The Colorman by Erika Wood

was seen as utter dreck when the paint was still wet. It’s whoever was honest enough to hear you, it’s whether THEY put you at the table or not. Whether anybody then has anything to say to YOU.”
    â€œRelativist bullshit,” Thom was muttering, but Karl was smiling at her charmingly.
    It was just the three of them left at the table now and Karl turned to Thom pointedly and said, “Well, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, then,” and just waited for him to leave. His leaving, of course, being a little more thorough than Karl meant it to be, but no less than he intended right at that moment.
    It wasn’t long after that night that Rain dropped out of art school and moved in with Karl. She’d found all she needed in terms of art instruction and support from him. His fierce narcissism and self-centeredness widened to include her for many of their years together, so she mistook his self-regard for support and his snobbiness for belief in her. He made her dizzy with his attention and his passion, but in front of her friends and other people who loved her, he was always a bit strange and jealous.
    The very fact that Rain rented a studio outside her home was an enormous luxury. Even its marginal neighborhood and ugly five-story walk-up couldn’t mar the over-indulgence it represented. Most artists in the city lived in their studios, with the more successful ones perhaps earning walls between the bed and the easel, sometimes only a few more feet of space.
    That she had one was enviable enough, but that her father paid for it was something that Rain would never admit, even to her closest friends, though most of those who knew about her studio suspected it. Few of her friends even knew about the place since she never brought people there. It wasn’t that Rain was shy to show her work; in fact, she brought most finished pieces back to the apartment she shared with Karl and even hung some of them there. It had nothing to do with the state she kept the studio in or the unfinished works. It was simply a sense of proportion. To most of her friends, it would be have been like screeching to a stop in a Lamborghini right in front of their lopsided old ten-speeds. They would have been impressed and complimentary, but some part of her suspected they might wonder if she deserved it.
    The studio rental was a wedding present from her father, arranged by Gwendolyn, who could always perfectly carry out whatever her husband conceived. John Morton knew Rain’s fiercest wishes. Though Gwen disliked Karl from the very beginning and held dark and pessimistic ideas about pursuing any aspect of art as a career—art-making darkest of all—she dutifully found and stocked Rain’s first studio magnificently. She thought it would provide a soon-to-be, much-needed escape from the controlling and small-minded man Rain insisted upon marrying so young.
    Though Gwen had told Karl that the gift was really just for Rain, he was emphatic about coming along to see it. The appointment at the courthouse was still days away, but Karl and Rain had both taken time off from work to get ready and have a few small gatherings in preparation for the big day.
    John’s heart condition counter-indicated the five-floor walk up, so he waited for them in the car while Gwen led them to the over-painted glossy black door. It and the jamb were bejeweled with odd buzzers, locks, a tiny camera lens and a peephole.
    As Gwen pulled open the door to the tune of its soon-familiar metallic sigh, Rain took close note of the air. It was a smell she would come to associate with working there. A fragrance that would unknot her stomach and loosen her shoulders. It was clean and faintly aromatic and yet had a kind of fresh antiquity to it. Like an opened pyramid, the small entry and stairwell suggested untold riches inside maybe this chamber, maybe that one.
    Gwen pointed out a mailbox.
    â€œWhy would she need that?” Karl