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“Paint with me, Joanie.” Julian’s words stay with her, carry her back from the dream as her eyes open in the dark. She lies there, floating in that liminal space between waking life and the dream world, Julian’s invitation a bridge. Slowly she gathers herself. The room takes form. She hears the wind charging up the mountain from the Pacific, whistling through the trees. But even now, there’s something else. Something that called her back from sleep. She listens.

From outside, down below, a rhythmic booming. But that’s not right. It’s not exactly rhythmic; it’s not in time. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and reaches to switch on the light. The room is bathed in dim orange light from the bedside lamp, and Joanie rubs her eyes. Still from outside: boom. boom. boom. She slides her feet into her slippers and stands, pulling the bedspread around her shoulders like a cape.

boom. boom.

She crosses to the window, pushes aside the curtain beside her Japanese peace lily. The flood light over the back door washes sickly pale across the deck, but not much farther. Even in the wind, a thick fog hangs over the property. She sees a cascade of needles and limbs disappear in the mist, the ghosts of redwoods straining against an unseen force. One of the dipping, swaying branches must have activated the flood light, she figures. Still, in the chaos, the booming, deep and ominous. She turns then, and crosses to the red bedroom door. She turns the black knob and steps quietly into the hall.

In the gloom, the gaily colored walls of the hallway twist like a nightmare kaleidoscope. Joanie treads softly, careful to feel her way to the top of the stairs, then down to the landing. She pivots with one hand on the head of the blue horse sculpture that leads toward the kitchen. Her slippers whisper on the hardwood. Finally in the kitchen, she flips the switch next to the door and rows of recessed bulbs fill the room with warm light. The black and white tile of the floor and counters stands in stark contrast to the alternating primary colors of the walls. Whimsical in daylight, it’s a lot to process when you’ve only been awake a minute and a half. Joanie squints, yawns. She grabs a cup from the dish rack, fills it with water. She gulps it down as only the newly awake or newly rescued can.

Still careful to move silently, she crosses to the dining room and the big picture window overlooking the back yard. The flood light is still on, and she imagines it will remain so until the wind dies down. Even so, the night looms large and threatening. She leans in close, pressing her hands to the glass, shielding her eyes. Outside, the fog swirls, inky. She listens. There it is again. boom boom. She pulls one of Julian’s coats off the rack. It hangs loose on her shoulders, a child playing dress up. She pushes the too-long sleeves up and holds it closed at the neck, sliding open the patio door.

The wind sucks the breath from her, threatens to rip the sliding door from her hands. She puts her head down against the wind and slides the door shut. Regaining her breath, her crossed arms holding the jacket shut, she shuffles across the deck and down into the yard. She looks over her shoulder and sees the house already disappearing. She takes a few more steps before the boom boom sounds loud and ominous from somewhere unseen and stops her. Something so close. She takes another tentative step and then relaxes. There, not fifteen yards from the house, Julian’s studio shed yawns at her through the fog. boom. boom. boom. The rolling door to the studio breathes in the wind, rattling on its track. boom. boom. boom. Mystery solved, she thinks. Now for the real question.

She pads back into the kitchen and checks the gently-ticking clock over the stove. It’s 4:30. That’s what she figured. She fills the glass with water again, drinks it down. She stands for a moment listening to the clock tick, then sighs and puts the kettle on. She ruffles her short hair, stretches to touch her toes, clutches the kitchen island to wrench and crack her back, and then quietly heads back upstairs to get dressed.

Two hours later, she’s reading the paper at the dining room table, an empty cereal bowl and lukewarm coffee beside her, when the pager next to her vibrates to life, red lights blinking. She silences it and stands, taking her dishes to the sink before following the long tail of the house away from the kitchen, down the wide glass hallway to the master suite. She knocks twice, then gently opens the door and peeks in. He smiles when he sees her, and she sees he’s already used the remote to adjust the back of the bed to sit up.

“My love,” Julian rasps warmly. She smiles, steps into the room, and immediately crosses to the McIntosh receiver in the built in stereo hutch. She flips it on, lets the tubes warm up, then turns to Julian, cracking her knuckles.

“What shall it be today?”

When the call came, Joanie was in the bath, warm with wine and weed. It was one of the few luxuries afforded her in the cramped studio she’d called home for nine years, and it was days like this that she felt true gratitude for one of the last apartment buildings in Santa Cruz that hadn’t been gentrified into a horror of grey faux-wood floors and glass-walled step-in showers. All that was an excuse to double the rent, Joanie knew, in an already critically fucked market, a market with less and less room for aging creatives with mouldering arts degrees. She knew it was coming for her, too, steadily marching like a death squad; the eviction notice came a month prior, along with the relocation assistance mandated by law. No conversation, no warning. Nine years of forgoing meals to pay rent on time, of fixing her own broken light fixture and replacing her own decrepit toilet seat so as to not appear a burden. Landlords who said they loved her like a daughter, like the daughter they lost so many years ago. All for naught, it seemed, when she found herself between them and a dollar. But for now, ah, the wonders of a soak.

