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If Only One Night	By : IosPillowBook Category: Individual Celebrities > Orlando Bloom Views: 2061 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know Orlando Bloom. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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“They’ve been playing games with you? Who are *they*?”

Orlando didn’t miss the insistent tone of that question. So Viggo, despite pretending otherwise, was affected by all this. Almost reflexively, Orlando pressed his lips together. Then he looked up, holding Viggo’s gaze for a long moment and said in a low, but determinate voice. “I won’t tell you.”

Viggo’s eyes narrowed dangerously. There it was again that wild, weird sparkle, but Orlando was too caught up in his own musings to care about it. His head was spinning madly. What was Sean trying to achieve? Why had he seen to it that Cate’s collage ended up with Viggo? This was anything but coincidence, simply couldn’t be.

Orlando traced the writings and cut-out letters on the collage with his fingers. Cate, you bitch, I thought I had been fucking you. But in reality you’ve been fucking with me. Behind his closed eyelids images of porcelain skin flashed up and of burgundy red lips, whispering, whimpering, moaning.

He banished those memories and said calmly, “How did that piece come to you?”

“Does that really matter?”

Orlando shrugged his shoulders. “I guess not.”

Viggo had already turned off the sounds of the installation, but the projector still cast irregular forms on the walls of the cubicle, whirring and buzzing faintly somewhere in the background. Traces of asymmetrical objects were dancing over Viggo’s face. It was hard to say what was going on in his head.

At last, Viggo took a deep breath. “So … are you an angel of death like it says on Cate’s collage? Have you come for me, Orlando?”

“I already told you. It doesn’t matter anymore why I came.”

“Why doesn’t it matter anymore? All of a sudden? Are you no longer in the mood for it?”

At that sentence, Orlando jumped up as if bitten by a scorpion, the words equally poisonous. He ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. “Your questions are starting to irritate me.”

Once more, Viggo inhaled deeply, but only a small garbled sound came from his lips. Abruptly, he put down the collage and rose from the sofa. He stood directly in front of Orlando, his irritation bubbling up from the depths like hot water from a geyser. He grabbed Orlando by the shoulders as if wanting to shake him like a rag doll.

“What do you expect from me? Sit back and relax and leave everything alone? Don’t underestimate me, Orlando. You won’t fool me that easily. I want answers.”

“Or you’ll do what?” Orlando stood upright, immobile like a stone statue, and his voice was ice-cold. “Try some psycho tricks on me again? This time, you won’t get to me that easily.”

Instantly, Viggo let go of Orlando. He turned around, almost weary, as if, from one minute to the next, something in him had broken.

“I’ll show you one more thing, another piece of art. It will be the last one, I promise. Then make of it what you will.”

He reached over to the place where he had been sitting and came up with a second painting, wrapped up in thin paper like the first.

“This is my version of this whole story. Some odd things have happened to me lately – but maybe you know that already?” He paused for a moment, scanning Orlando’s face for some sort of reaction, but Orlando remained silent.

“Phone calls in the middle of the night. Nobody answers, but I hear someone breathing at the other end. Then, out-of-the blue, the owner of this house cancels my contract. After so many years and without giving me a proper reason why he suddenly needs these rooms.”

“Next, a brick is thrown into the window looking out into the backyard. Of course, when I went out there I didn’t find anyone. And yesterday, when coming back from lunch I found the entrance door wide open though I could have sworn that I locked it before I left.”

“At last, I find you here. What am I supposed to make of all this? Write it off to the laws of coincidence? No. All this happens for a reason - because someone wants something from me.” Looking down on the wrapped parcel in his hands, Viggo muttered darkly. “But he’ll never get it.”

All the while, Viggo’s eyes had been fixed on Orlando. “Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

“No,” Orlando replied dryly, leaning against the wall of the small cubicle, arms crossed over his chest.

“Maybe you’ll understand it now.” Carefully, Viggo unwrapped the second canvas.

This painting was a bit larger than the first one, but not much. It showed a blood-red heart, set against a pitch-black backdrop. From the gloomy background feathery tentacles reached out, piercing the heart in many places and drawing all essence out of it. There were some other strange objects, too, white bones and skulls, but also little, colourful flowers and miniature animals like monkeys, ants or butterflies, all meticulously drawn out.

Orlando studied it intently, not daring to touch it though. “Looks as if the heart is glowing from within. And it’s hard to say whether the blackness draws all life from it or whether it’s the other way round. That the heart itself is the source of the darkness surrounding it.”

“You’re a keen observer – yes, I think that’s what it’s about. There is pain, there is despair. But like you said, it’s as if the heart is glowing from within, it’s emanating strength, too, and the will to survive – despite everything. It’s titled “The Heart of Darkness”,” Viggo said, something like awe swinging in his voice. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Orlando was not an art expert, yet the style seemed vaguely familiar to him. “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve seen something like this before. What’s the artist’s name?”

