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After Arthur had tracked him over half the states in the West, turning up like a bad penny whenever Albert had need, it was only fitting that here, as far out of his own habitat as a fish in a tree, in the sharp-edged, stifling noise of the biggest city he’d ever seen, Albert would be the one to find him first.
“Why, Mr. Morgan!” Albert cried. “It’s really you!”
Arthur had spent a lifetime relying as a matter of life or death on the steadiness of his own hands. He wasn’t about to let them start shaking now, at some—art show in a fancy parlor in New York, surrounded by gilding and velvet and people who had never had lifeblood under their fingernails. He might be twice an idiot for coming here, as he’d been telling himself riding the whole way from Valentine, boarding the ferry and then the train and then the next train and the next, until he touched boots to paving stones at the station and every step since, helpless against his own stupid instincts as a bird drawn south for the winter, and just as lost in the flat grey canyons of the city, struggling upstream against the rivers of people and horses. But it was all worth it, when he turned and found himself faced with bright hazel eyes and a smile like the sun breaking out from the clouds.
“Mr. Mason,” Arthur said. Albert was different here; Arthur might have been looking for a straw boater and frayed vest, but of course, that was idiocy. Albert was in a suit, neat as a pin, beard trimmed and free of grass, just like God knew how many other poor souls in this town. That smile, though. Like someone had opened a window, Arthur could breathe again. “Staying out of trouble, for once?”
“Well enough, I suppose; I’m still alive, somehow, without your assistance. No snakes or bears or Gila monsters to endanger me in the Bowery.”
Arthur thought to himself that despite Albert’s badly disguised regret, there were snakes aplenty slithering across the fine marble, dressed in silks, and none as would do you the courtesy of rattling first. “I’m glad to see it,” he said instead. “And—this,” he added, gesturing to the nearest wall, where a herd of wild horses thundered across a fen, manes and tails streaming, glorious in their strength and beauty. “Just exactly as it was,” he marveled, with an appreciative glance back at the picture.
Albert had been back in the city for long enough that even his tan was faded. When he flushed, it stained his pale cheekbones like rouge. “Yes, or as nearly as I could hope for, with my spare talent. Of course there’s no artistry, hardly an art at all, but for the pale imitation of the beauty I happen to capture.” He reached up as if to adjust his missing hat, and had to settle for scratching the back of his neck instead, with a hand Arthur was strangely glad to see still stained black with silver nitrate. “I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had a gift for paints, to capture the colors as well as the form.”
Arthur scoffed. “I could spend a hundred years with good paints and never get it right they way you did in a flash,” he argued, only realizing his mistake when Albert turned to him with wide eyes.
“Do you—Mr. Morgan, have you been holding out on me? You never told me that you’re an artist.”
“Aw, no. It ain’t as much as all that. Just charcoal scribbles.” The hand holding his best hat dropped protectively over his weathered satchel.
“Well, I’d be delighted to see some time, if you would be so kind as to allow me,” Albert said. “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see the same events rendered two ways? Imagine the combined exhibition! Adventures in the Wilderness: An Exhibit in Two Mediums, perhaps, or Fantastic Beasts of the Western Frontier: The Savagery of the West In Image And Art.”
“A little wordy, maybe, but you’re the expert,” Arthur said. He fiddled with the brim of his nicest hat; there was a nick from a bullet he hadn’t noticed before. “I could show you sometime, I guess, so’s you don’t combust of your own curiosity. Then you’ll see as they’re nothing special.”
Albert stilled him with the light touch of a hand to his forearm. “It would be an honor,” he said, in that unbearably earnest way that cut right to Arthur’s core.
“Well.” Arthur couldn’t make himself step away, but his eyes dropped to where Albert’s painted fingers just rested against the leather of his jacket. “Some chucklefuck—excuse my language, Mr. Mason. Some asshole already asked me if I was part of the exhibit.”
Albert laughed, and released him to breathe again with a last gentle grip. “I should say so! I hope you told him, a most integral part, for without your intervention, the hapless photographer would be dead in a swamp or dry creek or a ditch somewhere, I’m sure, and the exhibit would have surely suffered for it.”
It was all too easy for Arthur to imagine it. “It was no hardship, Mr. Mason. I’m just glad I could be of help.”
“Invaluable,” Albert said.
They stood for a moment smiling at each other, a warm eddy apart from the meandering crowd.
“I suppose—“ Albert began. He paused, and laughed awkwardly, and Arthur felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he gestured for him to continue. “You might be more literally a part of the exhibition as well. I’m sure you don’t remember, but—well, if you’ll follow me?”
As if Arthur had ever been able to deny him. “Sure.” After an uncertain glance, Albert lead him deeper into the richly furnished house. They turned a corner, and Arthur stopped like he’d been shot. Lit by electric fixtures, he found his own portrait staring back at him, clearer than any mirror. Stranger, too, as he wasn’t in the habit of smiling at his own reflection, especially not soft like that, eyes all crinkled at the corner. He had the overpowering urge to take the canvas before him and cover it with his arms, or a sheet, and scare off any of the soft-shoed city folk that got too close. Somehow that picture made him feel as bare as if he were standing in the middle of the room naked.
“There,” Albert said, ducking his eyes. “The crown jewel of my collection: the one subject who would stand still when I asked.”
Arthur could hardly string two words together. “I thought you said you meant to capture the beauty of the open west,” he finally managed.
“I rather think I have,” Albert said, looking over the image with a strange crooked smile.
“Well.” Arthur hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and looked away. “You’re always seeing beauty in the most vicious of beasts.”
The little frown between his eyebrows seemed out of place on such smooth skin. “You’re not a beast, Arthur. No—don’t make that face, I’m serious.”
“You don’t know the half of what I’ve done, Mr. Mason, but I know your eyes work better than most. I know I’m an ugly sonofabitch if ever there was one, and no shame in admitting it.”
“Well, as it happens, I disagree,” Albert said. “I happen to think—that is—” he fussed with the bright chain of his pocket watch. “Your features are really quite—I wish I could show you what I see. Perhaps, if I had the skill—” His hand reached up as if to adjust his missing hat, jerked away at the last minute before it could muss his hair. But his darting eyes found Arthur’s, and he went still, all at once, like the suspended moment before the flashbulb. “All those scars—You’re a man who has lived a remarkable life. Who has survived it. Who has helped others survive. What you see as flaws, I see as—hints of how you’ve built yourself into a person who can live through what you've lived through. What you’ve had to face.”
Arthur knew he was staring, but it took an uncommon effort to break away. “Mr. Mason—”
Albert stepped forward, one hand fluttering between them like a trapped bird. “Albert, please. Arthur, I beg you, call me Albert.”
“Albert,” Arthur said softly, and then coughed. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think you were trying to sell me something.”
“I suppose in a manner of speaking, I am,” Albert said with a strangely wistful smile. “I’m trying to sell you a better view of yourself. That’s the greatest arrogance of any photographer: the desire to make other people see things as he does.”
“Well. I can’t say as I see my likeness in your picture, but I suppose I’m well enough as I am.”
“As God made you,” Albert reminded him. “A masterpiece.”
Albert was blushing again, heat creeping up his cheeks like a sunrise, and it made Arthur want to lean in and do something foolish. “No more than any other man,” he said. “No more than you.”
The pictures were nice, Arthur decided, but Albert’s dawning wonder was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The room around them was quiet, empty, and foolishness had brought them both this far.
Albert was still speechless as Arthur took his face in his hands like something precious, leaned in, and gently pressed their lips together. But when Arthur started to back off to gauge his reaction, his white-knuckled grip on the front of Arthur’s shirt hauled him right back in.