by Alison Tyler
‘What sort of art do you like?’ I asked. Here was a conversation I felt much more comfortable with than the one about dancing.
‘Myself.’
Inwardly, I cringed. ‘A performance artist?’ I could imagine her smothering herself on stage with hot fudge sauce, or standing in one place for hours at a time, not moving a muscle.
She nodded gleefully. But my fears weren’t realised. She didn’t want to be an artist on stage. She wanted to be an artist in life. Everyday life. Nora named her individual looks, believing that she was a painter of hair colour and make-up. She might be Ziggy Stardust one day and a Spider from Mars the next. She kept Polaroids of each outfit, never replicating the same look twice. She might wear the bottle-green stretch pants emblazoned with black skulls for two different outfits, but the rest of the look would be entirely unique. I’d never wear stretch pants, or skull-emblazoned anything. Back then, I had no idea who Ziggy Stardust was, and the thought of basing an outfit on something called ‘Spiders from Mars’ made my head hurt.
But I liked Nora.
I couldn’t explain the attraction to her, other than she was different from all the other people I knew in school. I wasn’t a total loser. I did have friends. But my friends were the type who would have shushed her friends in the library, had her friends ever gone to the library. Just like her crowd, my gang tended to stay up late – but we went out studying not dancing. The group I hung out with actually had the gall to correct teachers in class. They prided themselves on knowing all there was to know about artists who had been dead for hundreds of years. One of my classmates actually carried a set of home-made flashcards of church floor plans with her at all times. Whenever Gina had a free moment, she’d test herself. I tried to imagine what Nora would think of a person like that, someone who considered viewing a series of tiny black dots on an index card a good time.
Nora and her crowd were alive in a much more vibrant way. They missed classes, and didn’t seem to care. They stayed up all night long, staring at the ceiling, talking for hours about things they didn’t know anything about. Nora was the best of them, and they seemed to realise that, coming in tight around her, as if trying to make a little bit of her power rub off on them.
I didn’t want to be like those members of her group. I didn’t want her to think I was a hanger-on. But I realised fairly quickly that she liked me back. She appreciated my sense of purpose, organisation and dark humour. I’d never tell other people the jokes that I told her, but when I was by her side, I could give in to the wicked observations that I made mentally on a daily basis.
What I learned from being friends with Nora was that sometimes opposites do more than attract. Sometimes opposites perfectly balance each other, keeping each other sane and safe. Nora and I were able to provide each other with the type of flat-out honesty that you can’t always get from a lover, that you can’t even expect from your family. We were there for each other, to extremes that boyfriends and girlfriends hardly ever reach.
Nora created her first club while we were still in college, transforming her dorm room into a members-only environment. Waxe Wod (or WW) was an anti-sorority/anti-fraternity environment to which both male and female students could retreat, like an officers’ club. The words Waxe Wod were from a poem circa 1200. She didn’t take the poetry class. I did. She read the piece in my book one evening when she was bored, coming upon this poem:
Fowles in the frith
The fisshes in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod,
Much sorwe I walke with,
For beste of boon and blood.
(Translation: The birds are in the wood and the fishes in the flood, surely I go mad, all the grief I’ve had, for best of bone and blood.)
Nora decided that ‘waxe wod’ stood for ‘surely I go mad’. And she liked that.
Most of the patrons at WW were punk and goth, art-house friends of Nora’s who dressed like her. Well, perhaps not quite like her. I have never met anyone else who actually named their outfits – and I’ve hung out with my fair share of artist types. But these were the students who I should have looked more like. We shared classes together on art history – ancient and modern. We sat in the sculpture gardens together, cramming before tests from coffee-table-sized tomes. Yet I was the most out of place physically, never having the nerve to dye my hair the colour of a ripe plum or pierce my eyebrows, tongue, nose or any other body part. But Nora always made me feel welcome.
Even if I am conservative in my own dress style, I’ve never judged Nora. And even if she is more adventurous in her lovemaking, more adventurous in every part of her life, she would never judge me.
