Office Girl (17 page)

Odile sighs, her hot breath blowing up the ends of her bangs. “Do you want to go or not?” she asks.

“Sure. I'll go.”

“You will?”

“Sure, why not?” And like that a plan is set.

ON THE WAY TO THE ART SHOW.

Odile announces that what they're really missing is a manifesto.

“A what?” he asks, pedaling briskly to try to keep up.

Odile slows down, riding beside him. “A manifesto. Like the Surrealists. Or the Situationists. Or the Theatre of the Absurd, you know?”

“Not really.”

“We need something to hand to people and say,
This is what we stand for.
”

“I don't stand for anything.”

“I know. Me neither. But that's why we should do it.”

And they ride further south along Milwaukee Avenue, passing the expressway, the bread factory, the bombed-outlooking apartment buildings.

“The other day I found out my stepdad's getting surgery,” Jack shouts.

“What?”

“My stepdad. I had lunch with him. Yesterday. He said he's getting surgery and then he gave me all of his favorite records.”

“Wow. That's really nice of him.”

“It is. But it's also kind of scary.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes me worried that he's going to die. And I don't know. I'm almost twenty-six, and I think what a disappointment I must be to him. To my parents. I mean, what do I have going for me? Nothing. I think he was already finishing his degree and probably opening his own practice at my age and everything. And I don't have anything to show for myself. Except the fact that I'm already divorced. I don't know. I feel bad. I feel like I need to do something important instead of screwing around.”

“You're not screwing around.”

“I'm not?”

“No. You just haven't figured it out yet,” she says. “I think it takes a long time.”

“Really?”

“Really. I'm still trying to figure things out too. All I know is a couple of very unimportant things.”

“Me too,” he says, but not loud enough for her to hear. “What I care about no one else seems to even notice.”

“Like what?”

And he thinks about telling her all about the tapes, the recordings he has made, the city of sound he has been trying to finish. “I really don't know,” he says.

“I think this should all be part of our secret society. The art movement.”

“What should?”

“Like being in favor of unimportant things. Insignificant stuff. Things that get ignored. Things nobody else cares about. Like Post-it notes. Or push-pins. Or paperclips. I mean, have you ever really looked at a paperclip? It's pretty amazing. I was looking at one the other day and they still look like they're from the future or something. I think we should be for the small stuff, the stuff no one even thinks of as art. Like fire hydrants. Or gym shoes. Stuff like that. And we should be against anything popular, anything that's made for mass consumption, like movies, or TV, or songs on the radio. We should only be interested in the things that aren't really interesting. Broken things. Incomplete things. Things that don't last. Like lame fireworks. Or snow drifts. Anything insubstantial. Anything that isn't art. Personally, I'm against anything by Jim Dine. Or Roy Lichtenstein. Or Andy Warhol. The only good thing he ever did was help get the Velvet Underground started. But I'm against all his other stuff. Anything that references pop culture. Because the only really interesting things, the only really lovely things, are things that don't last, things that nobody else knows about.”

“You should write all this down,” Jack says, “it could be your manifesto,” and Odile nods and then, up ahead, along an unmarked side street, is the art gallery.

Before they are off their bikes, Odile has taken out her silver paint pen and has written,
ALPHONSE F. DESPISES THIS PLACE,
with a small arrow pointing right toward the gallery. And then, after some shuffling of their feet, the two of them go in.

ONCE INSIDE.

There are some young, trendy, glamorous-looking people, some people with obvious trust funds, some people who seem bored to tears, some people who look like the only reason they came was to score cheap cocaine. Everybody is wearing a fashionable scarf, men and women alike. Everybody's dressed well and so both Odile and Jack feel more than a little out of place in their salt-speckled winter coats, Odile in a dress she stitched together from remnants, Jack in a grimy T-shirt. On the walls are some pretty decent paintings, except that in each there's some obvious over-the-top cultural reference: in one of the paintings, Winnie the Pooh is mainlining what is probably supposed to be heroin. In another, Mickey Mouse is preparing to hang himself. Odile and Jack stand before the paintings and roll their eyes at each other, moving from one image to the other, until Odile whispers, “These are so boring.”

“They're terrible. They look like something a junior high school student might do.”

