Wide-eyed and up in arms, my little brother was a solemn one. Who: Ephraim & Talia Sullivan. What: One half comes back to town; the other half welcomes it back. When: The beginning of April. Where: Sully’s apartment in Soho.
SULLY: The hallways of the building were dirty-dusty and the windows smeared; footprints scuffed through imprints of footprints long gone as people trammeled through a place few stayed long. The top floor was one just as neglected, faint air of lack of care about the scabbed and scarred front door, pockmarked with key-scratches and peeling black paint but here the tide of footprint traffic was lessened, a few rather than a mass. Small-dainty (flats, not heels; the curve of the foot arched and skimming round the pathways rather than tramp down the centre) the boot-heel print of shoes a little more serviceable -- and his own. Sully noticed things like footprints and the way the spider-web raveling out from the corner of the door to the hall light looked like cotton, spun sugar and that the light caught against it and made him want to sketch it but not the absence of the bulb or the cracked glass in the shade. People came and people went and the man within looked up with the same happy surprise, shook off whatever drifting remnants of the art-funk (sometimes less happily-so, it had to be said, inspiration all clutching fingers fastened around his wrist, the roll of a pastel or piece of charcoal between twitching fingers the only outward indication of serious impatience) and greeted them. In the centre of the space, feet hooked on the lim of a stool kept balanced with several years’ worth of phone-books, beneath the soft drift of sunlight through glass kept scrupulously clean (because of course, light quality merited notice) Sully’s lowered head -- sketchpad and watercolour pencil, it was a day of soft blend of colours and the play of texture against the page -- only raised now and again as his hand crept out like a blind spider for the mug of tea to his right. He never noticed it was cold.
The scratch at the door, key aimed for a lock was not noticed simply because it wasn’t unusual. Here in this place, his place, there was no need for the focused intent of the Gang, cultivated watchfulness and attention paid to shifting circumstance. The key to the flat rested above the doorframe and there was nothing within to steal -- a bed with sheets long past due washing, a scruffy purple velvet couch piled high with artistic accoutrements. A table or three (whatever could be seen of them, paint-stained and covered in sketchbooks and paper and canvases leaned drunkenly against the legs). People came because Sully didn’t answer doors, even when expecting them. Expectations were forgotten in the slide of medium against paper, in the slow-burn sensation of magic eking itself out of fingertips and the thin-pleasure smile of understood (long paid for) ability at work.
TALIA: Where he saw dappled light and the soft edges of hovering dust motes, like so many hundreds of individual paint flecks hanging in the air, Talia simply felt her throat itching and fighting off a sneeze. A year of travel had strung her out and beaten her down, wandering feet carrying the woman from Krk to Peschici before she’d finally tired of small towns and drifted back to France. Travel and lodging came easily, with nothing more than a hand pressed against an arm, or fingers locked in a polite handshake. Honeyed words weren’t even necessary, but Talia practiced them regardless. She dripped flattery and easy laughter wherever she went, worming her way into bed’n’breakfasts and family-run restaurants.
But every prodigal must someday return, and she’d felt that rubber-band connecting her to London (and her brother) stretching and quivering, ready to snap. She yearned for home -- yearned, perhaps, for the safety of territory, but mostly for a place to set down and recharge. As she clambered up these narrow steps with a heavy traveller’s rucksack weighing her down (no proper luggage; Talia Sullivan had gone properly mobile years ago), she couldn’t help but smile. Even with her mood crushed to nothing, her brother’s flat (a universal constant in her self-made, inconstant world) still appealed to her. It had that bohemian something to it. Not something he’d consciously cultivated, but something he simply lived -- she’d tried something like it for some eight-odd months, once, but it was more affectation than lifestyle. The lack of amenities bothered her. They’d done cold-water flats as children, when Rebecca Sullivan had squandered the last of their utilities money on the Market -- it hadn’t precisely been Talia’s choice. She needed heat. She loathed being without it, loathed being poor. Much as she liked the struggling actress stereotype in theory, her gut kicked against it in practice.
Reaching his door, Talia noticed the missing hall light and imagined what it would be like at nighttime. A bloody death trap. He’d know the way, though -- she could barely catch the lock with daylight, but he would be accustomed to the spatial dimensions here, hands would know where to go, fingers would easily find the key in one quick movement. (She wasn’t sure if she was thinking of Ephraim or Liam. Some hybrid of the two, a nebulous conglomeration of both.)
But with enough effort, the door finally swung open and she came breezing in, bag on her back, groceries cradled under her arm, a newspaper in the crook of the other elbow.
