I got up, expecting her to follow. But she started off in the other direction, down the steps.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ve already been.”
She swayed off, the way I’d seen her do a million times, leading customers to their table, not turning. I couldn’t help noticing, looking around, how guys on the steps, even though her body was completely hidden, even though they were sitting with pretty girls half Nora’s age, followed her with their eyes.
I was glad I hadn’t worn a coat. There would have been no place to hang it. People stood casually in the packed, airless room. I hesitated, trying to swallow down a metallic taste until I realized it was my heart, racing. But any anxiety I felt wasn’t connected to the rest of me. I was sheltered. I regarded everything from a booth. The occasional look bounced off me with the heavy thud of a rock hitting clear plastic. “Stoned.” Was this what Nora meant? I smiled and willed myself into the thick of things, heard this familiar voice and steered myself toward it. At that moment, another group came and bulldozed the people ahead of me sideways. I went straight. There was a path, then it closed behind. I couldn’t tell what I was making happen and what I was reacting to. Either way, I was in it, deep inside now, the crowd and the event itself. All around me I glimpsed Horace’s paintings, these dense canvases of numbers and letters and symbols, with strange spectrums washing over the dry formulas, making them shimmer. They were shapes, abstract patterns, but inside was all calculation, so you felt they actually meant something, that they weren’t just pretty. They were the answers to secrets. Trying to be, at least. I suddenly thought, seeing one longer than I meant to, actually making contact with it, he really is a good painter. The way he paints. Even if they’re not of anything in particular. And then I jumped away from that, because I didn’t want to think of him that way, the way other people thought of him. Still, it was strange, that for once I had seen what I was supposed to see.
“It’s about the non-linear nature of time. I mean, I had seen this portrait before it was painted. That’s how powerful it is. It shows the Female Psyche overcoming the patriarchal, cause-and-effect way we look at our lives. And what’s so amazing is that he comes from such a male perspective. I mean that’s the story of it. After all these references to rational science, to this very Western mode of trying to make sense of things, he finally lets go and breaks through to something feminine and unquestioning. See, she’s dreaming us watching her.”
Marron was standing in front of a huge painting that took up the whole back wall. I made my way closer, prying apart people the way I had tried to pry apart the bricks outside the bar.
I remembered that trick of her having these ready-made speeches she would slip into.
“It worked backwards through my life. I thought I had seen the person before, but really I had seen her portrait, in my future. I had seen what she was going to become.”
She had these killer boots that went past her knees, ribbed stretch pants, and a black sweater. She had let her hair grow out so that, for the first time, I could see the dark roots. It’s fall, I thought. It hadn’t really hit me until now, but the way she dressed made it clear, somehow. Not only that it was fall, but that fall was almost over.
Where is he? I wanted to ask. Why are you standing in front of his painting like you own it? Like only you understand?
It was the big one, that I had touched, laid my palm flat against. Except now it had that magic buffer zone. It was a Work of Art. People gave it this respectful distance. Everyone but Marron. She straddled the invisible line. You couldn’t look at it without looking at her, too. She was the tour guide, museum guard, and wife, all in one.
“The others are just exercises,” I heard her explain. “This is what they were all leading up to.”
...my suede boots, I completed the sentence in my head. My hundred-dollar pants. My cashmere turtleneck.
I finally saw Horace across the room, standing as far away from the action as possible. Someone was talking to him. He had found this patch of wall and was up against it, cornered, even though there was no corner. He had brought his own corner with him and was in it, now. His shoulders were hunched. I had never seen him looking so vulnerable. So exposed. Before, there had been this edge of smugness to him, he was sure of himself, but now, with his paintings on the wall and his name printed just inside the door, he looked pale and thin and I knew that, given the chance, he would make a dream lover. I felt this enormous need rising out of him, I could almost see it, this aura of who he was that even he didn’t know, but I did. And I could show it to him. That’s what made him so appealing. He could be my mission.
“Eve,” Marron finally noticed.
Shut up, I thought, staring at my future life. I’m having a moment, here.
“I can’t believe you came.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
“Horace,” she yelled.
Everyone turned.
“It’s Eve!” She pointed, like he wouldn’t recognize me, like she was his social secretary, and waved for him to come over.
They’re not really staring, I told myself. It’s an optical illusion. But just in case they were, I tried that Brandy trick of standing straight, like I thrived on attention. I threw my shoulders back. Marron pretended to admire my outfit.
“Cool jumpsuit.”
“Thanks.”
“You have great nipples.”
