What is art? A question so simple, yet so hard to answer. Not for Reno, though. Reno knew exactly what his art was and what he wanted to accomplish with it. During the few weeks I spent with him, I should learn just how special his art truly was.
I met Reno at the beginning of my third semester at my city’s arts academy eight years ago. The moment he strolled into the lecture hall, I couldn’t help but stare at him. To say he looked weird would be an understatement. His clothes were mismatched and dirty, his hair was wild and disheveled, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. This strange character found himself a seat in the back, where he dozed off almost instantly.
“Seems we have a newcomer,” our professor joked when he entered the room and saw him at the back.
For a moment, Reno continued dozing, and the class started laughing.
“Not a newcomer,” he mumbled.
For a while, the professor stared at him, frowning, but then his face lit up.
“Ah, Reno, what a surprise to see you here. Hopefully, we get to see a bit more of you this semester.”
Needless to say, that wasn’t the case. During the first half of the semester, I could count the times I saw Reno in the lecture hall on one hand. And if he was there, he was always at the back, all by himself, ignored by the rest of the class. I’d ignored him, too, if I wouldn’t have seen him at the university’s studio one afternoon.
Until then, I didn’t know what Reno was majoring in or that he was an artist. The studio was packed with students, all working on their respective projects. As I made my way to my little corner, I noticed a handful of students who had crowded together, all watching something.
“What’s going on?” I asked, walking up to them.
“That guy over there, it’s crazy.”
When I looked where he was pointing, I saw none other than Reno. He was working on some sort of sculpture, chiseling away at a block of stone. Now this wouldn’t have been strange at all, but there were two reasons Reno stood out. The first was his motif. He’d apparently picked up a random chair from somewhere in the studio and decided to sculpture it for our class project. The second was the result. The sculpture he was creating was breathtaking. He wasn’t merely recreating the chair; he was creating an idealized version of it. In his art, he turned an old wooden chair into a throne embroidered with flowers and ornate carvings. As I watched, I couldn’t help but think that this still-unfinished chair was the most beautiful thing in the entire studio. Yet, while we all watched in astonishment, Reno seemed distant, unattached, almost bored. He didn’t even look up at us, not a single time, and ignored us altogether.
Over the course of the week, I saw him at the studio multiple times. He was never there for long, but his progress was rapid. While my painting looked almost no different after a week of working on it, Reno’s piece was already finished. While everyone marveled at his creation, Reno put a single written note next to it and strolled from the studio as if what he’d done was the simplest thing in the world.
It was this chair, this throne that sparked my interest in this peculiar character. I guess it was the way he acted, the contrast between his artistic ability and his strange personality. Yet, after he’d finished his project, weeks went by without him showing up to class even once. Eventually, I approached our professor about him. The old man sighed when I mentioned the name Reno.
“That young man is something else. In all my years at this academy, I’ve seen no one as talented as him. It’s a shame he’s wasting his talent.”
I could hear the heartfelt frustration in the man’s voice, and having seen Reno’s piece, I understood how he felt. For a few seconds, I shuffled around in front of his desk before I asked the question I’d wanted to.
“Do you know where I can find him? I, well, I wanted to talk to him about his art, but he’s never in class, so…”
My voice trailed off.
“Well, I wouldn’t know, but if you go down to Mr. Zimmer in the student secretariat, he might be able to help you.”
I thanked him, and ten minutes later, I was face to face with Mr. Zimmer. He wasn’t thrilled about my inquiry and rambled on about privacy and that he couldn’t just give out a student’s address. As quickly as possible, I made up a lie, stating I was working on a project with Reno, but he hadn’t shown up in weeks. I even added a little curse about him “ruining my semester.” That did the trick. Zimmer yielded and handed me a note with his address.
I didn’t visit Reno right away, and neither did I visit him for the rest of the week. To be honest, I was nervous and didn’t even know what to say to him.
