Galatea (7/8)

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Spoilers: None. You can imagine this sometime during the second or third season. Your choice.

Disclaimers: The characters and situations of the television program "Charlie's Angels" are the creations and property of Spelling-Goldberg Productions and Columbia Pictures Television, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. However, I retain the rights to the plot. You may download and distribute this story as long as my name stays on the by-line.

Rating: R

Summary: Will Kelly show up at Alan's exhibit? Everything comes to a head in this chapter.

Acknowledgments:For Cliff, who took my shit but not my bullshit , and taught me not to be afraid of unknown ceilings. Or unknown cabbies. Siempre recuerda.

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I took comfort that I had finally figured it out. I understood her now. I could cope with this. I could make things better. If all went according to plan and she attended the exhibit, Kelly and I could have a serious conversation without her clamming up because she suddenly realized that she was vulnerable .

Invoking any and every god, I prayed she would show up.

The take-out menu had taken up permanent residence in the back pocket of my slacks. Her drawing of my hand was a metaphor for herself: drawn tight and close, distilled and intense at the center, fading into obscurity at the edges.

How could I explain to anyone what our problem was? Kelly and I would make love, she would hold me inside her as I shook, stare out at me through narrowed eyes, determined that I would never find out who she really was. We battered ourselves against each other and kept our invisible doors locked.

Something had to give. Soon. And I didn't want to be blind to it, to be caught unawares, this time around.

I missed the warmth of her body as it almost touched mine. I missed her small yawns in the morning. I missed the pulse of her breathing. I missed her smile and the crumbs of potato chips that would litter the bedclothes when we spent the night vegetating in front of the TV.

I had begun moving the things I had decided to exhibit, Doug set aside some time to help me take each painting into the gallery myself. I had to hand it to Doug, he had such patience… he calmly and quietly moved each painting in an odd version of directed musical chairs until I was satisfied.

Today I was going to place the photos I wanted to exhibit. They had each been blown-up and toggled to my liking. I paused at the one picture of Kelly I had deemed safe to exhibit.

She was sitting in my living room… looking so much like my mother and father who were compatible only in their secret lives. She looked like my parents, sitting with a great unspoken divide between them that swallowed me whole as a child. Locked in their own circle of silence, they had made no demands on each other… now I wondered if I could break the pattern they had cursed me with. Sylvia. Kelly. It didn't matter. My life would turn out the same.

I had chosen this picture because everyone loved the way Kelly looked in it. It was so life-like, they said. Doug, Bosley, Sabrina, Kris… they had all appraised the photo and found it accurate, beautiful. I looked at it now: Kelly sitting on the couch, looking up at the last minute and foiling my hopes for a candid shot. Her eyes were distracted above the most cautious of smiles. She seemed shocked at the opportunism of my tenderness. An SLR camera with a filtered zoom lens was where my welcoming smile should have been.

I had pushed too hard, and it had taken weeks for her to open up to me again. If you could call any of our careful conversations opening up. Our life together made me think of a tired old couple, still trying to do the tango even when they knew that everyone had gone home long ago.

Sabrina was right. I had been relentless.

I looked at my watch and hoped that she would be at the gallery when I got there. I called Alexis, the owner of the gallery, to ask if she had seen her. It was six o'clock and still no Kelly.

Thirty minutes before the opening, I stood before my mirror, assessing myself and pulling at the collar of the suit I was wearing. There was a characteristic tapping at the door, I picked up my jacket off the couch and let Doug in.

He was dapper in his blue suit, making it look casual and relaxed. His hair was cropped short and he looked every inch a gentleman of leisure.

"You're nervous as hell, aren't you?" he laughed.

"Does it show?"

"Nah." Doug deadpanned. "I'll just tell people you're a corpse."

"I feel like a penguin in this thing." I complained, fussing with the tie and the collar. I felt two-dimensional, flat, featureless.

"It's just your nerves." Doug assured me. "Get moving, the last thing you want to do is be late for your own damn exhibit."

"Isn't that the trendy thing to do?"

"Yeah." Doug replied. "That's why you're not going to do it. We'll be appallingly punctual, and it'll be refreshing. You'll be there on time and you will try to be polite."

"I am polite." I protested, following him down the stairs at a clip.

"There are going to be reporters there…" Doug turned to regard me after I groaned. "They're just a few friends I invited. It's nothing big. You'll manage."

"I don't know about this, Doug."

"Look, do you want a car? Do you want other pieces of furniture in your living room aside from a couch?" he asked. "Then you'll have to deal with these people. Be real, but don't let yourself think it's anything more than a business proposition."