Her phone was on the counter across from her, and she ignored it the first time it rang. No good news comes at 9:00pm, she told herself, and the last thing she needed to hear right now was that someone was bailing on their shift and she needed to come back in and cover. Nope, not tonight. Tonight she would soak in warm water, in wine and weed. Tonight she’d let Spotify take the wheel and spin out from the Lucinda Williams track she played when running the bath. She had leftover Chinese in the refrigerator. No force on earth or heaven would get her back out tonight.

The phone begins vibrating on the bathroom counter again less than a minute later, and Joanie groans, “Fuuuuuuuck.” She balances her joint on the edge of the ashtray, itself balanced on the edge of the tub, and stands, all dripping water and simmering annoyance. “Fuck fuck fuck.” She steps out onto the bathmat, not bothering to reach for a towel and looks at the screen just as the call goes to voicemail. It lights up again almost immediately, and for the first time Joanie feels something like dread. It’s a number she doesn’t know, area code 415. No one should be calling from the city, not at 9:00 on Wednesday. She taps the phone and holds it to her ear, still naked and dripping on the bathmat. She was right. No good news comes at 9:00pm.

A week later, she was crossing north over the Golden Gate, her 2003 Accord stuffed to the gills with clothes, books, her favorite lamp, her peace lily, even her box of brushes and paints – surely by now dried, congealed, useless. Everything else was in a newly-rented storage unit by UCSC, where they were running a summer special for students. She imagined the first work truck rolling up to her old front door before she’d even turned the corner. Even now, she knew they were beginning to scrape and tear, crack and peel away the home she’d made there, the delicate stencil work she’d done on the walls. They’d probably have the place back on the market for three times what she’d paid by the end of the month, white walls and stainless steel appliances, a void, a vacuum.

She passed Sausalito, then through the rainbow entrance to the newly-dedicated Robin Williams Tunnel, the city disappearing behind her, the Accord’s transmission sliding down a gear as she followed the grade up 101, then off the highway and onto the winding roads that beckoned her rise into the foothills of Mount Tamalpais. The roads narrowed, and the spaces between houses grew. The redwoods crept in toward the tarmac, their great canopies splashing muddled light onto the ever damp pavement. Higher and higher she went. It wasn’t until she was up above Mill Valley that a wave of remembrance finally crashed inside her, and she felt for the first time the weight of time and memory: the road, the forest, the man.

She lowered her window and was surprised at the chill. The temperature must have been ten degrees lower already, maybe fifteen. Down below, it was a sunny day in San Francisco, 68 degrees, and she’d let her arm hang out the window as she followed route 101 through the city, sunglasses on, REM on the radio. Now she was turning onto a single lane, barely paved, and shivering against a mist that seemed thicker by the minute. It dawned on her she was at elevation now, she was in the cloud. And then she saw the brightly colored mailbox, the wildly painted full-size wooden bison marking the entrance to the driveway, and she slowed to a stop.  The bison. The road. How long had it been? Ten years? Fifteen? The mailbox. The man.

Joanie turned into the driveway.

Julian can only muster half an hour or so at a stretch, forty-five minutes if he pushes it. Last week was better, but his energy diminishes by the day. They’ve managed two sessions this morning, and Joanie has made significant progress on the railroad trestle in the top left quadrant. She’s pulling shadows out from underneath it, using short strokes to blend them into the dried grass of the berm she painted last week, when she hears Julian snoring behind her. She turns to him and sees his head softly cocked on the pillow, the soft bite of his mouth half open.

She stands then, and goes to wash the brush. There’s just the one rule, and it’s that Julian be present for each element, each stroke. It’s a fair rule, considering, and besides, even though he’d blocked out the major pieces in pencil before starting the overpainting, she’d never know how to proceed without a reference. Julian is the reference; his mind, his memory. She is his hands now, that’s all. The colors of the tree and sky, the cut of sunlight on the chrome of the Ford, a crescent of water pooled lazily on the sidewalk; it’s all already there, already painted in his mind. She’s a translator, really, working against the ticking clock. Time is a thief; she’s helping him save what they can, squirrel it away somewhere safe. On the canvas.

