Justin rapped his knuckles on the seasoned old door frame. The curious observer in him wondered how many years it had been since a paint brush had touched the framework or if it had even been painted more than once in its lifetime. He doubted it. Bits of natural wood showed up in small patches a few feet apart where the hinges had been removed when the door was taken out long ago.

Something few could figure out about Sam Auerbach was his aversion to doors in his personal spaces. For safety and weather's sake, he tolerated the heavy outside doors, but there wasn't a door in sight in the rest of his large studio space. Even his cupboards were open. He didn't have claustrophobia, just another quirky artist's quirky quirk. Then again, maybe he was simply crazy. Six of one...

"Hey, kid. When'd you get in?" Sam gave a lopsided grin when he saw his visitor.

"Yesterday," Justin said as he walked in and scanned the massive room. Made his own studio space seem like a broom closet. "Had to meet with Sylvia, go over contracts, press some flesh with the gallery owners. You know."

"Bullshit." Sam pulled the young man into a bear hug and gave a sardonic little laugh. "You flew in on some compassionate rescue mission after we talked on the phone."

"Yeah, well, still met with Sylvia and did some paperwork." He'd already been pretty sure Sam wouldn't buy his excuse. "You really okay?"

"Always have been, always will be." They both chuckled at that. Yeah, Justin had talked to Sam about a thing or two over the years.

"Bullshit." Justin hugged his friend a bit tighter.

More than one person was stymied by the close friendship that had developed between Sam Auerbach and Justin Taylor over the last several years. Justin had heard the stories from Brian about the affair Lindsay had with Sam when Mel was pregnant, had experienced the toll it had taken on the women's relationship. He also knew of Sam through his reputation. The genius on par with Pollack. The temperamental artist who had little patience with the mundanities of the art business. The crass and craven cigar smoking womanizer with ex-wives and ex-lovers and abandoned children all over the world. When he finally met Sam at a New York gallery showing Justin's work during his sojourn into that barren wasteland, Sam nodded and made polite commentary about the pieces, let him know he'd been following his work, but he certainly didn't fawn over him. He'd later told Justin to go home, to go home before the city completely consumed his artistic soul. "You're supposed to evolve as an artist, not devolve. You've got too god damn much promise and talent to let this shit-hole of neutralizing concrete and creative turpitude extinguish it." They went out for drinks after the show and talked art and regret. Justin discovered a surprisingly astute character and a keen, intellectual wit hidden beneath a bad-boy mask. Justin had a bit of experience with that shit.

So here they now stood, amid the paintings and sculpture in Sam's cavernous studio, two men as disparate on the surface as disparate could be, but with more in common right now than the world would guess.

"Let me buy you a drink, old man."

Sam stared at the mostly barren canvas he'd been agonizing over for the last dozen or so hours, then at the poised man bracing himself against the empty doorframe and decided that given a choice between bleeding out his soul with noncompliant acrylics or baring it over a glass of whisky with a friend, the latter was the better option today.

:::

:::

"Eighty-four goddamned years old. Long life," Sam rambled. "Long life." Whisky tended to make him repetitive. "I tried to give her everything I could. Everything I could. An easier life to somehow make up for that hell hole. A home she could take pride in. A life she could relax in. Grandkids!" He grinned sheepishly around his glass. "I may have slightly over-done that last one."

Justin snorted. "Ya think?"

"Oh, don't get all faux sanctimonious, kid. If Brian had been screwing women, there'd have been a damned population explosion," he joked. "At least I only added six extra mouths to feed before I figured out how to stop it."

"Thank god I don't have to worry about that." Justin shivered just thinking about vasectomies, making Sam laugh before he got introspective again.

"At least she was at home. In her own bed." Sam sighed and blinked rapidly, thinking about his mom's last hours. "Thankful for that."

:::

:::

Sam had been sleeping off the effects of the night before when he received the call from the hospice nurse early on Tuesday. Antje Auerbach had died, peacefully, in her sleep. With her passing, the last remaining living link disappeared from the European Auerbach family history. He was now the eldest. The elder. At the ripe old age of fifty-nine. And he didn't know whether to be honored or to run off and hide in yet another bottle.

By the time Sam arrived, the doctor was already there. Sam sat beside his mother, his fingers drawn like a magnet to the faded numbers etched into fragile skin beneath the sleeve of Antje's nightgown. From the moment he could remember, his mother had worn long sleeves to cover the heinous evidence of months spent in the concentration camp. He could only recall her speak of it twice in his life. It was twice too many as far as she was concerned. He remembered she spat on the ground each time, as if she was expelling some evil with the spittle.

Her spirit had died a thousand times that year she turned seventeen. Now, time caught up with her and her body decided to do the same.

