What do you do when you see talent? What do you do when you see young talent? What do you do when you see young talent stifled? Let's see what Church does when he sees it.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: From Whence I Came The second installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
31
Is that an Andy Philips?
I rose early like I always did, and took a long, hot, thorough shower. There was a lot of sex to wash off and I wanted to be sure I didn't miss any of it. I dressed quietly and crept downstairs. No one was around, but that wasn't much of a surprise as it wasn't even dawn yet. The first hints of light were only starting to color the pre-morning sky. I made a pot of strong coffee and sat at the dining room table. I sipped from my cup and leaned against the seatback to watch the sun rise through the sliding doors of the sunroom.
Andy was the first one down. He entered the room in the middle of an awkward one arm stretch. His other arm was clamped over an oversized sketch pad and a flat box of colored pencils. Andy set his things on the far side of the dining room table. Once free of the small burden, he rubbed his face with his palms like he was trying to wake-up his expression.
The gesture reminded me of the one that I use when I'm frustrated or embarrassed. I also remembered Joe doing the face rub once or twice. I had a fresh wonder of where the habit came from. I didn't ever remember my father doing anything like that. My father didn't gesture very much.
"Morning Uncle Church." Andy said on what sounded like the inhale of a half-stifled yawn.
"Morning Andy. Want some coffee?"
Andy wrinkled his nose at my offer. "No, just some orange juice for me. I don't know how anyone drinks that stuff." Andy went into the kitchen. "You want some OJ?" He called back to me.
"Sure, a short one." I looked at the pad that the boy had left behind and was curious what was inside it. He'd left it out of my reach, but that didn't seem like a deliberate action. I assumed he'd simply set his things down where he thought they wouldn't be in my way. I pulled the pad to me with magic and flipped the cover back. "I'm gonna make pancakes," I said to the open page. "You want to help?"
The linen pages of the expensive pad were covered with sketches of clothes, tons of clothes. Pages and pages were illustrated with men and women of all ages and body types. They were dressed for every occasion. The faces and extremities weren't defined beyond the limits of the garments. They were limited to penciled ovals and circles, but the bodies were very detailed.
Andy came out of the kitchen with two glasses in his hands. He saw me looking at his pad and froze. "Don't look at that!" He cried.
I flipped the book shut so I wouldn't upset him more than he already was, and I tried to soothe him with praise. "These are good, Andy. I'd really like to look at them."
Andy deflected. "No one has ever seen them. They're just doodles."
I flicked the cover of the pad with my right forefinger and pressed him to show me. "Not only are these designs impressive, but the drawing technique is amazing. Would you tell me about them? Please."
Andy hesitated. He set his glass of orange juice down and put the other glass in front of me. He held his hand out for the pad. I handed it over, and Andy tucked it safely under his arm. I switched from trying to press the boy to coaxing him and hoped that would make my persuasion more persuasive. "Andy, you already know almost every embarrassing thing about me. I'd really like to know all the wonderful things about you. This pad seems like a wonderful thing."
"OK." He relented with a shrug. "But not here and not now...later, in private, and just you. I only brought this down because I didn't think anyone would be up. I like to draw by the early light, the angle helps me figure out the shadows."
"I'm looking forward to it." I said.
Andy nodded and took his pad and pencils up to his room at a run. He returned to help with breakfast.
Andy and I took our lead from Mary's cooking technique and made piles of pancakes. We separated them on serving plates by fruit type and set them in the oven on warm. After we finished with the pancakes, I fried up two pounds of bacon and two pounds of scrapple. It was too much food, even for our ravenous crew, but leftovers didn't often go to waste in the overflowing household.
As people came down, or up in the twins' case, I fixed plates for them and sent them to the dining room with coffee or orange juice as age and taste dictated. Once everyone was fed, I sat to my own meal. As I ate, the twins drifted away to play, while the adults lingered at the table to chat about this and that.
I finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen. Andy went to shower while I sat to talk. "Did you two have fun yesterday?" Joe asked Shawn and me.
"Yeah, it was a nice day." I said and rested my arm on the back of Shawn's chair.
Mary chimed in with some concern that I thought was sweet. "Bem thought you were on edge when you left yesterday. Are you alright?"