There were times back in school when Nora would hide out in my room to get away from the circus she’d created at Waxe Wod. She’d slip away, unseen by the masses who’d come to pay their respects to her, ducking under the clouds of clove cigarette smoke, manoeuvring around the velvet pillows spread all over the floor. I’d hear her knocking and, when I’d open my door, would find her standing there, similar to the way she found me at her place this very evening. Not bedraggled, exactly, but insecure. Nora exudes confidence. She is a bright flame. But every so often she has moments of self-doubt. On nights like these, she would climb onto my twin bed and lay her head on my pillow, wondering when the people in her room would notice her absence. But almost as soon as the curious clouds would come, they would lift, and she would be Nora again. Filled with animation. Fully sure of her choices.
I watched her the way I viewed art. She taught me to take myself more loosely, not to be so uptight about an A− or a B+. I went to concerts with her, and I learned to appreciate the colourful array of life that was displayed around me. Nora has never felt the need to look for art in a museum. She sees it everywhere she goes. Graffiti on a building – art. A fabulously decadent hairstyle – art. A pair of the most perfectly worn-in holey jeans – art.
I could spend all day talking to Nora, could spend my whole life talking to her, and never run out of things to say. I could listen to her forever, and still want to hear more.
Of course, Byron hated her on sight. He didn’t let me know his true feelings about her right away, because that would have been a deal breaker. At first, I think he might actually have thought there was a chance that he’d get the two of us into bed. When I took him to the club to meet Nora, he danced with her, and then with me – I’ve gotten to the point under Nora’s instruction that I don’t make a total fool of myself on the dance floor. But once that fantasy wore off, he claimed she was pretentious. ‘If there was nobody watching her, would she even exist?’ he asked. I said he simply didn’t understand her, and we left it at that. Nora never has had a long-term relationship with a man, so I’ve not had to compete with her love life for attention.
Thank God. I don’t think I’d be up to it. Not after joining her and Dean in that unexpected ménage à trois. Things like that are commonplace in Nora’s world. But not in mine.
Once we reached Nora’s club, she set me up in the best booth in the room, a semicircle in the far corner upholstered in a dark-fuchsia vinyl and trimmed with multicoloured marabou feathers. The booths on the edges of the dance floor were all done in different shades of shiny material and different types of fringe: glass beads, silver bells, tiny twinkling Christmas lights. This was the best one because it had the clearest view of the rest of the club.
After making sure I was comfortable, Nora ordered our drinks. And then she spent all her time with me, as if I were as important as the celebrities who continually stopped by the table to pay their respects to her, the doyenne of the club, the queen of the hour.
‘Nora, I didn’t even tell you the rest. The thing that happened after Byron and I broke up. The best thing.’
‘I was there,’ she teased.
‘I don’t mean with Dean.’ I flushed. ‘I mean, while I was still at the apartment.’
My best friend sipped her cobalt-tinted drink and waited, tapping her berry-hued nails against th
e base of the glass in rhythm to the music. Actually, her nails weren’t totally berry coulored. Every other nail was – the ones in between were painted a glossy black. In the lights of the club, this was difficult to discern, but when Nora held up her Martini glass, the candlelight played over her hands, and I could see. With Nora, things are never exactly normal. It’s probably one of the main reasons why I like her so much. She doesn’t follow other people’s rules. Or, rather, she only marches to the beat of the drummers she wants to fuck.
‘So tell me,’ she insisted. ‘What’s the best part of getting rid of that loser? I mean, aside from getting rid of that loser?’
‘He wasn’t really –’ I started, but she held up her hand.
‘He actually said another woman’s name while he was inside of you.’
I winced and looked down at the découpaged table. The pictures under the clear coating were all of Bettie Page. I stared down at the bondage maven and realised that Nora was right. Why the hell was I trying to defend him? Because I didn’t want to think I’d been dating a villain for four years. Didn’t want to admit that I’d been with someone so low. If I looked at our relationship too closely, and still couldn’t see the signs, then what sort of moron did that make me?