:::

:::

"My dad was a shit to her most of the time. Took me a long time to come to terms with why she stayed in that damned marriage, why she didn't get us both out of there long before he finally ate the bullet."

"She loved her family. Makes people put up with a lot that they otherwise wouldn't think of putting up with." Justin took a long swallow of his beer, pretty sure everyone had wondered the same thing about him from time to time. But Sam knew. He understood. They understood each other.

"Yeah, maybe," Sam agreed with an acerbic little huff. "Not the kind they write stories about though... And that's a god damn shame because her story should be told." 

Justin had only heard a little about Sam's father - about his heavy-handed discipline and his emotional distance. His own parents had been great up to a point and it was difficult to relate on a personal experience level. But he'd heard Brian's stories, when the man's tongue had been particularly loosened by alcohol. Brian didn't reminisce often, and he always pretended he didn't remember doing so after the fact. But Justin did. Justin remembered and sometimes seethed for days. Those infrequent snippets of childhood history had allowed Justin to better understand the man and his sometime callous behavior and temperament.

It had been that bad temper and a particularly callous episode of watching Brian walk away with yet another man that had cemented Justin's friendship with Sam Auerbach. "Some days the demons win, kid. Makes the days with the angels that much more worthwhile, eh?" Sam smiled sadly, tossed his arm around Justin's shoulder and walked him to the nearest bar. And Justin knew Sam understood. Sam's demons won sometimes, too.

:::

:::

The gallery was bustling for opening night. Justin stood aside, away from the crowd, sipping a glass of shiraz, Brian's arms tightly wrapped around his shoulders as they watched the emotion roll over the faces of a large group of attendees standing in front of the show's centerpiece. It was an evocative piece by anyone's standards, the subject matter and technique a definite departure from the artist's normal abstract style.

"So, not just a quirky artist's quirky quirk, then," Justin joked. But his voice held a quiet anguish. A public anguish, a historic pain. Brian understood and cradled his partner just that little bit closer to him. He'd heard Justin's envious groans from time to time about Sam's enormous studio space and the openness its simple design oddities conveyed. "Never know the reasons behind someone's apparent idiosyncrasies, Justin. Sometimes we aren't even aware of them ourselves at the time."  

It had been nearly a year since Justin's visit and conversation with Sam after his mother's death. He'd stayed late into the night and they'd imbibed way too much. And talked. The story of Antje Auerbach, of growing up in a home overflowing with repressed memories and effusive love, of days missing a mother when she took to her depression bed and days spent with her flying kites and sighting birds. Stories of the mother Sam knew and the woman he understood he could never know. Stories of strength and love and survival. He'd hoped to visit again before this; he missed the camaraderie between the two of them. But Sam had thrown himself into a project almost immediately, a project that Justin was certain, at the time, was avoidance. He now knew how wrong he'd been.

"Hey, kid. Brian. Glad you could make the showing. Been what? A year now, Justin?" Sam's languid smile belied the pain still haunting his eyes, and Justin gave his friend a hearty hug.

"Missed you, old man," he said quietly. "See you've been keeping busy."

"Well, you know, too much booze, too many memories, too much time on my hands. She deserves it."

Justin gazed back at the centerpiece work, a mixture of mediums -acrylic, watercolor, stone and metal. As much a piece of sculpture as a painting, the work sprawled across one entire wall of the gallery. A tryptic. The first piece showed gaunt, haunted faces of children flying kites in the ruins of Bergen-Belsen, all windows and doors removed, kite strings winding through the openings. The middle piece was a stack of wood on fire - the doors and window frames from the camp. The final section was a portrait of Antje, a stoic expression on her face, the tattoo on her arm partially hidden by the blanket of the baby she held in her arms. It was the most painfully magnificent thing Justin had ever experienced.  

"Sam...as an artist, I should have words for this... I have no words. God, she would be so proud of you."

Sam shrugged. "Her story needed to be told. The words you don't have lets me know I've at least begun telling it." He clapped Justin on the shoulder and walked back to his family. Justin watched as he was engulfed in the small, thin arms of a young woman who looked so very much like her grandmother.

:::

:::

Justin visited Sam about a month after the work was donated to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City, Manhattan. They drank to excess, Justin complained about Brian, Sam nodded sagely and offered repetitive advice in a boozy voice, before they both fell asleep where they sat. It was healing for both of them.

As Justin headed for his car to catch his flight back home, creatively cursing the hangover headache and wondering about his likelihood of dying from same on the flight, Sam laughed, pulled him into a mighty hug, and said, "Well, some days those demons do win, kid. But today's the angels' day."

Next to Brian, Sam was the best man Justin knew.