I gave a sanitized answer to Mary's question. The real answer would have been something like, you're driving me fucking crazy and I can't take much more of it.' What I said was much less confrontational. "There's a lot going on right now and I've been taking too much of it personally. Shawn noticed and demanded we take a day for ourselves. It helped." Inside my head I followed that with, the two marathons of mind-blowing sex helped some to.'
My memory of the marathons fueled a wave of lust that I assumed Shawn felt. He reflexively squeezed my thigh under the table in response. I rubbed his far shoulder with the hand that rested on his chair and felt his lust rise. Since it wasn't the time or the place to start feeling lusty, I dropped my arm off Shawn's chair and folded my hands in front of me on the table.
Shawn took his cue from me and shut his emotions down like he'd slammed the door on a windowless room. I focused on getting my own under control. The link we had was nice, but some of the more animal emotions could set off their own feedback loop. Anger and lust were especially dangerous.
Shawn and I had never come to physical blows, but once upon a time a trivial disagreement had started a loop that became an intense shouting match that devolved into a hate fuck. We didn't beat each other up, or smash up the furniture, but it wouldn't have taken much for it to get to that point.
After that incident, we both took some meditation classes to learn how to break the cycle. Shawn was better at meditation than I was. He'd learned to wall himself off completely, albeit for a short time. That provided the `breathing room' that I needed to control myself, thus breaking the loop before it got started.
The conversation had continued around me while I was thinking of those other things, and it wasn't long before I was caught not paying attention. "Earth to Church." Joe said over and over, completely missing the irony.
I shook my head and tried to pay attention. "Yeah, what...sorry."
"What are you doing today?" He asked.
"No plans. I've been running pretty wide-open since we got here, so a day around the house wouldn't be bad. That is, unless you need us to take care of anything for you."
Joe nodded at me but directed his comments to Shawn. "Nothing for you, but Shawn and I have business. Abbey finished setting up the LLC and moving all the investments. One of the partners is coming by after lunch to review everything with us. He's also supposed to bring the account exec that will manage the LLC on Abbey's end. They want to introduce him to Shawn to make sure they can work with each other. There's also some preliminary paperwork to go over this morning."
Shawn affirmed that he was at Joe's disposal.
Bem waited for his turn then announced his plans. "Mary and I are planning to take the twins...where?" He asked and turned to my sister.
"Down the shore." She finished his sentence with a New Jersey-ism. "Ocean City."
I stifled a snicker at the term and the fact that it seemed to confuse Bem. A peculiarity of New Jersey vernacular language is that whenever one goes to the beach, they go `down the shore,' even if they travel to the north to do it.
"Have fun." I said. "Just call us if you're not going to be home for dinner." I immediately regretted saying what I did, but the words got out before I realized how overbearing I sounded.
"Yes, Mother." Bem said through a faked impatient glare, much to Mary's amusement.
Bem and Mary went to get Hannah and Leah ready to travel. Shawn moved to Joe's side of the table so they could both look at the laptop screen. I got up and wandered around to look for a diversion. I remembered Andy and the secret sketch book and went upstairs.
"It's open." Andy replied to my knock at his closed bedroom door.
I went in and closed the door behind me. "Is now a good time, to see your designs?" I asked.
Andy was sitting at his desk with the pad in front of him and the cover shut. His box of colored pencils was conspicuously open. I guessed that he'd been sketching when I knocked, but he'd flipped the pad shut as I came in. There was real fear in the boy's face. I didn't want to push too hard, but I wanted to see what he could do, and I hoped to encourage him to open up more.
"You don't have to show me anything. I'd really like to see, but I don't have to if it makes you uncomfortable." I reassured Andy, then I tempered my statement with some hard facts. "That said, if you ever want to work in this field, you'll have to show someone, sometime."
Andy sighed like he'd resigned himself to my reasoning and stood up. "You're right. I'll show you, but you can't laugh or tell anyone about anything." He motioned for me to sit where he'd been seated.
"I promise." I agreed with my hand on my heart.