On Saturday afternoon, I mustered up what little courage I had and set out. Even then, I didn’t know what I was even doing or why I was going. I guess Reno gave off this strange feeling, almost like an aura. Once I’d arrived at the address, I found myself in front of an old, possibly abandoned one-story building. Its bleak walls were covered in graffiti, its windows frosted and half-closed off by rusty metal sheets. Great, did he give them a fake address? Considering the way he’d acted, it wasn’t too farfetched. Then I noticed a dim shimmer of light coming from inside, and as I stepped closer, I saw an old doorbell. For a moment, I just stared at it, then I took a deep breath and rang. I waited for a moment before I tried a second time. A moment later, I heard sounds from inside before a well-known, scrubby-looking figure with messy hair opened the door. I recognized him instantly.
“Sorry, but I think you’ve got the wrong address,” he mumbled and was about to close the door again.
“Reno, wait!”
When he heard his name, he looked up.
“We’re in the same class at university. Claire, remember? I saw your piece in the studio, that chair, and it was amazing. I was wondering if you could show me more of your art.”
For a moment, he stood there, taken aback.
“You know, no one from the academy has ever visited me here. I thought no one cared about my work.”
“What? Didn’t you notice how everyone was watching you at the studio? Even Professor Schneider told me how impressed he is with your work and that you’re wasting—”
I broke off.
Reno, however, didn’t get mad. He only smiled.
“Well, yes, there’s Schneider, but that man doesn’t know a thing about art.”
“But Schneider’s one of the most renown—”
“What is art?” he cut me off.
I started rambling on about depictions of beauty, about capturing the moment, and about creativity. Eventually I broke off as I realized I didn’t know what I even wanted to say.
“All right, fine, but then what is art, Reno?”
“Art is perfection,” he answered without the slightest hesitation. “It’s not merely a depiction of reality. It’s a depiction of a perfect version of reality. Art shows what could’ve been.”
“Like that chair,” I mumbled to myself.
He nodded and finally led me into his home. The building had looked old and rundown from outside, but the inside was sheer and utter chaos. The place was filled to the brim with all sorts of unfinished sculptures and various materials. Even the floor was littered with dust and rubble, forcing me to choose my steps carefully.
“Do you…live here?”
“Yes,” he answered matter-of-factly.
He led me through this labyrinth of half-finished sculptures, blocks, and stones until we’d made it to a haphazardly put-together living quarter at the back. There was a small kitchen aisle, a table and chair, and a dusky old couch he seemed to use as a bed.
“So what’s with all those sculptures? Are you working on all of them at the same time?” I asked and pointed to the chaos behind us.
“Oh, those? No, I’m not working on them anymore.”
“What do you mean, you’re not working on them?”
“I abandoned them,” he said with a shrug.
I walked over to a half-finished sculpture of a beautiful young woman. Her face showed a sad smile, half hidden by her wild, long hair.
“But, but this is brilliant, and this one over here,” I continued, pointing at another unfinished piece of a crying old man staring skyward.
“That’s not what my art is about, at least not anymore.”
“But what is your art about?”
“It’s about depicting perfect versions of our flawed reality.”
“What does that even mean?”
Instead of answering, he led me to a small back area of the building. It was less crowded than the rest. There was a single block of stone there, one he seemed to work on. I could see the smiling face of a beautiful older woman and the first hints of the outlines of her body. Pinned to the surrounding walls were various photos. They depicted a woman, her face similar to that of the sculpture, but also vastly different. The woman in the picture looked sickly, angry, crazy even. For a moment, I took in her appearance before I looked back at Reno’s sculpture.
“But it’s so different. That’s not even the same person anymore!”
“But it is, only it’s a perfect depiction of her.”
“Yeah, all right,” I started. “But if you want to create beautiful art, why don’t you base it on actual beautiful people? Wouldn’t it be easier?”
“Where’d be the meaning of that? And more importantly, it’s not what my art is about. It’s all about depicting a world free of faults. What I’m creating here is sculptured perfection.”
