Home [In progress]

Sullivan Whelan
[dex or manip + crafts (2D Art spec)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Sullivan Whelan
[Retry at +1]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Sullivan Whelan
[Ok, he waited a while to mail her the bill. Clearly this is why. So he came back to it a week later. Starting over!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]
Sullivan
There was always a new gallery event going on down on Santa Fe. Likely Eva had been invited to more than a few of them. Tonight it was a gallery dedicated to new and emerging artists. Likely not the sort of thing that anyone outside the art scene would want to attend, except that one of the artists being showcased happened to be related to a person of some importance. And so the word got out, and many people-about-town were invited.
Sullivan was not the artist that many of those people came to see. But a handful of his paintings hung along one wall, and they were both good enough and interesting enough that they drew a respectable amount of attention despite the fact that his name held no special meaning or importance (not among mundane society, anyway.) There were four paintings in total: Half Light, Siren, Feral, and Home. All of them shared a dark color palette, with bright splashes of red adorning the more impassioned two (Siren and Feral.) Half Light was a stark, nearly black-and-white image of an old woman standing at a moonlit window, her face both shadowed and illuminated, soft and beautiful and harsh and aged - depending upon where the light struck. Siren was a young, partly naked girl sitting on a bed, her knees curled up to her bare chest and her face partly obscured by wild dark hair. Her arms were bleeding from a handful of wounds, and in one hand she clutched a knife. The one eye that wasn't obscured by her hair looked out at the viewer with a wild kind of intensity, frightened and angry and inappropriately sultry all at once.
Feral was a more abstract piece: a flowing pool of dark, ominous shapes splattered in blood.
Home was a cliff overlooking the sea. Dark, gloomy pines. A stormy spray of water. A sky darkened by clouds. This was all one saw if they gave merely a cursory glance, but a closer inspection revealed a face beneath the surface of the waves: a woman drowning in the sea.
Sullivan had spent the last fifteen minutes or so wandering about the gallery to take in the rest of the artwork. He was there alone tonight, and dressed in some of his better clothes, which amounted to a pair of slim black slacks, expensive-looking black dress-boots, a white buttoned shirt and a blue silk tie the same color as his eyes. Eventually he began to make his way back to his own collection, attempting to keep his presence as unobtrusive as possible so that he might casually overhear the comments being made.
Eva

Garrett Hagen is the well-connected up-and-coming artist. The one whose family connections have flooded the gallery tonight with strangers. Not just the usual bohemians and hipsters and professors and creative professionals in slim back jeans and ironic bow-ties, but lawyers and developers in their standard uniforms of dark suits and golf shirts and khakis, respectively. His father is a Judge, after all, and his sister is married to one of the prominent Denver developers and his older brother is running for city council in the next election, but there are already whispers that he has his sites set on mayor or congressman or some other higher office.

The new mix changes the vibe in the room, and the comments Sullivan overhears range from insightful remarks, admiration, reasonable critiques to the sort of privilege-oblivious middle/upper class queries made by men who golf and attend the symphony only because they sponsor it and must be seen, sometimes, in black tie. Like, who would hang that on a wall? Or, give me dogs playing poker any day.

Garrett's pieces are all about imprisonment. There are bars to be seen on every canvas, and only three people in the room know what that signifies to him. The account executives and chamber of commerce vice presidents in the room make those self-same comments about Garrett's pieces, but only when they think no one is looking. And one or two of his works already have a SOLD sign mounted over the identifying information.

The room is crowded and overwarm. Too many people in too small a space, the lights are too bright. The HVAC unit does not work well; or rather, no longer works well when stressed by so much bodyheat and the men are loosening their ties, the women taking off their jackets and walking around barearmed in shells or sheathe dresses.

Despite the heat, Éva has not removed her jacket. It is dark navy and fitted and expensive, and made to keep her warm in the artificially cold environment of her firm's offices. Beneath it, she wears a sheath dress, crisp ivory banded with concentric, darkening rings of navy down the skirt. The only hint of whimsy in her clothing is in her shoes: which are a lovely orange sherbet color and lift her another 3 1/2 inches above her barefoot height.

She spends a good twenty minutes or so chatting with Garrett Hagen's father - a local judge - and then another ten with the young man himself. Then, there are others in the crowd whom she knows. Or who know her. Some greet her discretely, and she allows them this discretion. Others, who have never required her particular brand of counsel, greet her more openly. But rarely warmly, and these other conversations are crisp and light and passing. Beneath it all, she is remarkably tense. Aware of the weapon tucked away in a shoulder holster beneath her jacket. Aware that it would do very little against -

- but she does not show this tension. She swallows it and smiles and speaks. She watches the corners of the room and drifts through it, now and then glancing at the other artists' pieces. She has no particular eye for such things, but when a piece strikes her, as Home does, she steps up to it, much closer than most would carry themselves, and studies it closely, a thoughtful, yielding frown on her face. The suggestion of absorption without the fact of it. She works hard to remain alive to her surroundings.

