Ultramarine

Ruchi Sneha

Blue had always been my favourite colour. I trailed my fingers over blue-ribboned stanchions guarding artworks hung on the walls. Rain had dampened my hair and the scar on my face itched because of the moisture. Visitors were leaving the halls, chittering like bats, their backpacks slung across their fronts. I inhaled the scent of polished wood and preservative chemicals. The eyes of the paintings followed me as I strolled towards the end of the exhibit, an envelope clutched in my hand.

They hung side by side: two life-size paintings framed in gold, protected by a glass case and a border of security tape. 

“Hi boys,” I spoke into the silence. 

The painting on the left was a dim, watercolour art of Yurei: his long, flowing hair splayed over his shoulders, sombre caramel eyes and the tiniest curve of his lip. He was smiling. In all the paintings, he was always smiling. 

On the other hand, Giese, in his portrait, had a faraway look in his crystal blue eyes. His pierced ear peeked through ice-blond hair, and his mouth was slightly parted. He looked mesmerised. 

Below the paintings was the name of the artist: Sawyer Giese. 

I raised my hand to the glass and my fingers left a smudge on the pane. Someone would clean the display tomorrow and it would be like I had never been here. 

***

The first time I met Giese, I was close to financial ruin. The exhibit was on the verge of shutting down, and I had nothing to give back to the investors. When my phone rang, I thought it was another investor and I almost ignored it, but the screen said: Sharon Dean. 

She wasted no time. “Find anything for your exhibit?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t be in my living room drinking cheap beer.” 

She chuckled. “I might have someone for you. Sending you his address now. Go see him.” 

The address did not prepare me for the sheer size of the mansion I walked into. It was a colossal edifice, spread over several acres and polished to a pristine eggshell white. Sports cars lined the driveway, one in each primary colour. His PA met me at the gate and took me to a door in the basement. 

I don’t know what I had expected, all those years ago, but I was surprised to find a thin, gangly man on the floor, eyes covered by sunglasses even in the dim light of his basement, a shock of white hair knotted and messy across his forehead. He sat on the floor with one arm draped over his knees, and the other holding a palette knife, stabbing it against the canvas, like he was trying to carve indents into it. 

Even from a distance, he smelled strongly of whiskey. 

Canvases surrounded him. Easel after easel of watercolour paintings and pencil sketches. They were all odd pieces too: half a face, someone’s hair, hands, twisted lips, a nose, an ear. 

“Mr. Giese?” I asked. “I’m here to talk about your artwork. I own an exhibition in Manhattan, near SoHo. I would like to offer you a place there, for your paintings.”

At first, he didn’t reply. Had he not heard me? I opened my mouth to repeat myself, when he spoke.

“Fuck off,” he grumbled, releasing a foul stench of alcohol that hit me in the face. His words were slurred and the glass of yellow liquid beside him was clearly not his first drink of the day.

“Excuse me?”

“My art is not for the public,” he said, turning his head towards me. His sunglasses slipped to reveal the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen in my life: prismatic, vivid blue with splotches of white across them. Blind. He had to be at least partially blind. 

I looked at the paintings with a newfound appreciation. Perhaps it was cheap to elevate their status just because they had been painted by a disabled man, but my exhibit needed anything it could use and I wasn’t above resorting to petty promotion tactics. 

“If you change your mind,” I said, tapping and placing a card on the floor in front of me, “give me a call.” 

***

I was losing hope. All recent conversations with artists had gone poorly. My exhibit needed a strong piece, something that created tides, not ripples. A moon, not a rock. Giese’s artwork had the potential to cause a stir, but he hadn’t contacted me. I was about to call Sharon and tell her that her idea had failed, when my phone rang. 

It was Sawyer Giese, inviting me to a bar in Greenwich Village.

When I arrived, I realised I was overdressed. I had tied my hair up with a bow and worn a cashmere cardigan. The place was rowdy: throngs of college students chugging beers, loud rock music blasting through the speakers and arcade games blinking in the back. 

Giese looked entirely out of place too, sitting alone by the bar in a neat, navy blue suit with sunglasses perched on his nose. Awash with pink disco lights. He was nursing a lowball glass, with his head resting on one hand. If he saw me approach, he didn’t acknowledge me until I was sitting in front of him. 