But I wasn’t going to let her make me feel like an idiot this time. Horace’s job was working his way across the room. People kept stopping him. This tall handsome stranger. Stranger? Yes, stranger to himself. And I thought, just like that other time, why not? I know that sounds lame, but maybe the strongest argument in someone’s favor is the absence of any objection. Why not? Maybe love wasn’t a giant step you took but something you unblocked, that you allowed to happen. You lowered your defenses. You stopped doubting. Yes, he’d space out and be cold, cruel, even. Yes, he had the power to make me feel foolish. Sometimes I’d want to crawl under a rock and die. But the person he’d mistreat would be me, not her. Because there was always a her. That seemed to be part of love, too. A necessary ingredient. And for all my talk about how much more interesting it was, I was tired of losing. I had learned enough for one life, that’s how it felt, watching him come toward me. I was tired of painful lessons. How about a little mindless happiness? It was a wedding, in my head, except something was screwy because he was the one coming down the aisle and I was standing there with my rival sister, my best woman, who couldn’t shut up, who kept explaining to all these onlookers:
“When a thing is so big, it makes this depression in the fabric of your existence, so you gain momentum, heading toward it. You actually see it before it happens. That’s why it seems so right when it does. It fits into a space that was already there for it. A space it made. Because really everything happens all at once, or is happening and unhappening at the same time, in a kind of flux, and it’s only the guy thing of needing to make it ABC or 1, 2, 3 that leads to this crazy construct we try and lead our lives by.”
He stood in front of us. He didn’t look nervous anymore. He looked goofy. Maybe he’s drunk, I thought. No. The one time he drank with me, he just got more himself, more serious and intense. But now he was loose-limbed, a marionette with its strings cut.
“Well?” he asked.
“Congratulations.” I didn’t want to say anything stupid like, It looks great, since I couldn’t really see anything.
He put his hands on my shoulders. It was so public. I didn’t have time to step back. He spread his palms. He is going to hug me, I thought. Here, in front of everybody. In the center of the Art World. Then he was turning me around. He wasn’t hugging me, he was turning me like I was on a pedestal, except I wasn’t, so I moved awkwardly, on stiff legs, until I faced the painting.
“What do you think?”
I wasn’t really looking. I was trying not to look, like I’d done before, but this time because I didn’t lik
e what I saw. It was different from the others. It was of something. A woman. Her head splashed down. Her eyes closed. Her mouth open. You could almost hear her snore. She was naked, of course. They’re always naked. There was all this skin, it took up much more of the canvas than her face, and because it was close up you saw how vast it was, the shape of her body, how much effort he put into displaying it. All the formulas were there, the same things he’d been using before, foreign alphabets, maps, and lists of words, crazy equations, but this time they all fit together and really added up to something, a picture of a person, this monster girl, this goddess, this mountain of flesh.
“It’s you.”
“I know,” I said, even though I hadn’t, and still didn’t . . . didn’t want to, even though it had been seeping in all this time, through Marron, through the way other people were looking at me, through the words I had somehow managed not to read, the lettering right in front of me, on a clear plastic label stuck to the wall: Eve Asleep.
He had painted my portrait.
“This is what I was trying to tell you about at the bar. It was that morning. When you passed out at my studio. I saw exactly what I wanted. I worked the whole time you were asleep. Then I left. That’s why I didn’t come back. I couldn’t see you awake, once I got started. It would ruin everything. I didn’t want to be confused by reality.”
He waited, I guess for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of what. All I could compare it to was the way a dog comes into the house with a dead bird in its mouth, these bloody feathers, and expects you to be proud, laying it at your feet, with his paws spread out, his tail thumping.
“That’s why I didn’t call. I got the outline, but I still had to work in all the detail. I had to imagine you. To create you.”
“She’s ugly,” I finally said.
“No she’s not,” he answered quickly. “She’s beautiful. As soon as I finished, I came to see you. I tried to explain, but you wouldn’t let me. Then I figured it would probably be better anyway if you just came here and saw it. I knew you’d understand.”
Whoever she is, she’s not me, I thought. Not anymore. He stole my soul. He did what I said he could do. Maybe what I wanted him to do. He took advantage of me while I was asleep. So I had no one to blame but myself. But now I was somebody else. All he got was a person who wasn’t there anymore.
“Listen.” His hands were still on my shoulders. He bent down and talked from behind. I felt his gaze, shooting past, admiring his own work. “Will you come to Tuscany with me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want you to come to Europe.”
“Come to Europe and do what?”
“Paint. Well, I’ll paint. I’ll paint you. Don’t you understand? I love you.”
After all these times of him being tight-lipped, he was finally talking to me, making this declaration, and the only thing I wanted was for Marron to butt in, to stop this hideous moment. But of course it was the one moment she had chosen to disappear, to give us some space.
“Where is this coming from?” I demanded. “I mean, for weeks now you haven’t been calling me. Every time we get close you find a way to back off. And now you’re saying . . . all this stuff.”
“You wanted to know, that other time, if I had any fantasies. It took me a while to figure one out, but this is it.”
“Going to Europe is not a fantasy. It’s taking a vacation together.”
“I’m not talking about a vacation.”
By now I had turned. He was looking at me, but I could still feel the presence of the other me, the image he’d stolen, looming behind.
It was wrong. I mean, parts of it were right, like the idea of being taken care of—loved, even—but I couldn’t be this girl who took off her clothes and made him feel like an artist. It was too nutty. And even if I could, even if I could be his muse or his inspiration, whatever he was looking for, what was in it for me? I mean who would I be, apart from that? But I was also mad because he had stolen my dream! He had turned it into something I didn’t want, although when I thought about it, which I was trying with all my strength not to do, what he described was almost exactly what I had wished for. But now that there was an opportunity to make it happen, all I could think about was how to get away.