As now, several heartbeats in to just such an investigation of Home, a sidelong glance toward unobtrusive artist keeping an ear out for comments of the passers-by.

Her eyes are dark. Her hair is knotted into a rather severe chignon. There is a sense of composure about her that is almost perfectly calibrated to the room. The faintest tip of her dark head toward Sullivan by way of greeting then, when she catches his eye. It could stand in, as well, for an invitation to join her in front of the painting.

After that glance, her attention returns to the work. It is mounted with the horizon line just above her eye level, and that is where her attention lingers, chin lifted, her profile elegant against the shifting blur of the thinning crowd.

If Sullivan takes that tip of her head as invitation and joins her in front of the piece, she does not glance in his direction with more than a brief cut of her gaze. But she does ask him, quietly, " - is this one for sale?"Sullivan

[Per+Empathy (Emotional States spec)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )Eva

Manipulation + Subterfuge (nothing to see here!)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )Eva

(So: she's definitely in a heightened state of tension and working carefully to conceal it. She is more aware of her surroundings - hypervigilant - than she was the first night they met and seems removed from it. Concerned about something foremore, and perhaps a bit haunted.)

Sullivan

"It is, if you're really interested." Sullivan fell in beside Eva, glancing at his work with a guarded expression. "It's priced at three thousand."

Some might consider that a lot of money. More than likely too much to pay for something to be hung on a wall and promptly forgotten. Unless of course you were the sort of person for whom $3,000 was nothing more than spending money, which probably included some of the guests here tonight. Or unless one was the sort to buy a painting and not forget about it. Good art had a lasting effect on those who really looked at it.

Sully's eyes drifted back to Eva, regarding her profile and the fine arch of her cheekbones. Taking in the set of her jaw and the angle of her neck. Reading the tension in the minute details of her body language. After a soft exhale, he asked, "Are you okay?"

Because she didn't look okay. Composed, certainly, and more than capable of dealing with whatever worries may have been eating at her. But the haunted look in her dark eyes troubled him.

Eva

Can he read it in her? She is the sort to purchase a piece of art and then forget about it. Her presence here tonight has little to do with the works on the walls or the passion of the artists who created them, and everything to do with the Judge who sent her an invitation, for all that he marked it as no more than FYI.

"Perfectly well." Éva lies, with a crisp and unwholesome ease. There is a curve to her mouth with the words, though now that Sullivan has seen that haunted look in her eyes, there is no unseeing it. The tension outlines her frame, evident somehow in the set of her shoulders, the stiffness of her wrists. The tendons of her neck. The well of memory in her eyes. "Thank you."

It was long enough ago that she cannot remember every textured detail, but there are pieces of it that will never leave her. It was evening; she was working late. She answered the phone thoughtlessly, exasperated at the interruption as she was struggling to finish - what was it? Important at the time. Then Rozsa, her voice breaking. They're here. - in the middle of the words. They want to see you.

"Tell me," oh, her dark eyes linger on the painting in its frame, but here she cuts a slanting glance his direction, the sweep of her profile enough to give him a hinting view of her other cheek, the suggestion of her mouth, that curve deepening into a quietly polite half-smile of inquiry as she tips her head toward the piece on display.

"Why is she in the water." The briefest emphasis, the knuckle of her index finger tucked in the direction of the drowning woman. "Is it suicide - or did the storm draw her in?" Another pause. "Or was there something else?"

Eva

(BRB!)

Sullivan

Perfectly well, thank you.

Sully's expression shifted for a moment, the line of his heavy brows lifting in what was likely a mix of concern and skepticism, but he schooled himself away from it - chose for the moment to let the matter rest. The crisp, bright lighting in the gallery brought out the vivid hues in his eyes and the boosted the stark contrast between his white shirt, blue tie and black pants. He looked like he belonged there - more at home in spaces like these than perhaps Eva was.

Not that she stood out - at least not in a bad way.

When she asked about the painting, he answered without looking away from her eyes. "She was pulled under. The sea overcame her."

Eva

Though there are tables with beer and wine and inexpensive hors d'oeuvres scattered about the space and most are drinking, Éva carries neither a plastic wine glass nor a plate littered with strawberry hulls and the skins from cocktail peanuts. Her hands are free, the both of them, though having indicated the woman drowning in the painted sea, she now tucks her elbow and arm back against the bag she carries beneath her shoulder. Feels the weight of that bag firm against her ribs.

For the first time since she caught the young artist's gaze and invited him to join her in front of this particular work, her dark eyes cut away from the painted proper to his meet his own. Meet them with the same level equanimity she has cultivated about herself since she arrived at the gathering. Though there is something, some upward tilt of her chin, that embeds the look with a sharper sense of repartée.

"Was she merely walking on the strand when the tide came in?" A hook of her brows. The bright lights fixated on the pieces on the walls do her no particular favors tonight. Though perhaps Sullivan is the only one in the space to see the hint of strain around her eyes. Which was no way in evidence the first night they met.

"Or did she swim out too far. Get herself caught in some undertow?"