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the honorary | marnie & callum

Callum burst out laughing with Marnie’s greeting, “Or a face like that!” he exclaimed. He reached out, running soft fingers over the streaks of paint on her skin. He held up his fingers, tinged with blue, “If you’re going to be in the Blue Man Group, it’s full face blue makeup, Marnie. Full face.”

He stopped his teasing to shrug, “When has being a mess ever stopped an invitation for dinner at the McKinneys?” he asked, “I mean, you’re more than welcome to change, but it doesn’t matter to me.” He thought for a moment, thinking of the food he had left for them, “But it is getting cooler as we speak, so…why don’t you stay a mess?”

Callum tried peeking behind her at whatever piece she was working on, curiosity getting the best of him, “May I–?” he asked, already edging past her towards her workspace. He looked at the faceless people for a long time, blinking, “I was never good at interpreting art,” he laughed softly, still looking intently at the figures. “You have always been so talented, Marns.” He looked up with a smile growing on his face, “This town doesn’t deserve talent like this.”

Suddenly, though, he clapped his hands together, “If I keep staring at this, we’ll never eat.” He cleared his throat, stepping to her and offering his arm, knowing how ridiculously formal it was, “Shall we, then? We have a three course meal waiting for us, Madame Dowling.”

marniedowling-blog

His gentle touch spread warmth across her forehead and down into her cheekbones. Her mouth twitched in a smile as he removed his fingers, revealing the tint of blue on his skin. “Thanks for the tip, I’ll remember that next time,” she replied, sarcasm playing in her voice as she rubbed at the paint spot with the heel of her hand. This probably increased the smear’s prevalence, but it gave her an illusion of cleanliness that made her feel better about it. She stepped aside to let him pass, but watching him digest her art was slightly unnerving. She made herself busy by setting down the paintbrush in her hand and untying the old, paint-stained apron from around her waist, tossing it over the back of a chair as he spoke about his ability to interpret art.

Hesitantly, she tried to explain. “Well, this one is kind of, like… So she’s got the umbrella, she’s kind of hiding behind it, so the man just walks right past without seeing her. But the thing is, they might have met if she hadn’t been afraid of the rain in the first place...” Marnie trailed off, suddenly feeling like she’d just revealed too much about herself. Which was silly, there weren’t many secrets she had left to keep from him. When he complimented her painting she shrugged a little, grinning in spite of herself, and inspected the drying paint on her hands as a diversion. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things this town doesn’t deserve.” There should have been a thank you in there somewhere, but it stuck in the back of her throat. Taking compliments wasn’t exactly a strong point for Marnie, but she brushed it off by accepting his outstretched arm.

“We shall,” she stated emphatically. “Only three courses? I expect four or five at least, Master McKinney!”

#p:callum

roman-padgett-blog

Impressive? Most would say annoying instead. It was a welcome surprise, not to be embarrassed at the words that came flooding out of him. He offered the girl a small but bright smile. “A bit,” he admitted. It wasn’t that he memorized the words, in truth, but it was more that the words crawled inside his brain of their own accord and refused to give up residence. “Although that was a bit of something else from the Lost Generation… not Hemingway, one of his colleagues, T.S. Eliot… he wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, have you heard of it? They didn’t much get along - a bit of an understatement, really - but their work parallels and feeds off each other in extraordinary ways.”

As she listed off the genres she liked, he opened the door to the counter with a slow creak and stepped out from behind it and into the heart of the shop. Fantasy, and mysteries, and science fiction. “So, nearly everything.” His voice held a barely-perceptible inflection of teasing. Diving into the sea of books, he headed towards the fantasy section, glancing behind only to see if she was following him. He came to an abrupt halt in the middle of an aisle, tapping the spine of a gilded hardback. “If you like fantasy, I love recommending this one… it’s got a fair bit of mystery as well, for the characters at least. Faeries, and magic, and a fallen star turned into a girl.” A few steps down the aisle and across to the other side and he ran his finger along a long set of paperbacks. “These are mysteries, about a wizard employed by the Chicago police to solve crimes, murders, et cetera. We have nearly the whole series, though someone bought number four the other day… I’ve read just the first few, and but they were delightful. Though if you want the same idea but set in Victorian New England, Jackaby’s your better bet. That’s around the corner.” One shelf lower than the previous one, he pulled a weathered novel from the stacks and stared at it intently. “Or there’s this series. Saying it’s about ‘a fry cook who sees ghosts and tries to stop the apocalypse’ doesn’t quite cover it, as the story has an incredible amount of heart. I shed a tear at the end of the first one,” he mused. “Though the narrator is certainly hilarious throughout most of the story. These are worth reading as well.”

