by Kris Ripper
“Oh, don’t bother. It was all a lie. She’d no more want to go to Dad’s birthday than get an enema from Hulk Hogan. But I probably won’t tell her I just used her and her sons as a stick to beat my father with.”
“But it worked.”
He nodded, almost smirking. “It worked. Will you text me when he crashes so I can come back for the portfolio?”
“Okay. I’m guessing he won’t stay upright past one, but I’ll text you. Do you think this will last the rest of the week?”
“Think of it like restarting a heart. Now that he’s beating, he should be all right.”
I laughed. “That’s creepy as fuck, Colin, but thanks for the image. I’ll let you know if he needs another jolt.”
“Thanks. And thanks for calling. This is why we need you, Justin. See you later.”
I saluted. Then I grabbed my whiskey and went inside to clean up various messes. Talk radio was already blaring, which I took as a sign that everything was going to be just fine.
* * *
I “volunteered” to work on Saturday. Or, as Chad had no doubt seen it, I forced him to let me come in on Saturday. We’d lost way too much time at the beginning of the week, and I was still hustling to assemble copy for the info booklet, which should have been done two weeks ago.
We’d worked with smaller galleries that seemed a lot more organized, but when I made this observation to Colin, he said it was all down to management. And the size of the gallery—or its reputation—didn’t necessarily mean they had their shit together in any logical way. “But they paid for advertising, so you won’t hear me complaining.”
Which was great. But I was on the hook for getting the PDF for the info booklets in to the printer before two, and the graphic designer I’d hired had bailed Thursday for personal reasons. She’d sent me her files and a lot of apologies, and the work was good enough that I recommended Colin pay her for half the job, but I was still sitting there trying to get all the written copy to fit in the right places, and stressing over the resolution of the images, particularly the Hazeltines.
Twenty minutes before two I realized I hadn’t included any legal jargon about the Hazeltine images being used with permission from the estate or whatever, and sent a panicked email to Colin for language. I added that, sent the whole thing to him, he gave me notes, I changed stuff, sent it to him again, vowing to find a graphic designer who lived in a cave and could not possibly have personal reasons, and then it was kind of…done.
I uploaded the PDF to Chad’s cloud storage and sent the link to the printer. Then I refreshed my email every five seconds waiting for a This is all gibberish, what the hell kind of game are you playing? email. Which didn’t come. But neither did a Great, we’re all set to go, pick them up Wednesday email.
Right as I was justifying a call to the printer to verify that they’d gotten the email and looked over the file, I heard voices I knew. Laughter I knew.
“We come bearing lunch!”
I hadn’t seen them all week. I’d thought about them a lot. And we kept up a steady stream on our message thread about politics and cat videos. But to see them just…walk in like that. Like it was normal. Like they were real and alive when my eyes were still swimming with incremental font size changes.
No skirt on Alex today, but Jamie was wearing butch leather pants with a black turtleneck. And they really had brought lunch.
“Chad, we got you a salad,” Jamie called, holding up a bag.
“People who offer me salad get killed,” he replied without turning away from the sculpture he was working on. Dawn, the one he’d modeled on The Shortest Night.
They angled for a view. Jamie gasped. “Oh my—”
I shook my head frantically.
“It’s actually a burrito,” Alex said, grabbing the bag and plopping it on the nearest table.
Chad grunted.
“That’s Chad for ‘Thank you so much, random humans, for feeding me when I haven’t eaten since yesterday.’ Now what’d you bring me?” I gestured them over, then changed flow and waved them away. “Let’s eat standing around that dead tree they installed when they were beautifying downtown.”
Jamie whistled a little melody. “Dead tree picnic!”
“Was that…did you just call up ‘Teddy Bear Picnic’ from the halls of repression where that shit belongs?”
She grinned. “You love me.” Then she kissed me.
Which: yes, and yes.
I turned to Alex, about to complain about the childhood song now looping through my head (about to gloss over how much I’d liked that kiss, and wanted more), when he kissed me too. And looked me right in the eye. “You hungry?”
