Bright Fires Burn Fastest Read online

  He missed her and wanted to talk but with no internet, no phone and the fact he was cut didn’t think it would make the best impression. She was coming over soon though, the city would be theirs to take, theirs to judge together.

  Lucas poured another glass, missing the tumbler partially. His hands drummed the counter sending charcoal and grey pastels flying.

  He knocked back the drink and felt it burn and almost wretched but breathed deeply letting his eyes cross for a second as he looked at the ceiling. His eyes adjusted too late and he fell backwards off the stool. A crash echoed round the small apartment off 11st Street East as he lay there.

  “New York City” he screamed aloud kicking his feet in the air.

  Then came clarity, shaking he rose to his feet like the undead and dragged himself over to the breakfast bar.

  With his head lolling and one earphone back in he took another long pull on his whisky and began to draw. Five minutes was all it took. Not just the face of the London painting before but the face on the body, the muse as seen. This would be a full body painting, not just the face that haunted his nightmares and made his best dreams come to life.

  “Baby…” Lucas said one last time running his hand over the picture. Limping over to the mattress on the floor he let his body fall finally still with the glass still in his hand.

  *

  Polly sat alone, again, her week off ended tomorrow. She had reined it in the latter part of the week. Home cooked meals for one but the first nag of boredom was beginning to tell. Conclusions still escaped her, ambition and hope remained within.

  For two nights she had sat there and finally, with the blank page that had remained one of the most popular toasts to the uninspired, finally wrote out her plan. As the snow surrounded her building she eventually found some drive, or courage to admit what she wanted to do.

  She wrote only this, ‘There are two things we as humans take for granted, health…and time’.

  Polly looked down at the page and realised that for the first time in many months she was crying.

  She called her parents.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah baby”

  “Are….are you and Dad ok?”

  There was silence, for once not caused by a bad connection.

  “Yeah baby, we are fine. Just had dinner, why you ask?”

  Now it was Polly’s turn to be stumped.

  “I…I dunno, just wanted to check you were ok, nothing was wrong?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Good…well…you know I love you right?”

  “Of course baby, as we do…”

  The line went dead this time thanks to a faulty connection, a hangover of Hurricane Sandy.

  Maybe that was a good thing.

  Polly reclined as best she could and wiped her eyes. Time to motivate like never before. Before the end of this week she would have progressed.

  Even with all her ambition and hope not even she dreamed how far she would have come. The beautiful thing about life though was that she could never know that, not now. As she turned her lamp out she prayed for the first time since she had been a little girl.

  *

  April was bored, horny, and more importantly, annoyed. No word from Lucas in over 24 hours. She wasn’t dependent on him but he had been the one who said he would save her, save them both. When you make promises as such, a certain responsibility comes your way whether you like it or not. April had never been a girl that needed rescuing, she was no Rapunzel. However, Lucas had unlocked a whole new side of her, maybe being saved was what she had been missing, what she craved.

  “You have reached the voicemail….”

  April hung up, already able to repeat the message by heart.

  She lay back feeling her wounds, not licking them. Her rips and cuts had recovered but under her jaw there was still a red and tinged purple streak from those hands. The hands of Dicky Denton.

  “Aour”, she said aloud, the memory giving her almost a gag reflex such was its proximity to a place she never wanted to go again.

  “Fucck”, she said grinding her teeth.

  Why wouldn’t Lucas answer his fucking phone?

  *

  Tom got to fifteen reps and with a crunch on the padded lined floor he let the weights fall to his sides, his shoulders ached. His Equinox gym was quiet this evening, it was a Friday. Most other New Yorkers would be out, sipping Hendricks tonics or mimosas. He had enjoyed his previous weekend enough.

  This week though he hadn’t had a drink, or any blow, though he had texted the stripper once or twice.

  He was back in drive mode, he had work to do. True to his word, as he always was, this week he had gone back to his routine. Up at 5.00am for an hour of Ashtanga yoga in his front room. Breakfast was power protein granola from Whole Foods with added flax and pumpkin seeds. Lunch was a super lean salad from Global Kitchen off Wall Street. In the evenings he went to the gym, sauna, steam room and only ate lean meat. Healthy body, healthy mind.

  When Tom wasn’t eating or working out he was also working. Working on the next deal, the one that would make him partner.

  “Morning Tom”, the receptionist said when he walked in on Monday. Even she knew of his success. This explained her pinking cheeks as he brushed past quickly enough for the scent of his aftershave to wash over her.

  In the lift he closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the machinery taking him upwards.

  His colleagues, though pleased, acted as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Drink it in’ he said internally, ‘they want you to try and fit in’.

  “Back so soon?” Meck said as he sat down. “Thought you might jet off to Hawaii for a long-un with all y’all success.”

  Tom grinned, sipped on his red top milk macchiato, and calmly replied, “Work to be done. On with the next.”

  Meck’s face had grimaced and his jaw locked as he tried to smile. He had once been Tom’s mentor, everyone hated it when the cub got bigger than the pride.

