see you at the end

Dylan

“So, this is going to be a little awkward.”

I blink, shifting my gaze from the painting in front of me to the guy standing beside of me. It takes me a few seconds to retreat from my thoughts and realize the guy was speaking to me.

He looks as if he’s just come from a photo shoot for GQ. He’s got a champagne flute in one hand and the other tucked into the front pocket of slim-fitting black jeans. The plain, white short-sleeved shirt he wears is tight across his chest, making it look like he was putting a lot of effort into being effortless.

“Sorry,” I say. “What did you say?”

He leans toward me a little, confidentially, and I catch the scent of his cologne—a cloying undertone that’s sort of aquatic and makes me imagine sunset on a yacht. He whispers, “I just had to come over here and tell you,” his gaze shifts downward, “that there’s some toilet paper stuck to your shoe.”

I blink at him again, then follow his gaze to my feet. The heat of embarrassment creeps over my skin when I see a couple of squares under my left heel.

“No one’s looking if you want to get it real quick,” he says, glancing around, and sipping nonchalantly from the flute.

I’m not sure if there’s a graceful or discreet way to get toilet paper from one’s shoe in the middle of an art gallery in downtown Washington, DC. I was already feeling self-conscious and now I might as well hide in the corner the rest of the night.

Or just leave.

I snatch up the toilet paper and ball it up in my fist in the quickest, smoothest way I possibly can. I dispose of it in a metal trashcan a couple of feet away. I take a long drink from the complementary champagne I picked up pretty much as soon as I walked in.

“Thanks,” I say to the guy. “That was, uh,” I let out a pathetic laugh, “pretty embarrassing.”

He smiles. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody saw.”

I glance at him. “Except you.”

He laughs. “Right place, right time. I guess.”

“And I guess I should’ve paid better attention before I left the men’s room.”

“Hey, those mirrors are only waist-high. Pretty cheap for a place like this, if you ask me.”

I take another gulp of champagne and guess this guy looks at himself in mirrors all the time. I might too if I were him. He’s got a razor-sharp jaw that could slice through an apple and definitely won the genetic lottery with that face. I’m starting to think he’s an actual model or an actor and I should know that.

That makes this extra embarrassing because everyone here basically looks like him—sophisticated and chic. And me? In a button-up and khakis I look like a youth pastor that got lost.

“Yeah,” I say, “this place is…not really what I was expecting.” I look around at all the patrons, the artwork, the polished cherrywood floors. I’ll bet even the air circulating through the vents is designer and imported.

“What were you expecting?” He takes another sip from the flute, and I notice it’s full of ginger ale rather than the complementary champagne.

“I’m not sure.” I take one last gulp. “Not to humiliate myself, I guess?”

He laughs again as a white-aproned and black-vested server comes by to take my empty flute and offer me another, which I gladly take.

“I was at this kind of fancy dinner party once,” the guy says. “And my shirt was sticking out of my fly. Like really sticking out. Like a lot. Nobody said anything. I didn’t know until I went to the bathroom like hours later.” He shakes his head. “I was walking around all evening with all these snobby people like that. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Wow.” I look over at him. “I’m surprised no one said anything.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Oh well.” He takes another sip and nods to the painting in front of us. “So, you must really like this one.”

I look over at the painting. “Um. I don’t know. I guess.” I look over at him. “Why do you say that?”

“Seriously?” He looks amused. “You’ve been standing here in front of it for like half an hour.”

“Have I?”

There’s no way I’ve been in this spot for that long. I look down at my watch and see it’s a quarter till nine. We got here about seven-thirty, and then Brynn went off to talk to some people she knew a good forty-five minutes ago…I walked around…went to take a leak and got some fucking toilet paper stuck on my shoe…got some champagne…and then—oh, God. I was standing here with toilet paper on my shoe for a half an hour.

“If you like abstract,” the guy says, “there’s a shitload in that room over there.” He points to the right. I notice an array of silver rings on his fingers. The one that’s wrapped around his pointer like a lion’s paw glints in the recessed lighting.

“I don’t really know anything about art,” I say, taking a drink of the champagne as I gaze at the painting in front of us. “I just came here with someone and ended up standing here.”

