One Year With Him

by CD Reiss

  “Customs transfer certificate?”

  “Look,” Darren cut in, “the guy with all the paperwork got held up with an immigration mix up. We have the sound equipment and specs for it, but that’s it.”

  “Mister Rivers!” A man in a black turtleneck and wire-framed glasses approached us. He seemed to be in his mid-fifties, with a close-shorn head of grey hair. Darren recognized him. They shook hands.

  “Monica, this is—”

  “Samuel Kendall, your curator. You must be the lady without the passport.”

  “I fixed that.”

  “Obviously.” What could have been an insult actually wasn’t. He said it with a slight bow of his head and a little play of a smile. “I heard what happened to Kevin. We actually have a problem far more serious.”

  As if a mask had been removed without him moving a muscle or changing his expression, I saw that Mr. Kendall, under his veneer of jolly intelligence, was livid.

  “How serious?” I asked.

  “Career-ending serious.” He smiled again in that same way. “Please, follow me.”

  Darren and I walked down a long hall with him. He spoke with his head half-turned, his words echoing against the cinderblocks. “We allocated space for this piece, and a ton of it. We have financiers who expect a full show, and collectors waiting to see a whole piece.”

  We entered a larger, unfinished space with exposed ventwork and sprinklers. Crates and boxes stood everywhere. Kendall found three crates close to the loading dock and indicated them. Two were eight-feet tall. One was as big as a kitchen table.

  Kendall stood by them and smiled, tilting his head. “What the fuck is this?”

  Darren picked up a clipboard from the short crate and flipped though the paperwork. I never realized how brave and unflappable he was. At least in situations that didn’t involve me or his sister. Or his sexuality. He was as easy to throw as anyone, just not in matters of his career. Bless him, that was the only place I felt as though I had the wrong time signature.

  “We’re missing four crates.” He flipped through the pages. “A page of the commercial invoice is missing.”

  I inspected the tall crates. They’d all been labeled and numbered to match the assembly instructions. Kevin had reviewed it with me for no other reason than to sate my curiosity.

  “They’re currently in customs, thank you,” said Kendall. “Even if they’re released immediately, they won’t get here for the preview. Sir and Madame, I cannot express to you the financial impact this will have on the museum if we do not have this piece installed. Allocation of space is eighty percent of our concern, and to have a gallery empty is unacceptable.”

  “The gallery won’t be empty,” I said. “We’ll have to figure out the sound system, but I think we can get this to work. It won’t be a complete piece, and it won’t match the catalog, but the space will have something in it.”

  “If it sells, there will be financial repercussions.”

  “If it doesn’t, it’ll be worse,” muttered Darren. He looked up from the clipboard. “Can we get these moved?”

  “Right away,” Kendall replied. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest in this piece.” Darren and I looked at each other as Kendall hailed down a guy with a forklift.

  Chapter 47

  MONICA

  My idea was simple. The installation had four walls. Two had been delivered. A bunch of carefully indexed detritus was in the kitchen table-sized box. That was enough for half a piece. If we placed it against a corner of the gallery, we would at least have four walls.

  “Two of them will be plain white,” Darren said. “The whole meaning of the thing was about the overwhelming nature of emotional vulnerability.”

  “Think about the overwhelming nature of telling that guy his gallery’s going to be empty.”

  We didn’t know what we were doing. We’d made something using Kevin’s expertise, and though we tried to learn all we could while contributing to the visuals, Darren and I had essentially designed the sound. We placed the speakers, deciding which types to use and where. We conceptualized it, recorded it, mixed it, and made it work. We talked with Kevin about how the sound would work within the scope of the piece, but anything that could be seen was his. He had the last word.

  So the assembly design had been up to him, and it concerned us only insofar as the speakers needed a place to be hidden.

