his head up from under a counter in the kitchen, “I was just looking for something to make for dinner, you hungry?”
“Famished!” I reply enthusiastically, dropping down onto the couch with gusto.
“Err, Kate, are you drunk?”
“Just a little, anyway I thought I should celebrate two brothers back together” I make it seem blasé.
“Very true. I’m about to have a glass of wine, would you like to join me?”
“I probably shouldn’t” I say, waving my hand about.
“Oh come on. One glass won’t hurt” by now he is standing in front of me, offering the already poured glass, “and besides, if you’re celebrating me and Carlos, don’t you think you should have at least one drink with us?”
“I guess that makes sense, just one though” that uneasy feeling is beginning to creep up through me. What is it about him? One minute he is addictively mesmerising and the next he’s making my skin crawl, right now all I want to do is get as far away from him as possible. “Where is Carlos?” I ask.
“He had some work to do, but he said it won’t take long, so he’ll be back soon.”
Thank god for that, I no longer care what mood he returns in, just as long as he’s here.
Marcus takes a seat, uncomfortably close to me and starts droning on about a piece of art he’s having commissioned, the sun set over the New York skyline, the view from his bedroom. “It’s just magical, I try and make sure I’m home most evenings just to sit and stare at this wonder God has created, I just loose myself in its beauty” yet another side of Marcus, the deep, art appreciating, God fearing side. I can’t keep up with his personality changes and this one is certainly not my favourite. Where he seems to want to be mystical and interesting, he is coming across as sleazy and gross.
“Would you like to see them?” oh shit, he has been talking this whole time, while I’ve been caught up in discomfort, I have no idea what it is he’s talking about.
“Err, sure” there is no way of me finding out what he’s on about without giving away the fact that I wasn’t listening, so all I can do now is go with the flow.
He jumps up and runs upstairs, returning shortly with a scrap book.
Sitting down next to me, even closer than before, he places the book on my lap. I gulp down the last of my wine and lean forward to place the glass on the table; Marcus winds his fingers around the stem, grazing my own and takes it from me, “take a look,” he says nodding towards the book, “I’ll refresh your glass”
As he moves to the kitchen, I carefully flick open the cover, it’s full of sketches, mostly charcoal but some painted ones; there are a range of subjects, birds, people, sunsets of course and they are surprisingly quite good.
“did you do all these?” I ask as he hands me back my wine glass, now full to the brim. I take a courteous sip, although my vision is starting to blur and I’m losing my grasp on hand eye co-ordination; if I don’t want to vomit all over his art, I should really stop drinking now.
“Yeah, they’re nothing really, I just try and capture the magnificence of the world around me. I don’t do it justice though” he’s fishing for a compliment, but in all fairness he deserves it, he has a definite skill with drawing.
“They are really good” I say thumbing through them.
As I go to turn a page, he places his hand over mine to stop me, “This one I especially love” he says about a pencil sketch of an old man playing checkers with a young girl. “it’s the stark comparison of old versus young, experience and naivety, that grabbed me, I must have spent hours trying to get it right, while they just kept on playing.” He smiles at the memory and finally releases my hand. I take another closer look at this sketch, so to seem as though I’m taking in its full splendour, before turning it over, it’s good, but I’m not all that interested. It’s like people showing you their holiday snaps, a couple are funny, or stunningly beautiful, but the rest are just boring.
Turning my attention to the last one I gasp; it’s a charcoal sketch of me! I’m sitting on the beach, looking out to sea, my hair blowing in the