by CD Reiss
The bill came, and though I wasn’t responsible for paying it, I had to sign off on what I was taking out of the store. Lorraine had slid it across Shonda’s little desk with a smile. I checked the items and then the price. It came to two thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars.
“I know I spent more than this,” I’d said. “I saw the price on the shoes.”
“Well, you caught me,” she’d said. “You’re not supposed to see the price tags. So if you don’t tell anyone you saw it…” She paused and smiled to let me know it really wasn’t that big a deal. “I’ll tell you. Mister Drazen asked that the bill say this number no matter what. He said you’d get the joke.”
“I get it all right.” I’d signed, trying not to smile too wide. But as I looked at myself in my bedroom mirror, I smiled again.
Gabby had done my hair to cover the bite marks, tsking the whole time and making me giggle. I’d told her what I could about the night before, leaving out the parts that made my thighs black and blue. She did a church lady voice that made me laugh so hard I thought I would break a rib. We were in the bathroom playing with my makeup bag when the doorbell rang.
“God,” I said, “this is ridiculous. I feel like I’m going to prom.”
“You didn’t go to prom.” Gabby ran some hand cream over her fingers. “You and Darren stayed in the limo making out.”
“And you and Bennet Provist? In Elysian Park?” I popped tubes and pencils into my little makeup bag.
“Yeah. Excellent prom.”
“Mon!” Darren shouted from the living room. “You have a gentleman caller!” Oh God, was Darren going to embarrass me? I ran out to do damage control.
Jonathan was by the doorway, looking too big for the space, wearing a tuxedo cut for him and no one else. He and Darren were smiling.
“Yes, sir,” said Jonathan, “the dance is chaperoned.”
“I want her home by eleven.”
I stepped into the living room before the joke got old, and Jonathan saw me in my new black dress. He liked it. He pressed his lips together to suppress a smile that would have mortified me in front of Darren and Gabby.
“You clean up nice,” I said.
“Obviously you were intending to clean up in that old thing as well.”
I snapped my bag shut. “Good thing the Salvation Army was open late.”
He held out his hand, and we laced our fingers together.
“You met Darren, I guess?”
“Yes. He mentioned his shotgun.”
“This is Gabby.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jonathan said.
“Hi.”
“Okay, great,” I said. “Let’s go.” I pulled him out the door. I saw Lil standing outside the Bentley, which looked damn near vertical parked on my hill.
Darren stood in the door and wagged his finger. “Remember what we talked about. Not a minute later, young man.”
Jonathan walked backward a step and waved to Darren. “Eleven tomorrow morning, yes, sir.”
“Hi, Lil,” I said. “How did you enjoy my hill?”
“Quite a ride,” she said. “I want to try it in the Jag.”
“Be careful.”
“I was born careful, miss.” She opened the door for us. I slid in, and Jonathan got in right after and sat facing me. Behind him, the partition between us and Lil was shut. We sat quietly for ten seconds. My eyes must have eaten him alive as much as his undressed me. By the time the car started rolling, we were on each other, lips searching, tongues twisting, hands testing how far they could get before we risked wrinkles and stains.
He put his hands up my skirt, and when he felt the garter, he whispered oh into my ear. But I cringed because he’d gone up high enough to touch the bruises. He pulled back and said, “Let me see.”
I pulled the skirt to the top of the stockings.
“Monica, are you shy all of a sudden?”
“Don’t freak out.”
“I guarantee you I’ll freak out.” His tone told me he didn’t mean “freak out” in the same way I did.
I pulled the skirt up to reveal the black silk garters, and though the fronts of my legs were fine, he could definitely see the damaged insides.
“I did this?”
“We did it. I shouldn’t have worn garters, but they were so pretty.”
“Turn around.”
I turned to face the back window, my knees on the seat cushion, my hands on the back of the seat, steadying me. He touched me when he pulled my skirt up, his fingers barely grazing my skin. He didn’t hurt me, but the anticipation of pain made me flinch anyway. He kissed where I hurt, lips soft and yielding. “I’m sorry,” he said as he kissed the backs of my thighs.
