Accelerated (37 page)

She leaned in and gave him an awesome thank you kiss that made him want to shower her with gifts. She took his hand and said, “have you ever noticed your skin is exactly the same temperature as mine?”

“I have.”

“You’ve got to dance to this song,” Vols announced, as the first atonal crash of “Here Comes Your Man” escaped from the mini speakers hooked up to his iPod. He started bobbing his head to the unmistakably catchy baseline. “The Pixies make such happy fucking music.”

Crowe started to do a chicken dance around the electric chair. Martin Vols’s entire body shook like he was having an epileptic seizure.

“I love this song,” Jess said, and started shimmying around the room and swinging her hips.

He pumped his arms in the air and jumped up and down to the music. Soon, the baseline had them all bobbing around flubbing lyrics at the top of their lungs. They must have looked ridiculous, but no one gave a shit. They had their own show, who cared about anything else?

When the song ended, he and Jess turned, breathless, to his wall, and stared. “Wow,” she said. “It’s spectacular.”

He looked at the collection. Mounted on the wall together, the individual pieces became something he couldn’t have imagined. He thought about the love that had gone into each one of those sketches. He remembered how they’d changed for him when he started weighing down Ellie’s form with the colorful shapes. From a distance, it looked like a mosaic. But as you came closer, peered inside, the whole effect changed and became dark, heavy. A smile crept onto his face. He’d done something. Something good.

Vols turned to look, too. “Those are kickass, man. Jesus, I want to buy one.”

That got Crowe’s attention. She looked up from what she was doing and took in his work. “Fuck me,” she said. “Beautiful.
And
disturbing.” She gave a slow, affirmative nod.

He could pretty much die a happy man. He looked at the room and at his work alongside two of the most interesting new artists around. Not only did he have a real show, he was moving out of the city to live with Jess. Everything was perfect, which made it that much worse that the
Buzz
story would go out to subscribers in the next few days, just in time for the opening. He prayed Rick would wait until Monday to fire him.

T
HE NEXT THREE DAYS WERE INTERMINABLE AS HE WAITED FOR
the shit to hit the fan. When he wasn’t making plans with Jess about the move, he buried himself in Oscar research and tried to avoid Rick. He tried to do normal things, like reading and painting. But sustaining concentration was as hopeless as trying to sleep or eat.

“Dad, you’re doing the thing again,” Toby said.

“What thing?” He stared at his fingers thrumming the dining room table. He balled up a fist and gave the table a thud. “Sorry.”

“Are you going to leave your tortellini?”

Sean pushed his plate across the table. “Go ahead.” He was sure the mixture of excitement and dread was going to give him a heart attack, or at least an ulcer.

That night, Ellie called after Toby had gone to bed. Instead of a greeting, she launched right in. “You’re moving to Rhode Island?”

“I was going to tell you,” he said, though he hadn’t exactly decided when. “It’s just been so—”

“With Toby’s teacher?” He could tell Ellie was gearing up for a battle.

But there was nothing to battle over. “Yes.”

“Sean, I don’t even know her. I’m not just going to let my son move to a different state … with a stranger.”

He decided not to point out that she had no say in the matter, that she’d set the tone for leaving months ago. “Jess is amazing and Toby loves her. I love her.” The dead air may have meant he’d hurt her. It wasn’t what he’d intended, but he was glad he’d said it, glad it was out in the open. “I know you don’t know her. But you have to trust me on this one. Jess cares about Toby more than you could imagine. He will be loved.”

“But …”

“I get to have a life too.”

The line went silent again. “I promised Toby I’d see him, that it wouldn’t be like it was before.” Her voice had changed. It was smaller, more fragile. “I won’t break that promise.”

“You better not,” he said, and meant it. “He needs us both.”

H
E TOOK A BOTTLE OF
T
UMS TO
B
UZZ
THE NEXT DAY AND TRIED TO
focus on an Oscar hook-up spread. The mouse shook in his hand as he worked.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Rick shouted from across the office. Something heavy—a piece of furniture or a volume of the Encyclopedia Britanica—crashed against a wall. “Benning!”

G
ETTING FIRED WASN
’
T AS BAD AS HE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.
Though he didn’t feel good about screwing Rick, who would certainly be next on the chopping block.

