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Chapter Seven
Point of View: Nick


If you’d told me that night when I found her on the street in the rain in her panties that I’d be showing her how to scuba dive off that island a week later, I would’ve said you were insane. After all, I typically saved my only semi-legal scuba diving instructions for women who I was in love with.

“And to think I doubted you,” Krystal was crowing when I pulled my car into my driveway and turned it off. “I thought you had picked somewhere boring and plain and instead you just completely wowed me!” She’d been buzzing the entire way home. The water was certainly exhilarating and though we hadn’t seen much, she’d still enjoyed every moment of it. We’d relaxed on the beach in our underwear to dry off, throwing the six orders of large fries to the seagulls that had gathered while we ate our Happy Meals. Then we’d taken our time returning home, pausing the boat several times to just lay there on our backs, staring up at the stars and pointing out constellations we knew. Krystal had known quite a few. Personally, I only knew one of the dippers. I didn’t even know which dipper. Just that it was a dipper.

Now, the sky was darkening and it was almost nine o’clock at night.

“Thanks for the fantastic day, Nick,” Krystal said, smiling. “It was way better than sitting in that fucking shrink’s office all day.”

I had to admit, it was.

“I had fun,” I confessed.

Krystal stared at me, her eyes searching mine for a long moment. “You wanna come over for a drink?” she asked.

Drink. My body froze. I thought of AJ. In my mind, the rehab center had him bound and gagged and strapped to a stretchy table and washing his Jack-corroded mouth out with soap bubbles.

“I don’t drink,” I said. “Anymore,” I added hastily.

“One won’t kill ya,” she teased. “You’re young, you’re free, you’re crazy…” Krystal’s eyes danced.

She was right. I was young, and I was free. Just because AJ had drank excess didn’t mean I had to, nor did his alcoholism automatically make me prone to alcoholism. I wasn’t an alcoholic, I was just a kid, right? “Well, maybe one won’t kill me,” I said, sighing.

Krystal grinned. “While you’re over, you can see the painting I did.”

“Painting?” I asked.

“The night we met,” she clarified, “I painted you the next day.”

“You painted me?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Why me?”

“You’re very aesthetically pleasing,” she answered, grinning.

I followed her across the street, tossing my keys into my pocket. She hadn’t locked her front door and we waltzed right into her house and she flipped lights on as we migrated forward. Her house was full of an electrically colored menagerie of crazy things. She had a plastic lawn penguin in the corner with the words “FREE BIRD” written across its chest and a cape tied around its neck. She had garden gnomes, too, peeking out from corners and smiling at me with their little dunce caps on. She had magazines littering the coffee table in the living room in front of a bright orange couch with lime green throw pillows with flowers on them. On one table, she had the Christmas Story leg lamp and on another a huge, chandelier-style lamp with gaudy magenta crystals hanging off it. Her kitchen was painted bright reds and yellows with rooster curtains. Her teapot was shaped like a cow. I had never seen so many random things in my entire life. I felt like I’d fallen into Wonderland. I waited for the arrival of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

“Where did you find all this—“ I couldn’t think of any word besides shit at first, and finally I just supplemented it with, “Stuff?”

Krystal laughed, “Here and there,” she answered.

She grabbed a bottle of tequila and a couple square shot glasses from the cupboard, winked, and grabbed my hand, “Come see my studio,” she said, pulling me through a door that led to basement stairs.

As we descended the stairs, the smell of acrylic paint filled my nose and I remembered the paint that was everywhere the night I first met her, in the street. “So you’re an artist, huh?” I asked as we clambered down the stairs.

Krystal laughed, “In theory, I guess. My pieces are more… abstract. I like finger painting. Or body painting. I paint with my feet sometimes if I’m bored.”

We came around the corner into the basement studio and I smiled. The walls were covered with tacked-up images of pictures made with hand and feet prints and portraits that had obviously been made by smearing paint on her own face and smooshing herself against the canvas. A table of jars of paint stood a few feet away from me, and a futon in the corner told me she spent a lot of time doing this. Enough that she needed that much paint, and enough that she needed a place to sleep or to sit in the studio. I stepped up to a canvas she had leaning on an easel and studied it.

The painting was made up of a million little finger prints of various colors and looked mystifyingly like … well, like me.

“What do you think?” she asked, gesturing towards it with one hand. She opened the tequila and started pouring the alcohol into the little shot glasses. “Corny?”

“It’s interesting,” I said honestly, “I like it.” I stared into the blue prints she’d used to create my eyes. She smiled up at me. “What made you do this?”

“I told you, you’re aesthetically pleasing,” she answered, shoving the shot glass into my palm. She smiled, “I would like to paint you again,” she added.

I laughed and pretended to strike a pose.

Krystal laughed and took her shot, then grabbed the bottle of tequila again. “More?” I hadn’t even done my first shot yet, so I quickly downed the liquid and held out my glass, which she liberally refilled right to the rim. She studied the painting a moment while I took the second shot. “Now that I’m looking at you next to it, I see a flaw, though.”

“What flaw?” I asked, touching my face.

“In the painting, not in you.” Krystal refilled my shot glass a third time, downed hers and refilled it again, too. She put the glass down on the table and grabbed a small palette of colors and dropped her fingers into the yellow and quickly started working on the hair of the painting, making it a little longer.

When she was done, she looked up at me, and smiled before picking up her shot glass. “Now it looks like you,” she said, winking.

“I need a hair cut,” I teased her.

She shook her head, “If you get one cut, you should get them all cut,” she whispered.

I laughed and took my fourth shot of tequila. All the colors of the room were starting to blend together a little bit, but I didn’t fight her off when she refilled me a fifth time…

I stared at her, and a stirring crept through my body. I inched towards her. She might be crazy, I thought, but she was beautiful, and the crazy kind of added to that beauty… I wanted to touch her. I just need an excuse… a reason to put my hands on her…

And then she did it.

She rubbed her nose.