In the kitchen, Joanie finds the day nurse, Craig, reading a magazine at the kitchen table. He’s amiable, overweight. The grey in his beard hints at a previous career, a previous life. He looks up as she enters and opens the refrigerator. She pulls out some leftover pasta, sets it on counter. Then two sparkling waters. She offers one to Craig.

“No, thanks. How’s it going in there?”

“We got a lot done today. I think he’s pretty wiped. Maybe we can work some more this afternoon.”

“He has a lot of verve,” Craig says.

“Yeah. I suppose he does.” Joanie flips the container of pasta over onto a plate, slides it into the microwave. The buttons beep and the machine hums to life. Inside, the plate spins uneasily, quaking on the off-balance carousel.

“I’ll just go poke my head in and make sure he’s comfortable,” Craig says, pushing himself up from the table. The microwave calls out a self-congratulating final beep, and Joanie winces as her fingers touch the hot plate.

She takes her lunch out through the patio door and sits at the redwood table on the deck. The wind’s died down since last night, and the air is still thick with damp. Even in her sweater, she feels it trying to push cold fingers down the collar, up her sleeves, squeeze with icy hands her ankles. But the pasta is hot, and the contrast is good, interesting, almost aesthetic. She looks across the yard at the studio shed, silent now, its door as immobile and innocuous as you’d ever expect. But last night…

“Boom. Boom. Boom,” she says through a mouthful of hot penne. She holds out one of her hands, inspecting the paint in her nail beds. As hard as you try, she thinks, it finds its way in there. She’d known kids in college who wore latex gloves. But she’d always needed to feel the brush, to gauge the pressure of her knuckle gliding along the canvas. Of course she hadn’t held a brush in years. Five? Eight? She’d tried to explain to Julian, but of course he wouldn’t listen. It’s funny, though, the muscle memory. She flexes her fingers, feeling a familiar cramp beginning to settle into her knuckles. That certainly comes on faster than it used to. So does the tightening in her back. She finishes the pasta and stands, stretching. She bends over to touch her toes, twists and raises one hand high over her back. Holds it. Reverses. She hasn’t done yoga in years either, but her body remembers. Her muscles have hidden it away, perhaps knowing she’d need it again.

A breeze whispers up from the woods, and across the yard, the studio’s rolling door chatters. Joanie shivers, crosses her arms and rubs her shoulders. Then she picks up her plate, already cold to the touch, and slides back open the door to the house.

“Come paint with me, Joanie.” His voice on the phone sent a delirious thrill through her. She was living with roommates then, three other girls from school. They’d all graduated together that spring and found a place in the city, splitting the rent and sharing the dream. Deborah was working at a gallery in the Mission. Sharon lived on a mysterious income Joanie assumed was a trust fund, and spent most of her days reading in the chez lounge they’d thrifted that summer or painting nudes in watercolor on the living room floor from reference Polaroids. Patty and Joanie were trading shifts at a dive bar in the Tenderloin. The dream, indeed.

She’d loaded up her car – a Civic then, red like a cherry or a wound – with paints, brushes, the handful of cheap craft store canvases she had in the back of her closet, and a long weekend’s worth of clothes and drove north over the Golden Gate. At 22, each mile represented the farthest north she’d ever been. Her heart, giddy, pulled her up the mountain. The inevitability of Big Things revved the engine. Exultation rolled down the windows and turned up The Shins. A tiny shriek escaped her when she saw the bison, and she stopped her car right there in the road, took a few big breaths. Don’t fuck this up, Joanie. Don’t overthink it. You’re at Julian Beard’s house, sure. His house. But at his invitation. She reminded herself she was wanted here, and she told herself to remember that.

She was met at the door by a handsome man about fifteen years her senior, and fifteen years Julian’s junior. He smiled and held the door open wide, saying, “You must be Joanie. I’m Brad. Please come in. Julian’s out in the studio, but we’ll let him know you’re here.” Brad directed her to leave her bag at the door and walked her through the house to the kitchen. Joanie marveled at the bold colors, the tile floors, the freehand stenciling around all the doorframes, up the banisters. In the kitchen, he bade her sit and then leaned into an intercom on the wall.

“Sweetie, your guest has arrived.” The intercom squawked once, briefly, in reply. Brad poured three glasses of champagne and was handing one to Joanie as the patio door slid open.

“My prize student. My darling diamond in the rough. My protege.” Julian floated into the room, wrapping his arms around Joanie. “Let me suck of your youthful spirit, an energy vampire in my middle age. Yes, I smell it on you now, hope! Inspiration!” Julian smelled of lavender and turpentine. She loved it. Julian took a glass of champagne from Brad, offering his cheek for a kiss. Brad obliged.

