Page 95 of Alpha Heat
Maybe it was because Janus hadn’t returned from the city yet. Maybe it was because his brother Ray was giving Xan a great deal of praise for the way things were playing out in Virona. Or maybe it was because he was in love. Urho didn’t know. He didn’t care.
He just wanted his boy to glow like that forever.
At Xan’s question, Caleb barely looked up from the marmalade he was spreading. “When you show a genuine interest in the procedure, you may come. But if you just want to see what I make in there, then you can wait like everyone else.”
“Wait for what?” Xan asked, cocking his head.
“For my show,” Caleb said, like this wasn’t news. His chest told another story, though, exposed as it was in his V-neck shirt. A pink stain started up into his neck.
“What show?” Xan’s eyes brightened. “Do youhavea show? And you haven’t told me?”
Caleb shrugged. “Not yet. I think I’ll put one on after my next heat. If I get pregnant, then I’ll have a different theme to focus my art on in the future, I imagine.”
“What’s your theme now?” Urho asked.
Caleb winked, slathering more marmalade on his toast. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Urho snorted. But he remembered that Vale was always private with his poems before they were published, so he understood Caleb’s sensitivities in these matters. He was grateful that he was even being allowed into the new studio space.
“But where would you put it on?” Xan asked.
“At the gentlemen’s club, of course. They put on art shows in their upper rooms sometimes, I’ve heard. There’s a large hallway on the top floor they call the galleria, even.”
“Heard from whom?”
It was a fair question. For such a sweet, friendly, sociable guy, Caleb was definitely introverted as far as Urho could tell. He spent a lot of time in his room alone, or reading quietly in his drawing room, or in his studio with the prints. He seemed to enjoy their company when he was with them, but he withdrew for solitude quite happily.
“From Janus,” Caleb replied with a grimace. “Just because the source was tainted doesn’t mean the information is false. Anyway…” He flapped his hand, dismissing the ghost of Janus from the room. “People would come to my show of course, because they’re curious about me. And about you too. Not to mention, they’ll be eager to please the heir to the family fortune. The man who can provide jobs and more to this town.”
Urho smiled behind his napkin at Caleb’s arrogance. It was charming in its own way. He almost wanted to bottle it and sprinkle it liberally over Xan when he was feeling insecure.
Caleb added, “I have no doubt the show will sell out. If only because of who I am. But I think we should invite people from the city, too, so the onus doesn’t fall on Vironians alone to make my show a success.”
Xan opened and closed his mouth a few times like he had more questions, but in the end, he simply stood from the table and announced that he was going to be late if he didn’t get out the door. Then he kissed Caleb’s forehead and nuzzled his neck before turning to Urho and kissing his lips.
After lunch, as directed, Urho walked down the path between the main house and the detached wing, passing a few beta servants who were on their way from their quarters on the second floor. The house itself was looking much better since the time he’d first arrived. The rooms were being cleaned and slowly redecorated, and the grounds were coming to life as the harder months of winter began to release their hold.
Not that the breeze up from the ocean wasn’t a stiff one. He shivered against it as he walked alongside the wing, thinking that perhaps he should have worn a coat, and not counted on just his suit to keep him warm. He noted that the windows on the big room where Caleb worked were open.
The scent of chemicals and paint, familiar to him only as a residue on Caleb’s skin and hair, accosted his nose. He twitched it lightly and wondered if the odor permeated the entire wing, and what the servants must think of that.
He paused at the end of the walk and saw that there were even more windows and a massive glass door on the ground floor facing out to the ocean. He could look right into the studio and yet he couldn’t see much of anything. The interior was a maze of papers, stacks of stones, easels, and implements he didn’t recognize. Filing cabinets overflowed already, and he wondered how often Caleb cleaned out his space. His rooms in the main house were spotless, but this…
He let himself in at the door, surprised to find the studio was freezing. Though he didn’t know why he was shocked—after all, Xan said that Caleb preferred to be cold and liked to sleep with the windows open. But he wasn’t prepared for the movement of air in the room, the vibrant odors mixing with the scent of the sea, churning in and out through all the open windows.
Three out of four sides of the room were made up almost entirely of windows. The back wall sported a massive fireplace, but obviously that was no longer in use, since the studio was otherwise a fire hazard. The cross breeze was stiff, but bracing, and it shuffled the papers around in the space so that there was a constant ruffling, rather like gentle mice or birds making a nest.
The abundance of light was perfect, and he saw the way it served Caleb as he walked deeper into the room crowded with tables, a large printing machine—a press, Caleb called it—slabs of rock, and various other accoutrements he didn’t understand.
“You’re here,” Caleb called out from behind a table where he stood slathering some sort of stinky chemical over one of the slabs of rock. His hair was held back with bright, jeweled clips, and his pale skin was splotched here and there with blue and green ink. He smiled radiantly at Urho for a brief moment and then went back to his work. “This part’s a bit touchy. No time to waste. The chemicals start their work once applied and I don’t want the outcome to be uneven.”
“No, of course not,” Urho agreed, though he had no clue what Caleb was referencing. He studied the man at work. His pale skin glowed in the profusion of light from the windows, and his hair shone. His expression was peaceful but serious; concentration at its finest. His clothes were his usual—soft, white, and loose—but these were obviously reserved for his work, because they were covered with ink splotches in all colors of the rainbow. Though there was an abundance of black, as well. He wore fine work gloves, thin enough to have some control over what he was doing with the stone block but protecting his skin from the corrosive elements.
He wasn’t barefoot either, unlike his tendency to wander through the house with nothing covering his toes except glittery polish. Instead, he wore heavy work boots—much heavier than anything Urho had ever seen on him before—also ruined beyond the telling of it by ink splotches and what looked like chemical burns. The Caleb of the printing press was different from the Caleb of the house, and Urho felt suddenly sad that Xan hadn’t had a chance to see him like this.
And he wondered why.
“I should have waited for you,” Caleb said as he worked. “But I got impatient. I’ve wanted to print this piece for weeks. I couldn’t hold back from beginning.”