“So will you come?”
The crowd was pressing in. More were waiting. I stepped back and let them come between us. He looked at me.
“Stay,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“Of course.”
...not, I added silently, waited, and then slipped out.
But there were so many people. This time they weren’t magically parting. It was the opposite. They were preventing me from leaving. I kept trying to go around them and ended up back where I started. Finally, I felt the cold breath of the open door. I was sweating. I was glad, all over again, that I hadn’t worn a coat, although now I’d be freezing. But just when I was about to make my escape, Marron appeared, blocking my path.
“Hey,” she said, suddenly serious. Not chatty.
“I have to go.” I tried to think of some lie, some excuse. “I have to meet someone.”
“I know. You have to meet me.”
“What?”
“You have to meet me. My dad said so.”
“Your dad?”
She looked different. It wasn’t just her hair or her clothes. She was standing differently, in a way I remembered from someplace else.
“My father.” She searched my eyes, trying to see how much I understood. “Carl Van Arsdale? He said you wanted to talk.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Are you going to eat your fries?”
She shook her head. I speared some with my fork. She was only eating her burger, not even the bun.
“I love meat,” she said.
It wasn’t a coffee shop I knew. The booths were small. We sat opposite each other. Our knees touched. I could see, now that I’d been told, how that radical yellow hair Marron had the first, well, the second time we’d met, covered a dark brown appearing at her roots. It was her real color, the one that went with her eyes.
“So I went back there a few days later, when he wasn’t around, and checked his desk. I knew he’d have that policeman keeping track of everyone.”
“You wanted to see if the man you stabbed was OK?”
“Him?” She was chewing. “I couldn’t care if he lived or died. But I did see a copy of that report you made. It gave your name and address. Except I figured your name wasn’t really ‘America.’ People are so dumb. And it told what you saw. Or what you said you saw. So I decided to put you on my mailing list. Just ‘Eve.’ ”
“That’s how I got the invitation.”
She nodded.
“But why?”
“Because you lied. I liked that.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t know what I saw.” I looked at her. I still couldn’t get used to it. She was the girl on the street! It was so obvious. It wasn’t just the hair. Her whole manner had changed. She had dropped this mask and was the true Marron, one I’d had glimpses of before, but never so completely. Not since that night. “I still don’t know what I saw.”
“Want me to tell you?”
“No.”
“I have a problem,” she admitted. “I overreact, sometimes. I’ve seen a million doctors about it. Apparently I have intimacy issues. It would probably help if I talked about it.”
“Please don’t.”
“I was with a guy that night, one I’d just met, and he wanted to do it. And I didn’t. I mean I did, at first, maybe, but at a certain point I didn’t. Does that make sense?”
“But your solution was a little extreme, don’t you think? I mean, why carry a knife around with you in the first place?”
“Because I know what happens if you don’t.”
I reached over and took more of her fries. There was a wedge of lettuce, too. I was taking everything. I was starving.
“How come your name isn
’t Van Arsdale?”
“I changed it. McKee is my mother’s maiden name. I know that’s just her father, but at least I didn’t know him. Not the way I know mine.”
“Your dad seemed all right. I wonder how come he never said you were his daughter? He has a really nice apartment.”
“It’s not an apartment. It’s a penthouse.”
She made it sound like an important distinction. An apartment was middle-class, someplace where you’d have a husband and raise a family. Where right and wrong applied. A penthouse was up in the stars, above all that.
“He was protecting you,” I realized. “That’s why he didn’t say who you were. Even if it made him look like a pervert. He wants you to be safe.”
“His idea of safe. Safe in a padded room. Taking pills that make you stupid. I need to know what you saw that night, Eve. What you’re going to say you saw.”
“Not you, too,” I groaned.
“Listen to me. It’s important that you understand what really happened.”
I didn’t want to hear any more. I let my head fall forward and caught it. I covered my eyes with flat palms and tried blocking out all the light that streamed in. But even the colors I saw when my eyes were closed seemed more vivid. Marron talked, and, gradually, without my wanting it to, her intimacy crept past all my defenses.
“My father was this incredibly handsome man. Women used to go crazy over him. I remember, when he would pick me up at school, or take me out to a restaurant, just us, the look on their faces. To me, that was love, this longing for what you can’t have. I saw it on my mother’s face, too, because she never had him either. He was always leaving us, for work, or business trips, and finally for another woman. He was this powerful unreachable creature. And mysterious. He had that penthouse for years before we even knew about it. It’s where he disappeared to. So when I started dating, I didn’t want to be one of those women, ‘in love’ with some guy. I’d seen how that turned out. Instead, I wanted to be him, walking away. I hated the idea that I could need someone to complete me. I wanted to be an animal. I wanted to do things out of biological necessity, then forget all about them.”
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