“Did you have time to rethink my proposition?” I asked. 

“I can’t display my art at your exhibit,” he said, with an exaggerated drawl. 

“Why not?”

“I’m too good for a small-time nobody’s exhibit.” He grinned, revealing a set of rugged, stained teeth. Before I could really start to take offence, he added, “And the paintings you saw are worthless. I’m trying to create the painting. I keep failing.” 

“What are you trying to paint?” I asked. 

“Have a drink with me,” he said, instead of answering me.

I swallowed back my annoyance. I needed him, not the other way around. I ordered a drink. Then, two more. He talked a lot, often stumbling over his own words. He talked about everything in the world and nothing at the same time: sports, weather, Picasso, Beowulf and Kim Kardashian. The verbal waterfall gushed out of him with a speed that bordered on desperate – he talked like he was running out of time – and at times, I found my eyes glazing. I wondered if he had anyone else to speak with. 

It became increasingly clear to me that he was stringing me along. This was his twisted idea of a date, or something even worse, and I asked for the check, citing how I needed to be home soon. 

“Walk with me,” he said, paying for both of us before I could protest. 

Giese took me on a walk down the winding road and I questioned myself for deciding to go on a walk with a strange man in the night. I couldn’t justify saying yes. Something about him drew me in, despite how unpleasant the experience had been so far. Every instinct in my body said I should walk away, and yet, I found myself matching his pace. Streetlights lit up the road and cars whizzed past us. Rain had left glistening patches on the asphalt and a gentle breeze weaved through my hair. Giese walked with slow, deliberate steps, looking up and down, measuring each inch before he crossed it. He really was partially blind. 

“It was a good night,” I said, finally, “but I do need to get home.” 

“There.” He stopped by a tree. A wounded tree. Its bark was stripped in the middle, white skin peeping out of an ugly gash. It resembled the scar on my face and for a second, I thought he was making fun of me. But he wasn’t looking at me, at all. His sunglasses lowered, his vibrant blue eyes were fixed on the tree. 

“What?” I asked, confused. 

“This is where it happened,” he said. 

***

Giese and Yurei met in high school and went to university together. They became best friends like ice melts in whiskey. 

Giese was born into money; he was part of a fraternity and an incorrigible party animal all through university. He could afford to be. Late nights, drugs in the bathroom, long drives in fancy cars, he wanted it all. There was nothing he said no to. 

And Yurei was his companion in everything he did. They were joined at the hip. If you wanted to find Yurei, all you had to do was look for Giese, and vice versa. 

Giese didn’t know much about Yurei. His best friend was an extremely private person. He never talked about his family, never left his dorm room unless it was with Giese, never even had a girlfriend. 

Giese didn’t dig too much into Yurei’s life. He was happy with whatever Yurei extended to him. They were living in a bubble of shared hedonism in a time where everything felt eternal.

It wasn’t like they never fought. About the smallest of things too. 

“You’re too careless, Sawyer,” Yurei would say. “People flock to you because you pay for them. You need to learn to be more careful.” 

“People flock to me because I’m hot and extremely charming,” Giese would reply, making Yurei scoff. 

Their first and only big fight happened in their final year. 

They met at their usual haunt in Greenwich Village and Yurei sat by the bar, nursing a whiskey sour. Giese knew something was up even before he reached him. Eyebags covered Yurei’s face, his cheeks were pallid and sunken and his long hair was a mess around his shoulders. 

“I’m dropping out,” he said, and Giese felt like he’d been punched. “Going home. This is a goodbye.” 

“Why?” Giese demanded. 

“My family needs me. I’m not you, Sawyer. I have to provide for them. I can’t afford tuition anymore and I can’t keep living off of you like this. This friendship has been a drug to me and I’m quitting now.” 

“I’ll pay your tuition,” Giese offered. “You don’t have to stop being my friend.” 

“See?” Yurei smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s exactly why I can’t be your friend.” 

“This doesn’t have to be a goodbye!” Giese was on the verge of slamming his fist through the wall. Nothing Yurei said made sense to him. He couldn’t comprehend why he didn’t allow him to solve all his problems. 

“This is your world, Sawyer,” Yurei said. He sounded tired, as if he’d had this conversation in his mind many times before. “Not mine. My reality is far from it, and I can’t live in this dream anymore.” 

