My Art College Days are Over

My art college days are over.
Chapter One.
The postcard was of a New York sunset, the type that he'd seen one
hundred times before. It looked beautiful once. Maybe to some it still
did. With a flick of the wrist, Tobias spun the postcard across the
room and watched it land on the cluttered floor. He put his hands
behind his head, made himself comfortable on his chair, released a
smile and rested both feet on the desk, allowing every muscle in his
body to relax. The desk was stacked with paper - submissions for The
Edge. He had started the magazine with Francis, a friend since school
who eventually deserted him, joining the army without any prior
warning. He had not been in touch in the three years since.

It was Francis who had all the business know-how, the financial back up
and the uncle in the magazine trade. Without him it was a struggle to
pay the rent for the office which they had shared for eight years. As
soon as the office block was built they put a bid in for office space
and soon moved in amongst the mid-aged executives with designated
parking spots and squash related knee injuries. All the locals called
the building The Fish Tank on account of the shape and colour, Tobias
watched the shirts and ties and briefcases floating around the
corridors and couldn't help but feel he was gasping for breath out of
the water..

The biggest loss was of such a talented writer, he had been so prolific
and of such a consistently high quality that at first it looked
impossible for the magazine to continue. Tobias drew, he never wrote.
He spent evenings painting the artwork on large canvases. He drew
cartoons based on the articles Francis had written, and contributed his
photography, paintings and portraits to the glossy central section. It
had earned them a living thanks to what started off as a small group of
dedicated subscribers, the number later hugely increasing after
coverage in the literary pages of The Observer and after articles
penned by Francis appeared in The Big Issue.

Kamilah had helped. When Francis left she changed from being a bit part
player in Tobias's life to being the sole piece of his being. When she
moved to America she took some back issues with her, telling him she
would build up a fan base over there. He had always taken it to be
tongue firmly in cheek. But she kept to her word, he had trickles of
correspondence from people in America pinpointing articles or drawings
they particularly liked. He even ended up with a contract to send
monthly packages to a chain of newsagents over the pond, they paid for
the shipping themselves. But the nucleus of The Edge had gone, the
reason for it existing had diminished and it was only half heartededly
that Tobias carried on, collaborating with anonymous contributors by
email. It was so far from the original premiss for starting the
magazine that it bored him, if it were not for two inheritances that
fell into his path at opportune times, the office and The Edge would
have been things of the past.

The postcard changed everything, it resuscitated Tobias, dilated his
airways and loosened his shoulders. He got up, opened the curtains and
let fresh air into the room. He chose a record from a series of boxes
he kept on the floor, carefully took it out of the sleeve and gently
dropped down the needle, turning up the volume to maximum. For the
first time in weeks, to the background of loud music, he took his
sketch pad out of the desk drawer sharpened his pencil and looked
forward to spending the day drawing.

Curtis Rich held the postcard in his hand, flipping it over from one
side to the other. New York. He didn't know anyone in New York. In
immaculate handwriting, someone had written the words 'We'll meet
again!' The exclamation mark seemed so sinister.
"Could it be from an old girlfriend?"
Curtis shook his head.
"Someone you used to work with?"
"No." His voice forbade further questioning, Sakiya scurried back to
her desk and started scribbling numbers down on a piece of paper. She
lifted the lid of her laptop and pressed the power button. The computer
beeped as it loaded and Curtis looked up.
"Have there been any calls for me this morning Sakiya?"
"No."
"No contact from Bill Phoenix?"
"Not from anyone."
Curtis agitatedly tapped the postcard against his knuckles,
occasionally glancing down at it and rereading it. Sakiya was used to
this uneasiness, she'd worked with him for almost a year. During that
time she had learned to tolerate his mood swings, to never ask
questions, to quietly get on with her work. He had made it crystal
clear that he was a private man, dedicated to the business he had
started from scratch. She knew he was not married, that he lived alone.
Other than that was just speculation. She guessed that he once enjoyed
his job, but no longer did do. The number of clients had drastically
reduced even in the short amount of time that she had been there. She
knew that he hated her, resented her presence as much as the people
that worked downstairs in reception and the tramp that slept in the
doorway to The Fish Tank. In turn she hated the dwindling workload, the
silence created by the absence of ringing telephones, the brick wall
she was continually forced to bang her head against. She didn't hate
Curtis Rich though. If she did, she'd have left. Despite his
continually stony responses to her questions, his unblinking eyes as he
would give her the daily instructions and the condescending put downs
she had grown to block out, there was something endearing about
him.
"I'm going to lunch Sakiya. I'll be back in an hour."
She nodded, and watched as he closed the door behind him, then walked
over to his desk and picked up the postcard. She studied both sides,
and read the words carefully. As she put it down, the phone started to
ring.

It was just Scarlett's second day at work, but already she had been
left in the office alone. The three men she had met the previous day
told her they were going to Cologne for a three day Conference. They'd
told her to come in anyway, that Jack would show her around. She had
waited patiently for the first thirty minutes but soon became
unsettled, pacing around the room and up and down the corridors of what
one of the men had referred to as The Fish Tank. The building was
dominated by glass panelling, magnified by a huge dome roof.. She felt
she had rarely been in a building so spacious, so light, yet at the
same time she felt somehow compressed. There was a fragrance wherever
she turned, perhaps it was the plants which climbed practically every
interior wall. She wondered if someone was employed purely to water
them. Her own place of work was a big open plan office, six desks, all
with computer screens and adequate desk space. It was so unlike where
she had come from. She left Poland three weeks earlier, a pen pal she'd
had since school said that she and her husband could accommodate her.
She had worked in a call centre, answering telephones for eight hours a
day with thirty people in a room that would only have seated twenty
comfortably. She convinced herself the people walking past her on the
corridor were looking at her, she felt she was trespassing in a palace,
so retreated to the office. She looked around on one of the desks,
looking for a message for her. She opened a chest of drawers, looking
though them, not really sure why. A postcard from New York lay on a
filing cabinet, as if waiting to be found. Scarlett turned it over and
read the neat handwriting.
"Hi dad.
I'm so sorry?for everything
I'm coming back
Love from Kamilah"

She carefully put it back where she found it. A deep voice called out
from the doorway.
"You must be Scarlett."
She nodded.
"Then you would be Jack" she said, and they both smiled.