“Hullo!”
SULLY: There were voices like colours to Sully -- not quite the way the world spilled itself over into neons for those whom sound was sight and the rest -- but voices like shades filling between the black and white lines of the world as-was. Some crept into the dull blues and blacks, made themselves constants in the pliant shadows and curves of what looked ordinary, others blew themselves in, whirlwinds of joyous bouyant colour, strong and over the lines. That voice, not pastel but oils, not pencil but pen, bold and hard and careless meant the drop and roll of the pencil, the turn on rocking-uneven stool and the pad tossed toward the table without a look toward where it fell (sketches were all-important in the moment, kept him anchored and tied down to medium rather than day-dream shaping of clouds to shapes to ideas-of-art in his head and lost all authority once they were done with). His sister, the lines and conformation of her he knew as well (better -- not much time with mirrors and self-contemplation for Sully) as himself, as familiar to the eye -- comforting -- as seeing the back of his own hand in darkness. The flat, messy and dirty and a mass of unwashed clothing and mugs scattered, the discarded canvases like so many paper people observing, lost all interest as with a gawky kind of enthusiasm, Sully floundered off the stool and toward her.
“Hello! You’re here! Was I expecting you?” One long arm reaching out and plucking away supplies -- groceries, why did people always bring ...except, yes. He’d run out of milk and also of apples and bread, was that Tuesday or Sunday? The days mixed themselves up in a byplay that was clouds scudding skies and the thrum of rain against the glassed ceiling and perhaps groceries were useful after all, Sully wrapped the other around shoulders that fitted into embrace as evenly and wholly as if that was how they ought stay, two parts-made-whole rather than two people, thin-thready connection kept across country borders and rough telephone connections. “I didn’t prepare.” A little hopeless, Sully, with a sidelong look to the floor, let the grocery bag slide and wrapped the other arm around her for good-measure, pressing Tali into a hug of warm turpentine-and-cotton smell, the tang of oil paint and the sting of fixative along with tea that made up the scent-composite that was all Sully himself.
TALIA: She took a deep breath when locked into that embrace, absorbing the smells and letting them sink in. Her lungs and diaphragm swelled against his brittle ribs (everytime you breathe in, I breathe out) and she felt, for just that moment, as if she were home.
London itself wasn’t home, not precisely, and neither was the horrid little place they’d come from with their mother, nor any of the apartments Tali had flitted into and out of with equal ease -- but Sully. The boy, the man, was an extension of her. Wherever he was, whatever space he occupied -- Talia knew she could always come and insinuate herself there, and she would, to some extent, belong. She would never express it in these sentimental terms (she would choke, in fact, would splutter and hiss and fume over them), but they were there nonetheless.
And then, in the time it took for Tali to take her shuddering breath, she recovered from that sharp twinge of home-sickness, of Sully-sickness. The walls weren’t up; she had no need for emotional brick-and-mortar around Ephraim. But her smile was back, the nostalgia was forgotten (or at least shoved aside), and she was pressing a kiss to her brother’s cheek, arm twining around his shoulders before she detached herself to retrieve an apple which had fallen out of the bag and rolled over the uneven floor.
“You were expecting me a little,” she said blandly, buffing the apple on the sleeve of her white turtleneck. “We spoke earlier? On the journals?” The reminder was gentle. (Which they weren’t always, but today it was.) “It’s no matter. I hope I’m not interrupting anything!”
SULLY: A little, a smidge, an iota -- that splay of amounts that made very little sense when it wasn’t a smudge, a dab, something substantial, something that could be weighted and measured and seen. But it didn’t matter -- the usual byplay of bewilderment and guilt that twined themselves together until they grew as one was banished by the way Tali’s hair swayed until it brushed his cheek, all the wild curl of his own (and when they were small, didn’t he wind tendrils of it around his fingers when sleepy, his twin his own security blanket?), by the way her eyes played against the light without the constant itch to draw, to get it down on paper before it was gone (and that was only Tali, Tali whom he could close his eyes against the sun and see her then-now-next, the way she would be in as much certainty as the gap between her teeth when they’d both been losing them like their mother lost pennies). No guilt, just the way her heartbeat fell into step with his own, and that was Tali and it didn’t matter how long it had been -- he didn’t know, he’d been working with pastels then, a series of sketches all smudgy colour and splashy graphics -- because she was here now.