‘Has that ever happened to you?’ I asked.
Nora shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said. I opened my eyes wide at her, surprised until she continued, ‘At least, when I’ve been playing some sort of fantasy game. I’ve been called Marilyn and Madonna and Brad.’
‘You’re joking.’
She raised her arched eyebrows at me, and I realised that she wasn’t. And why should she have been? Nora has the ability to transform herself on a daily basis. Why shouldn’t she use this ability when in bed? She is definitely the type to wear a white dress and stand over a grate, to put on armfuls of rubber bangles and a bustier as a top, to purchase and wear a harness and a strap-on if this sort of thing would work for a lover.
‘But back to it,’ Nora insisted, her hand squeezing mine. ‘I don’t think you two were engaged in role-playing activities at the time, were you?’
‘No.’
‘Were you ever?’ she asked, curious.
I shook my head. Should we have been? If I’d become Marilyn or Madonna or Brad would he have stayed with me? Were any of those people the type to please Byron? I didn’t think so.
‘So don’t let him off the hook for it, kiddo. Just tell me what was good about your departure.’
‘I broke this antique,’ I began, closing my eyes as I recreated the scene in my head. ‘This ancient Greek urn that my great-aunt willed to me. I have no idea how much the thing must have been worth.’
‘Rose died?’ Nora asked, looking shocked.
‘Well, she didn’t die so much as disappear. But her immediate family has waited the prerequisite amount of time. The will has gone into play.’
Nora held out her glass reverently. ‘To Rose,’ she said. She’d never met my great-aunt, but she’d heard the stories. She knew that Rose was worth millions of dollars, and that she loved me.
‘You can see that the urn was priceless –’ I paused ‘– and I broke it.’ I sighed, still in semi-shock at what I’d done.
‘You didn’t mean to,’ Nora said matter-of-factly, as if that made things better.
‘Course not. But that doesn’t change the fact that I destroyed the thing. Still, when it broke, I went on my knees to pick up the pieces. Even one of those shards of pottery would have been worth money to a museum, and I had some fleeting thought of crazy-gluing it together. Crazy all right. There’s no way.’ I sighed. ‘And even with Byron standing there, screaming down at me, I was thinking of the museum. That’s when I saw it.’
‘It?’
‘This … This sheath of papers. This manuscript in the rubble. I don’t even know if Byron saw the thing at first, he was so out of his head at the thought that Gwen might not really be in love with him.’
Nora made a gagging noise, like a cat fighting with a hairball.
I lowered my head in my hands, wanting to clear the memory, wanting to think about the positive rather than Byron. After a moment, I looked back at Nora, ready to continue. ‘I scraped the bits of the urn into my suitcase, and picked up the papers – they were practically crumbling at my touch – and I wrapped them in some of the brown paper the box had come in, stuffed them in the bag and left.’
‘Where are the papers now?’
I motioned to my sleek red computer carrier. I hadn’t wanted to leave the bag in my car, hadn’t wanted to leave it at Nora’s. I wouldn’t feel truly secure about the manuscript until it found a home at ARTSI.
‘What are they?’
‘I don’t know. I saw the writing as I put the pages in the case. They’re in Greek. Or some form of Greek. Scrawling writing. I can’t read Greek – Latin, but not Greek – but I can recognise it, after having seen so much of it in the museum. Think of the concept, Nora. These papers must be thousands of years old. The only reason they survived this long is because that urn was airtight, sealed completely, and then broken by me in a heated fight with an imbecile.’
‘What will you do with them?’ Nora was obviously entranced at the thought. This was fanciful, the stuff of fairy tales. Exactly the sort of story she could appreciate. Her large green eyes looked lit from within.
‘Bring them to the museum, I guess. Show them to Marcia –’ I paused again ‘– or Anthony.’
Nora grinned. ‘Anthony,’ she murmured. She took another sip of her drink and then gave me a wink. Her mascara-drenched eyelashes fluttered becomingly. They were tipped in glittering eggplant that went well with her green eyes. ‘I remember Anthony,’ she continued dreamily. Nora has a good memory for men, and Anthony isn’t a man anyone would quickly forget.
