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Logico almost felt bad about the Inspector’s unshared enthusiasm, the pair standing hand-in-hand as they looked up at the large painting before them. Irratino seemed enchanted- Logico not so much. He knew it had something to do with its composition, about pointillism, he’d learnt it was called in his rich preparation.
“Can’t you see it, Logico?” The Inspector had tears in his eyes as he motioned his other hand over a swath of the painting. To him, it looked like a mess of green dots that only from much further back looked like grass. He failed to see what was so beautiful about it, but his companion was very quick to provide. “The misery! It’s… infectious,” his eyes watered.
“Misery?” Logico asked. “Ah. They were sad when they painted it.” He withheld rolling his eyes. Apparently that sort of nonsense derivative was completely logical for an art gallery.
Well, not logical. Perhaps customary.
Irratino nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Smudge proof eyeliner for today; the Inspector knew he would become choked up. He was far too attuned to the vibes around him and if something were made in such rich sadness, he could not help but feel it. His penchant for theatrics also pitched in and perhaps it was not not in part that he liked when the Deductive squeezed his hand in public.
“See, my friend. You do have an ear for intuition. The painter was very sad.”
“About what?”
“Well, I would have to consult the cards for that…”
Irratino was invigorated by the idea and moved to wriggle his hand out of the detectives for it, but the Deductive stayed.
“Or you could just read the plaque.”
The Inspector looked deeply offended, but had to admit that was the easier way to go about it. Logico could care less what was easy and what wasn’t; he just didn’t like drawing attention. To him, art galleries were hostile environments– he didn’t understand, he didn’t really want to, and the gallery receptionist had motioned to his coat and called it ‘very chic’ which he did not exactly like either. He was a professional, damn them!
Irratino finished reading the plaque with a number of melodic murmurs, an occasional ‘oh, yes, yes,’ to a ‘of course!’ vindicating what he had read in a single swath of dots.
“Sated your curiosity?” Logico asked, and their hands broke.
"Completely satisfied.” He straightened, and Logico knew he had done it again– his attempts at being supportive had been too much, and now Irratino was on about how the specific cluster was a metaphor for artillery fire (he doubted) and how the choice of green had been meant to represent pre-war innocence (also doubtful).
“It represents their spiritual turmoil,” he drew to a close.
“Interesting,” it was not. He had stopped trying to care about six pieces ago on one promptly titled Negative Space where he had stood in a small crowd turning his head at angles trying to see the old city, allegedly even Older Drakonia, and had received nothing but a lovely moment of vertigo. The most interesting thing about the gallery was in adding a possible murder weapon to his registry should the shroud of death follow: death by painting-induced dizziness. “I just don’t understand, Tino.”
Irratino laid his head on Logico’s shoulder, abusing his taller height, and laid the palm of his left hand over Logico’s right. Then he raised it upwards. “Try feeling it out.”
Logico did, mostly to humor him. The Inspector had done it very seriously, even attempting to push his head against Logico’s just for some momentary spark to become him, to breathe some life into understanding or appreciation to no avail.
“You’re not trying, Logico.” Which was true.
“I simply don’t see anything.”
“Because you don’t want to! There is so much beauty in what you can’t understand if you’d let it happen.”
He wanted to say he disagreed, but he was enamored with a paradox. A long-haired and green-eyed contradictory puzzle where all the pieces were overly-ridged, tab finding slot only rarely but if he could assemble it entirely he doubted he would have seen the glory of the small pieces.
Was that art? His research hadn’t spoken on puzzles as art, but he felt like it was possible. If so, it was the only one he certainly found the appeal in.
“I suppose it’s… interesting how it all slots together. You have to have extreme foresight for something like this, even if it makes no sense to take a decade longer for… what is it? A giant cube?”
“In a forest, yes.”
“Oh, fantastic.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It looks nothing like a forest. More like a lawn.”
“Why do you think that is?” Irratino assumed the role of art teacher rather than critic far too easily. He liked almost everything. And if he liked it, it therefore had meaning- even as little as since he loved it now, it had always contained the capacity to be loved. He had said that and shifted his eyes to the detective which of course, meant nothing.
“Because the artist has never seen a forest?”
Irratino rolled his hand. “Go on. Why?”
Plenty of reasons stood out to him, but he felt almost compelled to a cluster higher up, to an array of off-whites and baby blues that comprised a cloud just at the great corner of the nonsense. “The environment looks regular, an ideal climate for forestry. So I assume it was an act of necessity why it isn’t there. For tools, or shelter, maybe,” he sighed. “And you said it was painted in wartime?”
“Not that piece. That one feels… different.” He gave no indication as to what he felt in that section, moreso trying to prompt the third eye of the Deductive.
“Fine. It’s afterwards. It’s post-war, then. Things can never go back to how they were.”
“What if things are better now that they’re not the way they were?” Art Enthusiast Irratino carried.
“Obviously they’re not. War doesn’t come from nowhere,” but perhaps it didn’t entirely mean war. Perhaps it meant the closeness of two partners, the wronging of one and the reconciliation that had born something that if it was before the turmoil, those bad feelings, wouldn’t have come.
Logico had to stop, because he had almost reached a conclusion and he knew it. It had no real basis; to have it so, he’d have to comb libraries on the artist, to find the point of reference that simply did not exist. A conclusion would have been his speculation and speculation did no one any favors.
“Can we move on?” They had spent a long enough time staring at it.
“But you were so close to figuring it out!” Irratino protested at first, but softened at realizing how sheepish the Deductive had actually become about it. “Actually, I’m picking up on some better vibes this way.”
No need to fluster the detective into catatonia. He extended his hand once again, Logico hesitating for a moment before taking it. Then Irratino whisked them off to another piece that caught his eye- or attempted to, before interruption.
“Sirs!” A voice behind them called, before catching up. The receptionist, pale-faced and terrified. Familiarly frantic, which of course both recognized. “Are you the detectives Irratino and Logico?”
“Inspector and Deductive.” Logico corrected. And Irratino smiled that he felt the need to clarify when they weren't wrong. It wasn’t very chic at all.
“Well, Mr. Inspector, Mr. Deductive- there’s been a murder!”
And if nothing else; both of them knew the art of crime.