“No, no,” an expansive hand tossed toward the mess, the broken down stop-at-work that was a sketch unfinished, likely forgotten before the next one began, kerneled in the corner of his mind, “Nothing. Not busy.” And if the small wrinkle reappeared between the eyebrows, if Sully tried to find within the wide reaches of his mind as to when and where the journal conversation had been, when there had been warning of a sister now rather than far off, a sister who was not pleasantly bound up with envisioned cities sprawling in foreign brickwork and landscapes (and equally, with the uncomfortable too-stretched-out tug of something innately wrong to be so far separated) it was there and it was swept off and out of view as he tilted cheek toward her mouth in the same unthinking economy of movement that was two-thinking-as-one, and catching her bag as it slid off her arm. “I should probably tidy,” he said, doubt creeping into the voice as he looked around the room. Not quite good enough for Tali, but -- when was the last time he’d tidied?
TALIA: “No no no. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it!” She bundled up the fallen grocery bag and managed to set down the supplies, but only after clearing out a space for them on the counter. Slim hands carefully rearranged errant paintbrushes and pencils, straightening sheaves of paper and stained empty glass jars. She tripped around the living area for a few minutes, putting things away into cupboards with only a few missteps (what was this chalky sponge doing next to the baked beans?). Talia treated this flat, for all intents and purposes, as if she already lived in it.
“So. How have you been, Ephraim?” Asked as if he was the one who’d been travelling for years, and not her. Turning back from the latest pantry misadventure, her grin was crooked and impish: a remnant of the girl she used to be, before affectation moved in and took up residence. The groceries taken care of for now, Talia was free to sink into a rickety wooden chair and start pulling off her high-heeled boots.
SULLY: It was a little like an errant sunbeam, fallen through the smeary windows -- unexpected, not unpleasant, certainly not unwanted, but skipping across the floor and out of place and setting all other things off kilter and wrongly lit. Sunlight where it shouldn’t be, tossing shadows soft as dark over things that ought be clear and Sully was one hand scrunched down deep into pockets until pencil shavings curled sharply against his fingers and the other combing through and knotting too-tight in his hair. The tap carried on dripping, ongoing metronome to fraught assessment; Sully’s weight shifted, absent reflection on his sister whisking about the place restoring order (not restoring; creating -- what hadn’t been there all handled by her, all fingerprints and the trace of perfume and a smile, now in place, tucked against paint palettes and tins of food) and seated himself on the edge of the unmade bed as meekly as if obedient to an order.
“Me?” A look, more the sort of small boys caught in places they ought not -- Sully turned shy-sleepy smile on his sister, curled up corners of the mouth like an apology. “Fine.” Why wouldn’t he be? Plenty of people, plenty of jobs, the bills all stacked, tucked neatly beneath the can of paint thinner used presently as a doorstep, all marked over with Em’s writing. He blinked surprise at the notion and then -- appeasingly (for it might be what she wanted, perhaps? He never knew) “Better you’re back. Are you?” Doubtful.
“Where have you been?” The pencil, folded in amongst crumpled sheets, Sully edged it out with the tips of his fingers, the unconscious vague way a child might reach for security object in amongst the detritus of bedtime blankets. He rolled it between his fingers, that preparatory, speculative look all looking for light and one blind hand groping outwardly for paper, sketching his sister before he’d even really thought about doing so.
TALIA: Her gaze had flickered away, leaning over and attention drifting to lacings and zippers. But eventually Talia looked up from one stockinged leg and sheer black tights, head tilting in response to his question. Are you? “Am I what -- fine? Better? Or back?” She conveniently ignored his next, taking a moment to mull over the answer in her head. Where had she been? So many places -- names and memories all leaping around in her skull, impressions of hot summer nights and ocean breezes. They were all blurring together.
SULLY: Her hands -- not his. Once they’d been entwined, knotted round and together and sleepy-warm laced through one another’s until he didn’t know where he ended and Talia began, once they’d looked the same (they’d long looked the same -- long fingers, same span, palm to palm and wide-stretch of fingers like musicians, smiles like book ends -- there was a photograph, there was proof) but now her hands on her boots, her head canted like a bird, like an observer and he felt the shudder-disconnect of a part of himself detached and separate, like having one’s leg taken off and set in the corner to lean against a wall until you had the use of it again, until Talia-there instead of Talia-elsewhere began to paint itself bold over the lines of what had been drawn previously, until everything was of the same pigment. “All of it,” Sully blinked and his fingers fastened around the spiral of a notepad, dragged it across the bed and flipped it open with the vague dreamy note to the voice of mind slowly winding down to halt, of stopping as the other part woke itself up and twined itself around him.