Andy pulled a tall folding-stool over to the desk and perched next to me. He threw the cover back on his work and flipped the pages in a paper slideshow. While the designs went by, he gave what sounded like a practiced speech. "Designer clothes are three things, high quality, exclusive, and boring. The shirt you're wearing," he tugged at the short sleeve of the burnt-orange plaid buttoned-down he'd selected for me, "is very well made of good material and it fits you. It could taper around your waist more and the shoulders aren't quite right, but it looks as good as it can for something made to a standard pattern."
Andy pulled at the top of my shirt. He tried to get the shoulders to lay the way he wanted them to. They wouldn't cooperate and he gave up with a huff. He let his arm fall against his side with a frustrated slap. "You can wear that label because you're not too tall in the body, and you have an athletic build. That's the exclusive part. That label excludes a lot of people who are too short, tall, fat, or thin for these clothes to fit."
"The last thing that shirt is," Andy said like he was building up to something, "that shirt is dull. It's a muted color, with a different color pocket and a traditional cut. The only reason it has a little logo on the chest and the designer's name on the sleeve, is so people can tell it apart from every other boring shirt on the market. It doesn't have to be that way!" Andy waved his arms wide in a dramatic gesture.
"Everyone deserves to look good. Everyone deserves quality. No one should be excluded from a label because they're too short, tall, fat, thin, long in the leg, short in the body, long in the body, short in the leg, long arms, short arms, big muscle arms, thin bony arms, whatever. It's even harder for women who come in so many different shapes. I've never seen a woman whose clothes fit perfect. There is always something wrong. WHY?" He demanded.
Andy sat back on his stool with his arms crossed over his chest like he defied me to give him an answer. "It's 2025. Modern factories and 3D printing can customize clothes for every single body type. Digital scanners can take measurements and spit out tons of option. As a bare-bones solution, all shopping could all be done with some programming and a touch screen. I don't like not having salespeople, but it's possible. None of this has to cost any more than what people pay for designer labels today."
"And..." Andy paused his speech to leave a silence for the inaudible drumroll I assumed was playing in his head, "COLOR! Bold, bright, natural color. Nature already knows what matches. No one ever accused a flower of clashing or a parrot's feathers of being loud. Each of these drawings takes its colors from a single plant, animal, or mineral. Patterns and prints are important. Make a statement! I want my designs to be so individual, everyone who sees them knows who's responsible without having to ask. There would be NO logo on my clothes to distract from the lines of the outfit."
I saw an opportunity for a comment and pitched it at Andy, so he'd know I was keeping up. "Like Cadillac hiding the fuel cap under a taillight."
Andy stared at me, and I realized my pitch had gone way, way wide. The comment confused him. "What are you talking about?" He asked.
I tried to salvage the point I was trying to make by explaining. "In the fifties, Harley Earle, the designer for Cadillac, hid the fuel cap under a taillight so the fuel door wouldn't interrupt the body lines of his car."
The example clicked with Andy. "Exactly!" He shouted with his enthusiasm back in full force. He flipped the pages of his pad and pointed at his favorites, all aggressively colorful. There were hundreds of perfectly coordinated sketches of flattering clothes, drawn on all shapes and sizes of people. The boy was animated and passionate, excited as he turned the pages.
I noticed that no two sketches had the same body. I assumed, from the variations, that Andy's models had to be real people. "Where did you get all these people?" I asked.
"Everywhere," Andy opened his hands wide, palms up, in a gesture that seemed to take in the whole world, "I take pictures all the time. Sometimes I go to the mall and watch. It looks like I'm texting but I'm really taking a bunch of pictures. I've drawn most of my classmates, and tons of strangers."
The boy's admission lit a lightbulb in my head. "That's why you stare at people, isn't it? That's why you were taking pictures at the mall. I wondered about that."
"Partly." Andy agreed with more honesty than I expected. "When I can't take pictures, I try to memorize body shapes, but...you know...spank bank." He said with a shrug and an embarrassed grin.
I chuckled at my nephew and thought some more. I remembered a few other people I'd caught him staring at and wondered who else his sketch pad might contain. I broached the subject obliquely. "Did you draw me?"
The color drained from Andy's face and returned in a furious flush. I took his red face for an affirmative answer. "What about Shawn, and Bem? Did you draw them to?"
