Valentina's Knick Knacks

Tuesday, 7:07 PM

After work, you wander into Nick's Knacks on 43rd Street, a dive bar with dim red lighting and walls lined with, you guessed it, a plethora of knickknacks collected by the elderly Greek owner, Niklaus Dimoutsos, during his travels through South America in his twenties.

As he's famously elusive, you were able to corner him the night before in your drunken stupor and inebriated intrepidness, incurably curious about his procurement of said knickknacks (namely, the lobsters with bedazzled thongs; the intricate pearlescent goblets he reserves for his favorite customers to drink from; the world globe painted over with orchids, fish, and political slogans; the crimson-framed oil paintings of abstract, unnamed women), and learned that they were actually Valentina's knickknacks.

Valentina, his ex-lover from "way back in the day," when they lived in a Brazilian beach shack one summer, had left him one fateful Friday morning in the thick of an August heat wave after spending an entire night painting a canvas that he simultaneously detested with the fury of a love-scorned man and adored with the delicate preciousness of it being the very last (giant) knack she left behind.

He never did find her, although he attempted to uncover her whereabouts for years. Even while he got married, had kids, started a business, divorced, went bankrupt, got married again, and started another business, through all these heavily consequential life events that molded him, he still had a piece of his being misshapen by Valentina, who hid in the very crevices of his mind, clawing her way to the surface. Her sudden disappearance appalled him, unnerved him, and lived within him like an illness he could not treat.

Tonight, Nick's Knacks is empty except for a few regulars huddled at the end of the bar, their attention fixed on the boxing match on TV, as Niklaus mans the bar. When he sees you, he motions for you to take a seat directly in front of him, where he places one of the pearlescent goblets, carved with waves, roses, and fleurs-de-lis, and fills it to the brim with cognac. Then, he pours one for himself.

He raises his glass to yours and leans forward, resting on his forearms, ready to continue the story he so desperately needs to expel from his consciousness.

Yesterday, he had the strange epiphany that he hadn't ever really told anyone about Valentina. None of his wives, none of his children. Not his mother. He had never even uttered her name to God. He treated her name as a curse word, or a secret he had to hold close to his chest. He shakes his head as he tries to rationalize why you are the one he's decided to open up to.

Nevertheless, he continues.

As he begins to recall, hour by hour, the final day with Valentina, he stops. He looks past your head, toward the wall, and you follow his gaze, landing on a painting.

He chuckles. "Sometimes, I swear, I see her blink."

You realize it's Valentina. He confirms that it was her self-portrait. You kick yourself for not even asking what her final painting was the night before, although you'd assumed he kept it out of the public eye.

His callousness toward her, flaunting her abstract face to the patrons of his dive bar, makes you feel a strange sense of protectiveness toward her. You press him to continue with his recollection of Valentina.

"The day before she left, she made us a plate of papaya with lemon and salt," he says, his eyes turned toward the ceiling as he recalls the memory. "She took out all the seeds and glued them to the canvas there. You can see them under the paint."

You get up from the sticky red leather barstool and make your way closer to the painting, where, indeed, you can scarcely make out a flurry of rotund seeds protruding through the paint, creating texture across her skin.

However, your gaze is pulled toward her eyes. Her deep emerald eyes bore into yours, seemingly glistening, and you, too, swear you see her blink.

Then, you blink.

It's bright, excruciatingly bright, and you close your eyes and rub them aggressively until they adjust. You blink some more.

You're sitting in sand. Warm, silky sand, possibly the softest sand you've ever felt. There's a light hum of ocean waves crashing in the distance. Palm trees sway overhead, the relentless sun peeking between the green fronds.

You try to move your legs, but they feel slack and heavy. You massage your thighs, your shins, calves, and feet. Your toes start to wiggle, and you feel the strength returning to your muscles. You start with a crawl, then work up to a crouch, and finally manage to stand with the help of a tree trunk behind you.

