by Ashley Ream
She was wearing black leggings underneath a button-down gray top, which was long enough to have been a dress. Her brown curls were pinned back in a low ponytail, and she wore black ballet slippers, all of which made her look more fragile, vulnerable, and feminine than I preferred to think she was. I preferred to think of her as not unlike Chuckles on a bad day except taller and with less shedding.
“Can I come in?”
“Why?”
I was genuinely asking.
“I thought we could talk. There are some things I want to say.”
The ground underneath me felt unsure. I wanted to check for traps. I turned my wrist as though to look at a watch that wasn’t there.
“I have company coming in an hour.”
“I’ll be quick,” she promised.
I turned and walked back inside, leaving the door open for her. I threw a drop cloth over the buffalo, which wasn’t yet completely dry. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt it.
She saw me, and I didn’t care that she saw me. The other pieces, the ones that never went to the show, were stacked up, too. Those I left out in the open in defiance.
She stood in the entryway, unsure of what to do with herself. I pointed to the kitchen table, which was covered by my computer, newspapers, mail, and other debris that needed a place to land. She pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.
“Do you want anything to drink?” I asked.
She shook her head, which was just as well. The only things I had were water and soda from the grocery delivery boy.
I sat down several feet away from her on one of the stools pushed up to the kitchen island.
“So talk,” I said.
She crossed her arms across her flat chest.
“First I want to say that I know you were the one who did what you did at the Taylor.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Everyone knows that.”
I didn’t say anything. I let the room go quiet and just sat and watched and waited for what she’d say next.
“The insurance covered it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Well, great,” I said. “At least someone called State Farm. That just settles it all then.”
“I’m trying to put this behind me. I’d like for you to, too.”
“Why should I?”
“What?” she said, dropping her arms to her sides. “Property crimes, destroying art, running a smear campaign in the paper wasn’t enough?”
“I didn’t have a damn thing to do with that article. I didn’t even talk to the reporter. If you read it, you’d know that. And none of it changes the fact that you stole from me.”
“Artists create similar work all the time. Cultural Zeitgeist influences us in unconscious ways. Whole schools of artists—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.”
I slid off the stool, went to the fridge, opened it, didn’t know why I’d done that, and slammed it again. “Save your tired-ass art school bullshit for the buyers, Elaine. You’ve been watching me for twenty fucking years. When I changed materials, you changed materials. When I went primitive, you went primitive. When I signed with the Taylor, you signed with the Taylor. Now I’m quitting, so what the fuck are you going to do for the rest of your career?”
She couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d smacked her square in the face with a cast-iron frying pan, which considering our relationship wouldn’t have seemed that surprising to me.
“You’re not quitting. You went and tagged your own exhibit. That’s even more publicity. You’re not quitting.”
I wondered if I could get her to say “You’re not quitting” again.
“It wasn’t about publicity.”
“It’s always about publicity.” She recrossed her arms.
I looked at the clock on the wall. I needed to change, find the cat, and possibly shove some tranquilizers down his throat.
“That’s why you are where you are,” I said, and for a moment I felt sorry for her because she would never see it.
“They want you back at the Taylor after you do those”—she pointed at the pile of paintings on the floor—“at the Contemporary.”
She put her elbows up on a bare spot and spun a pencil I had lying on a stack of papers. We were both quiet. Everything began to make sense and not in a good way.
“Carla asked you to make nice, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“If you come back, I can stay.”
“She said that?”
“She implied it was in my best interest.”
“You’re doing a piss-poor job.”
“I get that impression.”
There was, I had to admit, something nice about being wanted.
“I’m not coming back.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, I’m quitting.”
“You can’t quit. You’re still working.” She nodded toward the buffalo under the sheet.
“That’s different,” I said. “That’s for me.”
“We all say that. We’re like junkies, all of us. We can’t let go of it.” She leaned back in her chair. She was more relaxed than I’d ever seen her. I still hated her on principle, but we were no longer lionesses circling each other in a cage. I wasn’t sure when that had happened. I tried to remember the last few sentences, but still couldn’t pinpoint it.
“I’m hungry,” she said, looking around like there might be something edible within reach. “You want to get lunch or something? We could call a gentleman’s truce long enough to eat.”
“Why would we do that?”
She cocked her head. “You’re an interesting woman, Clementine. Don’t you want to see what happens when we stop spitting at each other? We can always start up again afterward. It’s just a temporary truce.”
“You’re going to poison my food, aren’t you?”
Her face broke in half, and she laughed so hard I thought she might never stop. It’s bad form to laugh at your own jokes, but watching her I couldn’t help myself.
“I’ve got an appointment,” I said. “I can meet you in an hour.”
“I have to run some errands anyway. Where do you want to meet?”
“Dim sum?”
“I love dim sum.”
“Everyone loves dim sum. They put coke in the dumpling wrappers.”
She smiled.