“I missed you.” He thought. How long had it been?
TALIA: She heard the familiar scritch-scratch of lead on paper, and in the corner of her eye, spotted the bobbing weaving edge of the pencil dancing its way into a semblance of her face. She knew it would be her face, of course -- this was always Ephraim's way of absorbing and processing change. “You know, I often feel like someone never really exists until you’ve put them on paper,” Talia said offhand, her thoughts skittering into the open air. “Carbon somehow makes them a real person, gives them more life. Does that make sense?”
Onwards. The shoes were off; Talia was wiggling her toes, sprawling out in her seat.
“I missed you too. I’ve been well. Traipsing around the continent. Some small towns by the Adriatic, an Italian village on the Gargano promontory, some time in Paris and Nice... I saw Copenhagen for a while. Lots of the seaside, in general. It was beautiful -- you would have loved to paint it, I think. You really should travel with me sometime, darling.”
SULLY: Travel -- the kind of travel he did and she didn’t. Anonymous hotel rooms, maid-services, pressed shirts and businessmen in the lobby, a band of white-bright skin prominent around a finger, hands on the elbow of women too young to be their wives. Marks, the kind that were quick to notice oddities. Ephraim didn’t travel, but Sully did. Not much to see in scenery when tuned in to the body language in one restaurant much like another. He could see it -- the places Tali reeled off, unfolding behind his eyelids the way one watercolour seeped into another, pale imitation of what was real, picture-postcards as if he had seen them to. It always felt that way, words stretched out into brushes, delicately picking out what he hadn’t done, where she’d gone alone and filling in the gaps. The shading on the paper darkened to sulky granite-grey.
“I like it here.” It was a smile that drifted toward her, warm and whole-hearted, all twin welcoming home fractured piece of himself to be restored but with that small fissure within it, firm. Travel with Tali, watch the way faces changed when they allowed her fingers to skim theirs, watch the way they turned to face her, like flowers sought the sun. It was like a con, without the mark, without the end drawn after it. He’d never know when to begin painting again, when the job had ended -- if it had never really begun.
“People are carbon,” Sully said as gently as the pencil feathered soft shadow to Tali’s features, until there was a mirror-twin on page as well as sitting across. “What did you do?” The pencil stilled, Sully surfaced from the clinging sense of artist-attention caught -- “Did you like it?”
TALIA: She’d waited patiently (or as patiently as ever-moving Tali could -- her fingers drummed on the arm of her chair) for him to finish, knowing implicitly that her brother’s full attention would be lacking until then. When his eyes refocused, looking at her without the glazed distraction of an artist, Talia leant forward.
“Very much. But I’m back now, as always,” she said pointedly, glancing around at the apartment. “So... d’you think you’ll have space for me, just for a bit? You know how it goes: I need a landing spot. And it’s always lovely to live with you again, Ephraim.” The woman cracked a grin, and her tone was appropriately blasé. Airy. As if coming-and-going, trekking across countries and melting into his life and out of it and in again was the most natural thing in the world -- which it was, of course. This was how they’d worked, ever since Talia purposefully, stubbornly, put her foot down and refused to come home for their mother. She stretched these boundaries between family, pulling them to breaking limit (absence makes the heart grow fonder) before flitting back to his side with a kiss and a hug. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But London was London was London, and something in her heart and wandering legs always ached, in the end, and brought her back.
SULLY: There was a flutter of non-comprehension in eyes that matched her own (not in colour -- fraternal twins, two-in-womb rather than one a piece made separate, but that small piece of same-self that blinked back out from Sully to Tali and made them the whole). “But where else would you be?” Sully patient, no thin-fingered dawning of realization that there might be other alternatives. Tali came with friends, a coterie of laughing, too-bright-eyed people who jostled around with her, whose fingers skimmed elbows and who leaned together in a way too easy for skin-on-skin to marry themselves together. Talia home was Talia home -- home might be cramped and paint-stained and smell faintly of turpentine and damp but like question without answer, it was hers as much as his.
“I don’t know if there’s space,” a hunching in around the shoulders, doubt creeping quietly in to words as Sully divided himself, artist who craved quiet peace and the isolation enough to lose time in shadow and silence and brother (brother first and foremost, brother since the days the splaying light and chiming of charms hung above the bed was lullaby and nightlight) who put Talia-and-Ephraim above all else. “We’ll find some.” That smile, all echo of hers, solemn in a way Talia never was.
