continued fromON BORROWED WINGS
Francis and LloHan are both working at the Art Gallery of Barcelona. LloHan was a curator and Francis was a critique and they have been working there together for almost nine months now. It was the 6th of September 2001 since he was taken in by the Artes Galería de Barcelona after a year of serving as a junior curator in one of the prominent museums of Paris. Francis was a very amicable guy and a heavy smoker.
On LloHan’s first day he was quite nervous that at the very first chance to get a breather, he went out to the park just a walk across the street outside the gallery. There he noticed this lanky guy who was quite a good looking mestizo smoking a filtered cigarette, he was looking at LloHan with an amused look. LloHan who noticed his pin on the left lapel recognized him as one of his co-employees. Smiling back in recognition he walked towards the bench facing a sculpture of bronze, an Aztec priestess standing with an ornate robe and on her outstretched arms as in offering lays a shallow dish with which they burn incense.
‘Hey, it’s your first day huh…?’ Francis asked.
‘You bet … it is.’ LloHan answered fumbling with his hands inside his pocket.
Francis took out a packet of cigarette from inside his vest and offered some to LloHan.
‘I really don’t smoke but I guess I can use some right now.” LloHan retorted. Francis handed him his packet of green Phillip Morris and LloHan was right it was the filtered type.
He took one and handed back the packet and Francis gave him his cigarillo to light his and placed the packet of PM inside his vest pocket and extended his right hand and said, ‘Francis del Castillo, I am a critique in the hub.’
‘Lloyd Handrei de la Croix, I was the new curator. I’d be damned I really am nervous.’ LloHan coughed and grinned.
Francis shrugged in an almost aloft manner and laughed in a bellowing baritone. It was an infectious laugh which made LloHan felt at ease. There friendship started with a piece of smoke and LloHan thought he would never smoke again. It was disgusting! It was as if you are chocking your self with air but the difference was it was an air full of shit. But it did help calm him down at that moment, it took his mind of his worries and tried worrying on breathing the shit and coughed out from time to time.
LloHan met Francis’ beau Arian Dominggo, a tall slim figured lady with a well endowed bosoms that LloHan secretly wonder if it was all hers. Since then the pair has been setting up LloHan to meet their lady friends and acquaintances and to Arian and Francis’ disappointment LloHan seems to have very high ideals when it comes to woman. He never gets serious. He had some affairs, and some indiscretions. He was not celibate for that matter. When he messes up with his sex life he never uses his real name and never encourages attachment. He is very religious with using the rubber and typically never returns phone calls. The single females in the staff has been gossiping about his conquests whether there is some truth in the heresy that “he is a sex god” they know not but some are dying to give it a try. Too bad they may never know for it is LloHan’s primary rule not sleep with his co-workers. Would just complicate things, he would say. At the prime of his youth he does not want to commit and to be tied down—though he had few encounters of being tied on the bed posts.
As he reached his flat this was near the corner of San Filipe three blocks from the Catedral de Barcelona, just another ten-minute walk to the museum, the bells are tolling for the evening novena. He clicked the lock and went in, checked his voicemail and went to his office and checked his e-mail. Went to the kitchen took out the Tropicana Orange Juice from his elegant cabinet type refrigerator and took a swig. He had quite a taste in his furnishings and his kitchen was clean, like a torn page from a magazine. Black granite counter tops red cabinets; the scheme was very bachelor and sophisticated. He paraded to his bedroom with the tetra pack on his left hand switched on the lights on top of his bed hangs a mural 34x26 by Joan Miró. He is leaving in the modest No.43 2nd Flat of the Casa Batlló, an apartment which was designed by the famous Antoni Gaudí, a work of art. How predictable, a man who works at the Artes Gallería de Barcelona inhabits a work of art. He stripped and turned on the shower left the juice in front of the mirror by the sink and dumped his trousers and shirt on the laundry basket. He went in and closed the frosted glass panel in the shower compartment and soaked under the cascading cold water and let the salty water that had dried on his skin to wash off. He prepared himself for yet another date but this time it is quite different, it’s some tea on a Café Andalucia in the grand boulevard of Passeig de Gràcia and maybe dinner afterwards. After that, he really doesn’t know. He just hope it would not be that boring.
Andrei Abbot is a struggling artist and an eclectic savant of the art, whose first exhibit is two-weeks away and is still short of six pieces for the 13-piece art show. He is in deep thought trying to feel something that could inspire him. He is standing in front of his window on the third story of a four-storey apartment that he has leased since moving out of his parents house four years since. Each flat is occupied separately and the bottom flat was a bookstore owned by a widow, Senyora Ambrocia del Salvador who lives at the top flat with his son.
to be continued...