Tell me that wasn’t a fucking come-on.
“What’d you bring me?”
“You wanna guess?”
Jamie held up the remaining bag in her hands. “Sometime today, boys.”
The dead tree, which I affectionately referred to in my head as Stick, didn’t provide anything so opulent as shade. But it did have a little sea of dead weeds in a square around it, so we gathered at the edge where the sidewalk was interrupted by an arguably more ugly attempt to replace it with nature.
“It’s so gorgeous here, she sighed.”
I blinked at Jamie. “Did you just…narrate an insincere commentary on my choice of picnic spot?”
“Yep. Here, we got you your usual.”
And oh god, I almost literally swooned. Apparently I really was hungry. Beans, rice, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. No better burrito exists on planet earth. And these were homemade tortillas.
“Oh my god. This is amazing.” So creamy, so warm, so delicious, with just enough seasoning in the guac, and the beans were clearly refried in bacon fat.
“Jus is totally having a foodgasm right now,” Alex whispered.
“I don’t care about anything but this burrito. I don’t care about the show, the unfinished pieces, the fucking printer. None of it.” I took another bite and closed my eyes. “This is so fucking good.”
“Mmm.” Jamie’s finger dragged up my arm. “This is getting a little obscene. I guess we can’t kick Chad out of the shop for a quickie?”
Alex laughed. “Not the week before a show, anyway.”
“Shu’ up. ’M eating.” I may have actually groaned in pleasure, leaning slightly back against Stick.
Which was a terrible idea.
I tumbled to the side and Jamie caught me, but both of our burritos ended up facedown in the weeds. For a long second I just stood there, mouth open, staring at the foil-wrapped butt of my burrito, eyes smarting.
Jamie was still half-holding me and I didn’t mean to like…literally cry over spilled burrito. But I kind of leaned in and she wrapped her arms around me and I wasn’t sobbing or anything, but my disappointment was extreme.
Over the burrito.
“Aw, love. You’re exhausted. When can you get out of here?”
I sniffled and wiped my eyes. “I just need to make sure everything’s fine with the file I sent the printer.”
“Then let’s go get burritos, yeah?”
I laughed wetly. “Oh god. Why am I crying over a stupid burrito?”
“You definitely aren’t,” Alex said. “I’d offer you mine, but—”
“—no guac,” I finished. “You disgust me, Alexander.”
He smiled so fucking sweetly I kissed him. I couldn’t not kiss him. “Make your phone call so we can take you home.”
Jamie cleared her throat. “But first burritos.”
“I’m, uh, already good in that department.” And Alex, smug as anything, took a huge bite right in front of us.
“You cruel bastard. Cork, who’s the real sadist in this family?”
“Considering how long you made us wait, it’s definitely you.”
I swallowed. “I meant— I didn’t mean—” But I didn’t even know what I was saying, so I shut my mouth.
Alex nudged me, still eating his burrito. “Come on. You should make your ph
one call. Then we’ll go back to the taco place for replacement burritos.”
We started walking back, me in the middle. Jamie took my hand, like a dumbass kid. “Why do we call it the taco place when we only get burritos?”
“Because it’s a taco place. You know.” There were reasons, I was sure of it. “Because it’s primarily a venue for tacos. Burritos are an afterthought.” A delicious afterthought. “God, that burrito was fucking glorious.”
The second I walked into the shop, I knew something was different. Chad was standing very still, staring at Dawn. The original sketches for The Shortest Night had shown a small anatomical heart in the center of a ring of trees, which were then portrayed as part of the earth, ringed at the outside edge of the page with planets and stars. The whole thing was shaded and shadowed and dark, except for the heart. To be honest, I didn’t really get it, and I didn’t think it was anything like as compelling as The Longest Day. But no one pays me to give my opinions about Art.
The way Chad had translated it to sculpture, though, took my breath away.
He half turned. “Justin, it’s done.”