"I never said I drew you." Andy tried to deflect.
"No," I agreed, "the color of your face answered that question. What about the guys, or your Aunt Mary?"
Andy reluctantly flipped to some pages near the end of the tablet. There was Mary, Bem, and me, each with our own page and multiple outfits. I saw myself...well, just my body with a circle for a head, in a bold suit that Andy said was inspired by the colors of a natural gas flame. The jacket and pants were the yellow of the flame tip, the shirt and tie the blue of the base, and the vest was the amber orange in between.
I briefly considered explaining that if a gas flame was orange and yellow at the tip, the mix was too rich, but I decided not to bother him with my pedantic nonsense. Andy also showed my body dressed in print pull overs and buttoned downs with sharply tapered athletic cuts. Mary was displayed in all manner of outfit from evening gown to sun dress. Bem showed off suits and casual wear of many different types. I was impressed by everything I saw, but I managed to notice that someone was missing. "Where's Shawn?"
The flush that hadn't completely left Andy's face returned full force as he lied to me. "I didn't do him yet."
"Come on, Andy," I wheedled, "I like looking at him too. Please."
The boy covered his face with his palms. "He's on the next page, the next four actually." He admitted into his hands.
I flipped the page and was stunned by what I saw. The level of detail Andy had achieved with the sketches of Shawn was remarkable. I knew Shawn's body as well as I knew my own, probably better, and Andy's sketches followed every curve and ridge. He'd drawn Shawn from every possible angle, front, back, profile, and all combinations. Each of the first three pages averaged five Shawns per page.
The last sheet only had one drawing. Shawn was standing, facing to the left with his body turned so his right shoulder was nearest the viewer. He wore a wild print island shirt, open at the neck with the collar of a red undershirt exposed underneath. Below that he wore blue shorts that hugged at the waist, flared out slightly to accommodate his muscular thighs and ended below the knee. Shawn's head wasn't a simple pencil oval, and his extremities weren't simple outlines either. This last drawing was a full portrait.
"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, second only to the real thing." I gushed and was completely floored with Andy's talent. "You have a gift. More than that, you have a plan."
"Do you really like it?" Andy asked as he slowly uncovered his face.
"It looks like he could step off the page." I praised the boy and we silently admired Shawn for a few minutes. My head spun with possibilities.
Andy's style was over the top by Earth standards, but on Solum...on Solum I thought that he could take the fashion industry by storm. I desperately wanted to start making plans for when we got there, but Joe hadn't made up his mind yet, and he still had two days to torture me with doubt. Either way, I felt that I had to do something. `These designs have to see the light of day somehow.' I thought.
I got my black glass phone out of my pocket where I'd been carrying it from habit since we arrived on Earth. I stared at the blank screen and wondered if what I was about to do would make things better or worse. I hesitated and told Andy why I hesitated. "I don't know if I should show this to you. Maybe it's wrong...oh, to hell with it. What I'm about to show you stays a secret, OK?"
I didn't wait for Andy to answer before I opened the phone and selected the photo library. I flipped through the photos until I found one of Bem, Shawn, and me on an afternoon shopping trip just before Shawn and I were married. I turned the screen to Andy and watched his expression. He ripped the phone from my hands and poured over the photo. He enlarged each one of us to inspect the color and cut of our outfits. "Why are you dressed like that?" He demanded without taking his eyes from the screen.
"Almost everyone wears bright colors on Solum. They're not quite the same brand of bold that you use, but they're not afraid of color. That's how I know Shawn would love any of these outfits you put him in. He's not a clothes horse, but he has a good sense of style and knows what looks good. I don't pick anything out at home. Some of my stuff, Shawn picks, but most comes from one place. I only go to one shop and the woman there, Rubi, she picks everything I wear, like you did on our first day here."
"These are great." Andy kept his focus on the screen and reconsidered his praise. "They could be much better, but they're good. Do you have any other pictures?" He made a motion to scroll through my photo gallery. I panicked and snatched the phone back before his finger touched the screen.
Andy looked up at me. He was hurt and confused by my denial of the other images he wanted to see. "I'm sorry," I explained, "there's stuff on here that...oh shit...uhm...you can't, uhm...you know, you can't see."