  Combined with hours at his desk during daylight, after supper Tom would put CNN on mute and study the background of his next project. A block in Chelsea, 220W 21st Street. It had been a residential block since 1910 but was in desperate need of a Centon Estates facelift and the gift of Tom’s touch to turn apartments that rented for $2000 a month to ones that sold for one million.

  This week, and covertly, he had had all the preliminary work done on testing the place for asbestos, planning rights and any restrictions that might not allow him to gut it, change it and sell it. He would have a year to sell it but he required pre-lets. He had a month to find an investor.

  Centon had acquired the planning permission some years before but Meck and the rest of his co-workers only went after the really big fish now, they deemed this small fry. Blindly they forgot that whilst a whale could eat another whale and be full, it could also eat a shit load of tuna for the same result.

  This block in Chelsea was another tuna. Tom, however, had already eaten a whale, this was the one small fish needed to make him partner.

  He let the sweat fall from his brow onto the wooden floor of the sauna and hung his head between his knees and felt his toned body. There was nothing missing but an investor, everything else was falling into place. He had three on the cards.

  Tom let his eyes half shut with focus, which one would be the target against the others? Who wanted it more for pride? Very rich people were all the same. Bored predominantly and the only thing they really liked was beating other rich folk to the punch.

  “Yes”, he said as he stood feeling dizziness wash over him.

  I suppose somewhere in his brain he wondered if he was taking his life too seriously, he wasn’t even thirty. Then he grinned. He got all the satisfaction he needed from work but a girlfriend. That though was what strippers were for. Carnal without confusion.

  Chapter 3

  Lucas was practicing the art of drinking alone and an art form it was. It was easier in New York than it was i
n London, there seemed little scorn towards a man sipping on scotch at the bar, elbows propped on the stainless steel counter.

  He was in something of a unique category. He was not one of the bearded ‘travellers’ found in South East Asia stopping to see the Big Apple with trousers they made themselves. Neither was he a lone New Yorker at a bar who always carried the look of, ‘You think you’re day has been bad? Try mine!’

  Lucas liked to try a selection of bars usually dependent of three factors. One, was their anyone else in there, busy bars, like restaurants, usually provided a good indicator. Two, did they have a good selection of whisky and beer, not the piss weak brews as common as sirens in this city. Three, if he couldn’t be bothered to walk any further.

  Bar coaster thrown down the moment he sat.

  “What ya having?” Either it would be a ‘rock chick’ with tattoos or a burly brute fresh by the looks of him from finishing his shift as a fireman.

  “Beer and a whisky.”

  Avoiding New York stout was key, it tasted like pub floors in Britain smelt. Whisky was usually Jameson, to the point.

  The bar keep quick as a match strike would place the drinks in front.

  “That’ll be $14.00”.

  Lucas would duly hand over a $20 and leave $3 on the bar, the row of Washington’s neatly aligned. Some people ridiculed this tipping system, particularly Londoners. He liked it. He had worked in a pub after all and it was the principle, you paid for the ambience and the chance you might strike up a strange conversation. After all this was the true lifeblood of a city where you walked past so many strangers every day. In a place where cabs drove at 60 and people walked just a touch slower, this was the only acceptable place to talk whilst being still.

  Music played in every dive bar, usually the same kind of generic Lynrd Skinner or Bon Jovi rock but he was in America after all. Those in NYC swigging back Cosmopolitans talking about what was ‘in vogue’ seemed no different to the pricks in London that did it, just a slightly different accent and a 4.00am closing time.

  This bar was dark, dingy, welcoming, cheap and busy.

  Lucas found a seat and went through the usual procedure of ordering. He would then commence the stare into the vast array of bottles behind the bar occasionally overhearing a snippet of conversation, a song lyric he recognised from the speakers or a choice phrase from a New Yorker.

  “You gonna move up one?”

  This was said by the guy to his left. He was complete with duffle coat, ancient cap and a sour demeanour looked up.

  “Na” was all he said.

  The other guy, bigger and meaner just grinned, “We gonna have a problem?”

  Taking a sip, he looked up again, “Why, you wanna go outside?”

  Seconds of silence slipped, Lucas just kept quiet.

  Suddenly both men laughed, high fived and moved aside for each other before going back to their own drinks. Lucas liked that. Take no shit, give plenty.

  Lucas was on his third boiler maker when he felt the space next to him open up at the bar and a new presence arrive. This figure was different to most that came to bars like this. It was female, young, attractive and heavily doused in perfume.

  Apart from the scent Lucas had amassed all of this using the mirror behind the bottles that could never be fully relied upon. It was then he realised how much he missed the company of women. How much he missed April.

  Women seemed to possess far more suits of cards when it came to conversations, not just the clubs of war worn so proudly by men.

  The barman, almost as keen of eye as Lucas, swooped up.

  “What can I get you darl?”

  Lucas took this chance to quickly look to his left. Rock chick. New York. East Village. Sex on a fucking stick.

  “Screwdriver”, was all she said.

  Once the drink arrived she took a few quick sips.