Paul showed up at noon. I managed to wrangle Chuckles out from under the bed, but he’d never been a lap cat and saw no reason to start making exceptions then. I tried giving him a stern look, but that hasn’t worked on any cat in recorded history. Mostly it just encourages them to throw up on the carpet.
I asked Paul, who was seated on the couch, if he’d ever owned a cat before.
Oh yes, he said, many of them.
How many?
He was evasive. It was so hard to keep track.
I asked him if he had any other cats at the moment.
Oh yes, he said, many of them.
How many?
“Oh, you know how they can just multiply on you.”
“What? Like in Gremlins? Did you feed them after midnight?”
He blinked at me. I guess he’d never seen the movie.
I thanked him for coming and told him we’d be in touch. I was pretty sure he smelled like urine.
“See?” I told Chuckles when he’d gone. “I told you. Kitten hoarder.”
Chuckles turned his back on me and disappeared inside his covered litter box. There was scratching, which I took to be his form of social commentary.
If this kept up, I’d have to share the poison with him the way the Egyptian pharaohs did with their cats.
“How did it go?” Elaine asked.
“He smelled like pee.”
She shrugged like this could happen to anyone.
She’d already been seated when I walked into the cavernous Dim Sum House. We were at a table meant to hold eight, which was the only size
table they had. A white pot of tea hot enough to sterilize surgical instruments was in the center. Elaine had poured some into our little handleless teacups, and it had sloshed out onto the tablecloth, which always happened to me, too.
“I haven’t had tea in a while,” I said. “I threw my cups out the window.”
“I once threw a VCR out a window,” she said. “In college. It belonged to a guy.”
She didn’t ask how the cups had offended me. I appreciated that. Manic episodes were hard to explain.
Small Asian women in matching black pants and red vests pushed steaming metal carts around the crowded dining room, which was large enough for a regulation football field. They pushed the carts up to our table and began opening the round silver containers to display their wares. English was limited. “Shrimp” or “Pork,” they would sometimes inform us. Other times it was up to your experience and best guess. It didn’t much matter. Everything was good except the chicken feet, which were easy to spot. Most everything else was dumplings. When you made your selections, the dim sum girls would put a stamp on your bill indicating the charge for each item. This was impossible to read by anyone except the waiters, who wandered around the floor bringing more tea and spicy chili sauce and totaling receipts. You couldn’t spend more than thirty dollars on a meal whether you were feeding two people or the full retinue of eight.
We chose four different dishes to start.
“So what are you going to do next?” I asked.
“You mean now that I don’t have you to copy off?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” I said.
She either let it go or accepted it as fact.
“I’m doing a series of nudes,” she said.
I concentrated on picking up a barbecued pork bun with my chopsticks. After decades in L.A., I should’ve been better with them, but they were so damn inefficient. The bun was sticking to the little piece of parchment paper protecting it from the metal serving dish. No amount of chopstick wrangling could free it.
“I’d like you to pose for me,” Elaine said.
I gave up and used my fingers.
“What?”
“I’d like you to pose nude for me.”
You’d think, having been in the art world since I was eighteen and having known a number of lothario painters, that someone would’ve asked me this before. They hadn’t.
“Did Carla ask you to ask me that, too?”
“Nope,” she said and picked up a sweet taro ball filled with bean paste. “I just thought of it.”
“Now that would be good publicity for you.”
She smiled and put half the ball in her mouth. It took her a second to chew it. Those things have a gummy texture that gets in your teeth and hangs up in your throat. They’re not for everyone.
“It would,” she agreed. “But it would also be cool. You’re retired now anyway.” She took a sip of the no-longer-volcanic tea to wash down the rest of the bean paste. “What do you care?”
I had to admit it might be satisfying. I tore off a quarter of the pork bun and put it in my mouth.
“Let me think about it,” I said.
The woman pushing the dessert cart drifted past. Hers was the only see-through cart, and inside were mostly gelatin-based items, many of which were layered and multicolored like a box of crayons. Several had paper umbrellas stuck in them. Never, not once, had I seen anyone order anything off of that cart. It was the saddest job at Dim Sum House.
“You’ve got time,” Elaine said.
“Less than you’d think.”
10 Days
I spent the morning drafting another online ad.
Whole house sale. Everything must go. Furniture, kitchen appliances, clothing, dishes, and more. Must see to believe. 10 A.M. tomorrow until it’s gone or I get tired. Whichever comes first.
I read it to Chuckles, who’d found another pile of dust and crumbs to lie in. We had another appointment with potential adopters in a couple of hours, this one off-site, so he was getting ready. Maybe he’d roll around in paint or fall in the toilet later.
I posted the ad and walked over to the easel with a piece of toast between my teeth. I had a cup of coffee in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other, and I started to sketch. The buffalo, which was still under canvas against the wall, felt like a rough draft, just a way to get where I wanted to go.