  The galleries were packed with artists hanging their work, and when they heard about our plight, we found volunteer helping hands and working minds who understood how to put up an installation. The front of the house, with the doorway, and the adjacent wall. The bug inside was a whole, finished asset. The thing didn’t look entirely broken. Darren and I decided how to get the sound to work by using the museum’s walls, which we decided to leave white. Darren could have drawn something on them, but it wouldn’t have matched Kevin’s artistry. We placed the glass and broken cinderblock as we remembered it. When it was as good as it was going to get, with the walls stabilized, the top part hovering over the gash, and the layers of my voice filled the room, the artists that had helped us stood back and applauded themselves and us for pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

  Though we’d make a success of the show if it killed us, the talk around the galleries was that Kevin’s career was jeopardized. Non-delivery of work was such a dead serious infraction that even the craziest artists didn’t get away with it. Non-delivery was a loss of space. It was a loss of prestige and face. It was apologies and returned money.

  When he got out of whatever hole he was in back home in Idaho, Kevin would have to dig himself out of an even deeper hole in the art world. I didn’t envy him. As a matter of fact, I felt very, very sorry for him.

  Chapter 48

  MONICA

  We were very close to being late. The piece had gotten up and the music turned on as the caterers finished the buffet and bar. Feran had been at our service the whole time, even shuttling Darren around to pick up a cable he needed to reconfigure the sound. He sped us through the city, around side streets and highways, and got us back to the hotel with seven minutes to spare.

  “Dude,” Darren said, “thanks.”

  They shook hands like only men can, and Darren and I ran to our rooms.

  The door between our suites was open. I peeked into Jonathan’s space and found him in a tuxedo shirt and tie, setting in a cufflink. Clean-shaven, hair neatened for the event, wearing a suit sexier than any lingerie, he silenced my reproaches about the open door just by looking as though he’d stepped out of a magazine.

  “You look nice,” I said.

  “Thank you. I had some things sent from Yaletown,” he said. “They’re in the closet.”

  “I brought my Eclipse dress.”

  “No doubt you did.” He tapped his watch. “I’m leaving. But you guys are going to be late if you don’t move it.”

  “I have to close this.” I indicated the door.

  “Shoo.”

  As painful as it was to cut him out of my vision, I closed the door. Of course, I had no intention of wearing any dress he had sent from wherever he said they were sent from. I got out my Eclipse dress, which was the most beautiful thing I owned. I loved it. But next to it in the closet hung a wide garment bag designed for multiple hangers. In this case, seven.

  I hung the Eclipse dress in the bathroom, behind the door, so the steam would relax it, and ran the shower. As I undressed, I made it a point to not think about the seven dresses. In all likelihood, they didn’t go with my shoes. I didn’t have the right accessories, and looking at them would only hammer home what I already knew. The dresses had been picked out by someone who didn’t know me, didn’t know my taste, and obviously shopped with an eye to making that gorgeous man’s female interest look like a wet dumpling.

  The shower wasn’t the right temperature. Not quite too cold. Maybe it was too hot. That was it. I inched the handle a quarter inch toward cold and ran to the closet as though the bag held candy and opened it so
fast the zipper screamed.

  “God help me,” I said. “I am not made of stone.”

  Seven dresses. Four black. I pushed those to the side. Everyone was going to be wearing black, and time was ticking by. Darren would knock in minutes.

  One tonal print. Out.

  The last two fell just below the knee. A sparkly, flesh-colored halter with a handkerchief bottom, and a red, low-cut power suit that screamed don’t fuck with me. That was it. And it went with the shoes.

  I showered fast, keeping my hair dry. Quick shave. Soap all over. Dried like lightning and out to the closet.

  Right. Red dress.

  I pulled my underwear out of the bag, and of course, though I intended to wear my regular cottons, the lace and garter were right there. The set was white with gold hooks and clasps. The suspenders were satin with overlayed lace, and the rings holding the straps were as big as quarters. The front was held together with tiny gold hooks. Fuck it. At least I had an outside chance of getting laid in it.