Clearing out his stuff took exactly a minute and a half. He grabbed the only two photos on his desk, one of a tanned Toby from the beach last summer and another of their first hiking trip, with Toby on his shoulders after he’d realized that hiking really meant walking. He shoved three packs of multi-colored Post-its and a handful of pens into his jacket pocket and took the elevator to freedom.

He went directly to the Burdot Gallery to check on the last-minute details and to remind himself that getting canned by his crappy job didn’t matter. He would devote his free time to making art. A day job would only slow him down after the show.

He climbed the stairs to the gallery and saw instantly that it was all wrong. Instead of putting the finishing touches on the show, there were people taking his art
off
the Sean Benning wall. He rushed at them. “Whoa, stop! What are you doing?”

“Taking this stuff down,” said one of the workers, who wore paint-splattered coveralls.

“Why? What?” His heart was racing and the room seemed too bright. “Can you stop that?” he said to the one taking down his last piece. His head hurt. “Where’s Camille?”

He heard the agitated click of her heels before he saw her. The unflappable Camille Burdot looked like she was about to implode. “Take them down, already,” she yelled at the workers. “Move faster!” When she saw Sean, she clutched her chest and shrieked. “You terrified me. Where did you come from?”

“Why are you taking them down?” His hands were trembling. “Camille, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” she said, bitterly, “is that I have to cut you from the show.” She took a breath, then looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”

“But,” he stammered, “but it’s all set to go. I’ve invited everyone I know.” His heart pounded in his ears. “It’s
tomorrow.”

“Trust me, this is a major blow to me, too.”

“So why … what’s … how come?”

She sighed. “One of our biggest investors fell in love with a new artist. When he gets this way, he is a big crybaby until he gets what he wants.” She paused. “I had to pull you to include her.”

“But …” His eyes darted around the room. “Why don’t you pull someone else? You promised that I—”

“It’s decided.”

“Camille … I can … look … if I hang my work closer together, I can free up half the wall.” This was a good idea. Constructive.

She was shaking her head tightly.

“Three quarters of the wall. I can figure it out. Just … just don’t cut me.”

“It’s out of my control.”

“But … it’s … Who is it? Who’s the artist?”

“You would not have heard of her,” Camille said. “Like you, she is a newcomer.”

“Camille, please, it’s not fair. I—”

“Tell me about it,” she snapped. “I’m having some nobody shoved down my throat. At my own gallery!” She exhaled sharply through her nose.

“What about one piece? Can I show just one piece?”

“No.”

“No?” The word ricocheted inside his head, infuriating him. “No!? Who the hell are you to tell me
no?”
Everything in the room was blurring, spinning. He wheeled around, looking for something to help make his point. The stepladder by pregnant Ellie was the only prop around. He lunged for it and wound up aiming for an open piece of wall that used to house his work. He would smash the wall, make a hole, crack the whole gallery apart.

“Don’t do it,” Camille warned. “Just don’t.”

He tried to take a deep breath but the adrenaline was too strong and it came out as a grunt.

“You’re talented.” He noticed that Camille looked pale. “You’ll get a show. Just not here. Not now.”

He hurled the stepladder across the room where it landed with a loud crash. “Screw you, Camille,” he said. “You just ruined my fucking life.” He left without looking back. He was reeling when he hit the sidewalk. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked caller ID, then picked up.

“What the hell are you doing, Sean?” Walt was working the disappointed older brother tone. “You knew Bruce was looking into this for you.”

“No,” he spat back. “Bruce was trying to cover his own ass.”

“This is your solution?” Walt’s voice was loud. Behind him, Sean heard whooping and cheering. “You write an unsubstantiated story in a gossip rag? What did you think would happen? That you’d bring down the most prestigious private school in the country?”

“My facts are accurate.” Sean heard a whistle screech from Walt’s side of the phone.

“Bradley will be fine. You, however, have dug your own grave.”

“Screw you, Walt.” He watched his breath freeze on contact with the air.

“I feel bad about the show. I do.”

“The show …” He repeated the words slowly as he put it together. Walt knew about the show. He’d ratted him out to appease the Bradley dieties. “Prick. You fucking prick.”

