JULY 20, 2019

Freedom ~ A story written with Bill Kirton

The image entitled “Sculptures by the Sea” was the prompt for episode #87 of R.B. Wood’s WordCount Podcast. Richard took the picture from the gardens at The Ogunquit Museum of American Art overlooking the sea.

For this one, Scottish author Bill Kirton and I decided to collaborate again! I’ve written several stories with Bill in the past.

“Freedom” is an oddly, quirky story with sexual undertones. Bill wrote parts 2 & 4, and I penned 1 & 3. There was no discussion of plot or characters prior to writing each part. As per our previous collaborations, we simply played off each other’s segment.

If you’d like to learn more about our process, feel free to read Bill’s post on it. It’s a great summary of what we did in case you want to collaborate on a project with another writer.

Listen to Bill and me reading the story here. You can also learn all the latest from the Facebook page for the Wordcount Podcast. Please DO LIKE the page. It will give us more visibility and increase our listening audience. Thank you!

Hope you enjoy the story.

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Before calling her husband for dinner, Linda confirmed the exhibit was closing end of the week. One more delay tactic and she hoped Mike would forget about going to the event.

“Sculpture’s not my thing,” she said as she brought their plates to the table and sat down. “From what I can see, the pieces are pedestrian at best.”

“You promised, Lin.”

“Yes, but …”

”Kim’s going to be there.” Mike took his seat across from her. He picked up his knife and fork and cut into the meat. “She always asks about you. What am I going to say to her?” He looked at her with unblinking eyes.

Linda pushed her peas around on the plate. Suddenly, their Sunday roast beef dinner no longer appealed to her. “She’ll understand. Just tell her I’m not feeling well, came down with the flu.”

“I’m tired of lying for you.” Mike shovelled more food in his mouth. “You’ve already had the flu twice in three months!”

“So, tell her I have a migraine then!” She scooped up a forkful of mashed potatoes and wanted to fling it at the man in front of her.

“Kim looks up to you,” Mike said. “She just wants to be a respected artist like you, only you can never find time for her. For god’s sake, she’s just a kid.”

“She’s another one of your brilliant students!” Linda made air quotes when she said the word ‘brilliant.’

Her husband finished chewing and wiped his mouth. “Yes, she is quite brilliant, but she can use a bit of encouragement. Would it kill you to help her a little?”

Something in Mike’s voice tugged at her. She almost felt a genuine migraine coming on. Linda didn’t have the strength to argue any more. This time, she’d have to make an appearance.

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The rest of the meal was marked with silence, punctuated by barely audible but still irritating chewing and swallowing sounds that Linda didn’t remember him making before. Ah yes, before. Back in those days when they’d smile across the table at each other in some discreet restaurant, not drink too much wine, and know that, before too long, they’d be in their hotel room having the best sex that either of them had ever had. Before the wedding, the mortgage, the compromises.

‘Alright,’ she said, as she stood up. ‘I’ll come, but don’t expect my encouragement to be too enthusiastic’. Again, the word ‘encouragement’ was delivered with air quotes. She gathered the empty plates and took them across to the dishwasher.

Mike said nothing, took his wine glass and the bottle to the sitting room and turned on the television. When Linda eventually joined him, he was in his familiar pose, leaning back in his IKEA chair, glass in hand, stockinged feet crossed on the edge of the coffee table. The weather-girl with the big breasts smiled at him despite the fact that she was promising foul weather for the next couple of days.

Linda sat in the other, identical chair and picked up the newspaper supplement with the details of the exhibition. She looked again at the shot they’d chosen to illustrate it – a strange, phallic shape in the foreground, peeping from behind a bush at another, somehow more female creation (another word which, even in her head, she adorned with yet more air quotes). The female figure was staring out to sea, hoping for something unknowable.

It was, Linda thought, a typical student’s effort – aspirational but not properly realized. The sort that Mike, who’d not made it as an artist himself so had turned to teaching, always enthused about so much that his students lapped up his extravagant praise for their work and believed they were the next Rodin.

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Linda arrived at seven, in the final hours of the exhibit. She expected only to see Mike and Kim, and perhaps a few of the artist’s closest friends. Surely, no one would stay late for the last night of a three-month-long sculpture exhibition.

She was wrong.

The place was packed. It almost looked like a grand opening, not a closing. She felt a sudden stab of jealousy upon seeing such a strong showing. Contrary to what Mike had said, his student seemed to be doing quite well without her encouragement. When Linda stopped beside one of the largest of the exhibits, she saw Kim talking to a man she used to know well. Brant Griffin had curated several of her shows when she first started. Regarded as the most influential man of the contemporary art world two decades ago, he suddenly disappeared from the scene. Rumour had it that his wife had left him, and he plunged into a deep depression. She wondered what he was doing here.

Kim caught Linda’s eye and offered an enthusiastic wave. She stuck an index finger in the air and mouthed “I’ll be right with you.” Brant only gave her a cursory glance and didn’t seem to recognize her. Considering her shows had been amongst some of his most successful back in the day, she found herself annoyed by his lack of acknowledgement.

Why did she bother to come tonight, and where was her husband? As if her current, creative dry spell wasn’t discouraging enough, the last thing she wanted was to discuss sculpture with one of Mike’s students—and uninspiring sculpture at that.

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But then, the whole experience was weird, unlike any other exhibition she’d been to, hers or other people’s. They’d fenced off the piece of shoreline in which to set up the various constructions and, over the single gated entrance to the space hung a large, fairly crude banner proclaiming ‘ART IS FREEDOM’. And the spectators were all in couples or groups of three.

‘Hi, gorgeous.’

The voice, soft and dripping with innuendo, coming from close behind her, was instantly recognizable. Brant Griffin. She tried to turn to greet him, but his hands were on her shoulders and he was moving her to face a gap in the nearby trees.

He’d always been a creepily hands-on sort of guy so she wasn’t surprised. She remembered him saying way back, at one of her own exhibitions, that the early stirrings of feminism in the media were ‘counter evolutionary’.

But the little cameo she saw through the gap came as a shock. Mike, in an outfit far too young for him, was standing looking at one of the exhibits, each arm around a female student, chattering away to them and bending to kiss each in turn.

‘What the…?’

She didn’t get to finish the question. Brant spun her round, clutched her hard against himself with his left arm and grabbed her chin in his right hand, tilting her head to kiss her. She struggled to push him away, not believing he’d try anything so blatant in a public place.

‘Brant! Brant!’ she said, forcing herself not to scream and trying to treat it all as one of his clumsy jokes. But another voice took the initiative.

‘Yeah. Hands off, you pervert’.

Brant’s grip loosened and Linda was able to untangle herself from him and step back. Another hand took her arm, softly, gently, and pulled her away. It was Kim, looking impossibly girlish, fragile.

Brant managed a pathetic laugh, wiped his mouth as if it had been contaminated by contact with Linda’s, spat ‘Bitch’ at Kim – or perhaps Linda, neither was sure – and stamped away through the trees.

‘OK, Honey?’ said Kim.

Linda nodded and smiled, reaching her arms out towards the girl. They moved into a close embrace, bodies tight together, each feeling the familiar thrill of the other’s closeness.

‘I’ve missed you,’ said Kim.

‘Me too,’ said Linda.

And they kissed.