TALIA:I don’t know if there’s space. We’ll find some. “We always do, don’t we,” she said lightly, more statement and fact than question. She was pleased -- her little test had come out right. The twin had been out longer than usual this time, missing for a greater period than ever before. But when she came home, everything was as it was and should be and would ever be, with his home and arms opening up to her. The day Ephraim Sullivan deserted his twin sister would be the day she lost some of her basic belief in humanity.
“And besides, I’ve not got plenty of things. I won’t impose on your place much -- I’ll only start picking things up once I have a place of my own. Think I might stick around longer this time, though. It’s been such a long time, I hardly know what’s going on with you anymore. Still working with Liam, I take it?”
And this time it was a question, despite the fact that she knew the answer. The hints on the journals had said as much -- her boys (well, minus one, dead and gone and never to return despite his coven’s best efforts) were working. A job was brewing and something was kicking up its heels.
SULLY: He brightened, all sunshine through smeared glass made a little clearer by grounding in what was safe, was was right, what was perfectly ordinary. Talia gathered up the strings left long-hanging and waiting her return, to draw them all together and into hands, and Sully obediently (joyfully? Was there momentary hesitation in turning over all that life was, all that his life was too eagerly back to his sister? If there was, it was briefest hesitation, tiny micro-expression small enough not to be seen) laid them back across her palm.
“Yes,” he said, “Liam and the jobs. We do quite a bit.” No reprimand, no you would know if you stayed in touch for sister who darted away and left wide-enough hole behind, made certain to come back before it closed in and scarred over, worked away at its edges to keep it sore enough for her to settle back in. Sully dealt not in guilt -- he left that to the friends who parted helplessly in the rip-tide of Talia’s rejoining, who were torn asunder by all that wealth of need and time to catch up on (and Sully the one who let her loop her arm through his, guide him all away from what brief construction had been allowed, reshaped in her absence, let it all tumble apart until she left again and then to rebuild small convocation to live out from until her next return). Instead, the pencil tucked away, the sketch pad touched lightly with fingertips and closed. Sully turned supernova-full attention on his sister, attention sharp as honed knives and con artists, and smiled.
“You rejoining us?” Us the strange-new addition. It had been Talia’s, before. Now they were Sully’s, that band of boys and misfits and rag-tag motley crew (not Sully’s -- Liam’s but Liam now Sully’s rather than Talia’s -- microdistinction yet distinction all the same)
TALIA: “Perhaps,” she teased, drawling and tugging the word out until it stretched thrice its size. The vague promise was accompanied by a coy smile; it was fairly clear what she wanted and had in mind. And Talia Sullivan always tried very hard to get what she wanted.
“I don’t know for certain, darling. But I’d like to. If Liam’ll have me, I’ll gladly play along.” And play it was, for she was an actress, and that was where her talents lay. Changeable and chameleon-like, Talia slid her way into where she was needed. Perhaps she could be used again.
-- And her mind was already ticking over, drawing up a certain plan for Liam Ward. Reuniting with Ephraim or all the other friends came easily, ringing up phonecalls or meeting for coffee -- she rebuilt her network brick-by-brick, each of them with a gnat-like attention span and always willing to welcome her back into the fold. But Liam wasn’t a friend in her standard, stereotypical definition: flighty, unreliable actors and actresses who hadn’t seen a single lick of magic in their lives. She never knew where she stood with Liam; that meeting would require other methods.
But, ah, Sully. There was a reliable foundation, a solid bedrock for her feet to rest upon.
SULLY: A frown; he knew his sister’s faults, the ones that spiderwebbed through like fissures in diamond, that made her more than what she was, refractions for light to pass through and dance on past. Sully knew those faults, could catalogue them silently inside his head as friends indignant on his behalf (on their own; when had Tali not swathed through his life like a scythe, cut down all she could take in her path?) listed them off aloud, and ignore them just as easily. But Liam -- Liam who could find something to like, or at least, to interest him about all. Liam who could find reason to probe gently, to tease out smiles and laughter and solemnity as well from marks and women alike -- Liam the fractured mirror to hold Tali up against, “Why wouldn’t he have you?” for Liam was practical and Tali’s ability.... He’d seen it play out too many times to not see the practical value of Tali on board.
“You should,” and he was roaming around his space now, making it seem all the smaller in the comportment of long legs and arms, of broad bony shoulders on level with cupboard doors and putting things away, absently readjusting all Tali had whisked about. “We could use you, I think.” He turned, apple in hand, vaguely put it next to a cracked mug full of oil paint tubes, and closed the cupboard door on the motley mess behind it.
