Bravado's House of Blues by John A. Pitts Read Free Book Online Page A

to drink to that,” he had said, “We’d better do it quickly.”) Eliot, Frost, Van Gogh, Marx, Sanger, and the surprising popularity of Fort’s book—they moved from subject to subject, eventually settling into their childhoods, their fears, their frustrations and even a bit of their dreams.
    His brush darted now from palette to canvas, his eyes wandering over the field.
    After an hour of more random scribbling, more random lines to somehow capture this time, she looked up at him. “Why do you do this again?”
    He glanced at her, his brush never losing its stroke. “Bored so soon?”
    She chuckled. “Not bored. Curious.”
    He smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the light. “It awes me. I like how that feels. So I paint that feeling.”
    “You do this a lot?”
    “What? Lure young women into fields of dead snakes?”
    Now her chuckle became a laugh. “No. Paint oddities.”
    His brows furrowed. “Not oddities, Agnes. Unexplained and unexpected wonders.” For a moment, he paused, his brush hanging in the dead space between paint and painting. Then he remembered her question. “I paint what I see.”
    She looked at the field of dead snakes. “But always after the fact? You’d said in Mexico City that you’d arrived after the visitation. And these—” she waved at the snakes—” they fell yesterday . . . maybe even the day before.”
    “I’m usually appallingly late to miracles,” he said.
    “Usually? So you’ve been on time before?”
    “Once or twice.”
    “Only twice?”
    Their eyes met. Something danced in his. “Three times, now that I think about it.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “What were they? Strange lights in the sky? People vanishing and reappearing?”
    “No. Missed all of those.” He went back to painting.
    “Are you going to tell me?”
    “Maybe later,” he said. “For now, my paints are drying.”
    She rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard that one before.”
    He didn’t answer. After a few minutes, she pushed herself back in the chair, lowered her hat, and closed her eyes.
    It was late afternoon when she awoke. The sun had vanished, dark clouds spreading across the sky.
    “And the lady awakens,” Jacob said. “I think we’re going to have muddy roads home if we don’t pack it up soon.”
    Agnes stood and stretched. “Did you finish your painting?”
    He nodded, standing himself. “I did. Just now.”
    She took a step closer to him. “May I see it?”
    Jacob blushed and stammered. “I . . . I’m not sure you’d—”
    “Oh, don’t be silly.” She walked around the easel to stand by him. Her mouth opened and shut and she looked from the canvas to him and back.
    It was the most beautiful painting she had ever seen. A stunning girl stretched out, asleep in a collapsible chair, her hair cascading from beneath an off-kilter hat. She followed the line of the neck, the curve of the breasts, the sleek, coltish grace of the legs. The girl’s feet rested on the shore of an ocean of rainbow-speckled serpents while overhead, a sky colored by a thousand dreams swirled and twisted like a silk canopy above.
    Agnes did not know what else to say. “You’ve been painting me.”
    He turned to face her, shuffling his feet slightly. “I did.”
    “But why?”
    “I paint what I see.”
    And suddenly it struck her. Three times, he had said earlier, and she realized now that those had been the only three miracles she’d been on time for, herself. Mexico City. New York. Now here.
    “Is it okay?” he asked her.
    The sky above rumbled and opened. Something bounced off her shoulder but she ignored it. Dark shapes fell into the field, thudding softly as they bounced off the car.
    Her eyes searched his. She didn’t know what to say so she did the only thing that came to mind. Throwing herself into his arms, she kissed him and kept on kissing him while frogs fell around them. Beneath their feet, the ground hopped and croaked, rolling like a living sea. Overhead, the sky turned a shade