“Don’t be. It was worth it.” He pulled my dress down and gently guided me back to sitting. I took his hands. “I just got a little bruised, but I was never scared.”
“I feel terrible.” His elbows rested on his knees, a posture I remembered from the morning I saw him talking to his ex-wife on the back patio. His eyes searched mine, looking for any hidden anger.
“Okay, stop it. Really. I’ve never had sex like that in my life. The bruises will heal. My brain chemistry is what’s totally fucked.”
“That’s a high compliment. I should say thank you first.”
“You’re welcome.”
He held his hands over my thighs. “I’m afraid to touch them.”
“Do it.”
“I’m going to San Francisco for a few days. By the time I get back, these should be healed enough I won’t have to worry about hurting you.”
“I remember asking for it.”
“God,” he whispered, “so do I.”
He put his hands on my neck and kissed me all the way to the museum.
twelve
We walked hand in hand to the L.A. Mod from the parking lot, taking an extra turn around the block. His dry palm against mine, the tracks of his thumb drawing circles on the base of my wrist, and the sound of his voice seemed to have a direct line to the heat in my crotch, which pulsed to its own beat after the make out session in the car.
The museum had been built on one of the busiest streets in the city, set back to leave room for a granite courtyard flanked by steps on either side that led to a patio a flight up. The gathering began in the courtyard. Jonathan introduced me to thirty people, none of whom stuck in my mind. Gabby would have had a field day drawing connections between everyone, but all I saw were the expensive dresses and cufflinks. I saw why Jonathan had insisted I go to Barney’s. I would have stuck out like a sore thumb in my cotton shirtdress.
“When you sent me to Barney’s, you were saving me from embarrassment,” I whispered after another introduction. I held Jonathan’s hand, leaning into him as if he was a string bass.
“I just wanted you to fit in.”
I squeezed his hand and looked over the crowd, my eyes scanning the staircases.
“Why are you nervous?” he asked. “I’ll introduce you to anyone you want.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Kevin.” I looked right at Jonathan when I said it. I was a little ashamed to have my eyes peeled for my ex-boyfriend while I was with my current lover, but I had no illusions about my future with either man. “I’m looking out for Kevin. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I just suddenly want to avoid him.”
“Monica, when you’re with me, you don’t need to be nervous about seeing Kevin or anyone else.” He led me up the stone stairs.
“I’m not nervous.”
“You better keep the truth on those lips.”
I shook my head and looked away. I saw her at the top of the stairs: Jessica Carnes. She didn’t photograph well. She looked gorgeous on film, but in person, she was exquisite. She wore a long white dress over her straight, slim figure and low heels on small feet. She saw us, or rather Jonathan, and excused herself from the couple she was speaking to.
Jonathan squeezed my hand. I looked i
n his direction and spoke close to him, keeping my lips as still as possible. “And this is who makes you nervous.”
“I hate this,” he said.
“We can lean on each other. Then you can take me home and bruise the rest of me.”
“The things that come out of your mouth.”
“They please you?”
“Yes.” He looked at me and took one long blink before facing his ex-wife. “Jess, how are you? Congratulations!” His smile was so wide I thought his face would snap. It wasn’t a happy smile. They kissed each other’s cheeks, his hand on her bare shoulder.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad you could come.” She made a quarter-turn so she faced me completely, her sky-blue eyes twinkling with icy delight. “We haven’t met.” She held her hand out.
Jonathan spoke before I could get out a word. “This is Monica.”
I shook her hand, and to my surprise, it was warm. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “Very, very nice to see you here.”
“Thank you,” I said. As I tried to pull back my hand, Jessica put her left hand over our clasped hands for a second, then let go.
“Where’s Erik?” Jonathan asked.
Her expression didn’t change. Not a hair nor muscle moved. “He didn’t come.”