“Have you seen him yet?” Yet. For if Talia was home, Liam was small stop en route, port to be called into before settled utterly.
TALIA: “Mm.” The noise was noncommittal, her attention suddenly fluctuating, following his every moment as he fussed around his (bare, bohemian) space. Talia became fixated on a loose bit of white thread from her sleeve; business-like, she took it in hand and snapped it between her fingers.
Finally, watching as Sully pushed a jar beside a cardboard box and then inexplicably moved it back, she answered. “Haven’t yet. You’re always first on my list, Ephraim, you know that. But we did have that talk on the journals--” if talk was the right word, really, which it wasn’t, with both of them pacing wary circles around one another and never saying precisely what they meant. “--and I expect I’ll be seeing him soon. You probably can’t tell me any of the current details, can you?”
She knew the secrecy of the job, of its absolute confidentiality, protecting an operation liable to crack at any misjudged variable. Perfect disclosure between twins aside, if Sully told her any of the crucial specs, she’d have been disappointed. But he fit right into this life now, she knew. Long ago, she’d hated it -- she’d experienced bristling territorialism over her other half stepping into the magical illicit world which was hers. Devon (and Liam by extension, for those boys were part-and-parcel just as she and Sully were) was hers. But that childish petulance had ironed itself out into weary acceptance by now. He could have it. She didn’t belong there anymore, not really. With the original Peter gone from the Lost Boys, there was no need for Tali, Wendy-Tinkerbell hybrid that she was.
SULLY: “No,” Sully was all agreeable, long fingers closed around some flotsam of everyday life, artist puttering within household mundanity like a man at puzzle-piece kind of game. He smiled out peacefully from behind another cupboard door, rummaged until he found the bits and pieces (put away only a few minutes before by Talia herself but now established as part of the whole, Sully lost the knowledge of their origin, drew them out with happy surprise and stacked them up) of food and tea components, filled kettle -- all with the spreading out equanimity of man made safe by sister’s presence. Simply put; when Talia was home, when she sat amid canvases and dirty paintbrushes and mussed bedlinen as if artist’s model and muse and other-half-of-self all together, he did not need to worry where about in the world-sea she tossed.
“But you knew that,” secrets sat wrongly on the tongue. Talia was accustomed to keeping them, like small fingers digging in dirt for pieces of shell and shiny stones, children’s treasures -- finders keepers, mine, small empress laying claim to all that could be accumulated. Sully on the other hand - Ephraim, he was Ephraim here - either could not keep his things out of Talia’s grasp or chose not to. Small boy with scabby knees trotting over to where his sister sat, related all he’d learned... No, Sully had learned how to keep things from Talia with the prickling unease of something fundamentally wrong about the whole. “You should go and see him. There’s a job coming up soon,” Sully sounded surer of that than of most things presently spoken of. The details of the job, filed away like india ink markings in the page, bold enough to keep everything else a colour wash within the lines. He was always certain, when it came to jobs. “But not tonight. Tonight you’ll tell me all about everything?” Hopeful. Little boy asking for stories, Sully turning fond smile towards twin-best-friend-other-self, all expectant.
TALIA: “I will,” she promised, encompassing all of the above in two simple words -- Liam, jobs, working together, and storytelling. And as he bustled about to prepare the tea, she started unpacking her bag -- neatly-folded pile of clothes, half-full notebook and chaotic assortment of pens, toothbrush and face-wash, all the various accouterments which would declare that Talia was back in residence. And the younger sister (but only by a hair’s-breadth of time) settled on the edge of his bed to recap her stories, unable to resist that expectant face; looking at him, she’d always see Ephraim, the malnourished boy-child tagging in her footsteps. Sully expected his sister to come back with romantic tales, painting-vivid and exotic to balance out his own adventures.
So she did.
She would tell him of rickety buses veering along precarious cliff-faces by Peschici; of flirting with the bartender to get free mugs of the best hot cocoa she’d ever had, heady and strong; of swimming amongst docile fish in the clear waters of the Adriatic; of watching bats billow into the sky in Cyprus; of waking up with the dawn, daylight streaming through stone windows without curtains or slats; of finding a stray dog and her newborn pups living beneath a hotel fountain in Lisbon, and sneaking food from the buffet daily to feed them; of sleeping at bus stops in the streets of Rome; of sneaking into a barn outside Vienna and spending the night nestled in the hay.
All of these facts were true. And if she inflated the stories a little, making the colours too bright, the people just a bit too outlandish -- well, what was the harm in it? He was an artist; she was an actress.