You suddenly notice a faint taste of metal on your tongue. You realize your lip is bleeding. Or is it your cheek? Your tongue?

You look around the palm forest, barren of humans, of any semblance of society having touched this place. You feel the beat of your heart in your ears, numbing your senses to everything but the distant surf and the insufferable heat.

You come across a shack. At last!

It's constructed of graying, decaying wood, with dried brown palm fronds splayed across the roof. A few worn, sun-beaten surfboards lean haphazardly against the facade. There's a low murmur of a song emanating from the shack. As you get closer, you realize it's Brazilian bossa nova.

Are you in... Brazil?

Your memory is fuzzy. How did you get here? Weren't you just with Niklaus, drinking his cheap, overpriced cognac in his dim bar on a random Tuesday after work?

A flash of green, emerald green, shocks you and sends a shiver down your spine.

Valentina's eyes.

You hear a rustling coming from inside the shack. You move behind a palm tree, unsure if you trust the setting you've found yourself suddenly dropped into.

From behind your perch, you see the front door of the shack swing open, smacking into one of the surfboards and sending it to the ground, rattling the quiet beach.

A woman emerges from the doorway, long auburn hair flowing down to her waist, dressed in a cherry-red bikini. Your breath catches. The living, breathing version of the abstract painting with emerald-green eyes and papaya seeds in Nick's Knacks.

Valentina.

Her expression is severe, anger evident even from where you stand, well over forty feet away. She surveys the space in front of her. Her eye catches the surfboards beside her, and she grabs one, scratches at it, and attempts to break it over her leg.

You hear a voice calling out from inside.

You dare yourself to get closer.

You notice a window on the left side of the shack, closest to you. You slowly tiptoe over. The window is bare of coverings, allowing you an uninhibited view into the life of Valentina.

You spot Niklaus on the couch, with a woman draped over him.

Not Valentina.

The woman is blonde, with one bare leg draped over Niklaus's waist and a spectacular sunburn covering the entirety of her exposed back. You look back toward Valentina, who has abandoned her attempts to destroy the surfboard and is now pacing the perimeter of the shack, muttering furiously to herself in Portuguese.

Suddenly, the blonde woman stirs.

Niklaus looks down at the woman in his arms, and smiles. He brushes a strand of hair from her face, kisses her forehead, and says something unintelligible that makes her laugh.

You feel a peculiar embarrassment at having witnessed this intimate betrayal. You retreat from the window, wondering whether you should leave, although where you would go, or how you'd find your way back to 43rd Street, remains entirely unclear.

Then, without warning, the sky darkens.

Not gradually, as one might expect of the sun retiring after an exceptionally hot day, but instantaneously, as though somebody has switched off a light.

You stumble backward.

The blonde woman is gone. The surfboards have been returned to their original positions. Through the window, you can see Valentina sitting at a wooden table, surrounded by pots of paint, working feverishly on a large canvas.

The painting.

You approach the window, pressing your palms against the weathered frame. Valentina is arranging small black seeds across the canvas, pressing each one into thick swirls of paint. A halved papaya rests beside her, its flesh beginning to brown in the humid air.

You watch her work, mesmerized by the urgency of her movements. Occasionally, she stops to glance toward the door, listening for something.

A suitcase sits beneath the table.

You recognize the face emerging from the canvas. The eyes, the crimson lips, the distorted features. You've just spent the better part of an hour staring at it in Nick's Knacks.

A distant voice calls Valentina's name.

She freezes.

The voice comes again, louder this time, followed by a string of what seems like profanity in Greek, judging by the way each word drips with vitriol.

Valentina reaches for the suitcase, but before she can lift it, the door swings open.

Niklaus staggers into the shack, carrying a half-empty bottle of liquor. His face is red from the heat and alcohol, his shirt unbuttoned almost to his stomach.

He notices the suitcase immediately.

"You're leaving me?"

Valentina says nothing, but her eyes dig into him, and it's clear. She is.

