This was the day for the visit.

Reluctant as he was to make it, to a gallery in the newly developed downtown district where one named Ingmar Lorken had his Frank Gehry-designed art temple.

The man, he knew, would not be there, and if he was, Ever would not have known what to do.

Ever hadn’t seen the man for twelve years, since the time when he was a collector, well, a buyer, of his father’s work. The man who finally would give this wonderful artist the recognition he deserved. Those were his words at the time. Their clichéd cloyingness ran cold in repetition, summoning up the memory of his father’s enthusiasm at receiving a massive cheque for having sold all his work; purchased by Mr Lorken himself. Ever’s father had been given the promise of an exhibition housed in the yet-to-be-completed gallery.

Ingmar Lorkenau, Austrian father, Swedish mother.

Ingmar himself removed the ‘au’ from his name. Easier life, spelling-wise, in the new-found land of America, and the numerological conclusion of the remaining twelve letters added up to three. The trinity in the Torah, body, soul, and spirit. Believe it or not.

Elohim made man composed in his image, and it had worked for Mr Lorken.

He was doing very well indeed.

*

Ever stood outside the metal curved signature of Gehry’s three-dimensional piece.

He was sad at the thought that it never happened for his father. The exhibition did happen, not there, but in an inauspicious place off Venice Boulevard by Ocean Avenue, unpublicised, with the works remaining unsold.

With the advance cheque, he tried to buy all his work back, but Mr Lorken refused, deciding to hedge his bets on the possibility that one day Ever’s father’s work would be of value. But that was the destruct button, and further attempts at creation were met with increasing dissatisfaction of nuclear proportion.

He became destructive towards his work and depression led to breakdown and breakdown to an inability to paint anything at all. The money ran out, the ability to soften Mr Lorken’s resolve went with it, and death was the ultimate release. The fallout cloud had spilt its pollution.

The destruction of his father, albeit not self-inflicted, was as a result of losing ten years of his work to the depths of a warehouse. This was the thing that consumed Ever more than his own life, and he too lost motivation to do anything, and became obsessed with the futility of it all.

The lack of point.

Of purpose.

A nihilism.

*