Close to Hugh Read Online Free

too much pulling espresso, ex-presto, perfecto. Frick, school is weird, after homeschool, even only doing art and algebra. But one does need to get into art school next year, to get the hell out of here, and IB marks will make applications easier than a vomiting cascade of parent-based evaluations. Only, even with one’s coterie, getting to/hanging around at school sucks.
    And always always always the panicky urge to go home and work on the Republic . At school she does not talk about it. Only Jason has seen it. She hasn’t even let her mom go through it and she believes, she does believe, her mom would not unless invited. Because it’s her work, her self. Her mom would not. Her dad would, probably, but he’s not that interested in art and probably fears to find what hellish interior thoughts she harbours. The nudes would make him stop looking, even though they are mostly just repro Voynich Manuscript–type ladies. Not all of them drawn from life. Only Nevaeh.
    Last night, Nevaeh—can’t even talk even inside about that. Like fire, like dry ice, wanting to touch it, to see if it will burn you. To touch her mouth. A great canyon gapes between wanting/doing. If one does one small thing, or set of things, in a doze, in a daze, does that mean—? Silk armskin sliding, foreheads touched in fond embrace, is one then—?
    Languid, head lolling over the edge of the bed, Nevaeh’s mouth upside down looks like another, other person’s mouth. Just as beautiful, but lighter, happier. (Onion-skin portrait for the Republic , upside down/right side up, two of them side by side. Or negatives …)
    N—let N stand for the unknown—is what one wants that moment but but BUT. Then could one still talk to her? Or Jason? And Savaya, what about Savaya?
    A wind, and Orion zips up beside L, slowing his silver bike to match her stride.
    “Carry your fucking books, miss?”
    L laughs and shows her empty hands, her douche-pack with brushes and pencils and phone.
    They move on together, Orion balancing, easy. He is the easiest to be with. Knows himself, maybe. Orion is like Newell—who’s back in town, doing the master class.
    “Excited for the master class, and Master—Burton?” she asks Orion.
    “—bation,” he says, in unison. “Yeah. I have to pick up the lady, whoever, Mrs. Lovett. She’s staying at Jason’s.”
    “I’ll go with you. We’re doing the cyclorama for the backdrop, me and Jason.”
    “Art, Art! How lucky we all are,” Orion cries, going into paean mode, a long hand flung out over path and river. “To be at our glorious school—when compared to all other schools, even that ruling-class übermenschhaus Sheridan Tooley went to—really working, learning stuff that will be useful. Assholery and tomfoolery is everywhere, fine, that’s an education in itself. We’re good, we’re so good .”
    Yet he looks keyed up, fearful underneath the joy. Underneath, everybody carries it. This earthcrack the voices come out of, this crater of sadness. Everyone does.

5. IF I WERE HUGH
    At four p.m. Hugh pours himself a glass of wine, a civilized thing to do at a small gallery without much hope of selling anything on a Monday afternoon. Maybe he should get back on the ladder, do those lights.
    Ruth walks in. Outside her working hours.
    “Look what was in here,” she says, pulling a gloved fist out of her pocket. There’s that bright brown hundred. “I’m going to have to take this back. It’s too much to keep—I’d be stealing it from the Clothes Closet. Those Mennonites do such good work.”
    Hugh pours a little more malbec and offers to make Ruth a coffee. He drains his glass, standing at the espresso machine in the framing room.
    “Nice jacket,” he calls back into the office.
    “Well, it does fit,” she says, smoothing her cuff. “Lucky day already, even without the extra.”
    “I don’t know,” he says. “I think you ought to keep that.” Spurs his sputtering brain to think of why. “It’s like it