“Did you crack it?” Brad asked.

“Right in fucking two, my dear,” Julian said, raising his glass. Brad and Joanie followed suit, and Julian closed his eyes. “A productive morning, a happy life, a sacrificial lamb.” He winked at Joanie, and then they all drank. To Joanie he said, “I trust you’ve packed for the weekend. We have much work to do, starting this afternoon. But tonight, tonight is for fun. Guests arrive at, when, Brad?”

“I said 6:30, but that means 7:00.”

“Except Joyce, of course, our dear Joyce who will likely arrive at 9:00.”

“Very drunk.”

“And in exceptional spirits.”

“Now, Joanie, my love, finish your drink and come with me.” Julian emptied his champagne flute and handed it to Brad, then turned with a flourish and headed straight back out the patio door. Joanie tried to finish her champagne, winced at the bubbles. Her eyes watering, she handed the flute to Brad, who shook his head with a grin. And then she turned and followed Julian across the yard.

“Go fuck ‘em up.” It’s what Julian inscribed to her in the book of Ken Light photographs he gifted her at graduation. But she hadn’t fucked them up. She hadn’t fucked anything up, really,  except herself, and now she’s sitting on the edge of the deck lighting a joint at 10:30 in the morning and wiping from her cheek one stubborn, stinging tear.

The painting’s as done as it’s going to be, she realizes. Over the past few days, Julian’s lost his speech, and this morning he could only watch dumbly as Joanie did her best to bring life to the orange leaves of the maple beside the train tracks. She knew then it was done, abandoned as all art must one day be, and Julian knew it, too. So now she sits, knees against her chest, her hands curled into the sleeves of her sweater save the two fingers that bring the joint to her lips, flick ash into the grass.

Across the yard, the studio sits silent. The patio door slides open behind her. She hears careful footfalls, and then Craig is lowering his weight onto the wood beside her, groaning with exertion.

“So is this it?” Joanie asks, ashamed of the tremble in her voice.

“It goes pretty fast from here,” Craig says. “Is there anyone else you should call to, you know, be here? Any family?”

Joanie swipes at her eyes with the sleeve of the sweater, shaking her head “no”. Isn’t that why she’s here, after all? The only one still around. The Great Julian Beard’s last friend standing. She gestures with the joint, offering it to Craig.

 “Would if I could,” he says. “Still on the clock. I’ll go back in with him in a few minutes. He’s sleeping for now. Just needed some fresh air. Cold this morning.”

 “Yeah,” Joanie says. Craig sits with her for another moment, then pulls himself up on the deck railing. He places a hand on Joanie’s shoulder. Gently. Then he turns and pads back across the deck to the sliding door. Joanie hears it whoosh shut. She gently tamps out the joint on the edge of the deck and stands. She pulls the little plastic tube from her pocket and drops the roach safely inside, then turns to go back inside.

 boom. boom. boom.

 Joanie stops. Turns. She looks at the studio. She feels no breeze. God, she thinks, I’m losing it. Just what we need now. She turns back to the door. boom. boom. boom. boom. boom. Joanie spins on her heels and quickly drops down the three steps into the yard. Without giving herself time to think about it, she heads for the studio. She’s just a few feet away when –

BOOM. The rolling steel door raises six inches, maybe a foot off the ground, then slams back down. Joanie gasps and stops, a hand going to her open mouth. That wasn’t wind. And the door should be –

She sees the padlock on the ground, open. The door rattles against its track. Softly. Almost seductively. Without any earthly idea why she’s doing what she’s doing, Joanie reaches down, grabs the handle, and yanks it up. The door rolls all the way open, slamming into place in its track just below the ceiling. Dust motes rise lazily in front of Joanie’s face, and she waves them away. She steps forward, squinting into the gloom, and then one foot steps up onto the concrete pad that is the studio floor. Then the other. And now she’s inside.

Ten years? Fifteen? She feels around on the wall, her eyes still adjusting, and finds the light switch. She flips it and a dozen disparate lamps, some with shades painted in bright splashes of color, fill the cramped space with various degrees of incandescence and throw abstract shadows across every surface. At the far end, Joanie sees Julian’s easel, his desk, a paint-spattered wooden stool. There’s a canvas on the easel, and she crosses to it.

The railroad trestle. The puddle on the sidewalk. The maple shedding its leaves. She knows this painting. She’s spent three weeks trying to finish this painting. But here it is, almost done, forgotten, abandoned in the shed. The lower left quadrant is empty, a white void. Just like the one right now propped up next to Julian’s sick bed. His deathbed, she thinks. She looks to her left where a number of canvases of various sizes lean against the wall. She picks up one, holds it at arm’s length, pivots into the light of an antique dragonfly lamp.