Having been enraptured by the books for the entirety of his explanation, he finally looked back up at the young woman who’d asked for the recommendation in the first place. “Do any of those, ah, sound interesting to you?” Roman tapped his fingers behind his back apprehensively. It was so hard to choose which books to recommend, and though he was usually spot-on about what certain people would love, he’d been wrong before. “If you don’t think you’d like those, I can try again.”

marniedowling-blog

She returned his smile, then murmured a small, “No, I haven’t heard of it,” by way of his T.S. Eliot comment. She tried to take a mental note of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, feeling a little silly in comparison to a man who could recite whole passages from the book while she would be lucky to remember the title. As he emerged from behind the counter, she gave a small, sheepish shrug at his comment, So, nearly everything. “I just like to keep my options open,” she said, though she thought he might agree with that sentiment. The way he swept towards the stacks spoke of purpose and routine, a manifestation of years spent pouring over books. Marnie followed dutifully.

His movements were swift with clear familiarity of the shelves and wide range of texts within them. When she had asked for recommendations, she had not expected this. The way he spoke about each novel sounded like poetry; his gentle touches to the spines of different volumes verged on art. To say he was lost in his work would be an understatement, and at the same time completely inaccurate as it omitted the sheer beauty of the thing. As he described each story, Marnie’s mouth curved up in a fascinated grin, and she found herself involuntarily picking up the fantasy he had left behind, then the first volume of the mystery series. The Hemingway and algebra books had long since been lost to the stacks, and she reached for the one about the psychic fry cook when his gaze returned to her. She dropped her hand, then, suddenly flustered by his gaze and the stack of books in her hands. “I think I’d like all of them, but...” she trailed off, a grin spreading across her lips. Enthusiasm was surely present on her face, but she averted her eyes to an uninteresting spot on the floor in a feeble attempt to hide the captivation in her expression. He had a gift, and she hadn’t tasted enough of it quite yet. “But, maybe you could try again?”

#p:roman

roman-padgett-blog

A tinkling of the bell rang throughout the shop, a thin layer of dust swirling from the tops of the bookshelves at the gust of air from the door. Roman sat atop a short step-ladder behind the register, in his lap a singular thick tome he’d pulled from the newest stacks. Engaged in his own examination of the binding, he didn’t bother looking up until the customer - or, presumable customer at least - approached the counter.

He looked up to see a young woman tentatively holding out two books towards him. Any recommendations, she asked. A complex question if there ever was one.

“Ah,” he said, peering over the counter at the offerings. “A Farewell to Arms, yes, that one’s… not terrible, I suppose, but The Sun Also Rises is the better Hemingway choice. Though perhaps it’s only my infatuation with the idea of the Lost Generation that makes it seem so. A bit reminiscent of here, disrepair from disrepair. ‘For you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water…’” He broke off quickly and gave a short cough. “A Farewell to Arms isn’t as engaging, in my opinion. And I probably wouldn’t bother with the algebra at all.”

Roman mentally chastised himself. She didn’t care what he liked, only what he thought she would like. So he swiftly moved on, closing the book he’d been examining so he could slide off the stepladder and move over to the counter. “What sorts of books do you usually enjoy? Or… what topics do you think you might enjoy?”

marniedowling-blog

Marnie was a little taken aback by his response, to say the least, and she surely had not expected him to recite lines from her random shelf pick. But something about his voice made the words dance and sing and she nearly leaned in to listen. For a moment it made her believe she might enjoy a classic after all. Then he broke off, maybe even seemed a little embarrassed by the way his tongue had taken flight of it’s own accord. To her, it was something of beauty. Something she could have listened to all day if he would have continued.

