Page 80 of Sin of Love
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He paintswith his hands and wadded-up paper towels from the bathroom. When I asked him why he didn’t buy brushes along with all the paint today, he said he didn’t want distance between him and the canvas. Or, in this case, a wall in the Marais district gallery we’ve broken into at two o’clock in the morning.
The wall’s former occupant—a painting of his from a few years ago—sits discarded on the floor, facedown, like so much trash even though its price tag includes three zeros.
“It is trash,” he says in response to my comment. “I’m no longer the man who painted that.”
“So just because you don’t relate to it anymore, no one can? Who are you to judge what makes people love art?”
He shrugs. “No one’s taken it home.”
“Maybe the gallery shouldn’t charge so much.”
Pausing with his fingers splayed on the wall, blue paint seeping from his palm, he glances at me. “I love it when you argue for the sake of arguing. Come here.”
“What? Why?”
Golden eyes narrow, fiery and expectant. “Do I need to give you a reason? Have you learned nothing the last few weeks?”
“You’re such a snob.”
His grin flashes in the ambient light from the nearby street. “You said you wanted me to teach you how to live. I make the rules. And I want to live in art and sin.”
I suck in a breath, my body clenching as it receives his message even more loudly than my mind. Art and sin. No two words better describe him. My wild god. Darker now than he was before. Newly tested and triumphant.
I’m reminded of one of our first conversations, outside one of Crossroads’ playrooms. Back when he was nothing more than an attractive nuisance, a force of chaos in my carefully ordered life.
“What if the pursuit of happiness and pleasure is, in fact, a pursuit of sin?”
“I’m surprised you even believe in it.”
His eyelashes flutter, gaze veering to my face. “Believe in what?”
“Sin.”
“I didn’t say I did.” He nods toward the glass. “But don’t you wonder if their pleasure isn’t enhanced by the idea of sinning?”
“So you do believe in it,” I muse now. “Sin.”
“I suppose, though I don’t think it’s synonymous with bad or evil.” His hand sweeps across the wall, dragging paint, but his eyes stay on me. “The dictionary says sin is an immoral act that breaks divine law.”
“You don’t agree?”
“I think sin is more of a feeling than an act. In some of us, it’s linked to secrets or shame. In others, curiosity. Delight. There was a time when being left-handed was considered sinful. And don’t get me started on notions of sin in modernity.”
“You think sin is a feeling you have when doing something illicit?”
“We can talk about it all night, or I can show you. Come here. Please.”
I stand, flexing the stiffness out of my legs. “The floor was getting uncomfortable, anyway.”
“Mmhm. Whatever you say.”
When I’m a few feet away, he shows me his paint-darkened palm, then slaps it against an unmarked spot on the wall.
“Take this, for example. This feeling right here. It’s delicious. Multifaceted. The paint is cool and slick, the wall just slightly roughened. The act in itself isn’t illicit—”
“If we get caught, we’ll be arrested. That’s the definition of illicit.”