"Oh God, I'm sorry." Andy chuckled, either at his own indiscretion, or at my indirect admission to having a pile of nude photos on my phone. "I know better than to just start scrolling through someone's pictures. Would you show me whatever I can see?"
Andy and I hung out in his room for a couple hours. We shared photos and sketches and talked clothes for much of that time. Andy was excited about every outfit in every picture I showed him. He especially loved the pictures from my wedding and the concept of the color changing suits. He peppered me with style questions, most of which I had no answers for.
When I ran out of photos that I could show him, Andy got up and stood with his back to the window. The mid-morning sunshine filtered through his tousled blond hair and haloed his head with warm light. "I can't wait to see it. I'd go right now if we could." He said meaning Solum. "I really hope we can. This's been so much fun. I don't want you to go away forever. Is there any way to call you or email you there? I mean if you have to go back without us. I could work on Dad, get him to change his mind."
"I don't know. I don't know how any of this works." I rubbed my neck as the frustration of Joe's deferred decision rose inside me. "Your Dad is really pissing me the fuck off. You want to go, I want you to go, he needs to go; why can't he just make up his mind to go? I told him he could come back if he didn't like it. There's no risk at all." I realized I'd been shooting off my mouth about my brother in front of my brother's son and was ashamed of myself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that stuff in front of you. I'm just worried."
Andy stepped away from the window, crossed the room, and flopped on the edge of his bed. "I am to. Dad always says, `opportunity only knocks once.' This time it kicked the door in and he's acting it like its robbing the house."
His statement struck me funny, and I started sniggering, "kicked the door in...that's great!" When I settled, I looked at the boy for a long time. An idea percolated in my head, and I asked a question for some information that I needed to crystalize my thoughts. "How old are you, I mean, when do you turn sixteen?"
"This Monday."
"Really? Happy birthday then." I rolled Andy's age over in my head. In five years, he'd be twenty-one and a legal adult. His father, my brother, could say anything he liked, but he'd have no legal hold on Andy at that point. Andy could do whatever he wanted. Joe couldn't stop him from coming to Solum if that's what the boy wanted to do.
It made sense to me that if Andy decided to come, that would likely force Joe's hand. I doubted Joe would stay on Earth while his son went to a parallel world where they would likely never see each other again. What I was about to suggest definitely fell under the category of playing dirty, but I didn't really care. I made sure I had the boy's complete attention and made my pitch.
"Andy, I'll make a deal with you. If your dad decides to be...difficult, if he refuses my offer to come to Solum, then this offer that I'm about to make goes into effect. On the day of your twenty-first birthday, five years from Monday, Shawn and I will drive my Crown Vic down this street at eleven at night. If you still want to go to Solum, be standing in front of this house, and we'll pick you up. If you can convince your dad to come along, we'll pick him up to. If you change your mind, and don't want to come, don't be there and we'll cruise past and go home. That's an absolute promise I will keep no matter what. OK?" I eyed my nephew to gauge his reaction, but I couldn't read his expression.
I figured I'd better lay out the rest of it before he got carried away. "That doesn't mean you can fuck off the next five years here. You still have to live your Earth life for that time; stay in school, go to college, meet people, look after your dad. That's your end of the agreement. You can't tell your dad about this offer until you turn twenty, but you need to tell him as soon as you do. That will give him a year to make up his mind. You'll be an adult, so he can't stop you, but he needs to have every opportunity to decide his own fate. Maybe knowing, or thinking, that you'll come with us either way, will force his decision." I stood from the desk chair and held my hand out. "Do we have a deal?"
Andy sidestepped my hand and surprised me with a big hug. "Deal. Thanks, Uncle Church. I feel so much better now! I'll miss you if I have to stay here this time, but five years isn't so long."
I was freshly thrilled at the idea of Andy coming to Solum with us. He was a blast to have around. Every minute I spent with him was a minute I spent thinking that Joe just had to make the right decision and come with us. I couldn't keep myself from imagining what a shining star Andy could be on Solum and how much fun it would be to have him around. Something had to be done, and I was starting to get another idea.