“Did you... how much of that have you memorized?” As she said it, she made a feeble attempt at hiding the fascination in her voice and expression. “That’s impressive, it’s really...” But then she broke off, too. Glancing back down at the books she still clutched, Marnie remembered herself and the topic at hand. “Um, I like fantasy and mysteries... maybe science fiction?” She’d also read a good amount of romance, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that to this stranger. “Although, that book - what was it, The Sun Also Rises? That sounds nice, too.”

#p:roman

callum-mckinney-blog

the honorary | marnie & callum

“Ethan,” Callum sighed out to his brother, “I told you that I was making dinner for us tonight.” His younger brother shrugged, pulling on his jacket, “Plans come up when you have friends,” the seventeen-year-old teased, ducking out of Callum’s swinging hand to his head. Ethan laughed as he rushed out the door, “Just ask Marnie to come over! Or keep it warm for Katie–no, wait, she’s at a sleepover because she has friends, too.” Callum pointed at him, “You better watch yourself.” But he couldn’t joke for long, and he called out the window to his retreating brother, “I love you! Call if you’ll be late!” Ethan just waved and headed out.

But he did have food for two–food for three, really, since Ethan ate like any 17-year-old boy–and a need for another. And Ethan did have a point about Marnie. Couldn’t hurt to check. He kept the pasta in the pot, turned down the old gas stove so he didn’t return to a fire, and left to cut through the backyards over to Marnie’s home. The path was a herald to childhood, the answer to the endless go play outside! requests that followed being one of five rambunctious children, as well-behaved as they could be. They would go outside and immediately go over, so much so that even then, at twenty-three, it made him feel for a few moments that he had no responsibilities but keeping his siblings entertained with games.

He came up to the back of the home, knocking on the screen door. “Hey, Marnie! Any chance you’re hungry? My siblings hate me or something these days.” And he waited, smiling on her back step.

marniedowling-blog

Something about the way the light hit the half finished painting in front of Marnie didn’t seem quite right, like the colors were a little too vibrant or a little too dull. She wasn't quite sure. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead, inadvertently leaving behind a few streaks of blue as she considered the canvas and workspace before her. This painting featured a faceless woman under an umbrella, passing a similar, umbrella-less man in the other direction. Beneath it, the kitchen table was unrecognizable with newsprint spread across the entire surface and paintbrushes of different sizes and textures lying lazily in a row beside the little easel.

The knock on the door brought her out of her reverie, but the familiarity of Callum’s voice was not unwelcome. Nor was the invitation of food. Marnie didn’t so much as set down the brush in her hand as she stepped across the room and pulled open the door. Despite her frustration with her work, the sight of Callum immediately elevated her mood. His easy smile was contagious as ever, and she couldn’t help but grin back at him.

“Who could hate a face like that?” Marnie said, tilting her head to the side and looking him up and down like he was one of her works of art. After a moment, she shifted her gaze to appraise her own paint splattered clothes.

“I mean, I’m kind of a mess… but I could definitely go for something to eat. Clearly no food is about to get made in this chaos.” She gestured vaguely to the room around her, but the thing was, the kitchen usually looked like this. And she was almost always a bit of a mess. That was one of the best things about being friends with Callum, though. She knew he wouldn’t mind, and he had spent years cleaning her up when she needed it. With him around, she never had to be a mess on her own.

#p:callum

say anything // marnie & roman

The allure of a clear, mildly blue day may have coaxed Marnie out into the open, but the heat of the afternoon sun turned out less friendly than she had hoped. She ducked into the nearest store in search of a few minutes of cool air, removing beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand as she entered. The tinkling of a bell above the door and the stale scent of old books met her as she began browsing the shelves. Disorganized stacks of books were cramped into every last bit of space, making it impossible to identify many of the titles. But in her years of experience, sometimes the best thing was to let the right book find you. So Marnie chose a nearby shelf, reached out a hand, and seized a book at random.

A well worn copy of A Farewell to Arms. She had never been one for classics, so she tried again. This time, a small book on basic algebra. Once again, the subject didn’t appeal to her, but there was something charming, almost enticing about the dog eared pages and margin-scribbled notes. Frowning slightly at the two books in her hands, she turned to the man behind the counter.

“Any, uh, any recommendations other than these?” she tried, lamely holding out the two books for him to see. “I like to pick at random but it didn’t really work this time.”

#p:roman