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[abrightboy]

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[abrightboy]

“She was lost.”

His work on the brush in his hand doesn’t improve; his mind is elsewhere now.

“She just wanted to get out.”

[conning]

“What about that called to you?” His tone is gentle. He still doesn’t correct the clumsy job, instead just stealthily palming Malcolm’s poorly finished jobs to re-clean them.

[abrightboy]

“I’m lonely, too,” Malcolm admits.

[conning]

“What did you want to give her, by helping her?”

He puts away the cleaned brushes, and then just… lingers in front of their paintings, not wanting to leave the gazebo yet. “What did it bring you?”

[abrightboy]

"I just wanted to give her a way out," Malcolm tells him. "What does this have to do with painting?"

[conning]

“Why though? Why did you want to give her that?”

He realizes he’s not just asking for the sake of the point he’s trying to make and stops himself. “It has to do with art. With the reason anyone created or destroys anything.”

He gestures toward their easels. Malcolm’s still life, Neal’s outlined replica. “You want to reach something. Someone. Share or explore or figure something out. Just because you’ve never channeled it with paint and paper doesn’t mean you don’t have an artist’s heart.”

[abrightboy]

“Because I couldn’t give it to the girl in the box,” he finally blurts out. “That’s why. Or any of the ones before her. Or so many after her. There’s no noble reason for what I do, Neal. It’s a compulsion to claw back my failures. That’s it. The need to just… give one person a chance at life for all the lives I couldn’t save.”

[conning]

Neal blinks. “The… Girl in the Box?”

That’s more than just a descriptor. Malcolm says it like a title. Like a name. The rest of it is important, he doesn’t miss it and won’t ignore it, but there’s background here he doesn’t have.

[abrightboy]

“When I was ten years old, I found a woman in a travel trunk in the basement of my family home. I called the police, but when they came, she was gone. I didn’t understand, at the time, that my father had been drugging me into amnesia with chloroform. I didn’t know that he’d had lots of time to take her far away from our house. I thought I was saving her. But she wasn’t there when they searched. Everyone told me she was imaginary for twenty years, but she was real and I knew it,” Malcolm tells him. “But I couldn’t save her. Or the twenty-three before her.”

[conning]

The sound Neal makes doesn’t quite reach the level of oh. As a child, Malcolm found a girl in a box. The twenty-fourth person his father murdered.

“Art isn’t noble,” is what he finally says. “It’s desperate in its own ways. Reaching for something. Meaning, connection, the expression of emotion words won’t quite frame. That’s not noble. It’s human. What you do, why, that’s human too.”

[abrightboy]

"Okay, I see your point. Though, like what I do, I think art also takes a certain amount of... natural aptitude," he muses.

[conning]

"Maybe. But you can learn to be good at things. You can learn aptitude." He shrugs. He doesn't realize it's easy for him to say that--he's found himself with a general level of aptitude for almost everything he's ever tried.

Neal hesitates, then organizes some supplies needlessly before tucking his hands into his pocket. "...Thank you. For telling me. And for letting me in here."

[abrightboy]

"I'd let you in here any time you want," Malcolm tells him. "I'd like to watch you work some time." He's never seen a real artist do art.

[conning]

"...Thanks." He doesn't know how often he'll ask--he doesn't like having to ask--but the option existing... it's nice.