“Sculptured perfection,” I repeated. What a strange expression, but oddly fitting for such a strange man.
“So, all I can see is this, and all the abandoned sculptures outside. Do you have any of your finished pieces here?”
He shook his head. “No, they are all gone.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There’s a purpose to them.”
“Let me guess, money? You’ve got yourself some rich patrons who are interested in the stuff you created here, right?”
Reno didn’t answer. Instead, he gave me a little smile. One that said, “If you think that’s it, so be it.” For the next hours, I stayed at Reno’s place, talking to him about his art. All his answers, however, were ambiguous, nothing more than short ramblings about ugliness and beauty, perfection and imperfection. It was interesting to listen to him, intriguing even, but also endlessly frustrating. When the sun set, I told him I had to go. His answer was nothing but a shrug, and he went back to his sculpture, chiseling away at his newest version of sculptured perfection. On my way home and for the next days, I couldn’t stop thinking about Reno. It was less attraction, but more curiosity. After seeing his work, even if most of it was abandoned pieces, I couldn’t deny how brilliant he was.
It was a week later that my curiosity drove me back to his place. I hadn’t even made it to the door when I heard a ruckus from inside. As my steps sped up, I could hear stone grinding before something shattered to the ground. The door burst open, but instead of Reno, a disgruntled older man stormed outside.
“Fuckin’ disgustin’!” he screamed back. “You do somethin’ like that again and I’ll kill you, you hear me, you goddamn fag?”
With that, he stumbled from the door and in my direction. When his eyes met mine, he cursed at me.
“What you lookin’ at, you dumb bitch? Get the fuck outta the way!”
The guy was clearly drunk, and I quickly hurried aside to let him pass. When I reached the door, I saw Reno shuffling toward the exit. I could see a split lip and a bruise on his face.
“My god, Reno, are you all right?” I asked, hurrying toward him.
“It’s nothing.”
“That’s not nothing! What happened?”
Soon enough, I saw that one of his unfinished sculptures had been knocked over, explaining the noise I’d heard.
“Oh no, did he do that?” I asked as I stared at the now-destroyed beautiful piece.
Reno nodded but then shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But why’d you let someone like him inside?”
“Because he’s my newest motif.”
“What?”
He shrugged again and led me to his work area. A new block of stone stood in its center, and a new set of photos lay scattered on the ground all around it. I picked some of them up and saw they were all of the same drunk I’d seen before. In one of them, he was shirtless, showing a disturbingly emaciated body sprouting discolored patches all over.
“Is that why he beat you up? Because of those photos?”
“No, I asked him to take off his pants,” Reno answered.
“You what?”
I had to suppress the laughter that was rising in my throat.
“The better a look I get at someone, the easier things are.”
“Yeah, but asking a guy like that to… God, Reno, of course he’d flip!”
He stared at me for a moment as if waiting for me to explain, but I sighed.
“What about the statue of the woman you’ve been working on?”
“I finished her two days ago.”
“And let me guess, you’ve already sold it, right?”
He gave me a nod, but it was a reluctant one.
“Do you have any pictures of them, of your sculptured perfections?”
For a moment, I saw him hesitate, but then he shook his head.
“There’s no need for that.”
“You know, Reno, talking to you can be frustrating.”
He eyed me again, clearly not understanding what I meant.
“You know, why don’t you let me watch you work? As a fellow artist, I’m sure I can learn a thing or two.”
There was the smallest hint of an emotion on his face before he shrugged and started on his work. He sorted through all the photos he’d taken and pinned them to the walls. Then he went over to a table stacked with various tools and chisels. His hands moved over them delicately. I watched him pick up one, then another, before he seemed to have found what he was looking for. Then he began his work. There was madness to his artistry. It all seemed chaotic, not trained or studied. Chunks of stone crashed to the floor here and there, some small, others big. Yet, as I continued to watch, I realized there was a method to his madness. It was almost as if he needed nothing but his eyes, nothing but his tools to bring forth what was hidden inside the block. It was entrancing to watch him work. He didn’t pause once, and his hands never came to a rest. There was no moment of hesitation. I don’t know for how long I sat there, but after hours, I said my goodbye to Reno. This time he didn’t react and seemed to have forgotten I was there altogether.
