15
FRANK
About to leave home on Saturday, Frank picked up his phone from where he'd left it charging in the kitchen. Another missed call. He hadn't heard it ring; he must've been in the shower.
Ash.
No message.
And he had no intention or time to return the call.
The arrangements were made when Frank was too drunk to think straight. He only hoped he had the details correct in his mind. He planned to meet Chris in the café again. From there they'd head over to the studio for a private tour.
They hadn't exchanged numbers, so it wasn't a simple case of texting to make sure he had the right time and place. The only way they could communicate with each other was via that dating website, which Frank had not looked at since Thursday morning. He was sure he did have the right time and place, though, and they would exchange numbers today so Frank could scrub his details from that site.
Just as he stepped outside his house, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Another message from Ash. Frank read it. “Can I come to your place and talk?” There was no point in ignoring this message; she'd only send more. And after ten years he could surely listen to what she had to say.
A part of him wanted to hear what she had to say; wanted things back the way they were—safe and familiar.
He stood on his doorstep and typed out a quick reply. "Okay. Not today. Next week. Monday or Tuesday." He hit send.
Did he want her back?
No answer.
He had no answer at all. He didn't have space in his head or his schedule to consider whether he wanted: Ash, or a man —specifically Chris.
Frank pulled the door shut and set off.
He lived close to the gallery and the café so the time it would take to walk from his front door could be measured in seconds rather than minutes. His house was on a side street, so he couldn't actually make visual contact with anyone waiting outside the café or the studio when he stepped out of his door. When Frank turned the corner, however, Chris was waiting in plain sight and looking across the road.
Chris turned, spotted Frank, waved, and called out, "Hi, Frank, darling." He took a few steps in Frank's direction. His lips seem to twist into an alluring pout, but Frank was sure that was his imagination.
Face to face, a surge of desire swept through Frank. Not exactly lust, but the desire to get to know Chris better. And to get close enough to feel and smell and taste Chris.
Wishful thinking.
Frank suppressed the urge to envelop him in a bear hug. He remembered they'd sat in the cinema and held hands. They'd drunk and flirted for hours. Yet Frank was uncertain how to greet the new man in his life.
"Hi, Chris." Frank stopped in front of him and had the sensation that a man hug would have been the entirely natural greeting. Instead they both swung their arms a little.
Not touching.
"Deary, I don't know what I was thinking the other night, telling you I'd show you the studio. As if it's worth seeing." He jerked his head in the direction of the studio across the road. "I was half-cut. I forgot there isn't much to see up there. I hope I didn't raise your expectations."
Frank certainly didn't have high expectations; he had no expectations at all. If anything, a drug dealer or a property developer would have been his first and second guess about a long-haired, young man dressed casually like Chris driving such an expensive car. Making a living as an artist simply didn't exist as part of Frank's world view.
"I'm curious to see where you work, but it's all right if you don't want us to go there."
"Not at all, that's fine. Just don't want you to expect to view masterpieces when it looks a lot like the inside of the back of my car."
Together they crossed the street, and Chris pulled out a key to unlock the cinema door.
"It was a theater before it was a cinema. We haven’t altered the inside but make use of the space as it is," Chris said.
They stepped into the entrance foyer, and Chris closed the door behind them.
A busy mess of paper, bold words, and color dazzled before Frank could work out what he was looking at. The walls were covered with leaflets and flyers and posters. Not arranged in a neat, orderly fashion, but overlapping in an apparently random way. Frank went closer and made out that they were all advertisements for art shows. Some appeared pasted to the wall. Others stuck with sticky tape, staples, or tack.
The decoration covered not just the walls, but doors, three of them, camouflaged by the same twenty-first-century découpage.
Chris walked past Frank to one of three doors. "We believe there was once a wooden ticket booth in here, but we've no idea what happened to it. Taken for firewood or recycled, long before the council gave this building over to artists. It has a history of being abandoned, derelict, and squatted."
Frank ran his fingers over some of the leaflets and lifted those that were only stuck at the top, bottoms sticking out as enticing flaps.
"We all contribute to this space, putting in flyers and posters of our exhibitions. It's a living, growing diary of what we've collectively achieved. All of the artists in the building have contributed. And it dates back to before I moved in here."
"How many artists work from here?"
"That's not as simple a question as it sounds. Some people have assistants or work in teams or share their space." Chris opened an inner door, ready to move on.
"Roughly?"
"Between twelve and twenty. We have twelve allocated spaces and lots of shared space. The stage and stalls are shared spaces. We use them for storage, mostly. Come on; I'll show you."
They walked through into the stalls. The seats had all been removed. Only the dimmest of lighting lit their route. It was far from the exciting sense of walking into the cinema and hoping for a great film or waiting for curtain up at the theater.
"The stage would've been hidden behind the cinema screen for decades and backstage used for storage, which is what we use it for now as well."
"It's very dark. I hadn't realized how dark it would be. I though artists need lots of natural light."
There was little evidence of a cinema or theater and even less sign of any art studio. It appeared more like a warehouse, a space used for storage.
In the middle of the stalls, Chris stopped and took Frank's hand. "I don't want you getting lost, or falling over, or feeling scared of the dark."
Frank squeezed the warm hand. "Thanks, I feel safe now."
"We pay a peppercorn rent as part of the council supporting the arts, but we do have to pay the electricity bill. So we've got the lowest possible energy consuming bulbs for navigating around the building. If anyone were working here, they'd have it lit up like daylight. Most of the artists work in rooms around the perimeter of the building with windows letting in daylight. And we keep these dark spaces for storage. Mostly."
"I see," Frank replied.
On the ground floor, in the heart of the stalls, there were assorted ladders, trestle tables, folding and stacked chairs, boxes, and crates. There were also many floodlights and a small scaffold tower. Frank could see the balcony of the circle overhead.
"For a lot of us, light isn't essential. Having the big space is more important: some of us make huge works. And we've got a lot of stuff that needs to be stored. And, of course, it's affordable."
Chris pulled Frank toward him but started walking, leading Frank by the hand. "The place was a theater and used to have massive sets and screens. This makes it ideal for many of us to store large pieces. Have you been backstage before?"