On LloHan’s first day he was quite nervous that at the very first chance to get a breather, he went out to the park just a walk across the street outside the gallery. There he noticed this lanky guy who was quite a good looking mestizo smoking a filtered cigarette, he was looking at LloHan with an amused look. LloHan who noticed his pin on the left lapel recognized him as one of his co-employees. Smiling back in recognition he walked towards the bench facing a sculpture of bronze, an Aztec priestess standing with an ornate robe and on her outstretched arms as in offering lays a shallow dish with which they burn incense.
‘Hey, it’s your first day huh…?’ Francis asked.
‘You bet … it is.’ LloHan answered fumbling with his hands inside his pocket.
Francis took out a packet of cigarette from inside his vest and offered some to LloHan.
‘I really don’t smoke but I guess I can use some right now.” LloHan retorted. Francis handed him his packet of green Phillip Morris and LloHan was right it was the filtered type.
He took one and handed back the packet and Francis gave him his cigarillo to light his and placed the packet of PM inside his vest pocket and extended his right hand and said, ‘Francis del Castillo, I am a critique in the hub.’
‘Lloyd Handrei de la Croix, I was the new curator. I’d be damned I really am nervous.’ LloHan coughed and grinned.
Francis shrugged in an almost aloft manner and laughed in a bellowing baritone. It was an infectious laugh which made LloHan felt at ease. There friendship started with a piece of smoke and LloHan thought he would never smoke again. It was disgusting! It was as if you are chocking your self with air but the difference was it was an air full of shit. But it did help calm him down at that moment, it took his mind of his worries and tried worrying on breathing the shit and coughed out from time to time.
LloHan met Francis’ beau Arian Dominggo, a tall slim figured lady with a well endowed bosoms that LloHan secretly wonder if it was all hers. Since then the pair has been setting up LloHan to meet their lady friends and acquaintances and to Arian and Francis’ disappointment LloHan seems to have very high ideals when it comes to woman. He never gets serious. He had some affairs, and some indiscretions. He was not celibate for that matter. When he messes up with his sex life he never uses his real name and never encourages attachment. He is very religious with using the rubber and typically never returns phone calls. The single females in the staff has been gossiping about his conquests whether there is some truth in the heresy that “he is a sex god” they know not but some are dying to give it a try. Too bad they may never know for it is LloHan’s primary rule not sleep with his co-workers. Would just complicate things, he would say. At the prime of his youth he does not want to commit and to be tied down—though he had few encounters of being tied on the bed posts.
As he reached his flat this was near the corner of San Filipe three blocks from the Catedral de Barcelona, just another ten-minute walk to the museum, the bells are tolling for the evening novena. He clicked the lock and went in, checked his voicemail and went to his office and checked his e-mail. Went to the kitchen took out the Tropicana Orange Juice from his elegant cabinet type refrigerator and took a swig. He had quite a taste in his furnishings and his kitchen was clean, like a torn page from a magazine. Black granite counter tops red cabinets; the scheme was very bachelor and sophisticated. He paraded to his bedroom with the tetra pack on his left hand switched on the lights on top of his bed hangs a mural 34x26 by Joan Miró. He is leaving in the modest No.43 2nd Flat of the Casa Batlló, an apartment which was designed by the famous Antoni Gaudí, a work of art. How predictable, a man who works at the Artes Gallería de Barcelona inhabits a work of art. He stripped and turned on the shower left the juice in front of the mirror by the sink and dumped his trousers and shirt on the laundry basket. He went in and closed the frosted glass panel in the shower compartment and soaked under the cascading cold water and let the salty water that had dried on his skin to wash off. He prepared himself for yet another date but this time it is quite different, it’s some tea on a Café Andalucia in the grand boulevard of Passeig de Gràcia and maybe dinner afterwards. After that, he really doesn’t know. He just hope it would not be that boring.
Andrei Abbot is a struggling artist and an eclectic savant of the art, whose first exhibit is two-weeks away and is still short of six pieces for the 13-piece art show. He is in deep thought trying to feel something that could inspire him. He is standing in front of his window on the third story of a four-storey apartment that he has leased since moving out of his parents house four years since. Each flat is occupied separately and the bottom flat was a bookstore owned by a widow, Senyora Ambrocia del Salvador who lives at the top flat with his son.
to be continued...