“Stay.” Giese was begging and he didn’t care. “Stay. Have one last night out with me. Let’s get drunk. I’ll buy us a bottle, I’ll buy us the whole fucking bar. Please. You can decide what you want in the morning, but please spend this night with me.” 

For a second, Yurei looked like he would say no. Then his gaze softened. “Of course, Sawyer. One last night out.” 

***

Giese didn’t remember much of the accident, or even the hospital. When he woke up, his vision was clouded. Everything was brighter, the world plunged into a vibrant palette of scattered lights that hurt his eyes. Nurses’ faces loomed into his vision but he couldn’t remember them, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t remember anyone’s face. 

He heard the words, “Your friend didn’t–” 

And he started shouting. He didn’t let them finish the sentence, never heard the words, but he didn’t need to. Giese woke up with a hole in his heart, and he knew what shape the missing piece had.

His family settled the drunk driving fine. His dad bought him a new Lamborghini. Giese was back at university, the best artist in his whole class, the celebrated prodigy on his way to a great future, even with damaged eyes and a brain that no longer remembered anyone’s face. 

But he was never the same again. Every time he painted, he thought of Yurei. He couldn’t remember his face, but he remembered individual features, scattered fragments of his visage. The edge of his jaw. The line of his nose. The slant of his eyebrow. Giese painted everything he remembered. He compiled all these little pieces of Yurei into his paintings, trying to reanimate a man that was lost to him. His own Frankenstein’s monster.

He kept falling short. Every painting was a ship made of the same parts, but it wasn’t the same ship. No matter what he painted, the finished painting resulted in a collection of Yurei’s features, but it wasn’t Yurei. Giese didn’t really realise when his grief became an obsession. He didn’t realise when ten years passed. When his mansion became chock-full of paintings of a man that wasn’t quite Yurei. He was so close to his masterpiece, one last tribute to his best friend, but he was always so far. He felt like he was going crazy. 

That’s when he met me. 

***

Glittering, crystal tears lined his eyes as he finished talking about Yurei. He glanced at me, reaching out to touch the scar running across my face. I flinched from his warm touch, but he was unfazed, tracing the rough edges of my scar like he was memorising it. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said. It wasn’t a compliment. “Worth painting.” 

“Why don’t you?” I asked. 

“I can’t paint anything until the painting is done. And I can’t finish it. I have nothing of Yurei’s, no pictures, not even the name of his mother. Yurei never let anyone click his pictures. I have no one to talk to. I never made friends in college. There’s no one in the world who seems to remember him, except me. Tell me,” he breathed out, “am I crazy?” 

“A little.” I glanced at the tree, imagining a blue Lamborghini wrapped around it. Sparkling shards of glass scattered all over the road. Blood like paint splattered over the dashboard. A young college kid with his head against the wheel. Chilling. “I can help you find information on Yurei, if you agree to display your paintings. If we open the exhibit to the public, someone might recognise him and give us a tip.” 

“I can’t share him with the world,” Giese said, quietly. 

“Do you love your best friend, or do you love the idea that he is your best friend?” 

He looked at me for the longest time. Then, he sighed. “Fine. Have your pound of flesh.”

***

The exhibit was a hit. Of course it was. Paintings created over ten years by a partially blind man, born out of an obsessive, half-drunken spiral. They weren’t the greatest pieces on Earth, in fact, skill-wise, some were even mediocre. The sentiment behind them, however, elevated them to the level of divine. It made Giese a god. 

He refused to visit the exhibit, though. He refused to even collect a cheque. He said I could keep all of it, he had no use of money made through Yurei’s name. The numbers we raked in spun my head, but to him, those numbers meant nothing.

After months of begging, he finally relented and visited the exhibit. He was using a cane. I was so delighted by his visit that it took me some time to realise he was limping. 

“What happened?” I asked. 

“The body is a feeble, mortal device. It can’t contain all my genius.” 

I laughed. Arrogant as ever. 

We walked around the exhibit together. He barely glanced at the paintings. If anything, he pointedly avoided them. When he did look at them, anger and annoyance flitted across his face. I’d never seen anyone look at their creations with as much hatred as him. Perhaps he hated their inadequacy, their inaccuracy. Or perhaps he hated the fact that these paintings had to exist in the first place. 