Doug and I walked out of the lobby of my apartment building. His Isuzu was parked across the building and we hurriedly dodged a suburban station wagon as we traversed the width of the street.

"Whatever they say to you about your art or your looks…" Doug continued, fishing the keys out of his pocket. "It doesn't mean anything. It's all a show."

"I know. I know." I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "Did you remember to put the new painting where the seascape was?"

"Yeah." Doug replied, driving carefully. We merged with the rest of the cars on the interstate and headed for Beverly Hills. "I still think you should have placed it in the center of the hall."

I shrugged. "Let people find it. It's not really meant to be gaped at."

"Okay." Doug relented. "You're the artist."

The beat of the drum was arresting, it throbbed through the room. Sabrina's brother-in-law was the bassist and his band played an odd hypnotic brand of pop that formed a subtle undercurrent to the event.

Doug had really outdone himself. People were milling around, swathed in Yves Saint Laurent and bathed in Chanel No. 5, they looked at my paintings with a strained interest. I wondered if anything sifted through to their souls, if they were touched by anything they saw.

The gallery was getting crowded, the waiters were having trouble navigating through the sea of people and the bartender kept cracking open fresh bottles of champagne. The pseudo-intellectuals jostled for attention and one or two people I recognized from the faculty at the high school, looked on the dazzling array of people in barely-concealed awe.

Doug was in the thick of it, touring several starlets and their sugar daddies… discussing the nuance of every photo and the meaning of every brush stroke. Knowing all the while that none of them knew jack-shit about what he was talking about, Doug was still the showman, a ringmaster in the center of the circus tent.

A flash bulb went off in my eyes, in its wake a shrill noise filled my head, and when I had regained my vision the offending photographer was gone. A persistent group of reporters were at the good white wine, probably encouraged to do so by Doug, who could tell I had been drowning in their annoyingly tedious questions.

I suppose I was prepared for people dissecting my work… the razor sharp tongues of LA's art critics stropping themselves on my little pictures and defenseless canvasses. But the volume of feigned interest, the shallowness of the people who sought to purchase pieces of myself, the momentary lionization of Alan the Artist… it was all beginning to grate on my senses. I pressed my fingers hard on my eyelids, trying not to see. Trying not to know.

"I'm sorry." I heard Kelly's voice say, surprising me with the volume of this declaration. I opened my eyes swiftly and tried to focus them on her. She was leaning toward me in an effort to make herself heard above the din of people and the deafening music. "We didn't mean to be late."

In a sea of shapely women dressed in the little black communion dresses that were de rigeur for being seen, Kelly was alive in a deep burgundy dress. It's delicate straps wove themselves over her shoulders and met at her lower back. The dress clung to her body the way a car hugged the curves of a road, revealing a hint of leg in the slit on the side. Her brunette tresses were swept up and pinned in place by an elegant barrette, revealing the uncharted geography of her neck. Her eyes were dark and unadorned. In the shadows of the room, she was breathtakingly beautiful.

"Kelly." I said, not knowing how to put into words how happy I was to see her. She smiled at me and placed her arms around my shoulders. Her breasts and her body were pressed against me, and I held her to me as if I were drowning.

She extricated herself from my embrace and stepped away, twirling around for my inspection. She was lean, intimidating, feminine and feline in her grace.

I smiled and closed my eyes briefly, as if my eyelids were a shutter and I could take a picture of this moment… carrying it with me forever. "You're beautiful."

"Thank you." she said demurely.

I detected soft laughter to our left and caught site of Kris and Sabrina. Kris was elegantly dressed in a midnight blue cocktail dress, her long eyelashes and innocent smile were provocative beyond belief. She kissed me on the cheek and went off to find Doug. Kelly and I exchanged smiles as Kris's small form claimed Doug's attention, staking out her territory among the reed-like models.

Sabrina looked like she had been airbrushed in breeding and good taste, one of those go-to-hell Beverly Hills types with the incorruptible carriage of a lioness. Several men were gravitating to her as she stood quietly in the archway. I grinned as she embraced me, quietly congratulating me for years of study and discipline before she was swept away by offers of drinks and intelligent critiques of the artwork. Bri winked at me as she went off with a handsome green-eyed man.

I smiled ruefully. "Where's Bos?"

"You miss him?" Kelly joked.

"Well, yes. I actually do." I said. "I'm supposed to fix him up with someone from the faculty."

"Really?" she asked, her eyebrows arching in curiosity. "Who?"

I pointed out the raven-haired, nervous-looking English teacher at the bar. "Too mousy?"

"I don't think so. Anyway, we'll see what happens when he gets here… he said he'd drop by his apartment first." Kelly smiled in a slightly bewildered way. "You really like my friends."