“Well, that sucks,” he says.

I turn my head to look at him.

One corner of his mouth lifts. “I meant that sucks you don’t know anything about art.”

“Oh.” I nod. I turn to the painting again. “I guess I’ve just never taken the time to learn.”

The painting is huge, about eight feet from top to bottom. It covers almost the entire wall. The background is this soft orange and there are random shapes, angles, and lines painted all over it. It’s almost geometric, yet haphazard. Almost too much and yet not enough.

“I bet you do know something about art,” the guy says softly.

I glance at him again. He’s looking at me funny. Is he a model for real? Or maybe a YouTuber TikTok Influencer person? Is this a prank? I look around quickly for someone holding up a phone or a camera.

“So this one, for example,” the guy says, gesturing to the painting in front of us. “What do you feel like when you look at it?”

Feel? Out of place maybe. Brynn knows people here. I don’t. And even though I politely said hello when she introduced me to a couple of them, I went to go get some champagne and never went back. When I want to make a good impression, I’m kind of like that Socially Awkward Penguin meme. So, sometimes I’d rather not make an impression at all. And in this case it’s probably a good thing since I obliviously wandered around this fancy place with a mile of toilet paper trailing behind me.

“I don’t know,” I say to the guy. I wasn’t really looking at the painting before. I was just walking around and sort of lingered here, thinking. But I look at it now. I stare at the complex shapes and colors that are vibrant and mismatched. It’s almost like there’s no way I could see everything it truly is in one glance. Probably not even in half an hour. I feel like I could spend years looking at it and always notice something new. “I guess…I feel…,” I shake my head and shrug. “Like there’s no closure. It just kind of keeps going.”

“Hmm.”

When I look over at him, he’s assessing me with a knowing smile.

“What?” I say, feeling myself smile back.

“I was right. You do know something.”

My face flushes under his gaze. I laugh it away. “That’s not anything. That was an amateur attempt, and it didn’t make any sense.”

He’s still looking at me with that knowing smile. He’s got to be on TV or something. He even seems a tad bit familiar. Or is the small town in me so unused to the big city that I think anyone with a beautiful face must be famous?

He stares at the painting for a few seconds. “It keeps going…yeah, I can see that. Because it’s so random, right? Is that what you mean?”

I’m starting to feel intimidated now. Not just by him but by all of this. The gallery, the people, all the art. A thudding jazz bass coming through a speaker somewhere. A scent of sophistication and modernity floating around, mixing in with this guy’s yacht cologne. I’ve been to art galleries before. In my whole life I’ve probably been to three counting this one. But they were smaller, folksy, attached to a university, and I was at an age where carrying on conversations with strangers was an every weekend occurrence. After thirty-four years, I’ve discovered that I’m a late-blooming introvert.

I’m aware of Mr. Model Influencer waiting on me to reply, but all I can do is shake my head, sip more champagne, and mumble that I don’t know. I don’t know what I mean. Then I nod to the painting and ask him, “How does it make you feel?”

He grins at me, a look like now we’re talking, and stares at the painting for a second. “Honestly? It makes me feel kind of disappointed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He makes a face. “There’s too much color in the middle of it. Makes it kind of unbalanced. And this part here,” he points it out with one of his ringed fingers, “it’s too…busy.”

“Busy?”

“Yeah, like…I don’t know.” He tilts his head in thought. “It’s like all crowded over there. Too much going on. You know?”

I look over to the corner he’s pointing at. “Are you an art critic?”

He grins again and looks away from me for a second. “No. Well, I mean…,” He shakes his head, smiling wider. “No. I’m not an art critic.

“Okay.” I still think this might be a prank, but I’m not exactly sure what the prank would be now.

“So, you came here with someone?” He asks me suddenly.

He’s turned to face me now, his thick hickory-colored hair curling over his forehead as he lifts the flute to his lips again. His hair looks messy, but on purpose, an ironic accessory in comparison to the rest of him, incredibly stylish and put together. I watch his Adam’s apple bob in his ivory neck as he swallows. I feel a burst of heat on my cheeks, and I look away.

