I See You Lying Next To Me

I checked my phone and smiled. What did she want THIS time. I’d only spoken to her half an hour ago. Well too late, I’d finished at the art suppliers.

“Liz? What have we forgotten, I’m on my way back now, it’ll have to wait until next week,” I said cheerily, resting the phone in the crook of my neck and placing the huge bags of supplies on the floor in front of me so that I could hold the phone properly.

“Its not what we’ve forgotten, its… its whose been here.” She said in a weird sounding voice.

”Been there? At the gallery?” I said. I could just about hear her, the traffic was building up, and rush hour was starting.

“Yes, here, just now.”

“Who?” I asked frowning at somebody rushing past me and knocking into me.

“Gerard.” She practically whispered it. She probably thought I hadn’t heard her but I had, clear enough.

Gerard.

“Kitty are you there?” said Liz. Of course I was here but I had to compose myself.

“Kitty, did you hear me?” She said getting louder now.

“I heard you,” I said. I felt weird all of a sudden, dry mouth, pounding heart, sweaty palms.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

“Look, I’m on my way back, I should be with you in half an hour,” I said. Half an hour on the train back to my gallery.

Half an hour to remember our times together.

Not that I’d ever forgotten them.

**

I’d hardly got in the door of the art gallery and she was over putting the closed sign up. I checked my watch. “But its not 5.30 yet,” I said.

“No, its 5.25 and we need to talk,” said Liz ushering me away into the back room.

“Let me just at least get my coat off,” I said removing my scarf and gloves and unbuttoning my coat, “and then you can tell me all about it.”

All about him.

Gerard.

“He just came in, said he’d been meaning to come in for a few days. Kitty he’s blonde.” She said.

“Blonde? Gerard?” How could Gerard be blonde? I thought to myself remembering him with jet-black hair, hair entangled with my fair locks and his hazel eyes looking into my icy blues.

“Yeah, at first I thought what the fuck had he done? But its striking Kitty and it suits him, blonde and very short.” Said Liz. I was watching her; she was emptying the supplier’s bags of art equipment and putting it in all the wrong places. She was flustered.

“Sit down Liz for god sake you’re making me nervous,” I said.

She came and sat at the table of the little storeroom at the back of the gallery. My gallery.

“He saw the painting in the window, your painting,” she said, “He recognised it, that’s what drew him in.”

“Well he would, he knows my style,” I said. Of course he would know my work, he’d seen me paint enough pictures over the years.

“He said the name of the shop gave it away too, K’s Gallery,” she said. He remembered you saying all those years ago you wanted a gallery called K’s.

“And now I have one and he found it,” I said. I often wondered what it would be like if he ever came into the gallery. How would I react? Well now he’d been here and I hadn’t seen him.

“He asked after you, of course,”

“I bet he was still smoking,” I said.

Liz nodded.

“He didn’t stay long, had a look at some of the paintings you’ve got up. He stopped the longest at the oriental one. What’s so special about the oriental one Kitty, you never did tell me?” She said smiling at me.

“One day I may tell you,” I said.

“Then he left, but he bumped into Mel on the way out, I think they just said a polite ‘hi’ to each other.”

Mel. Smelly Mel my sister.

“Oh shit.” I said. She hated him, hated Gerard and always had. “So what did SHE say,” I asked kind of knowing already.

“She said what the fuck had he been doing here and that he’d better ‘fucking’ stay away from you after all he put you through, then she went through to the back room to collect her coat that she left here the other day. She looked angry. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” I asked.

“I don’t know, may be I should have given him your number, I don’t know, it all seemed to happened so quick, he took me by surprise, by the time he’d looked around and asked me about my teaching job, he was gone and Mel was here.”

“Its OK, you did the right thing?” Did she? Of course she did I thought getting up and making myself a drink. A huge vodka wouldn’t go amiss now and it wouldn’t have done either of us any good if she’d given him my phone number.

I was engaged now after all. I was different now. I had a business, was respectable, not like the irresponsible teenager who had fallen in love when she was sixteen and had spent nearly 10 good years with the same guy. Gerard.

Ten wonderful years until… well everything went wrong and we went our separate ways.

Still, not a day went past that I didn’t think of him and I often wondered if he ever thought of me.

I often thought back to when we first met and wondered if he ever thought about those times too? He was famous now though, led a completely different life to me, he was busy travelling and writing and meeting people, the times he had now probably far outweighed those times, even though we went through so much together.

**

I locked up the front door of the gallery and glanced out onto the New York street, just opposite of Central Park. The pavements glistened from the rain as I watched people scurrying past, umbrellas up against the wind and rain, hurrying home to their loved ones and my thoughts went to Gerard again.

I wonder if he’d come back to the gallery or he’d seen what he wanted to. I shivered and turned and walked over to the light switch and turned the gallery lights off. I climbed the stairs to the apartment above but as I climbed I couldn’t help but remember the day I met him…