  When I pulled the dress out of the bag, I saw another, smaller bag was attached. I opened it to find a pair of red-soled shoes inside. Oh. Could it be?

  Removing the cream halter dress, I found a pair of five-inch stilettos in a matching cream. Fuck, they all had shoes. Which meant I needed another hour. I had to look at every dress in the bag, every pair of shoes, and God help me, two of the black ones had scarves.

  There was a knock at the door two rooms away.

  “Mon? Come on!” It was Darren.

  I ran through the bedroom, the living room, the dining area, and called through the foyer, “One second!”

  Red dress.

  But when I got to the closet, I realized I didn’t want to look like a bitch on fire. I didn’t want to be dangerously sexy. I wanted to be sweet and approachable. I slipped on the cream dress. I looked pretty. Like a woman of grace.

  Chapter 49

  JONATHAN

  Plan B was on his way to the museum from the airport. Petra had gone to her doctor’s appointment and gleefully told me she’d have to stop flying in a few months. I envied Jacques.

  I’d left Feran with Monica and Darren, sent someone else for Plan B, and drove myself to the museum. I was much more comfortable at B.C. Mod than at the Eclipse show. My wife held little sway on this side of the border, and my place on the finance committee came not through family connections but a love of art Lanie Jackson had noticed when I donated some postmodern pieces to the burgeoning museum.

  It was a small space and would never be the Moma or L.A. Mod, but Vancouver didn’t need a palace. It needed something intimate, like the city itself.

  That night would be a smallish, boozy affair with collectors and fellow curators. It was Monica’s moment, and without Kevin around to suck the wind out of her, she could enjoy it. At the entrance, a string quartet played lilting top forty classical with a pianist at a black baby grand. I said some hellos, shook some hands, laughed at a couple of stupid jokes about L.A., and got a whiskey. I eventually found the Unnamed Threesome by following the sound of Monica’s voice.

  It wasn’t the same piece. Though her voice, layered forty times like angels singing, then screaming, then moaning, was perfect, the piece wasn’t as good. Adequate. It would do. It wasn’t shameful, and it didn’t look wrong as much as it looked somehow aborted. I couldn’t figure out if the difference was that I’d seen it in its complete state and my eye had been colored, or if it truly did have something truncated about it.

  Samuel Kendall approached me, hand out, wearing the same black turtleneck he always wore. “Did you see the Simulcra Brothers piece in the West Hall?”

  “Not yet.” I pointed at the truncated house. “Got stopped by the voice.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I saw it in L.A.”

  “Ah, so you saw it complete.” He ground his teeth. He was not a happy man. “It was good. Amateur mistake.” He wagged his finger at me. “Never deal with amateurs.”

  I swallowed my drink and smiled. “Amateur comes from the Latin agent amatus. To love. Never worry about love. Love delivers. It’s the incompetent professionals that’ll screw you.”

  Kendall laughed bitterly. “Every freaking time.” He looked over my shoulder. “Who is that?” I followed his gaze to Plan B, who had just arrived.

  “Harry Enrich, the president of Carnival Records. Great guy. I have some property for him to look at. He’s thinking of opening a mini-studio up here.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  Harry came my way with his wife, Yasmine, on his arm. He was a small man with wiry hair and cheeks that were never free of late-day shadow. “Jonathan, you’ve met my wife?”

  “Nice to see you again.”

  “Beautiful plane,” she said.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  I introduced them to Kendall, and Harry didn’t waste a second before asking him, “Who is this?” He pointed at the ceiling. “I know that voice.”

  “She just walked in,” I said, knowing I was smiling.

  She’d chosen the cream dress with the tiny sequins. As willful as she was, she proved she was mine with every small, seemingly inconsequential decision. She looked breathtaking, even on Darren’s arm, leaning on him as if he were her brother. In my mind, he was. She waved when she saw me and made her way to the bar.

  “Don’t recognize her,” Harry said.