“I’m here with my, um, fiancée.” I nod to Brynn, standing at a high-top table, chatting away with some friends of hers, her back to us. She rakes her fingers through her copper-penny waves and turns her head as if she can sense me looking at her. She raises her brows with that tiny smile as if to say, having fun?

The answer would be no. Not really.

We moved to D.C. so she could take a job at the American History Museum. It’s a damn good job and she grew up here, the daughter of a Marine and an Air Force Sergeant. On Monday I start my new gig teaching Music Theory I and Music in Society at Potomac Community College. It isn’t my dream job, but I had to find something. And there are going to be more opportunities here than there were in the backwoods of Moneta, that’s for sure. So, this isn’t the worst thing in the world. But I’m quite the sore thumb here.

A sore thumb that got toilet paper stuck to his shoe and may or may not have a YouTube Model Influencer guy pranking him right this minute.

“She’s hot,” he says, giving Brynn a grin and a wave, which she returns, perplexed.

“She is,” I agree, appreciating the way she fills out that strapless black dress and the shiny gloss on her lips.

I’ve known her for six years, we’ve been together for three, and engaged for one. I randomly think I should play those numbers the next time I buy a lottery ticket, which I never do, so I don’t know why I think I will anytime soon.

“Can I show you something really quick?” Mr. Model Influencer says.

I turn to look at him. He takes another sip from the flute and the Adam’s apple bobs. He’s looking at me with a smile again only it’s a curious smile. A curious smile that gets curiouser when I feel, once again, my face flush.

“In there.” He nods toward the room he pointed out before. “I think you’ll like it.” He begins to back towards the room. “Unless you need to get back to your friends?”

I quickly tear my gaze away from him and look down at my watch. The time is crawling and Brynn’s not going to wrap up her socializing any time soon. And they’re not my friends. I don’t dislike them, I don’t even know them, but they’re not my friends.

So, I follow him into the room.

It’s darker in here. The lighting is dimmed. There are more paintings hanging up, but there’s also sculptures and an interesting light display in one corner. It’s multifaceted and prism-like and appears, upon closer inspection, to be changing or moving every few seconds.

Mr. Model Influencer is watching me. I can see him in my periphery take another sip of his ginger ale as I look around the dim room and walk past a couple wearing what looks like matching gray ponchos. He seems to be waiting on me to notice something.

And I do notice something. I notice that everything in this room looks like it could be taking place in a dream on another planet; a virtual Alien Dreamland. I get the same feeling in here that I did out there—like there’s no way I could see everything for what it truly is in any amount of time.

“Was there something in particular you wanted me to see?” I ask Mr. Model Influencer, pausing in front of a sculpture that looks like an asymmetrical anchor.

“You tell me,” he says with a soft grin.

Tell him what? I look around. I appreciate him rescuing me earlier, but I’m starting to feel a little impatient. I consider going back over to Brynn and her friends. At the very least I can zone out, and I won’t have to deal with vague riddles from strangers.

“This?” I point to the light display.

He shrugs. Sips the ginger ale. Smiles wider.

I go over to the display. I can’t tell if it’s changing shape every time I move, or if it’s an illusion based on the angle I’m looking at it. Either way, the lights don’t seem to be anything. Just a random tangle, but as I stare at it a little longer, shapes and silhouettes begin to appear. Forms become familiar. Familiar enough to where I feel my face flush for the tenth time this evening.

There’s a silhouette of what looks like two people having sex.

It’s hard to tell if it’s between a male and a female, or two women, or two men. It’s two bodies entwined, suggestively, but they’re androgynous. Two bodies clearly experiencing sexual enjoyment, but it’s hard to identify anything else about them. It’s amazing, actually, to be able to do that with simple dots of light. But this would have to be what he’s wanting me to notice. It would have to be. It’s the most unique thing in here.

“Do you see it?” He whispers and I catch the scent of his yacht cologne hovering behind me.

I feel my face heat. My heart begins thudding in my chest. The skin on the back of my neck tingles and breaks out into goosebumps. I inch forward a little. “See what? A bunch of lights?”

He’s quiet for a moment or two as he moves to stand beside me, staring into the dots of light.

“Do you think,” he eventually says, “anything really has closure?”