“I know it’s tough. I like you, Sean. But this goes way beyond me now. You have officially pissed off the powers that be.”

“I’m not scared of Bradley,” he said, seething.

“Well maybe that’s your fatal flaw.” Sean heard a buzzer in the background. “If I were you I’d try to figure out a way to take it all back. But hey, it’s your life to ruin.”

Before Sean had even hung up the phone, he broke into an all out sprint. Chelsea Piers was only two blocks away.

He stormed through the glass doors to the gym, scanned the courts, and found Walt practicing free throws from the line. A couple of the other players were just arriving, unzipping their gym bags. The orthopedist was stretching. The whole thing happened in slow motion. Walt’s eyes widened as he saw Sean run onto the court and rebound his bad shot. Sean must have looked as out of his mind as he felt, because every eye in the place was on him. He gathered his rage and threw a hard pass that drilled Walt in the gut and doubled him over. Walt was still hunched over gasping for air when Sean pulled him up by the T-shirt, wound up, and cracked him in the side of the face with his fist. It hurt like hell, and he thought he’d broken his hand.
It’s worth it
, he thought, as he left Walt writhing on the ground. He felt the eyes of all of Walt’s influential teammates on him as he stormed back out of the gym.

By the time he’d walked the ninety blocks uptown, the moment of victory was far behind him and the despair was back. The afternoon crowd at the bar oozed self-loathing. These were his people: washed up men wasting their lives. Their guts stretched over their belts, their red noses shoved into their drinks. It was only a matter of time for him. He pushed his glass toward the bartender, who refilled it without a word. With no job, no gallery show, and no chance of convincing anyone that Bradley was doing anything wrong, he sat glued to the TV above the bar, which he’d forced the bartender to leave on CNN. He drank another Scotch as he watched the talking heads tear apart his story. The talking head of the moment was Greg Clark, the President of the Board of Trustees of Bradley. His white hair, angry white eyebrows, and soft, saggy skin made it impossible not to trust the words coming out of his mouth.

“The unsupported accusations in the weekly gossip magazine are figments of a disgruntled parent’s wild imagination,” he said dismissively, as a picture of Sean’s face appeared on the screen.

The bartender looked from the TV to Sean and back again. Twice. “That you?”

He shot the bartender a glance that insured he wouldn’t ask any more questions, then turned back to CNN.

“This wouldn’t be the first time a parent has blamed the school because his child couldn’t keep up with the rigorous academics at Bradley. Mr. Benning’s son was having problems at school. And the …
article,”
at this the guy made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “contains no documentation or even evidence of any kind. Why?” he asked rhetorically. Condescendingly. “Because Bradley has done absolutely nothing wrong.” He said it with a shake of his head, like he felt sorry for Sean’s inability to distinguish fact from fiction.

Jess rushed in and spotted him. He’d left a message during his hourlong trek uptown, telling her where to meet him, but now he just wanted to drink himself into oblivion. “Are you okay?” She took the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the glass.

“Bradley got to Burdot. I don’t know how, but they made her pull me from the show.”

“But—it’s tomorrow. She can’t … how can she …?”

“Walt did it. You were right.” A surge of renewed vitriol took hold of him and he batted the bowl of peanuts to the floor where they scattered. “I should have just walked away.”

“Come on,” Jess said, nudging him up from the barstool. “We’ll get some coffee on the way home.”

After Gloria went back to her own apartment and Toby was showering, he and Jess flipped through the channels, surveying the damage.

His
Buzz
article had gone viral. Not only had it been viewed half a million times on both The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, it was all over the seven o’clock news. On NBC, a child psychologist was talking about the pressures on kids today. He kept referring to what he called “the overscheduled child,” insisting parents didn’t give their children enough downtime. On CBS, a representative from a group called Parents of Attention Deficit Disorder, or PADD, was ranting about how video games and high fructose corn syrup were responsible for the rise in ADD. ABC featured a pediatrician who outlined the dangers of methylphenidate-type drugs and reported that one in four college students now relied on ADD medication to help them study. He and Jess watched for a while. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he left her with the remote and sat on Toby’s bed.