The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (50)

“I’ve been looking at you all night,” the stranger said, so close Rey smelled the sour milk breath on him.

“Good for you,” Rey said and did the only thing he could. He tried to push past him.

The stranger pressed Rey against the wall with the spread of his forearm. Rey’s mouth went dry, muscles soft as jelly. He’d been in so many fights, clawed his way out of groups of boys who tried to get him to man up. He thought of his father teaching him how to punch, how to take a hit and let it roll off so you could get away. But that was all before.

The stranger traced Rey’s arm and brushed a thumb across the soft rose petals. Rey thought of how Marimar said that poison ivy had attacked her boyfriend when he got a little passionate with her. He’d laughed but here, as panic paralyzed the drop of common sense he usually had, he was mad. Mad that he was surrounded by marble and glass and cement instead of dirt and grass and hills.

His attacker’s grip tightened and this time, he cried out. Rey felt the warm trickle of blood before he saw it. A dozen thorns, each one half an inch long, had protruded from his skin.

“What’s wrong with you, freak?” the drunk stranger yelled, staring at the blood running out of his palms from perfect tiny punctures.

“What’s going on here?” someone shouted. Professor Something, Rey realized.

The attacker shoved his bloody hand in his pocket. “Just congratulating Rey on a good show.”

“Is that right?” the professor asked Rey, who cradled his flowered hand against his chest.

He nodded. Again, who would believe him?

The stranger scurried off, but the professor remained. He was of average height and build. A full head of hair gone completely silver and forget-me-not blue eyes. No, hyacinth blue. Pretty fucking flower blue. Despite his coloring, his face was young. He wore an emerald blazer and a tiepin with a garnet on it, and jeans to throw off his wealth. He kept his distance, but homed his gaze on Rey, whose heart was a sledgehammer against his ribs.

“Can I call you a cab?”

At that, Rey laughed. He felt like a diffused time bomb as he said, “Actually, I prefer to be called Rey. Professor—”

“Edward Knight.”



* * *



Edward Knight, an art critic who doubled as a professor, took Rey under his wing and into his bed.

Rey, with his beautiful smile and honey brown eyes. The body he’d carved like Michelangelo did David. Eddie had swept into Rey’s life the night of the party and hadn’t left his side since. Rey gave art school one last semester, but his heart told him it wasn’t for him. While Eddie was never Rey’s teacher, he made time to stop by Rey’s apartment every day and see his progress.

Sometimes he had nothing to say, simply sat on a chair and watched Rey work. Stroke by stroke until the painting was finished.

“Why do you look so shocked?” Rey asked one night.

“Not shocked. Fascinated.”

“Because of my rose?”

“Because you don’t hesitate. From the first moment your brush touches canvas, you don’t stop. You barely even eat. It’s like you’re—”

“I’m inspired,” Rey interrupted, because he didn’t like the word possessed.

Rey worked on what he called weird shit, but Eddie preferred to call surrealism, even though surrealism was passé now. Rey didn’t know the names of famous artists or movements. He used his art history textbooks as palettes if his palette paper ran out. When Eddie took him to a real gallery show, Rey mostly smiled and drank champagne while all of Eddie’s friends spoke in rapid-fire French. He was surprised to find that none of them touched him, not even a casual tap on the shoulder. It almost felt like they’d been warned. That Eddie was his shield against the art scene that felt so foreign. After all, no matter how much schooling he’d had, his degree, how long he’d lived in New York City, when he was in the escargot-filled belly of art critics, Rey still felt like a townie from the middle of nowhere.

Slowly, he learned the right things to say. The right clothes to wear. He learned that people didn’t always want to talk to you, they wanted to simply be near you, just in case you were the next big thing. He’d become a story people might tell at Labor Day barbecues or happy hour. “Oh Reymundo Montoya? I was at his very first show. And yes, it’s real.”

Eddie insisted that everyone call him Reymundo. Rey was too sweet, too causal. Why be Rey? Something that meant king, when his mother had intended for him to be the king of the earth. Why be less when he was so much more?

Over the years Rey kept up with Marimar. He kept encouraging her to snatch up an eligible cowboy from town, but she was happy in her garden, still hibernating her heart though winter was long gone. The rest of the Montoyas, at least, were thriving. Caleb Jr. had come to the city for a partnership with some flashy designer, and Rey’d dropped thousands of Eddie’s money at New York Dolls on Murray Street just to show his uncle a good time. They’d visited Florecida in Key West and taken her on a booze cruise where she met her second husband. Eddie had even sat with Rey in the rain at the Jones Beach concert arena just to watch Juan Luis and Gastón be the opening act of a new boy band.

Knowing his family was safe, that he’d worried for nothing, he kept painting. He rolled his eyes at Marimar when she called him a sugar baby. She didn’t know how much Eddie protected him from the vultures of their world. Sometimes he worried that people were there to want him, to be close to the rose on his wrist, which he’d stopped hiding. That was when he locked himself away and didn’t emerge until he’d had a new batch of portraits. Florecida watching the sunset at the furthest most point of the United States. Marimar in her poison garden. Rhiannon with her pretty flower on her forehead, always changing.