“Ah, too bad. Well, we’re about to sign in. We’ll see you in there?”
“Sure.”
Another half turn and she was speaking to someone else. Jonathan put his arm around my shoulders and guided me away.
“Who’s Erik?” I asked.
“The man she left me for.”
I shook my head. “You people are too fucking mature for me.”
He chuckled as if he had so much to say, but he didn’t know how.
thirteen
The galleries were designed to change. The vast space was chopped up by permanent-looking temporary partitions that still left enough room for huge sculptures. The lighting was flat, warm, and consistent, flattering the people in it. The space was so big, I stopped looking for Kevin and looked at the work.
Lynn Francis was still doing huge, photorealistic canvases of branded stuffed animals. Star Klein put out a bucket of meat encased in Plexiglas. Borofsky was still counting from one to a billion in ball point pen. Elaine Slomoff knitted pullovers with the names of the war dead. Jessica Carnes exhibited three sculptures thirty feet high that could only be accommodated by removing pieces of the modular ceiling and making the sky visible above them. The bottoms were shaped like Popsicle sticks and the tops, which reached into the night sky, were living trees. She’d cut them to look like a bomb pop, a fudgesicle, and one of the double flavor jobbies that had two sticks you broke in half and shared with your sister if you had one.
“Any insight?” I asked Jonathan, standing next to him under the leafy fudgesicle.
“She glorifies nature against popular culture. It’s what she does. She’s cut the trunks, so these are designed to die, like everything.”
I turned to face him, feeling ornery and out of my depth. “I think its bullshit on a stick.”
“The ability to talk about modern art is the sign of an educated mind.” His voice was smug, yet inviting. He wanted a comeback.
I faced him but stood to the side and laced my fingers in his, speaking quietly into his ear. “Jeff Koons’s grandiosity, plus Damien Hirst’s embellishment of the mundane, divided by Coosje van Bruggen’s extremity of the unremarkable … equals bullshit. The presence of the stick is unimpeachable.”
We regarded each other for a second. “Suitably erudite,” he said. “And you pronounced van Bruggen’s name right. What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?” He stroked the inside of my forearm, leaving trails of tingling nerve endings in their wake. I wanted to kiss him, but I was a stranger there, and I had no idea who I’d upset.
“I can throw a guy out at second from home plate,” I said. “Arm like a rifle, as long as the pitcher gets out of the way.”
Our noses sat next to each other, and my lips felt the heat of his. I smelled his sagey cologne and fennel toothpaste.
“Monica?” I knew that voice. It had uttered my name in the dark of night, with moonlight coming through the window, and had screamed it in the bright light of day with heat coming off the asphalt. My name had been on those lips between laughs and tears and rage and humility.
I turned my face away from Jonathan’s. “Kevin.”
“I’m sorry, I, uh … didn’t mean to interrupt, but I didn’t know if I’d catch you again tonight.” He was in a brown suit for a black tie event, with a lavender tie and a blue striped shirt. It should have been a mess, but he looked gorgeous, like he was in the world of the reception but not of it. The scarf in his pocket was folded into a peeking triangle, and his pants fit him as though they’d been custom made. He’d apparently been shopping for the event as well, and unless he had a rich girlfriend, the business of being Kevin Wainwright had been brisk.
“Hi, Kevin. This is Jonathan.”
Kevin held out his hand. “Drazen?”
“That’s me.”
Of course Kevin knew Jonathan, at least by name and face. He made it his business to know anyone who could afford original art.
Kevin turned back to me. “Did you see my piece yet?”
“No, where is it?” Of course he was worried about himself. Of course he thought nothing of interrupting an intimate moment to ask me if I’d seen his piece yet.
“No rush,” he said. “It’s around that corner. I just wanted to see you first. I want to say…” He glanced at Jonathan, then back at me. “I hope you like it. Excuse me.” He fell back into the crowd.
“That was awkward,” I said.
“Looks like we’d better go see if it’s bullshit on a stick.” Jonathan held his arm out, and we turned around the next corner.