 The same image, but this one doesn’t have the tree, just the lightest pencil sketch where it should be. She crouches, fingering through the other canvasses. All of them the same image, the same unfinished image. Some are merely pencil outlines. One is nearly impressionistic, like nothing she’d ever seen Julian paint before. Here’s one that is just black and white blotches, but unmistakably the same tableau.

“What were you trying to find?” she whispers to no one. Something behind her drops to the floor. She swivels her head and sees another canvas face down on the floor across the room. She crosses to it slowly, carefully lifting it and carrying it into a pool of light. It’s no more than a sketch, really, the now familiar scene. But something’s different in this one. She sets it on the easel and clicks on the bulb clamped to the top of the wooden frame. She leans in close.

On the street. In front of the car, yes, that’s the car. And there’s the outline of the tree ready to start dropping leaves. On the street in the bottom left corner is… she frowns, leans in closer. It’s a boy. Lying in the street. No, not lying. She traces with her finger the faint pencil marks where Julian breathed shape into the figure. Shape, but not life. She sees the exaggerated angles of the boys limbs, murmurs of a landing on the pavement, an accusation. She looks at the car, thinks of the hours she spent getting the gleaming chrome just right. Then back at the boy. He’s not just lying in the road. He’s dead in the road.

A shudder rides through her.

“Oh, Julian,” she says to the empty room. “What did you see?” Then, without thinking, she goes to the desk in the corner of the room and pulls a charcoal pencil from the mason jar atop it. She pulls the wooden stool closer to the easel, brings her hand to the canvas. She tests the weight of her hand against it, refines her grip on the charcoal, and runs a confident black line along the sketched railroad trestle. Then another. She follows the undercarriage of the car, then grabs a white pencil to trace the gleam of brilliant sunlight into the chrome hubcaps.

She’s brought back later by a voice calling for her. She shakes her head, dazed, then stands and goes to the open door. The light’s all wrong. On the deck, Craig is waving.

“I’m taking off for the night. Trish is here and starting her paperwork. See you tomorrow morning.” Joanie waves, and Craig tugs on his backpack straps before going back inside. How long has she been out here? She looks down at her hands, sees they are black with charcoal. She turns and hurries back to the easel. She gasps at what she sees. The sketch is no longer a sketch, but an intricate snapshot of a moment not hers. It’s all familiar, but… across the drawing, detailed vines wrap around the car, up the trunk of the tree. The railroad trestle is overgrown with black shrubs, grey flowers. Everywhere, flora has consumed the charcoal landscape. And the boy in the road, flowers burst from his chest. She gets in close, squints at the minute detail in each bud, every stalk.

I got lost in it, she thinks. Like I used to. Back when she was young, when college felt like the cannon from which she’d be launched into real life. Back when dreams were currency, not liabilities. She takes a step back, and then notices something else in the corner of the room, something she’d overlooked.

Trish is in the chair beside Julian’s bed reading a Patricia Cornwall book when Joanie enters. Trish looks surprised.

“Hi, he’s still sleeping,” Trish says. But beside her, Julian exhales, his throat a gravel road, and they both see that his eyes are open. Open and sharper than they have been in days, Joanie believes.

“Could we have some time to work?” Joanie says? Trish frowns, confused, but sets her bookmark and stands, straightening her scrubs.

“I’ll just be outside if you need anything,” Trish says. She casts one more doubtful look at Julian in the bed, and then exits, pulling the door shut softly behind her. Joanie flips on the McIntosh lamp and lets the tubes warm. On the bedside table beside Julian, she places her peace lily. Then she crosses to the easel and removes the painting she’s spent three weeks pulling from the ashes of Julian Beard’s life, the painting they’ve saved from being lost in the infinite and that, though unfinished, is now here in the real world for as long as the world cares to keep it. In its place, she props up the canvas she brought in from the studio, the one she found in the corner.

Julian’s eyes follow her as she goes back across the room, cues up Van Morrison, hits play. She goes to Julian’s side and places a warm hand on his cheek. She leans in close to him, kissing his forehead softly. Her lips brushing his ear, she whispers, “Paint with me.” An invocation. A sacrament.

She squeezes paint onto the palette and smiles once more at Julian. His bright eyes lock on hers. The corners of his mouth twitch ever so slightly, and she knows he’s present. That’s their one rule. She nods to him as Van Morrison invites them both to moondance.

“Let’s fuck ‘em up,” she says, then turns to the blank canvas, raising her brush.