I was surprised to see him at a lecture a week later. He looked just as he did when I’d first seen him. A disheveled, tired-looking young man who’d snuck in without being noticed by anyone.
“Why do you even come here?” I asked as I plopped myself down next to him.
His tired eyes met mine, and it took him a while before he recognized me. Then he gave me the weakest of shrugs.
“Habit, I guess.”
“That’s it? Aren’t you here to graduate? I mean, you signed up, after all, right?”
Another shrug.
“I used to, but not anymore.”
“But why?”
“I guess I found my own way. There’s nothing here for me anymore. At times, I just like to mingle.”
“You know, Reno, sitting at the back all by yourself hardly qualifies as mingling.”
To that, he said nothing.
“All right, how about joining me and my friends tonight? We’re going to hit a bar to have a few drinks.”
“Thank you, Claire, but I don’t think—”
“No buts! You probably spent all of last week working on that stupid drunk’s sculpture, and now you’re just wasting away. You’re coming, end of story.”
Reno smiled at my little outburst and nodded.
“Guess it’s fine this once,” he said, musing on.
That same evening, I showed up at his home and dragged him along with me.
“There’s no way you’re staying here,” I started when he was about to protest. “You said you’re coming, and that’s what you’ll do!”
And with that, I dragged him to the nearest subway station. Needless to say, my friends were more than curious when they saw me with Reno. He was a weirdo, after all, and he hadn’t even bothered to change into a fresh set of clothing. I introduced him to them, but he was as detached as always, merely stating his name and stumbling along with us. While my friends chatted, Reno’s eyes darted around, scanning the world.
“Come on, Reno, live a little. Have some fun.”
“You know, when you look at the world, I sometimes wonder…” he said.
His eyes wandered over a group of people on the other side of the road. He never finished his line of thought, though.
At the bar, my friends were their usual selves, ordering drinks and sharing stories. For a while, they pressed Reno to tell them more about himself and asked how the two of us had met, trying to include him in their conversations. Soon enough, though, they gave up. Even at the bar, Reno was the same as at university, sitting at the back, voluntarily isolated. Eventually, my friends wanted to move on to a different bar. When we all got up, Reno didn’t move. He sat there, seemingly in his own world. I snipped my finger in front of his face.
“Reno, we’re moving on. Let’s go.”
He raised his hands.
“No, I’m fine. I’m just going to finish my drink and head home.”
I sighed.
“All right,” I said, turning to my friends. “Why don’t you guys go ahead? I’ll see you later.”
They gave me a puzzled look before their eyes darted to the dejected figure still sitting at the table.
“You sure you want to stay?” one of them asked.
“Just for a bit, all right?”
As they set out, I heard them mumble about me and why I’d be with a guy like him. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Of course, they’d got the wrong idea. I got myself another drink, put down my jacket, and set down next to him.
“Why didn’t you go with your friends?”
“You know, I don’t really know myself,” I said with a sigh. “Why aren’t you having any fun? You know, you could at least try to do, well, anything.”
He shrugged.
“Because there’re more important things to do for me.”
“Your art, right?”
No answer. Instead, his eyes were scanning the bar’s other patrons. They came to rest on a burly man who was drunk and a bit too touchy with the girl next to him.
“Looking for new motifs?” I asked jokingly.
This time I got a reaction, and his eyes wandered back to me.
“It’s not that simple. Not just anyone will do.”
“Why do you even choose the people you do?”
“I guess I’m trying to make the world a little more beautiful, a little more perfect. I think my art can change the world and the people in it for the better.”
“You might want to try that on Clark Roberts,” I mumbled.
“Clark Roberts?” he asked with a little edge to his voice. “What about him?”