‘Come on, don’t tease me. I can’t even think about this whole thing clearly.’
‘Nobody could think clearly once Anthony enters the picture.’
I looked down at my green apple martini. ‘And even less clearly after one of these.’
Nora ignored me, and began to list Anthony’s attributes, counting each one off on her fingers. ‘He’s the James Bond of ancient literature, Eleanor. Profiled in the LA Times. Written up in GQ. The man has it all: brains, brawn and a killer accent.’
‘I broke up with my boyfriend today,’ I emphatically reminded her, not wanting to admit that she was right. ‘Just hours ago.’
My best friend gave me a look that said, ‘Come clean.’ Her looks are like mental polygraph tests. She can always tell when someone’s lying to her. Besides, she had just personally escorted me back into the sea of sexual pleasure. Why was I trying to hide from her?
I took a deep breath. At this moment, a famous, and handsome movie actor slid by our booth, blowing an air-kiss to Nora. She winked back at him, and I found myself as awestruck as ever. Had she been with this man? I hadn’t heard about it if she had.
‘Did you –’ I started.
‘You really don’t read my blog, do you?’
I flushed, and then took a quick sip.
‘Don’t worry,’ she teased me. ‘Let’s get back to your man.’
‘He’s not my man,’ I insisted.
‘He will be. He wants you, Eleanor. You’ve said so yourself. Every time the two of you have worked together, he’s been more than attentive.’
‘Crush on Anthony Ginsburg aside,’ I told her in a serious voice, ‘it was very odd. As soon as I saw the papers I found myself less angry at Byron. I thought: look at us. We’re totally insignificant. We destroyed – or, rather, I destroyed – an ancient artefact. Something that existed buried in the dirt, undisturbed and unharmed, for centuries. Here’s a manuscript that someone wrote thousands of years ago, half a world away. I started to feel very small. When I looked at Byron, his cheeks all red, smoke nearly pouring out of his ears, I thought that he looked awfully small, too.’
‘Was he small?’ Nora asked. This was a topic she could sink her teeth int
o. ‘I mean, he had fairly big hands.’
‘You can’t tell anything from a guy’s hands.’ Even I, with my little experience, knew that.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I’m always curious. He looked like a, you know, European cucumber to me, but in those handmade suits, I never could tell. Was he more of an Armenian cuke? They tend to curve at the end. Or was he built like an Oriental cucumber? They’re long and skinny.’ Nora likes things large. And she has absolutely no problem discussing this particular fixation. The fact that she uses cucumbers as size gauges wasn’t new to me. She’s been doing this ever since she dated one of the darling chefs in the city, a man who took her to farmer’s markets, who pointed out the differences in flavours from one cucumber to the next. (He was the size of an American pickling cuke, if I remember correctly. Not that long, yet plenty thick.) But I didn’t feel a need to describe my ex’s member, using vegetable terminology or anything else. In fact, I wanted to forget what Byron looked and felt like as quickly as possible. It’s why I had taken the marathon shower, why I kept wanting to spray myself with perfume. Anything I could do to erase him.
Nora eyed me expectantly, but I shrugged off the question, getting back to what I really wanted to talk about. I stared out at the dance floor and then at the movie showing silently on the wall. It looked like an X-rated film, but I knew what it really was. Nora has several private rooms in her club. One features images from the web that customers can call up at will. Basically, the walls are large screens that show exactly what anyone is surfing for. You might see porn or music videos or even blogs, such as Nora’s own, ThePinkFedora.blogspot.com. Another room is called Would I Lie to You? This room features all black walls with a do-it-yourself polygraph machine on a small wooden table. Nora understands how obsessed people are with this sort of gimmick. She thinks it’s amusing to send a couple back there to learn each other’s secrets. There’s a room in the rear called Body Graffiti, outfitted with edible body paints and a shower – for after; there’s another called Friction; and one called Smile, with Polaroids and video cameras.