We paused by one of his better works: a chiaroscuro sketch with delicate crosshatchings, where Yurei’s eyes seemed alive, full of love and compassion. I knew nothing about the man, but having heard Giese talk about him over the last few months, I developed an image of a wise, kind man who lived by his principles. Someone I could respect. 

“Wow,” a voice said near us, catching our attention. Two girls were studying a painting of Yurei’s hands. Giese had painted every ridge on his palm with care, highlights on his pink nails, a scar on his little finger. His skin was full of so many evocative colours – the slight red undertone, the browns of the folds of his fingers – that I felt like it would be warm to the touch. “I wish someone loved me like this. Enough to dedicate years to creating paintings of me. Isn’t it incredible?” 

I glanced at Giese but he had gone completely white, his face matching his hair. He exhaled softly, turned and limped away. 

***

We stayed until closing time. Then, surrounded by silence and paintings of Yurei, sitting on the floor in the centre of the exhibit, I uncorked a bottle of Pinot Noir. 

I took a sip of the pungent beverage and then passed the bottle to Giese. 

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” I commented. 

“Do you think I love him?” he asked. 

What kind of a stupid question was that? “Duh.” 

“We were friends. Not lovers. Right?” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “I’m confused. I don’t know if we were friends or if I was in love with him. I don’t know if I am in love now. It’s not love. It’s an obsession. Isn’t it?”

“It’s not an entirely unhealthy obsession. Your drinking, though. Now that’s a different story.” I tried to make light of the situation but he had a crazed look in his eyes. His eyebrows were scrunched, and his breaths shallow. 

“I’m going crazy,” he said, softly. “I keep seeing him. I can’t remember his face, and it’s driving me crazy. The other day I saw someone with a smile just like his. I thought it was him. Could he still be around? Maybe I’ll walk by him one day and no longer recognise his face. I keep seeing him in strangers. He’s haunting me.” 

He was speaking rapidly, and I found myself wrapping my arms around him. At first, he tensed. Then slowly he succumbed to my embrace and I held him as sobs racked his body. 

He drank the whole bottle that night, and I didn’t stop him.

***

The tip line turned out to be a success. People from Giese’s university and old school recognised the man in the paintings. I started getting calls every day with jigsaw pieces of information about Yurei. About the time he stayed up all night with someone when they wanted to hurt themself. How he finished his assignments beforehand and let others copy. How he had the brightest smile. How no one knew anything about his family. How he was a ghost even in life; a man with no past, but a man with so much presence that he touched everyone he interacted with. 

The more I knew about Yurei, the more I understood Giese’s obsession. 

Yurei was gone. All that was left of him were memories.A xerox of a xerox. I had a lot to piece together: enough to create mental images of Yurei, but not enough to render it into an actual painting. 

None of it helped Giese. It was information he didn’t care about. Others’ opinion of Yurei was as worthless to him as his failed paintings. 

Then, one day, a girl called and told me she had an old photo of Yurei. 

***

“Don’t show it to me,” Giese said. “I won’t be able to process it fully anyway.” 

“Okay.” I held up the photo in front of me, its back to Giese’s milky eyes. Yurei was with Giese in the photo. They were sitting on a bench in Central Park together, mouths wide open in laughter, washed in the golden light of a New York sunset. Yurei barely looked eighteen in that photo. Young. He was always going to be young, while Giese was more than ten years older now, worn around the face, weighed down, thin, fragile. “How about this? You paint, and I’ll guide you, tell you if you’re getting it right?”

“You want to be my partner so bad,” he teased, but his eyes were glowing. He was watching the photo hungrily, as if he was contemplating ripping it out of my hands to have one, just one glance at his best friend. 

His willpower was strong, though. He brought out a new canvas and a fresh set of brushes. A new beginning. 

“So. Do I start with his eyes or his mouth?”

I thought about it. “His eyes.” 

***

Several hospital trips later, the painting was finally complete. I had scolded Giese relentlessly for his drinking habit but this achievement deserved a celebration, so I let him have his Scotch on the rocks. 

He swirled the ice in his glass, staring at the finished painting. 