He laughs, a short, disbelieving chuckle. She continues painting.

He approaches the table and grabs the canvas, nearly knocking over a jar of crimson paint. She remains cool, collected, unperturbed.

"What the fuck is this?"

He studies it, his face contorting with disgust, and throws the canvas against the wall.

Valentina rises from her chair.

He spots her suitcase beneath the table and pulls it into the middle of the room. He unfastens the clasps and empties its contents across the floor. Clothes, photographs, a passport, a little velvet pouch of money.

"Where exactly do you think you're going?"

She reaches for her passport, but he snatches it away.

"You think you can just disappear? That I won't come looking for you?"

He tears the passport in half.

"I'll find you, Valentina. I don't care where you go. I'll spend the rest of my fucking life looking for you."

She backs toward the painting, her expression strangely composed.

"I know," she says.

He advances toward her, furious now, and grabs her wrist. She struggles against him, knocking a jar of paint from the table. It shatters against the floorboards.

"You're not leaving me."

He tightens his grip.

"Do you understand?"

Valentina reaches behind her, her fingertips finding the painted face.

Every candle in the room extinguishes.

An emerald-green light begins to emanate from the painting, illuminating the shack with an eerie, underwater glow.

Niklaus releases her.

The painted woman's eyes are open.

And they're looking directly at him.

He scrambles backward, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

The canvas begins to move.

Images flicker through the woman's face. Valentina laughing on the beach. Valentina asleep beneath a mosquito net. Niklaus kissing her forehead. The blonde woman on the couch. Valentina crying. A suitcase beneath the table.

Then, Niklaus tearing her passport, his hand around her wrist, his promise to find her wherever she goes.

He clutches his head, staggering backward as the images accelerate, flashing so quickly that they become an indistinguishable blur of color and movement.

Valentina approaches him.

"You said you'd spend the rest of your life looking for me."

Niklaus falls to his knees.

"Please," he whispers.

She studies him for a long moment.

"Then you will."

She places her fingertips against his temples.

His body goes rigid.

The images disappear into the canvas, swallowed by thick swirls of crimson and green. The woman's face becomes less defined, her features dissolving into something almost unrecognizable.

Niklaus convulses once, violently, then collapses.

Valentina watches him for several seconds before kneeling to check his pulse.

Satisfied, she rises, grabs her suitcase, and begins collecting her scattered belongings.

You watch through the window as she moves through the shack, methodically removing photographs, letters, and scraps of paper from drawers. She gathers them into a small pile and sets them alight in the kitchen sink.

She picks up the suitcase and heads for the door.

And the sky goes black.

You blink.

The boxing match is still playing on the television. You're standing in Nick's Knacks, your nose inches from the painting. Niklaus is watching you from behind the bar.

"Well?" he asks.

You turn toward him, your heart hammering against your ribs.

"Well, what?"

"The painting. What do you think?"

You stare at him. He chuckles.

"Funny thing. I hated that painting when she made it. Hated it! But after she left, I couldn't stand to be without it."

He sets the goblet down.

"Almost fifty years," he says quietly. "And I still don't know why she went."

You look back at the canvas.

The papaya seeds protrude beneath the thick paint, and Valentina's emerald eyes stare out from the crimson swirls.

For nearly fifty years, he'd searched for an explanation that Valentina had taken from him herself. As penance, she left him without closure, condemned to spend the rest of his life wondering where she'd gone. She would haunt his thoughts until the day he died.

"Do you remember the night before she left?" you ask.

He considers this.

"Not particularly."

"Nothing unusual happened?"

He shakes his head and picks up his cognac, studying the amber liquid.

"Sometimes I dream about her," he says. "She's always looking at me with such fear in her eyes."

He pauses.

"I never understood why."

You glance at the painting.

"Perhaps you should ask yourself."

He looks at you, puzzled.

You finish your cognac and rise from the barstool.

Behind him, Valentina blinks.