“I guess you could call him my uncle, of sorts. Not in the biological sense, of course, but he used to be best friends with my dad back in the day. He was around a lot when I was a little girl. But while Dad ended up in some dead-end job, Roberts grew rich, filthy rich. Financial speculation, stocks, real estate, that type of thing. Still, he came to visit us from time to time, but things weren’t the same anymore. Even as a child, I noticed his condescending attitude. After Dad died, after Mom and I lost everything, she pleaded his old friend to help us, but there was nothing, not a word!”
I broke off for a moment and shook my head.
“Sorry, that’s all old news, but it shows what sort of person he was. God, I should’ve never visited him at his foundation.”
“Foundation?”
“Yes, some years ago he started his so-called Roberts Foundation. An organization to help exceptional young woman in this city by paying their tuition. It’s all about empowerment and about leveling the playing field. His words, not mine.”
“It’s a farce, isn’t it?” Reno asked when he noticed the anger in my voice.
“You know, I had a bad feeling before I even went there. There were stories about him, but Mom said I should go. After all, he’d been my dad’s best friend, and she still referred to him as ‘Uncle Clark.’ It would help so much, even if I only got the smallest level of support. And so, I went to talk to him. How goddamn stupid I was.”
I shook my head as the memories of that day returned.
“It all started off normally. I waited in the lobby, and eventually he led me into his costly office. There he had a look at my art and agreed that I was very talented. But then, as his eyes went from my paintings to my body, they changed. They became hungry. He got up and paced the room, outlining the foundation’s program, but his eyes never ceased resting on my body. And then, he stepped up to me, asking me if I wanted to make this work. He put his fat, sweaty hands on my shoulders and moved them down to my… I knew what he was asking. I knew! That man, he’d been at our home, he’d played with me. I’d once thought of him as an uncle and then he, he—”
I broke off.
“Did you—?”
“No! Jesus Christ Reno, no!” I cut him off. “I left then and there and never returned, never. I thought about telling people, thought about telling Mom, but what good would it do? What could I’ve done against a man like him? And his entire foundation, it’s nothing but, ugh!”
“He might do,” Reno mumbled to himself.
“What?” I asked, but then it dawned on me. “No, not him! Not this man! He doesn’t deserve it!”
“Perhaps he doesn’t, perhaps he does,” he said in a quiet, almost sad voice.
“Reno.”
I reached for his hands and stared into his eyes. He held my gaze for a few moments before he looked away.
“Your friends are waiting. Shouldn’t you—?”
“Just promise me, Reno. Not him!”
Yet all he did was to gently pull his hands back, smiling like he usually did. Then he got up and left the bar.
The rest of the evening, Reno’s reaction stayed on my mind. While my friends were pestering me about my new “boyfriend,” all I could think about were Reno’s words and his damned smile. He couldn’t, I told myself. He wouldn’t.
But of course, I was wrong, and the next time I visited him, I saw his newest piece. I recognized the face, saw the photos on the walls all around it. His statue, like all the other ones Reno had created, was beautiful. He wasn’t the fat, sleazy man who’d touched me at his office. No, he was a middle-aged god. Anger pumped heavy through my veins, and I felt tears streaming from my eyes.
“How dare you, how dare you do this!” I spat at Reno. “Where did you even get all those pictures?”
A shrug.
“I sought him out. I went down to his office and told him I was interested in creating a sculpture for him. For his contribution to society, his foundation and—”
“His contribution to society? His foundation? It’s all so he can seduce unsuspecting young girls, to corner them and…and… Don’t you remember what I told you? Don’t you remember how he asked me to fuck him for his foundation money? Don’t you, Reno?!”
Reno’s eyes wandered to the photos of the man he was sculpturing, and for the first time, his face grew angry.
“This here, this art is the reason.”
“I don’t care about your art! What will a sculpture of him even do? What will it change? It’s just so you can sell it to him and—”
“It will show the world a perfect version of him and will show everyone how flawed and ugly he is compared to it,” he said in a calm voice.