“Yeah, she has become very famous meanwhile. They even made a movie out of her life. Maybe that’s why you recognize her style. But she’s long dead and gone. And the longer an artist is dead, the more expensive his or her paintings tend to become. This one,” Viggo turned it slightly so that more light fell on it. “This one’s become priceless. Especially since not even the experts knew about its existence until very recently.”

Orlando studied the paining closely. “Those flowers, that bird … Is it by Frida Kahlo?”

“Bravo, an excellent guess. Yes, it’s an unknown Frida Kahlo. An old friend gave it to me last year when I was in Cuba, organising an exposition in Havana. ‘Take it, Viggo,’ he said. ‘This is not about money. I want the painting to leave the country. The world will see it at last, after all these years. And the money will go to a special trust for street children. But listen, it mustn’t – under any condition - be sold to a private collector, de accuerdo, mi amigo?’

That man knows me well enough to be sure I would not only successfully smuggle the painting out of the country, but also respect his wishes without asking too many questions. I won’t give it away.” Viggo’s eyes seemed to shine in the semi-darkness. “No matter how much someone offers me.”

“So you’re a man who keeps his word, huh?”

“There’s no need for such a sarcastic undertone. Seems our opinions differ on that subject, too.”

Hurriedly, Viggo took the painting back and wrapped it again. He seemed wary all of a sudden.

“Look, Orlando, it was nice talking to you – as nice as it could be considering the circumstances we’ve met. I found it - how can I put it? – comforting; yes, in way comforting to pretend we could, we would have something in common. But it isn’t so. We don’t have anything in common. And the more I think about it the clearer everything becomes to me. It was neither coincidence nor some sort of hoax that you showed up here. Someone sent you and I believe I know quite well who that person is even if I’m lacking the hard evidence to prove it.”

“Then why are you telling me all this?”

“Yeah, why am I telling you?” Viggo took up the two parcels and held them to his chest as if they could offer some sort of protection.

“I’m telling you because I’m a sentimental fool. And because you said I won’t see you again. At least I don’t hope so. The transaction negotiations for this painting with the Phoenix Art Museum are almost finalized. And after that, hopefully, the spook will be over.”

There was some hint of bitterness in his voice when Viggo continued. “Being so cool and jaded and above everything you won’t understand how it is it being suddenly faced with a miracle. Discovering such an outstanding piece, a work of art that – for some reason or other - was never documented or catalogued is like a miracle for me. It’s like falling in love at first sight.”

He looked up on the ceiling, as if looking for something there. “It was different with Cate’s painting. Sure it’s a fine piece, but here it was not the art I fell in love with.”

Viggo paused; his voice was almost drowned out by the whirring of the projector. “It was the person in the photo. I didn’t not know anything about this man. I didn’t know whether he was dead or alive, whether he was a phantom or reality. I only knew that I’d never forget his face …”

His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “Now you can laugh and smirk and tell me some more made-up stories or nothing at all. But I think you’d better go now, Orlando. The time for confessions is over.”

***

The air was damp and the wind was cold when Orlando stepped out onto the pavement. The streets were completely deserted by now. Apart from the sounds his shoes were making on the pavement it was all quiet.

When crossing the street he stepped into a giant puddle and didn’t even notice it. His mind was spinning. He hadn’t even said good-bye to Viggo, just nodded silently and a second later he had left the gallery.

Viggo had been right – there was nothing left to say. Orlando knew all he needed to know now, at least about Sean. But what about the man that should have been his target? A strange person, this Mr. Mortensen, a man full of contradictions. Orlando still saw Viggo’s green-grey eyes fixed on him, full of distrust, full of questions. Not all of Viggo’s questions had been answered, but that hadn’t stopped him from figuring out the truth in the end.

Orlando sighed. Suddenly, he remembered the hunger in Viggo’s eyes when he had cornered him in front of that infamous “Fuck Machine”. He remembered Viggo’s hands on his skin and how close, how dangerously close Viggo had been then. He wondered whether Viggo had been hard, too, at that moment. Thinking of it both frightened and thrilled him.

But there was something even more disturbing when he thought back on their strange encounter. It was the moment Viggo’s eyes had suddenly gone soft when releasing Orlando or, shortly before they had parted, when he had talked about his feelings for Cate’s “Angel”. Orlando snorted in disgust. Sentimental crap. Probably one of Viggo’s games, as he, too, had been playing games with Orlando. Like all the others.

Still, it seemed that something in Orlando had changed. It was only a vague notion, something he couldn’t quite make out. It was as if, for the first time in a long while, he could breathe freely again. And he realized this was the moment he had been waiting for. Time to leave everything behind.

Suddenly, his cell phone rang.

Instinctively, Orlando picked it up.

“Orlando, how are things with you?”

It was Sean. Orlando glanced at his watch.

“Well, that’s an odd question to ask at 2 a.m. in the morning, don’t you think.”

“Is there something you should tell me?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What about the assignment I gave you.”

“You didn’t give me a deadline.”

“I’m giving you one now. Tonight.”

The conversation was disconnected before Orlando could answer.

TBC
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If Only One Night