text: She felt their eyes on her. The aspens that lined the street to his apartment. She hated how each of them stood, quivering and pale. But most of all she hated the dark swirls in their bark, like so many eyes. They watched as she rang the buzzer. They watched as she slipped into the grey building from the grey street. His door was unlocked. The apartment consisted of a single room, with a bare mattress and a tiny kitchen. The only other furniture was a giant easel, at which he was standing with his back to her, rocking back and forth and staring in great concentration at the painting it supported. It was a masterpiece. A pale figure covered in pale cloth, face turned away and obscured by pale hair. The warmth of the model’s skin radiated through the folds of the fabric and heated the otherwise frigid room. She reached out to him, and he turned abruptly, splattering her with flecks of paint from his palette knife. One landed in her eye, and for a moment his body blurred to match the one she remembered, then resolved back to the man as he was. “I wasn’t sure you would come” he started. His beard looked like he hadn’t cut it since she had seen him last. “You contacted me” she said. “Well, you contacted me first” he retorted. She glanced around the room, at the pantry filled with cheap boxes of macaroni, anything to avoid looking directly at him. “This is your best work yet. Are you going to put it in an exhibition?” she offered. He looked back at the canvas. “If I ever finish it. I keep coming back and making small changes, but it never feels right.” There was a moment of silence between them before she said in a timid voice “Remember when you wanted to paint me?” He broke their eye contact, as he had broken that promise. The cloud of memory melded with the cloud of smoke from the car accident on her way to see him for the first time. How she had gingerly slipped into the slip she hoped to surprise him with, scarlet silk to match the gash on her chest where the seatbelt had spared her greater disaster. A badge of devotion she wore as proudly as her lingerie when she displayed herself to him. How he hadn’t seen either, just rambled about Rembrandt as if she weren’t standing there bare. “After you sent me that letter, I started writing again. Started painting more. Started wanting to be a better man.” “Why?” “Because, I hoped, after all this time that we might...” She looked away, back at the macaroni boxes. “Is that still the only thing you eat?” she asked. He smiled a half smile. “I’ve tried a few new things, but yes. That’s it.” There was another silence. She broke this one too. “I am in a relationship” she said, the message she had carried with her this whole way finally delivered. “So am I” he said “but I am not happy. I don’t feel it in my chest like I do with you.” He reached out to catch a strand of her pale hair between pale fingers. He held the dead part of her a moment, then released, turning the living parts to ice water. “If you wanted, I could finish up teaching in a semester or two, then move down to Arizona with you. I feel like we never really got a chance. I was too wrapped up in the divorce, and you with your career.” She looked at him, ice water boiling over now. “You made your choice a long time ago, and so did I. How could you be my savior if you won’t do your time in the desert?” He smirked “I never figured you for the type that needed saving.” She couldn’t think of a response to that, and stared at the painting again. The model’s areolas bled through the cloth. “Is that your girlfriend?” she asked, hating herself. “No. I’ve only ever had one muse.” He trapped her in his gaze. “I hope you don’t mean me. Can you really be someone’s muse when they never make any art when they’re with you?” His knuckles whitened around the palette knife. “I’ll always hold a candle for you” she whispered. He exploded “Then blow it out or light a fire. Just don’t leave me flickering like this!” She retreated from his outburst toward the door. “Some light is better than no light at all, and if I remember right, too much of it causes you pain. Maybe that’s why our relationship always stayed in the dark. Why it couldn’t handle the Arizona sun. Why you let me go without a word of goodbye. So I’ll just say it. Goodbye.” He lunged forward, grabbing for her wrist. She felt his white hot touch, wet from his sweaty palms. She slipped from his grasp and went for the door handle. Her fingers passed over it, leaving red streaks. She whirled and the world whirled with her. When it steadied she saw the palette knife in his hand, covered in her blood. Blunt as it was, it must have nicked an artery. The red liquid frothed and bubbled out of her, evaporating into the air. The room filled with a scarlet haze. Through the clouds of blood she saw him look down at his tool and turn to the painting behind him, raising the knife to the canvas and spreading the pigment that only moments ago had passed through her heart. “This is it” he muttered, tracing the curves of his woman. Somehow she found purchase on the knob and fled. Out into the street, all color left back in the room. The bleeding had stopped now, though she still felt dizzy. The eyes of the aspens closed in around her. Quivering and pale, but never moving. She hated them, but its always easiest to hate in others what you hate most about yourself.