And now I was officially allowed to look.
Alex and Jamie held back, but I moved in. This wasn’t my favorite part of working with him—sometimes by this point I basically hated him and didn’t give a shit if he never made anything again—but when it was a piece I cared about, I loved that announcement: Justin, it’s done.
It wasn’t directly referential that I could tell. He’d formed steel into a bare round framework, then on the northern hemisphere of the thing, there were reaching arms of steel, almost as if they were demanding interaction from the viewer. Engaging.
Trees? Branches? In the drawings the trees merely existed, but if that’s what these were meant to be, they were serving a much different role here. I stood directly in front and surveyed them individually. Knobby, crooked, almost bone-like. A call back to Dusk, which had far more realistically rendered the skeletal structure of The Longest Day? I didn’t know. But he’d worked on them for ages, and I could tell. There was nothing random about their placement, their spacing, or the intense way they seemed to be enticing me forward.
Only after I’d looked at every other part of the sculpture did I turn my attention to the heart.
He’d wanted blown glass. Until he realized that the skills he’d randomly picked up over the years weren’t nearly enough to successfully create the thing he had in his head. (And that had been a charming few days of him slamming around sniping about stupid things.)
But he knew what he was doing with stained glass, even though he called it “finicky shit” and did a whole monologue on something-something oxidizing copper something. He did most of the soldering at night, he said so I wouldn’t have to breathe in lead fumes, but I secretly thought it was so I wouldn’t see all his false starts until they were shards in a trash can.
Lots of shards.
Now, looking at the final piece, every damn glass sliver (that stuff travels) had been worth it. “Jesus fuck, Chad. How the hell are you ever going to top this?”
He uttered a sort of laugh-bark. “I did all right.”
It wasn’t a plea for validation, but I couldn’t help myself. “It’s fucking magnificent. How did you do that?”
The heart was shaped sort of like two elongated pyramids pressed together along the flat part, so what was that, an octohedron or something? Each of the sides was really a piece of art all to itself, with vibrant reds and pinks and even some purples, looking effortlessly intertwined. The entire heart was roughly the size of Jamie’s electric kettle, and it was hanging suspended in the center of the outstretched branches.
It was absolutely goddamn amazing. And also was gonna be a huge pain in the ass. “Christ. This is gonna be a pisser to move.”
That laugh-bark again. “Yeah. If it breaks I’m throwing myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“You’ll want to make sure you hit the water head first so you die on impact,” Jamie said helpfully. “Some people live long enough to drown or die of internal bleeding, so I’m just saying, way better to die on impact.”
Chad turned, like he hadn’t noticed they were still there. “Huh. I wondered how the hell he got along with you. Guess that’s why.”
“Because I know what kills people who jump off bridges?”
“Because you shoot from the hip. Anyway, I’m calling it. The work day’s fucking over. Get out of here, all of you. And thanks for the burrito.”
Alex and Jamie both bowed, as if they’d rehearsed it.
“I should just call the printer—”
“Get lost. Paulson will call the printer. You’re done here.” He glanced at them again, then landed on me. “Go home, Justin.”
I wanted to argue. To at least check my email before leaving. Except that burrito was damn good. And the company was even better. I grabbed my briefcase. “See you Monday, boss.”
“Yeah yeah.”
We waved goodbye and escaped.
Chapter Thirty
YOU WOULD THINK that after lifting the sex ban, we’d be all over one another. I always assumed if that rule wasn’t in place we’d be all over one another. But between the wedding and the show, it never went as far as it had at the Saints house. And I didn’t spend the night with them, so it never got anywhere close.
I was stressed out. And they were…I hated to think it. But it seemed like they were being…gentle. Not putting any pressure on me. I’d like to argue that wasn’t necessary, but I’d probably be lying.
This was uncharted territory. Not sex, or kink, but both. And not limited to sex and kink.
Ugh. If I was now the proverbial nervous teenage girl, it was love I wasn’t ready for. How do you even put that? If you love me, you’ll wait…until I’m ready to feel love?