  “Monica Faulkner.”

  It rang a bell. In the tilt of his head and look in his eye, I knew Harry recognized the name. I also knew he didn’t know it well enough to be attached to any notion of how she should be signed or branded. That had all been Eddie’s idea.

  Chapter 50

  MONICA

  I dragged Darren through the lobby and into the galleries without telling him I was looking for Jonathan. I found Jonathan by our piece with three other people, including Kendall of the black turtleneck. The other man looked like Harry Enrich from Carnival, but he couldn’t be. Jonathan looked more relaxed and comfortable than he had been at the Eclipse show. More affable, somehow, better in his own skin, if that was even possible.

  “I need a drink,” I whispered to Darren.

  He nodded and pulled me back to the lobby. The string quartet and pianist, two women dressed in long black skirts and three men in tuxedos, played a Brahms’ Hungarian Dance like a dirge. It somehow worked. Gabby and I had taken a ton of gigs like this through high school and college. Little parties and big events full of wealthy people trying to act wealthy. They paid crap, but we figured we would have been practicing anyway.

  “What are you having?” Darren asked, somewhat less comfortable in a suit and tie than Jonathan. He cast his eyes down to his phone.

  “Whiskey rocks. Who’s texting? Kevin? Is he okay?”

  “No.” He tapped the bar then shook his head as if a fly had landed on his hair. “No, I mean it’s not Kev.”

  “Okay?”

  “Adam has landed.”

  “Is he coming?”

  Darren rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Well, if he’s here and he came to see you, you’d better think of something fast. Like a piece of pie or a cookie. You don’t want him to waste the trip.”

  Our drinks came with a flirty glance from the bartender to me. He had arched eyebrows and full lips, reminding me of Kevin..

  Christian Rondo, one of the artists who had helped us that afternoon, introduced us to Donna Santonini. Meeting her made me blush because not only was her work unforgettable, it was also pornographic and arousing and high-minded, all at once. I loved her, told her so, and met seven other people in the next ten minutes.

  My customer service smile was getting a workout. Everyone thought I was with Darren, and we fell naturally into a brother/sister routine we’d honed since we broke up. The musicians took a break, silencing the background noise. Our klatch of artists didn’t notice. We just kept talking about getting shafted, fucked, disrespected, kicked in the a
ss. Stuff we all had in common.

  And Kevin. We talked about the missing status of Kevin Wainwright.

  I felt Jonathan’s hand on my back. Even through my dress, I knew his touch. His fingertips just grazed me, and I wanted to melt under them.

  “That dress makes me want to destroy you,” he said in my ear.

  I faced him, and I noticed his hand left my back. I felt suddenly cold. “Missed your opportunity last night.”

  “I’ll take you when you’re ready and not a minute sooner.” He pressed his lips together, looking at me as if he’d swallow me whole once the moment of readiness came. “I have someone here who swears he’s heard your voice on some scratch cut one of his acquisitions people brought him.”

  I looked behind Jonathan and found the guy I thought was Harry Enrich talking to three other people I didn’t recognize. “The president of Carnival records?”

  “Eddie’s boss.”

  Jonathan and I stood together, looking at each other, no words passing between us. I saw the blue flecks in his eyes and the laugh lines at their corners.

  “I could introduce you,” he said. “Or you could remind him of the cut he heard.” He glanced at the empty piano, then back at me.

  “I could prove I’m not Bondage Girl?”

  He nodded. “The song can be what you want. Sing it.”

  “You’re releasing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I sang something else?”

  “Your call. I’ll never hold you back again.”

  “Jonathan.” Leaning into him with my eyes half-closed, I whispered it so softly, I doubted he even heard me.

  “Go,” he whispered just as softly. “Take what’s yours.”

  He stepped back, and I felt at once totally alone and totally powerful.

  Eleven steps to the piano.

  I could do the new song, “Crave/n/” He’d recognize my voice, maybe, but I’d be Monica.