“But—” I started but broke off.
I don’t know why, but somehow, Reno’s words were enough to calm me down. I still didn’t like that he created a sculpture of this man, but his motif was different. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about pleasing him or to garner favor, it was about taunting him, to play him. Reno, in his very own way, was trying to get back at Clark Roberts. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. But how could I’ve ever known what he was truly doing?
As I sat there on Reno’s old musty couch, I watched him as he feverishly worked. His face was distorted by concentration as he brought out every little detail of Clark Roberts’ sculpture. I saw sweat running down his face as he worked on tirelessly. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep. I was woken up when Reno shook me.
“Is it done?” I asked him as I jerked up, but Reno shook his head.
“I think it’s best if you go home, Claire.”
“No, I want to see you finish it. Let me at least have that.”
But Reno didn’t move.
“I can’t. That’s why you have to go. It’s important that I do the very last detail on my own.”
“And why’s that so important?”
“Because otherwise, it won’t be perfect. Perfection can only happen without gazing eyes, without witnesses.”
He was serious. And as I realized that, as I saw his tired face, the way he smiled down at me, the anger that had vanished before came back.
“You know what? Fuck you, Reno! Fuck your stupid sculpture, your stupid art, and your stupid way of doing it!”
With that, I stormed from his home and out into the street. The sun had long set, and a slight drizzle filled the late evening air. Somehow, though, those small droplets washed away the anger that had burned so hot before. My steps slowed down and came to a halt. I took a deep breath and sighed. This was all too much for me, I realized, all this talk about Clark Roberts. Who was I to tell Reno what to do? And in a way, in his very own special way, he had a reason for creating this sculpture. Before I knew it, I was on my way back to his home.
When I arrived, the dim lights had already been turned off. My hand wandered to the doorbell, but then I remembered how exhausted Reno had looked, remembered the sweat running down his face and his trembling hands. He was probably resting, I realized, but then I heard something. It wasn’t coming from his front door, however. At first I didn’t see a thing, but then I noticed a figure dressed in a heavy coat and its face hidden below a hat. He must’ve left his home via a back door. My mouth opened to call out to Reno, but the way he moved made me stop. In the dark of the night, he was moving sneakily, almost tiptoeing down the side of the road. Where the hell are you going at this hour, Reno? I saw him hurry on before he entered a nearby subway station. As carefully as I could, I followed him down to the tracks. Down there, I did my best to hide from his line of sight until the subway arrived. I entered the subway car behind his, my eyes glued to him. He took a seat at the side, right next to the door, his face still hidden below his hat.
We were on the subway for almost half an hour, but when he got off, I realized we were in one of the city’s exclusive residential areas. Rich homes lined the street, and I understood where he might be going. He was on his way to Clark Roberts’ home to inform him he’d finished his statue. At this time? And those clothes, the way he moved, something didn’t add up. In my mind I saw him earlier today, the anger the otherwise so quiet Reno had shown. Oh god, Reno, don’t do anything stupid. It didn’t take long before he stopped, and my eyes followed him as he approached the door of one of the luxurious homes. No, it must be the home of Clark Roberts. On the sidewalk, I inched closer and watched as his fingers pressed the doorbell again and again. Finally, lights came on before the door was cracked, and I heard Clark Roberts’s angry voice.
“Who are you? What do you want? Do you have any idea who—?”
His voice trailed off, and when I saw his face, an expression of confusion and terror contorted it. Reno’s hand reached for the chain, tore it apart before he put a hand over the man’s mouth, pushing him inside. No. Reno, what are you doing? I hurried toward the door. Inside, I saw Reno’s hands close around the man’s neck.
“No, Reno, don’t! He’s not worth it!”
In that instant, the shrouded figure’s head jerked toward me, and for the first time, I could make out its face. It wasn’t Reno. I came to a halt, froze as I tried to take in the absurd sight in front of me. What stared back at me was the face of Clark Roberts, a white, perfect rendition of his face. I stumbled back.
