The Anatomy of Emotion

Chapter Thirteen

December—Cannes

Maeva's headphones rage against her ears as she slaps red paint against her canvas. Screams, guitar, more screams, drums. More red paint. Everywhere, on her jeans, on her floor, splashed over her stomach, her cheeks. She jams her brush into the canvas and drags it through the red. The result is deep grooves, sharp curves, rough, angry, and nothing at all like what had floated in her head.

She finally throws the brush down and yanks her headphones off, gasping.

King Diamond still whines from the speakers, but it is drowned out by the noise of the gallery downstairs. She hears the caterer clanking dishes, barking at waiters, the pianist tuning his instrument. Saria snarls at someone about the lighting. Maeva almost smirks at that. But glaring at her painting takes precedence.

It is three shades of red, five by four, abstract, the strokes clearly visible, curving in angry, stretched loops like rubber bands. It is a bastardization of what she sees in her head, a clumsy impersonation of the sensation she is fighting to capture. She screeches and kicks the box of brushes by her easel. The box tips and they scatter, through the splashes of red paint, over the corners of sketches, and the final few knock against the stack of red canvases behind her sofa. Five of them, five more inaccurate renditions of what she sees in her head.

She growls and turns away from it, hearing Saria's boots on the steps. She comes up carrying a garment bag and freezes at the entrance to the studio, eyes wide. Not on Maeva, coated with red like she had just slashed a throat, but on the canvas behind her.

"Oh my god," Saria breathes.

Maeva snorts, glaring at it over her shoulder, "tell me about it."

"...that's gorgeous,"

"Oh, fuck off, it is not gorgeous!" Maeva's glare grows infinitely sharper, "it's disgusting."

She puts her foot on the lip of easel and shoves it over. Wood and metal hit the studio floor with a satisfying bang.

Behind her, Saria's eyes have grown wider, and the awe is replaced by fear. Maeva could swear she sees Saria's dark knees quivering over her suede boots.

Taking a deep breath, Maeva tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, "is that my dress?"

"Y-yes," Saria says, her shy voice returned, "the cleaner just dropped it off, and I put your shoes in the bag."

"Thank you, leave it on the sofa please," Maeva says, "I'm sorry I lost my temper, it has nothing to do with you. This painting is driving me batshit."

"its fine," Saria lays the dress down and wanders over to the enormous canvas by the window, "oh, you stared painting it."

Her eyes scan the fresh color on Eurydice's album cover. Most of the background is complete, and she had started on the band in the middle ground. Saria tilts her head at Corin's completed face, studying the colors and strokes Maeva had used to catch the burnished undertone to his cheeks and jaw.

"Yes, I needed to get away from this for a while," Maeva waves her hand at the red mess.

She picks up the garment bag with her dress, and doesn't tell Saria that she had been hoping to recapture the feeling that had inspired her painting in the first place. And she had, carefully painting the dimension of Corin's lips, dabbing gold into the highlight along his cheekbone. Her chest had remembered the feeling of being close to him, in his arms, as close as she could ever get, and still needing something, still stretching for more. Maeva looks from the album cover to her discarded red canvases, and curls her lip. Such a load of good the exercise had done.