“Kevin Wainwright puts his bullshit in a box.”
Kevin was known for installations. Two dimensions could not contain him or his big stinking ideas. His first set up was in a ten by ten storefront he rented in the worst part of downtown. When his parents moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the center of Seattle, he got shipped a basement full of every toy, game, and fetish object from his childhood. But to him, it wasn’t crap. To him, it was media. He spent a month in that storefront hanging, pinning, pasting, and strapping things to the walls; setting up tables for mise-en-scenes with army men and action figures; deconstructed board games and decks of cards, mixing up the pieces to make new things. I hadn’t known him then. I shared his bed after he was already an agented comet streaking across the art-world’s night sky. I had heard of his downtown storefront, which had been titled Arcade Idaho and had spawned a hundred imitators but not one other success story.
Kevin was a shrewd businessman as well. Installations left nothing for the artist to sell. His art wasn’t a painting a rich person could put in their living room or a sculpture for their yard. He sold the preparatory sketches and worked closely with a little hipster bookbinding outfit on Santa Monica Boulevard to create limited edition booklets containing silver halide prints of the installation, along with his wordy, over-modified prose describing what it all meant.
I knew his exhibit would be crap. I knew it would be manufactured meaning, and exasperating, and it would remind me of all his drama. But when I turned the corner and saw the doorway to the installation, I got a little nervous. Metal signs hung outside. CAUTION. HARDHAT AREA. NO TRESPASSING. The signs were typical Kevin overstatement, but the sign at the top concerned me.
FAULKNER COAL MINE
“Isn’t that your last name?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah.”
“You sure you want to go in?”
“No.”
But I pressed forward anyway.
From just outside, I heard a canary singing, a lone bird at top volume. The doorway was little more than five feet high. I bent a little to get in, and Jonathan bent a lot.
The room was dark, with spotlights to point where h
e wanted you to look. At first, I hadn’t adjusted to what I was seeing. He’d scribbled a lot of words, floor to ceiling, on two facing walls and the other two facing walls had eight and a half by eleven copy paper pinned to them. Piles of objects were on the floor with papers on music stands, which I couldn’t read because people stood in front of them.
Then, like a gunshot, the canary turned into the honking of a disconnected number. Everyone flinched, and some people got angry at the intrusive noise. Except me. I knew what the noise was about. I knew what the canary was about, and I knew, for damn sure, what that installation was about.
The phone noise drove out the people standing in front of one pile of about nine small objects. A black chalk line had been drawn around them. A music stand stood in front. The stand had a piece of paper clipped to it, and engraved on the paper:
1 (one) 13.5 oz bottle Purell shampoo. 50% empty. Current value - $2.39
1 (one) 13.5 oz bottle Purell conditioner, dry hair formula. Unopened. Current value - $4.79
5 (five) Tampax brand tampons, regular. Current value - $1.34
1 (one) Recyclable toothbrush, soft bristles. Used. Current value - $0
1 (one) 16oz bottle Kiehl’s Crème de Corps moisturizer. 75% empty. Current value - $12.50
I remembered a conversation over that tube. He’d questioned me about that and everything else, because he assumed I was too incompetent to manage my skin.
“How much do you spend on this stuff?” Kevin had asked, putting a blob of Kiehl’s into his palm.
“This bottle will last me a year if you don’t take that much.”
Then he’d rubbed it on my thighs, and we did it on the bathroom floor. The bottle was 75% empty because that wasn’t the last time.
I felt Jonathan behind me. “What is it?” he asked, just as the canary came back on.
“This is the stuff I left at his place.”
Someone moved to my right, and I saw a pile of clothes. The pockets of my jeans and the T-shirt I slept in were folded neatly under a pair of simple cotton underpants. I didn’t read the little menu. I knew what those jeans were worth. Any normal person who wasn’t terrified of getting sucked back into their ex-boyfriend’s life would have gone back for them.