“What the hell? What the hell’s going on?”
For a moment, the real Clark Roberts’ eyes grew wide. They met mine, and a pleading expression appeared on his face. Then the sculpture’s hands pressed down on his neck. There was a sickening crunch and the light in Clark Roberts’ eyes vanished forever. And that’s when I ran. I stormed from the house and down into the streets in absolute terror.
I don’t know for how long I was running. When I came back to my senses, I didn’t know where I was. For the next hour, I stumbled through the streets in the rain, confused, scared, and in shock at what I’d seen. Or thought I’d seen. There was no way. It must’ve been Reno. He must’ve created a mask or a likeness of Clark Roberts and put it on. There was no other way. For the entire next day, I thought about confronting Reno, to talk to him and ask him what he’d done, but I was too scared. My brain was in an uproar, still trying to make sense of last night. I was torn from my thoughts when the doorbell rang.
For a moment, fear washed over me. I saw a terrible vision of someone or something wearing a likeness of my face standing out there, waiting to attack me the moment I opened the door. I tiptoed toward it, put my eye against the spyglass, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This made no sense. How could he be here? How was that possible? My world started spinning. I’d seen him die, hadn’t I? I’d heard his neck break. So how!? With shaking hands, I opened the door.
“Uncle…Clark?” I asked.
When my eyes came to rest on him, I noticed how different he looked. He was taller, stronger, and healthier.
“Claire, my dear,” he started.
It was his voice, it was really his voice. As he spoke, he began to apologize, for ignoring Mom’s pleas, for not granting me the tuition money, and for what he’d asked of me. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, or what to think. What the hell was going on here? Why was he here? How could he be here?
“I know it’s not much, and I know it can’t change the past, but this tuition check, I want you to have it.”
He reached into his pocket and brought out an envelope. When his hand reached out toward me, I couldn’t help but cringe back. The sheer absurdity of the situation drove me further away from the apparition in front of me.
“No, I…”
But I couldn’t think straight. Clark Roberts, however, didn’t seem offended. Instead he stepped up to me and held the envelope out to me. When I didn’t react, his other hand reached out for mine. The moment his hand closed around my wrist, I screamed. The envelope fell to the floor, but my eyes weren’t resting on it. My eyes were resting on the cold, hard, stiff hand that had closed around my wrist. It was a hand that didn’t feel like skin and flesh. It was a hand that felt like cold, lifeless marble.
I screamed once more, tore myself free, and retreated as far as I could. And that’s when I realized how it had fooled me. The skin, it was wearing Clark Roberts’ skin. When the sculpture smiled at me once more, I noticed the stiff movement of its mouth, the cold lifeless eyes, eyes that might very well have been Clark Roberts’ before.
“It’s all yours. You’ll need it,” the thing said before it turned around and left.
For a while I was too stunned to do anything, but then I rushed to the door and threw it. For the next hour, I sat huddled up in my living room, too confused to do anything. When I’d calmed down, I picked up the envelope. As I opened it, I knew it was all true. It was a tuition check and a letter that named me as a benefactor of the Roberts Foundation. The amount of money was lavish, more than enough to get me through school and enough to afford all my expenses. Yet I didn’t feel happy. No, all of this was wrong. And I knew why it was so wrong. Because of Reno, because of what he’d done.
I was at his home an hour later. He looked as disheveled and weird as always. His eyes were tired, but his face showed the smallest hint of emotion when he saw me.
“It’s not here anymore, Claire. I’ve already started working on—”
“I know what you did, Reno! I don’t know how you did it, but I know what you did. I saw you, no, not you, what you made, and I saw what it did to—”
But I broke off when I saw a flood of emotions on his face. I’d thought he’d be angry, he’d be scared, but all there was was endless sadness. A deep sigh followed, and without another word, he led me inside. As we walked through the maze of discarded art, he began talking.
“It’s a gift. Not just the art, but what I’m able to do with it.”
“But how’s something like that even possible?”
