Fic: How Far We Have Come
Andras had a studio now -- a proper empty whitewashed room with a large industrial window and a large iron door, in the warrens off Vine Square. The place had become creepingly gentrified over the last few years, a renovation here and a hip new coffee shop with a oh-so-witty hipsterish name there, but there was still room for artists here.
Andras had read a quote the other week, uttered by some celebrity-of-the-moment, who stated that "Winston Churchill said, ‘If we cut funding to the arts, then what are we fighting for?" -- and apparently, the people in the City and around Morningstar Manor stood by that conviction. There was civilisation here, beyond naked capitalism and the secret, deep-running fear that eventually, it would all be swept away, and they would be made to pay for their privileges at last.
No, as yet, there were lights always up in Andras's studio, backdrops ready for portraits, and the shiny big iMac ready to present the results on right away; and he didn't have to put anything aside in the evening to feel comfortable or hospitable any more. Instead, he locked up and went home. On some evenings, he didn't even fire up the little oldish Macbook he kept at home, which amused Fin, in that secret way Fin had of being amused. Maybe he's poke the iPad for news or additional info on something, but that was all.
The big computers were at the studio, the serious, state-of-the art iMac and the backup server. And this was where Andras was sitting now, finally having found the time to pull the pictures of the Memorial Day barbecue off his third-best Pentax (no more commonplace 'CanoNikons' for Andras now!) and process them to post online for his fellow Manorites to look at and pull to their own blogs or Facebooks or what have you, or perhaps, for the more old-fashioned ones, order paper prints, which Andras would gladly print out for them on his good picture printer.
There were duties that came with the privileges, and Andras didn't mind them.
Flipping through the pictures, Andras wondered how far they had come. All the kids growing up, of course -- the suddenly tall Indian boy with the hound as lanky as himself hovering near little Morgan Temminck who wasn't so little any more, and loved that hound. Dear Fin, wiping something violently red off Nia's dress and trying to keep her from crying while her dads were doing something urgent to a barbecue nearby. There were several set up, and tables with salads, and drinks, everything carried out into the Manor gardens, into the sun. They Reyes, in their little bubble as always, a happy family busy with being just that. Couples and children, dogs and cats (even that disgraceful old tabby who thought he was a smilodon or something!) smiling into the kit lens of Andras's third best Pentax.
And they were all there, all that were still there. Even the reclusive Mr Vision had come out, towards the evening, and had a drink and made a short speech laced with odd promises that might turn out to be threats, after all, the way he had. We want you all to be happy here, or else...
Andras found he had become used to the weird.
There was Lajos, perched on a railing, chatting amiably to old Mrs. Temminck. You'd never think he was in the throes of a really vicious divorce, Ilona finally fed up with her husband lured away from her and the kids in London for the charms of the City. Andras had found himself quite able to see both their points, and found it painful to realise how much stability and sense of family he had riding on what was, ultimately, other people's relationships, and none of his business. It was good to have Fin, to have his work, to never mind Ilona's agency nearly going belly-up, and having to take the bottle away from Lajos more than once in the last few months. But now they had come far enough for Lajos to pull out a shiny façade and chat with ladies again -- important ladies, patrons of the art and everything else. As Charlotte James had become quieter and faded more with each old cat that died and wasn't replaced, Maude Temminck had taken over as matriarch of the place. She was listened to now, in a serious manner.
In the gaps between the happy people, Andras almost saw those that weren't there. Maude had come out from the shadow of Manny when he died, after that defeat over Vine Square -- and only very few people knew what had actually happened to her husband, or when it was he really left the world, and who with.
For each happy person in the sun, was there not some shade following, some skeleton in a closet, or corpse in the basement?
And what about the people who had come and gone, flitted through -- Casey, who had brought the famous rococo mirror, for example, or that amazing red-headed relative of Mr. Visions who had kept the place on its toes for a bit, and who had probably deserved to bear the same name as the supervillain of this spring's super-blockbuster? There had been that delightful bloke, what was his name again, here only for the briefest time? Or Samantha, who'd lived in the Manor for such a long time, but who people hardly remembered now, especially as it didn't seem quite polite to try and remind Charlie and Deacon who Nia's actual mother had been. And there had been Eamon -- there was still always that little sinking feeling in Andras's stomach when he thought of him.
On the picture he had open on his screen, Andras could almost see the exact spot where Eamon wasn't. Could see the bushes through which Loki wasn't sneaking, and the precise window of the ballroom where two misty shapes weren't peering out at the parties of the living. And the basement window behind which the one that had turned out to be Cecil Vine jr. wasn't eternally waiting any more for his justification and revenge.
Quickly, Andras closed that file and deleted it.-
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