Feeling it wasn’t the problem, obviously. What to do about that feeling very much was.
* * *
Thankfully, I barely had time to think in the days leading up to the show opening.
Chad finished the final piece on Tuesday. For a show opening on Saturday. Which was nothing to him, because then he got to sit back and be an angsty artiste for three days while the rest of us were in a frenzy to get everything done.
The Museum: A Gallery was trendy as fuck, but it was actually a really cool space, with a ton of skylights (to gather in all that San Francisco fog glow), and a few odd little pockets here and there. And the estate of Enrico Hazeltine had okayed the display of some of the work Myrrh Macintosh had shown me, probably at her request.
Which meant I got to spend a fair amount of time in the last few days in the same room as pieces he’d actually touched. If you’d told me at fourteen I would one day stand in the same room as pieces he’d actually touched, I would have rolled my eyes and told you to fuck off. Because no way.
But here I was. Here they were. Not the journals she’d brought just to show me, though. And while I would have loved to look at them more—even just a single two page spread under glass—in another way, this made them more…mine. She’d brought them just for me, and shared them only with me.
Also, the watercolor Chad hated and I liked was framed and hung where one of the skylights would brighten it without shining on it. Ha. One in the eye to the boss.
I’d assumed they would do the show in clumps: Chad here, Hazeltine there. But they didn’t. They displayed all the pieces where they best fit, and just left it to the label to spell out whose work was whose.
I pulled Colin aside to ask about it. Specifically, how Chad felt about it. “I mean, it’s sort of like he’s sharing his show with a dead guy, isn’t it?”
“He told me this is the best company his work has ever been in, so apparently it doesn’t bother him. Though just between you and me, I had a really convincing argument all planned out.”
“And another sacrificial family member just in case that didn’t work?”
He grinned. “I never leave home without a sacrificial family
member.”
And then, almost abruptly, it was Saturday and I was jittering from a mixture of caffeine and very little sleep, sitting in the back of Jamie’s car on the way across the Bay. I’d decided not to stay the night with them, and it was probably good, since I’d spent most of it rereading Hazeltine’s early essays, the ones in which hope wound like a thin silver thread through a whole hell of a lot of darkness.
When I made this observation, Jamie said, “We would have shown you some ways to relax, Jus.”
They might have. But it was too late now.
Chad was already there, half pint of beer in hand. I greeted his daughters (who didn’t come to every opening, but I’d met them a number of times before), shook hands with his sons-in-laws, dutifully admired grandchildren younger than ten, and shook hands with the older ones.
I’d escaped back to Jamie and Alex by the time I finally saw Colin.
“I’m glad you’re here. If I tug on my ear, wade in and tell him you need him urgently for something.”
“For what?”
“Make it up. He didn’t sleep last night. It’s a miracle he combed his hair.” For the first time, he seemed to notice my friends. “Hello. I don’t think we’ve met?”
I gestured. “Jamie, Alex, this is Chad’s agent-slash-son, Colin Paulson. Colin, these are”—do not say “my lovers”—“my partners, Jamie and Alex.”
His eyebrows shot all the way up to his very slightly receding hairline, but he gamely shook their hands. “Really nice to meet you both. I didn’t realize Justin had guests or I wouldn’t have picked him for backup.”
“Oh, we understand about Chad,” Jamie said.
“And backup plans,” Alex added, with a smirk in my direction.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s fine. They can take care of themselves. But you should get back over there, he’s untucking his shirt.”
“I can’t leave him for five minutes! This is why I didn’t have kids…” He casually speed-walked back to his dad.
“Just another day at the office,” I said. “Wine?”
* * *
The place was wildly full by the time someone clipped a classy microphone pick-up to Chad’s shirt. They were recording his speech so they could post it on their website, where it would play over one of those 360 degree videos of the show. Or, they planned to post the speech on their website. Colin and I had quietly put the odds of him saying something totally inappropriate at three-to-one.