“I don’t understand it myself. I like to think it was given to me by God, by a higher power, but who knows?”
He motioned for me to sit down and made his way to a small cupboard. He brought out a folder. It was filled to the brim with pictures, notes, and newspaper clippings. He leafed through it for a while before he showed me one of the pictures I’d seen when I’d first visited him. A moment later, he brought out a newspaper clipping.
Mother suspected of killing her two daughters set free due to lack of evidence.
Then he handed me the picture of another man and a newspaper clipping accompanying it.
Horrible accident caused by drunk driver—two killed, three injured.
I looked at the pictures, read through the articles, but I didn’t understand what he was trying to show me.
“Reno, what is all this?”
Instead of answering, he continued to show me more pictures. Some were accompanied by newspaper clippings, others by notes or printed-out articles. There was a rapist who’d gone free, a man who’d abused multiple children, a nurse who was suspected having cause the death of multiple patients, among many others. And while I was going through them, he handed me a second folder, a smaller one.
“But you said you had no pictures of them!”
A shrug, but nothing more. This folder contained pictures of every single sculptured perfection Reno had created over the years. They were all beautiful, looking as if God himself had created them. It was a display of outstanding beauty. The last one was the sculpture of Clark Roberts, and that’s when I realized what he was showing me.
“So all of those…?”
He nodded.
“I created them all, good versions, no, perfect versions of them, just like the one I created of Clark Roberts. And then I brought them to life and sent them out into the world where they’d replace their horrible, flawed counterparts with what’s perfect. And eventually, they change and what was once stone or marble would become flesh and bone.”
I listened to his words, to this absurd story, but I had seen it, I had seen Clark Roberts’ perfect version. This man, Reno, he’d created perfect sculptures, no, perfect versions of all those people to replace them. He said, he’d wanted to make the world a better place, but to replace them meant to…
“Murder them,” I finished my thoughts out loud.
Reno looked up when I said this.
“Reno, what you’re doing here is wrong. It’s not right. It’s unnatural! How can you decide who lives and who doesn’t?”
“But it’s not about that. It’s just the way my art is. It’s—”
“It’s murder, that’s what it is! You’re not an artist. You’re not making the world a better place. You’re a murderer!”
As I spat those words at him, I jumped to my feet. For a moment, I stared at him, waiting for him to speak, to say something, but all he did was to give me the same sad smile he’d worn so many times.
“I’m leaving, Reno. I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back.”
With that, I turned around and went on my way, but I came to a halt in the center of his maze of discarded works and waited for him. I wanted for him to follow me, to explain to me, to defend himself. No matter how long I waited, though, he never came. All I heard was his chiseling as he worked on his next piece, his next sculptured perfection.
After that day, Reno never returned to the university, and I in turn never returned to his home. Years went by, and I eventually graduated and left my city behind. The memories of the weeks I’d spent with Reno slowly went away, were discarded and pushed to the back of my mind. It was by sheer accident that I met him again. I’d been visiting my mother and was out to meet some old friend when I ran into him in the middle of the street.
He looked different. Gone was the weird young man with his rough hair and his tired, disinterested eyes. He was an entirely different person, a person who’d matured. And when I saw him, all those strange, conflicting feelings I’d had for him came rushing back to the surface.
“Reno!” I called out to him in surprise. “Is that really you?”
“Yes, it is. Who am I talking to again?”
“It’s Claire, from back when we were still in university, back when we… No, it doesn’t matter. How are you? Are you still doing your…art?”
The last word was nothing but a confidential whisper. Reno laughed and shook his head.
“Oh no, that’s all in the past. I’ve given up on art.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, he gave me a curt nod.
“Well, it was nice seeing you again, Claire, but I’ve got to get going.”
“No, Reno, wait,” I called out, and my hand shot forward.
But when it closed around his wrist, I felt the same thing I’d felt when I touched Clark Roberts’ wrist that day so many years ago. Nothing but cold, lifeless marble.