It feels like a trick question. Maybe I didn’t see what I thought I saw. In fact, the light silhouettes look different now. Not so much two people having sex, but now the silhouette of a face, which is also genderless. It’s sort of like those optical illusion paintings where you either see the face of an old man or a young woman in a flowy white dress. Supposedly you can psychoanalyze someone just by which image they notice first. What does it say about me to notice two genderless people fucking in thousands of points of light?

“If you’re talking about the art,” I hear myself say. “Then, no. I don’t think I could find closure in any of this.”

He looks at me for a moment or two. “Would you want to?”

I meet his gaze. He’s serious. He’s genuinely interested in the answer I might give him. And I hadn’t realized the acceptable social distance between two men in public had been breached by a couple of inches. I don’t know if those couple of inches are on my side or his. But I do know those couple of inches allow me to notice the gold flecks in his brown eyes. Gold flecks that match the thin gold chain around his ivory neck. If those couple of inches increased, I’d most certainly notice his pillowy bottom lip, pushed out slightly as he waits for my response. If those couple of inches turned into feet, I’d notice that his pillowy bottom lip was still wet from his last sip of ginger ale.

I swallow more champagne to quench my dry mouth. I try to subtly claim those socially acceptable inches back. “I’m not sure. I suppose that’s subjective.” I pause to see if that will suffice, but he’s waiting for more. “Closure is subjective, I mean. Because some people could look into these lights, see one thing, and be satisfied. And others, well…others might not be satisfied so they’d keep looking.”

One side of his mouth quirks upward and he gazes into the light display. “So, it isn’t a matter of closure. It’s a matter of feeling satisfied then.”

I’m not sure what we’re talking about anymore. My pits are sweaty even though the AC is on. It’s quiet in this room. I look around and realize it’s just me and him in here. No phones filming an elaborate prank. No matching gray ponchos. And that throbbing bass, it mixes with the voices out in the bigger gallery room. It makes me feel isolated. Alone.

Stranded.

I look over at him.

He looks over at me.

“Any thoughts on that?” He grins.

I swallow. “On what?”

He stares at me for a second. “Could you just see one thing and be satisfied or are you…,” his tongue grazes that pillowy bottom lip. “Insatiable?”

My pits get sweatier, greedily pulling moisture from my mouth, which is just shit out of luck when I see my champagne flute is empty. I’m feeling its effects, just mildly, moving toward the borderlands of inhibition, but not quite there yet. Not quite in the place where I’d be able to answer this guy’s question honestly.

“I don’t know,” I say flatly. I’m suddenly aware of how uncomfortable these cherrywood floors are on my feet. How the band of my watch is pinching the skin of my wrist. How there’s this itch between my shoulder blades that I won’t be able to reach, so I’ll need Brynn and her mauve acrylics.

Brynn. Brynn in her tight strapless dress and glossed lips. Brynn later, when we’re home, scratching that itch, her nails raking over my skin, and I’ll roll my eyes back in my head in relief and one thing will lead to another and I’ll be satisfied.

“I should get back over to my, um. Group.” I turn abruptly. I walk briskly towards the exit out of Alien Dreamland. “It was nice talking to you. And thanks again,” I call behind me.

He says something, a response, but I don’t hear it clearly once I’m in the big gallery room again.

But that’s just the champagne brain trying to convince me.

Sober brain heard him. Sober brain knows what he said.

He said, “You’re insatiable.”

***

“Well, that was something,” Brynn says, kicking off her heels in the entryway to our apartment.

“It was something,” I agree mildly, closing the door behind me, locking it.

Brynn picks up her shoes by the heels and stretches. “I’m so tired.” She falls onto the sectional sofa we specifically bought from Grand Home Furnishings for our living room. We left the old Big Lots couch on the curb in Moneta.

I go straight into the kitchen and find exactly three bottles of Yuengling left in the fridge. I take one.

“It was cool, though,” Brynn is saying. “I literally haven’t seen Beth and Jim in like ten years. Maybe more. I can’t believe they got married. They used to hate each other. They’d fight all the time.”

I sit on the other side of the sectional with the beer and untuck the button-up from my khakis and take a long sip.

“You okay?” Brynn says, looking over at me.

“Yeah. Just tired too, I guess.”