I took my time drawing the body of a cow on the new canvas. Then, coming out of the forelimbs and the back where the chest and neck and head would start to appear, I drew human parts. It morphed into the torso of a cowboy complete with shirt and hat and maybe, for whimsy, a cigarette. Maybe the Marlboro Man. I sketched and sketched and changed my mind and drew a new line here and there, and then I set the charcoal down on the table and walked off toward the shower. My coffee was long cold, and I left it on the table, too.
Chuckles was in the passenger seat and yowling in his box. He tried to stick a white paw through the grated front at a stoplight, and I reached down and touched the soft fur. We still had each other for a few more days. He could lie in all the crumbs he wanted. He got a few toes through a hole and let me pet them. We were like prisoner and girlfriend holding our hands up on either side of the bulletproof glass. I could see him looking up through the air holes in the top of the crate, and something in my chest squeezed. I loved him. I really did. I loved that squished-up face and that he never cared that I was crazy. I liked having a warm body in the apartment. I loved him like he was people. I loved him like he was Jenny or Richard. And this was so much harder than anything else I’d had to do so far.
I took a deep breath.
“So those are your new people,” I told him. “You be nice and don’t scratch too much furniture. It looked expensive.” My throat was gumming up and a knot like a giant rubber band ball was forming. Hot tears gathered on my bottom lashes and dripped down my cheeks. “That brown chair in the corner was crap, though, so have a go at that. Okay?”
Meow.
“Yeah?” I laughed, just one chuckle through the snotty sobbing. “I love you, okay? Don’t forget me.”
The door to my studio was open and Brandon was backing in, carrying the last two of his dining chairs from next door. His table was already pushed up against mine in the middle of the floor. His was a rectangle and mine a circle, so the arrangement looked like a banjo. He placed the chairs in the remaining spots and shrugged.
“Not exactly Architectural Digest, but at least we’ll all fit,” he said. “I’ll bring flowers.”
“Thank you.”
I had menus spread out across the top of my worktable, lying over stacks of cut-up magazines and propped up against pots of gesso. I was marking them up with a black Sharpie, trying to pick my favorite dishes from each restaurant. It was harder than I thought it was going to be. Food tasted so much different now. I had missed out on a lot over the years.
Brandon read over my shoulder for a minute before bumping my arm with his. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
I turned my face up to his and kissed him on the cheek. It’s easy to love people you need nothing from. “There was nothing you could do.”
“I would’ve been a better neighbor,” he said.
“You’re a perfect neighbor. You cut my hair for free and bring me furniture.”
“I have loud sex.”
I smiled and circled the fried chicken.
“Really? I never noticed.”
He crossed his arms and affected a pout. “I don’t know how to take that.”
“Don’t be late for dinner,” I told him. “I’m counting on you for eye candy.”
He left, and I called Jenny, who was picking up the food. “Do you have a pen? Write this down.”
The boyfriend, Ray, didn’t stay, which saved me the trouble of asking him to leave. He came up with Jenny to help carry the bags. He had black hair and dark skin of indeterminate origin, which made him her physical opposite.
“I saw you in the Times,” he said.
>
I made a noncommittal noise.
“I don’t do art on command or commission,” he said. “I think a piece done that way should be more rightly called a craft. Don’t you think?”
I put my hands in my pockets and cocked my head. “I think I was in the Times and you weren’t, so I don’t really give a damn what you call it. But since you were trying to be insulting, I think you should apologize to Jenny. It was just as much her craft as mine.” I nodded toward the kitchen. “You can leave the food over there.”
The red blush bloomed out from under Jenny’s collar and rushed up her neck to her cheeks.
“No offense,” Ray said to me.
I didn’t reply, and he didn’t make the apology I’d asked for.
He left the paper bags on the counter and left without kissing Jenny.
Shortly after, Jeremy, my favorite professor, came and brought his new husband, Mark, and two bottles of wine, a red and a white. Jeremy beamed at me through his round, black-framed spectacles.
“W-w-w-will you show me what you’re working on later?” he whispered.
I promised him I would.
Jenny was in the kitchen plating appetizers, and I took the wine in to her and set it on the counter. Her hair was falling out of the clip again. I refilled my glass from an already open bottle of very good pinot grigio and fixed her hair.
She looked up and blinked.
“Don’t worry. I’m not hitting on you,” I told her. “And that steak tartare is for Chuckles.”
I picked up a lobster dumpling topped with crystal clear threads of shark fin and left her standing there holding the takeaway box from a high-end Chinese place downtown.
Brandon came in without knocking, holding a bouquet of flowers that looked like something out of Lewis Carroll. Dusty purple cabbage roses as big as your fist with cattails and something pink and furry that might have been an artichoke but wasn’t. He set the whole thing down in the middle of the table.
“Where’s my drink?” he asked no one in particular.
Mark handed him a glass and shook his hand. I raised an eyebrow at him. He either didn’t see or pretended not to.
Annabelle was late, no doubt on purpose. She wore a strapless black jersey dress that went all the way to her feet, letting only her tan, painted toes peek out. We hugged and kissed and kissed again. She smelled like vanilla as always.