  Lucas toyed with his glass, the awkwardness palatable in the air despite the increasing business of the place and the hum of music now onto Rick Springfield of all people

  “So”, he eventually said.

  The girl with long eyelashes done in dark purple and brown hair bobbed around her heart shaped face turned towards him.

  “Don’t suppose I could ask you a favour?”

  The girl said nothing but made a slight nod of her head implying, ‘yes you can, but get on with it’.

  “I just moved here. This the right place to get loaded?”

  She grinned. “Can be”.

  Lucas laughed, took a swig of his drink and placed it back on the bar.

  The girl piped up, “What are you doing here?”

  Lucas, having spent years lying to everyone and himself about what he wanted to do paused for half a beat. “I am a painter. I have one to sell and working on a new one.”

  The girl seemed to look like he had asked a question, her head inclined. Then she smiled.

  “I’m Polly, I work in an art gallery.”

  It was incendiary and it worked, perhaps only once in a lifetime, just like that.

  *

  April took a last drag on her Marlboro and stubbed it out with her cowboy boot heel. Heathrow Terminal 3 hustled and bustled around her and despite the business and general rush, mothers with children still scowled at the smoke coming out of her nostrils.

  So she went to New York, she went to see Lucas. She had wanted to leave London for some time, that she knew. The last hurdle had been the Visa, some unsavoury minor offences from the past. The final decision to do so had been made by another though, good followed bad. She would return one day though, tougher, wiser and ready for revenge. Right now the wounds were too raw, she would have failed. Anger blurred everything.

  The plane was busy but nothing a few gin and tonics and the finest Merlot Virgin Atlantic could offer would do the trick. More than a couple of Gordon’s gins were required to survive the proximity and ablutions of so many other humans.

  Whilst the plane gathered speed she watched the drab day whip past the window, rain spitting against the plane with venom. Fuck you London and goodnight.

  The wheels tucked and the last view she had of the city below was a stack of poorly built and shabby industrial rooftops of buildings surrounding Heathrow.

  *

  Polly had been on the phone all morning to most of the art dealers she knew in New York City. She would have made more calls if she knew more numbers but to get them would require her talking to her colleagues and boss and that was the one thing she couldn’t do.

  Lucas was a rare gem, his painting even rarer. This had been her artistic goal, independence. The branch had been extended, what remained was to obtain an unbreakable grasp.

  The night they had met they had spoken, and it was confirmed to Polly that Lucas was an ‘artist’ in the traditional sense. Not concerned with the free canapé parties and headlines he could accumulate but the sense he was creating something to last. And because he wanted to in the manner he would. A dying breed.

  “So where is the painting now?”

  Lucas had laughed, “Storage in London. Better to pave the way for a dream first opposed to turning up like Dick Whittington.”

  Eventually Polly had contrived a photo of the painting out of Lucas he had on his phone, mainly due to the whisky she kept buying for both of them. Like any good New Yorker she could hold her drink, particularly when she stood to gain something from doing so.

  Once Lucas handed her the phone she had looked for a split second and the object in her hand was no longer a cell but something else.

  This was not only what she had been missing but also the overly pretentious 2010’s of art in New York. They were still trying to be grounded following heady 80’s days of graffitied canvases, heroin induced scribbles on walls and artists dying young. The galleries had become more sober since then, it seemed even the ultimate tools of expression were now bound by the pressure of social responsibility and ‘fitting in’ for success.

  The work of Lucas was mesmerising. Ev
en on a flat screen of a phone 3 inches by 4 it held untold power. The two faces smashed into each other on the canvas with a mix of utter passion and disgust. The brush strokes were broad and detailed, the canvas itself trying to get its fingertips around the edge of the phone so it could climb out and punch you in the face.

  Polly had handed the phone back and only sighed deeply.

  “Look” she said, “I know this is out of place but don’t show that to anyone else. Please.”

  She had then proceeded to tell her story. How she had dreamed of running a gallery, moving out of home in the Upper West to the East Village when young and doing all she could to make ends meet. Maybe it was the whisky or his good looks but she told him far more. She rattled on about the drinking habits, the occasional drugs, the men.

  Lucas listened intently and eventually agreed, she could ‘have’ it for a month. Whether it was to be sold or just to increase his profile Lucas didn’t really care. Fuck, he was in a city of strangers and there was no better chance meeting than that. He couldn’t care who she called or who she told.

  Polly on the other hand, really did. She cared about what this might mean for her, both in the sense of career and potentially a date. He was good looking but more than that, he had a dark side. Very dark indeed.

  *

  Tom hailed a yellow just south of Central Park, Columbus and Broadway. He had taken the second of his three potential buyers for the building in Chelsea to Marea’s and Chef Michael White didn’t disappoint. Truffle soaked anchovies on warmed eggplant followed by a light clam tossed linguini with oyster mushrooms. His target was an executive at CBRE, global agents with more employees than sense. He seemed interested, not enough though, it was a six-year recession after all. The agent just wanted a free lunch, didn’t we all? Made it easier for Tom though, now it was down to two.