“Beth and Jim were kind of mystified why you wandered off.”

I shrug and take out my phone. “Guess I got caught up in all the artwork.”

“Right,” she says with an eyebrow raise. “Well, I know you don’t like being social or whatever, but you could’ve come back over to chat a little with them. At least for a few minutes.”

“I know,” I say, checking the weather for tomorrow, then putting my phone down. “I’m sorry. I really should have.”

And I really mean it.

Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten tricked into looking at light art porn or whatever that was. And maybe I’d probably still had toilet paper on my shoe, but I wouldn’t have been surrounded by yacht cologne or heard that whisper behind me.

You’re insatiable.

I’m irritated and alarmed to feel my face getting red.

“Did you know that guy?” Brynn says.

My heart jumps in my chest. “Huh?”

“That guy,” she says, wriggling out of her strapless bra and pulling it out from the top of her dress. “The one you were talking to for so long? Did you know him?”

“No,” I say almost defensively. “How would I know him? He just came over to me. He just…,” I decide to leave out the toilet paper on my shoe debacle. It seems like such a minor detail now and silly and I don’t know. I don’t want Brynn to laugh at me. “I think he was like an art critic or something. He was asking me about some of the art.”

“Oh.” Brynn makes a face as she tugs her stockings down her legs and off. “Why was he asking you?”

I shrug. “Just to ask somebody, I guess.”

She stands up. “Huh. Well, it’s a shower and bed for me. Night, baby.”

“Night,” I say, watching her walk down the hallway.

I feel a little bit abandoned.

And unnerved.

And maybe a little bit drunk.

I drink the beer, my knee bouncing with a sudden restlessness and with a lingering emotion I can’t quite name. I cut on the TV and try to find something to watch. But channel flipping and switching between streaming services keeps me occupied for all of only five minutes.

I pick up my phone.

I check the news, the weather again. I get stuck in a social media scroll for a little bit when my thumbs start typing words into the search bar. Words that look an awful lot like E Street Galleries.

The Facebook page is at the top of the search results. I tap my thumb on it and start scrolling, unsure of what I’m really even looking for. Some pics from tonight, maybe? Information about what that light thing was?

A blur of soft orange catches my eye and I scroll back up to a familiar image.

It’s the painting.

The no-closure painting. The angles and shapes painting.

You must really like this one.

And standing next to that painting is him. Mr. Model Influencer. He’s standing next to it, flashing a peace sign, silver rings around his fingers. His face is angled up, making subtle duck lips, and he’s dressed head-to-toe in black.

The caption above the image says: Come see a new work by local up-and-coming artist Leander Garrison titled “daylight comes after an insatiable night.” Created with acrylic and watercolor on canvas. Come support a young artist’s amazing talent! Now through November 18th!

I read it a couple of times. I bring my phone closer to my face.

I should be more surprised, but I’m not.

And then I quickly rewind the evening, right back to where he asked me about that painting, and exactly what I said. He was the one that said he was disappointed with it, right? I frown at the image as I hear Brynn cut the shower on. Why didn’t he just tell me it was his?

I read the caption again, gleaning more information from it.

His name: Leander Garrison

His profession: up-and-coming artist

His medium of choice: acrylic and watercolor on canvas

His very Gen Z thing of styling the painting title in all lowercase, which would make him what…early twenties? Young. I feel a pinch of discomfort. Way younger than me.

Then the discomfort morphs into confusion.

Why would that even matter? A local artist that chatted me up at an art gallery and made sure I didn’t humiliate myself all evening. What would his age matter? Or his name or his profession or his tendency to favor the color black?

“What does it matter?” I mumble out loud.

I put my phone down. I get up off the sofa and unbutton the button-up as I walk down the hallway. It is surprising, I guess, that Mr. Model Influencer created that painting and then criticized it in front of me. But it doesn’t matter. It was just a thing that happened, one night out of the many nights of my life.

I go into the master bathroom and peel back the shower curtain. Brynn turns in the brown-tiled shower to look at me, sudsy body wash pooling at her feet.

What does it matter, I think, as I step inside.

I’ll never see him again.

And I’m not insatiable.

He was wrong.

I can find closure.

And tonight I will be satisfied.