The Con Artist

He moved through the crowd unseen, blending in easily. An insignificant speck in an expanse of people. They didn’t see him as he watched them, they merely saw the tray of drinks which he carried - it was as if he himself was truly invisible. They tilted their heads, critiquing the work on the walls, turning their noses up at it or applauding it; seeing aspects of it which were not there in an attempt to seem more intelligent than they actually were.

A too tanned man in an expensive suit and a wife whose face seemed unnaturally tight for a woman of her age stood in front of a large canvas which was a mix of blue hues and splashes of vibrant pinks, which if you looked from a distance and squinted actually formed the image of erect male genitalia. They were surrounded by a crowd equally as unearthly looking as themselves who nodded and frowned - or attempted to with their poison filled faces - in concentration.

“The artist is conveying such beauty and pain in this piece, you get a true sense of his loneliness and despair but also hope, don’t you agree, dearest?”

The woman with the too tight face nodded in her husband’s direction.

“You discovered the artist, didn’t you, Felicia?” an eager woman asked from the gathering.

Felicia Too-Tight-Face smiled as best she could. “Yes. He was starving on the streets trying to peddle his canvases to tourists but I saw within him a wonderful gift, the true eye of an artist. I knew at once that he deserved to have himself be seen. Of course he is painfully shy and suffers from deep dark depressions. He would hate us all gawking at this work like this…”

What a wonderful patron of the arts Felicia Too-Tight-Face was, he thought as he watched them all hanging on her every word. What a shame that she knew nothing about art at all. What a shame neither did he, apart from how much these philistines were willing to pay for it. Strange then that the crowd here this evening was lapping it all up, not realising as they did so that the waiter who served them their drinks was the very same person who had created these colourful canvases splattered with random colours which represented merely what he could lay his hands on at the time. And the man who Felicia Too-Tight-Face was describing to them was his greatest work of all - a poor, homeless, depressive with the soul of an artist. Well, not quite. He lived in a penthouse, which he happened to know cost twice as much as Felicia Too-Tight-Face’s apartment, and the only depression he ever suffered was when someone tried to serve him warm champagne - although he had no scruples about serving that this evening to these plebeians.

Art was a con and so was he.

Farewell To Golden Boy

Erin sips her coffee. It’s her fourth one that morning and it isn't even eight o’clock yet. The bitterness tastes good to her and fits her mood perfectly. Her stomach protests as the caffeine hits, demanding actual nourishment. Absently she puts some bread into the toaster and glances up at the clock. He’ll be down in a minute, she’s never had the issues of waking him up for school like other mothers seem to with their children. Christopher is no trouble at all in fact. He sets his alarm every night before bed, is up before it has chance to go off and is showered and dressed and settled down to breakfast in the space of twenty minutes. 

Today though he isn't getting ready for school, he just doesn’t know it yet.

With a sigh she looks down at the headline in the paper again. Hearing the click of the bathroom door she shuffles the newspaper away and sets the table, gets the milk from the refrigerator and places a box of multicoloured cereal by his bowl and spoon. Right on cue Christopher walks into the kitchen and takes his place.

“Morning, mom.”

Smiling faintly and feeling her stomach tremble again, Erin butters her toast and sits down at the table, “Morning, honey.”

She bites into the toasted bread and chews, not tasting anything; not feeling anything but a bodily numbness. Somewhere, far away it seems, her head throbs and aches, but it’s more like something she might remember from a half formed dream which suddenly comes to her hours after waking.

Robbed of any appetite she stands up and takes her plate of part eaten toast over to the counter. Standing behind Christopher she watches as he munches on his cereal, half listening as he chatters about his upcoming day ahead. She strokes her hand through his hair, blonde - the colour of his father’s. Her golden boy, her two golden boys. He looks up and smiles, he has his father’s eyes too, the ones which melted her heart in high school; the same ones which tore it apart years later. 

“Honey, you aren't going to school today.”

“Why not?”

“Because, we have to go visit your dad today.”

Christopher stops eating and frowns: “We’re going into the city? How come? Can’t we visit him at the weekend like we normally do?”

Erin shakes her head, “No, we have to go today, you see, your dad is… he’s not well, in fact he’s in hospital and we should go see him to try and cheer him up and make him feel better so he gets out sooner.”

Christopher looks into his bowl but that’s not what he is seeing.

“Is he sick like Uncle Michael?”

The words - whatever words they were going to be - stick in Erin’s throat, refusing to budge. Could someone actually choke on their own words? Up until now Erin presumes that was just a turn of phrase.

“Mom?”

Erin glances the corner of the paper from under the magazine where she’s hidden it. She doesn't need to see it again to remember what it says. Six men have died of a mysterious new disease which seems to be claiming the lives of men in LA, men of a certain persuasion, that was the polite way of putting it, the papers hadn’t bothered to be so polite. Uncle Michael - the person who had replaced her in her ex-husband’s affections - had been one of them.

“Mom?”

She fingers the chain around her neck, touching the silver crucifix, then turns away from Christopher again gripping it and squeezing it in her fist as tears start to threaten once more. How can she tell him about his father, how can she look into eyes - which remind her so much of the man she once loved; the man she probably still lives in fact - and tell him that his father is most probably going to die; is most probably going to die very soon and that’s why they simply have to go visit him as soon as possible. How can she tell her son that even if they’re allowed into the hospital room where he’s being kept that they won’t be able to touch him, that Christopher will not be able to take his father’s hand in his and squeeze it for the last time. How can she tell him that they might not even be allowed to be in the same room with him, that they may have to see him behind a window for fear of infection of this new horror no one can explain. How can she tell him any of this when still she hasn’t been able to tell him that his father is gay?

“Mom?’