doctor

gave Brian"s boss/mentor warmed his heart. Doc Sutherland was in

his corner.

“We"re just gonna walk to the next sculpture,” Tate said, trying

to keep his discomfort out of his voice. “I haven"t seen it yet—Brian

really wants me to.”

“You haven"t seen it yet?” Mark"s voice was more than bitter—

it was downright hurt.

“No. I"m guessing you have?”

“Yes, Tate Walker, Brian"s inspiration, muse, and life, I have

seen this next sculpture, and the idea that….” That bitter voice

trailed off and Mark seemed to get hold of himself, which was good,

because Talker didn"t have the first fucking clue how to respond to

that. Mark found a small alcove that afforded them some privacy

from the crowd that seemed to be gathering around the next

sculpture and pulled Talker to the side.

“Okay, look,” he said, his grimace eloquent; he didn"t like Tate.

He obviously never would. “I wanted him—you knew that. If you"ve

got any fucking sense in your little squirrel-brain, you"ll know that he

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37

didn"t want me back. That"s fine, right? I get it. True love always,

just like those disgusting teenagers in that vampire movie.

Whatever. But this thing he"s turning down? The opportunity in

Petaluma? That"s huge. Wine country is like… like „Art Mecca" right

now—it"s right up there with Carmel and Monterey for an

unschooled artist, okay? And Brian"s got raw talent and a lot of

willfulness; unschooled is where he"s going to be, and he seems to

be fine with that. I get it. So he"s not going to take classes, and he"s

going to learn everything he can from books he can pirate online, I

get that too. But he"s got a chance to run his own gallery, with all of

the resources he needs built right in, including a studio with enough

natural light to maybe let him see what he"s throwing away by

turning it down!”

Tate listened to him with an open mouth and a whirling brain,

right until Skeezenbacher"s voice rose at the last few words. “Look,

Skee… Mark. You seem to be functioning under the delusion that I

have any fucking idea what the hell you"re talking about. You want

to back up to, I don"t know—Petaluma, maybe?” Tate had a tight

grip on his worry-stone, because the temptation to just twitch

himself right out of this library and into the big goldfish bowl in the

sky was almost over-fucking-whelming.

“A friend of mine is retiring,” Mark said patiently, and then he

looked away and took a deep breath. “Okay, let"s be honest. My old

lover is dying of cancer. He"s leaving this gallery and this little

house—and they were his life. He knows about Brian because…

well, you know I had hopes, but… well, after….” Mark glared at him.

“After Brian showed me that brilliant piece of work that you haven"t

even seen, he told me that I needed to butt out. He told me that you

guys were like we used to be, back before….”

Okay. It was official. Talker couldn"t hate the guy, because he

was hurting. Wasn"t going to serve Brian up to him ass-up on a

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38

platter, either, but, well, he could understand a little bit, about how

life would get in the way.

“Shit happened,” he said softly, and was rewarded with a drop

in the bitter guard around Mark Orenbacher"s body.

“Yeah. Life got in the way. So Taylor"s dying, and he"s leaving

this really wonderful set up, and I offered it to Brian, because…

well, Taylor would like him. He"d probably even like
you,
because

he has a big heart that way. But Brian… he didn"t even listen to the

offer.” Mark looked away bitterly. “He said that you needed to finish

school first. I tried to tell him that was a lost cause—”

“Fuck you!” Talker snapped, his sympathy gone, and Mark

winced.

“Okay, okay—I"m being an asshole—but dammit—it"s
there.

And it"s
beautiful.
And if Brian is going to waste his life with

someone like you, I don"t see why he couldn"t make use of his

talent someplace better for him than this craphole of a city!”

Talker blinked at him. “You hate Sacramento too?” He and

Brian had talked about it—
God
how they had talked about it. The

homophobia, the urban sprawl, the way their favorite places were

being eaten up by strip malls. Brian missed the relative quiet of

Grass Valley, the small community, the joy in the arts, and the

simplicity. Talker just yearned for someplace where all he could

hear was the sound of Brian"s heartbeat—the world seemed so

jumbled
in the city.

“Who doesn"t?” Mark asked distractedly. A hole opened up in

front of the sculpture, and Mark grabbed his arm to steer him there.

Talker let him. At this point letting Mark show him the one thing he"d

been dying to see was a lot easier than sorting out his tangled

thoughts. “I just… it would be really nice if you could consider it,

okay?”

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39

“Well,” Tate said, irritated, “I would have been happy to

consider it if I"d ever heard about… it….”

All thoughts about Petaluma and a little cottage by the sea

dribbled out of Tate"s ears.

The sculpture was there. There in front of him.

And it was beautiful. It was beautiful, and it was
him.

The sculpture could loosely be termed a bust—it featured a

young man, with dark hair parted in the center, ink-black eyes, a

delicate nose and vulpine chin. His expression was
open,
open and

eager and joyful, and his features were clean and perfect, which

was in direct contrast to the surface he was resting on.

The surface he was resting on was full of dark twists, wrought

in three dimensions, with grooves and whorls carved into the clay"s

surface, and unsightly lumps punctuating the bizarre, twisting

landscape. There were spikes and studs—the kind that would go

into eyebrows or noses—embedded in the clay, and etched over

the frightening, inky whorl was the face of the beautiful boy. It was

as though the boy looked into a mirror and saw only the darkness,

while the person looking at the boy saw only the light.

The sculpture"s title was right at the front, on a little placard. It

said, “Talker.”

Oh Jesus. Tate wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. This

was how Brian saw him—the beautiful, unblemished boy, with the

open, eager, seeking face. And this was how Talker saw himself,

with the disfigurement and the confusion and the pain.

He felt hard sobs well up in his chest. Oh God. God, he

wanted to cry. He wanted Brian"s arms around him so he could cry

and cry and cry—but only when Brian"s arms were around him,

because just like Brian was the only one who could look at him as

he was and see that beautiful boy inside, Brian was the only one

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40

who could hold him and care for him and see what was real and

what was Talker and what was the crying child and the open-eyed

boy and the scarred, optimistic… oh, God, according to that

sculpture, the
brave
man.

Suddenly Brian"s arms were around his shoulders and he

ignored everyone—the patrons at the Library, Mark Orenbacher

and the ashes of his regret, and even their family, Lyndie, Craig,

Doc, who were looking at the sculpture and at Talker and Brian with