"Yes, I do." I replied. "They're great people."

"I think so too."

"Come on, I'll show you the pieces I picked out." I gave her a warm smile and offered her my arm. We made our way through the crowd in a comfortable silence. She paused at her photograph.

"What's the matter?" I asked, worrying that I had once again invaded her privacy by putting up this picture. "Do you mind…?"

"No." she answered too quickly. "After all, it is your work."

"But…?"

"I don't know. I suppose I wish you'd consulted me first." She put her hand up in defense. "I know. I wasn't here to ask."

"Why don't you like it?" I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. "Everyone says you look beautiful."

"I know how I look, Alan." she snapped.

I stared at her, wondering how she could turn even this moment into a protracted battle for her precious personal freedom. She shook her head.

"I'm sorry." she said.

"Why don't you like it?" I asked her, trying to turn this into an opportunity to see into her psyche. "What's wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with it." She replied uncomfortably, holding my hand in a sudden poignant gesture. "It's what's wrong with me…"

Before I could press her for more, she pulled me towards a waiter and gingerly took two glasses of white wine. She took a large sip from her glass, and I followed suit.

"Oh, we didn't toast to anything." Kelly said nervously. "I'm sorry. Next glass, we'll toast to your success."

I opened my mouth to speak, but she had already pulled me to the next photo, and begun gushing about its arresting qualities. I sighed. What would happen when she found my newest painting?

In a smaller, more intimate part of the gallery, where the crowd was less dense because of the narrowness of the corridor, she found the canvas I had dashed off a week ago.

Kelly was quiet. She reached out to touch the texture of the paint, but suddenly stopped herself. Before her was an enlargement of my hand, the red paint of the Chinese characters seething and bleeding into the very atmosphere. Beneath her sketch of my conflicted palm, I had painted in a rusty old red bicycle and an equally rusty nail. From afar, it had looked like an innocent doodle; but at this distance, in these close quarters, it's force was immediate and its meaning oblique. The feelings that spawned it had come from somewhere, distilled and purified into this scrawl on a Chinese menu.

I heard raucous laughter behind us. "He can't even draw a bicycle right. The wheels are going in the wrong direction."

"He hardly does anything right, dah-ling. Especially in bed."

Kelly turned towards the couple behind us before I could maneuver her away. My eyes narrowed to slits and my hands bunched into fists. I glared at Sylvia over the top of Kelly's head with a fury I could barely keep in check. Donald, the only guy I knew who could swagger while sitting down, tried to match my menacing look.

"Excuse me," Kelly said icily. "I think you've had too much to drink."

"Well, isn't she polite?" Sylvia laughed. "Alan, I'm very impressed. She actually is as pretty as people said she was. They said she was intelligent as well, but then what would she be doing with someone who makes love like a kid?"

"Guess he pays for it." Donald drawled. "She looks like one of those affordable types anyway. Did he have a coupon?"

Kelly didn't even blink, her hand came out of nowhere and slapped him so hard his glasses flew off. "I think the two of you should leave."

"You little whore." Sylvia spat, moving to strike Kelly's face.

I intercepted her and grabbed her wrist, she raised her left hand to slap me and I gripped that wrist as well. Donald, not bothering to recover his glasses which must have been more of a fashion statement than a necessity, attempted to come to Sylvia's rescue with a right jab to my ribs. I side-stepped, held Sylvia's wrists with my right hand and used my left to slug him in the jaw. He backed off. A crowd was beginning to gather around the mouth of the corridor.

"I am not going to play these games with you anymore, Sylvia." I said through gritted teeth. "It's over. Finished. You're nothing to me now. Not a wife. Not a friend. The papers have been signed and I don't owe you anything."

"Alan, let her go." Kelly said in a tight voice.

I pulled Sylvia close to me without releasing my grip on her wrists. She winced but still struggled to hurt me.

"Don't push me too far." I said slowly, trying to control my temper.

"Alan, you've made your point." Kelly said, her voice forcibly calm. "Let her go, Alan. She's terrified."

They both were. I moved protectively toward Kelly before I freed Sylvia's wrists. There was venom in her eyes as Donald tried to control the damage his reputation would receive in the society pages in tomorrow's newspaper. As he placed his arm around Sylvia to guide her through the crowd, she broke away and hissed something at Kelly.

Media vultures were swarming over the narrow corridor with their flashbulbs and their prying eyes. But the only person who could have made anything out of Sylvia's parting shot was Kelly, and her eyes went wide and watery. It was as if Sylvia had dug her nails into her upper arms instead of merely insulting her.