It was brilliant. The work of a true genius. Perfection: it looked exactly like Yurei. He had captured everything from his delicate fingers to his deep, chocolate eyes, his gorgeous dark hair and his kind smile. The painting was brimming with life, Yurei’s eyes lit with ardour, like any moment he would laugh out loud, step out of the painting and join us for a drink. 

“Are you happy?” I asked. It was a silly question, but I cared immensely for the answer. It was important that Giese be happy. He had achieved something after ten years of chasing it. 

It had to mean something. 

“It’s done,” he said, reverently. Divine light spilled out of his face. He was a god kneeling at the altar, a celestial beast turned into a devotee on his knees with his head bowed. 

I imagined Giese through all these years. Downing glass after glass, splashing paints across the canvas, always chasing the man who had left him behind. Paintings filling up his house, each one more disappointing than the last. All the nights he spent, squinting in his basement. Spending every waking moment with his paintings, even taking them to bed. He deserved this moment. He deserved so much more.

He turned to me and his expression slowly shifted to a mask of confusion. “What now?”

I clinked my glass with his. “Now you’re free. You can paint whatever you want.”

***

He called me at midnight, just as I was about to drift off to sleep. 

“My life is over,” he said, deadpan. 

“Elaborate.” 

“I tried to paint. Nothing. I’m dry.” He paused. “I have had one goal for a decade and it’s done now. I can’t imagine painting anything else. I don’t want anything else. I thought, if I could finish painting him, my grief would let go of my throat, but it’s still there. He is still there. I want to be with him.”

“I have an idea.” This was a man looking for hope, and for some reason, I thought I could give it to him. “Paint yourself.”

He had the audacity to snort. “I know I’m the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, but I’m not creating art for your bedroom.” 

“No, idiot.” I huffed. “Paint a self-portrait. Make it as beautiful as him, and I’ll hang you beside him. Forever.”

“Forever?”

“And a day.” 

***

He didn’t tell me about the diagnosis. His PA did. Perhaps, in his own way, he was trying to save me from the grief. 

I had known from the start, hadn’t I? A man of his insane disposition simply had to be a source of grief. He had always been an open wound, and I must’ve known from our first meeting that he would bleed on me. 

The first thing he ever told me was to fuck off. He had been warning me.

Like blue waves find the seashelled shore, I found him. He was the most beautiful man I knew. Infuriatingly self-obsessed and arrogant. A walking warning. A car crash waiting to happen again, and I just couldn’t stay away. 

He died miserably. If there was a thing more painful than his life, it was his death. 

They said it was the alcohol, but I knew it wasn’t. 

It was Yurei. It had always been. 

***

Giese’s brilliant blue eyes stared at the distance. Even in the last painting he made, before he could no longer paint, the asshole didn’t look at me. I knew what he was looking at. Yurei. Always Yurei. 

They belonged together. Nothing more perfect than two dead men – best of friends, best of almost-lovers – hung up side by side. People pooled to see them in droves, marvelling at them.

I was finally starting to understand why Giese used to look at his paintings with so much hatred. I wanted to burn them down. To set fire to the exhibit. Ashes to dust. 

Holding up the envelope in my hand, I read the name on the front. Yurei’s sister. I had met her a few months after Giese’s death. She was the only remaining family of Yurei’s, and while she was angry at first – we had made her brother’s death into a spectacle – she finally relented and accepted the percentage of the profits I offered to her. All things considered, that was the best place the money could go. I was sure Giese would have agreed. 

I flipped the switch, plunging the exhibit – and the boys – into darkness. Tomorrow, there would be a queue to witness their love. But tonight, they could be alone in their grief. 

Giese was mad. I never denied it. You had to be a little mad to love someone like that. Every day, I promised myself I would learn from him. I would be careful. Not allow grief to consume me like that. I could do better. I could move on. 

I locked up the exhibit behind me and opened my umbrella to shield myself from the pattering rain. I stepped out into the street and whistled softly to myself. Mail the cheque, go home, make dinner, watch some trash TV show, sleep, start another day. If I could keep doing it, again and again, I would be fine. Maybe I’d even wake up one day and not miss him. 

A man bumped into me and I almost dropped my umbrella. He muttered an insincere apology and rushed past me. I didn’t see anything of his face except his eyes. Bright, crystal blue eyes. 

And just for a second, I froze.