And Odile nods and says, “We should at least get some free booze,” and Jack nods and they head over to the small table where there is wine and beer and cheese and there, dressed in a white turtleneck and gray sport coat, is someone Odile would rather not see. She turns quickly, her face going red, and grabs ahold of Jack's hand.

“What? What is it?” he asks, but she just shakes her head, keeping her back to the person in gray. Jack peers over and sees a man whose round head is slightly balding. He has a white Van Dyke beard and modern gray glasses and is gesturing emphatically with a wine glass in one hand and, in the other, a full plate of cheese.

“Who is it?” Jack asks, and Odile leans in close to him and says: “It's this professor. He's pretty much the reason I quit art school,” and Jack looks over, trying to see what it might be in this man's manner that is so intimidating. But all he sees is the man talking, taking several cautious bites of cheese.

“Let's get out of here,” Odile whispers, but Jack says no, and walks over, picking up another bottle of beer. He leans in, listening to the professor's conversation. Apparently he's speaking with a stranger, or maybe some former pupil, Jack can't really tell.

“I think the greatest asset of postmodernism is its irony and general disdain for the simpler, more … how should I say it? … maudlin emotions. We need great artists who will posit the big questions without resorting to whimsy. That's precisely what I love about Mika's work here.”

Jack smiles and then walks back over to where Odile is standing. “He sounds like a douchebag.”

“He is. You should have heard what he had to say about my stuff. He pretty much represents everything I hate about art.”

“We should follow him,” Jack suggests.

“What? Why?”

“I dunno. We should. We should do something to him. Scare him or something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know,” Jack says, glancing over at the professor's thin frame. “Something.”

And then, without noticing them, the tall professor walks past the two of them, stopping before an oil canvas of Big Bird holding a machine gun, the professor keeping his hand to his bearded chin long enough to declare, “This is what we need more of, art that challenges assumptions,” before turning to join a collection of other bespectacled art enthusiasts.

“Let's go,” Odile says again, and Jack nods and they hurry back outside, laughing for no real reason, and head over to unlock their bicycles from the parking meters. It is then that Professor Wills steps out, pulling his overcoat across his narrow shoulders, lowering his bearded chin into the recesses of the folds of his turtleneck. Odile and Jack watch him go, watch him cross the street to a boxy-looking teal Subaru; they see the flecked green-blue color, see the dent on the driver's side, see the model and license plate, and then watch the art professor pull away, suddenly aware that certain machinations, certain elaborate revenge strategies, are already falling into place.

Jack looks at Odile and smiles googly-eyed, and asks, “Was that him?” and she nods, and he says, “We should do something to him. Or to his car. Or his house. Something. Do you know where he lives?” and Odile shrugs again, the plot starting to take shape, before she pulls her pink mitten back on and says, “It wouldn't be too hard to find out,” and then they ride back down Milwaukee Avenue in near silence.

At the corner of Augusta Avenue, they part ways quietly, neither putting a word to the distracted notions, the complicated thoughts, the sense that the brilliant, refracted lights of the city are all the feelings they are now feeling.

A MANIFESTO.

Then on Sunday morning who should telephone but Odile? And he climbs out of bed and answers the phone and is surprised by how her voice sounds on the line, much huskier and somehow older, and she says she's planning a new project and does he want to come help? And he says okay, and wonders what would happen if he ever said no, which he knows by now he won't. And they meet by the corner, and ride their bicycles to the corporate copy shop where Odile's roommate Isobel works, and Isobel has blond hair and is pretty good-looking but more in a self-involved kind of way, and Isobel gives them the code to the self-service machines, and together Odile and Jack make one hundred pink posters announcing:

Together, once again on their bicycles, they put on their ski masks, Odile in the black one, Jack in the red, and they post these pink sheets of cardstock everywhere, gluing them to walls, to signposts, to metal trash cans, with a mixture of wheatpaste and rubber cement. They put these posters up on the sides of buildings and over other posters announcing upcoming rock shows, and once they have glued all them up, Odile takes off her black mask and places her white winter hat back onto her head. Jack does the same and then looks up and sees her staring at him for a moment, until she asks, “Do you want to see my favorite place in the city? It's only a few blocks from here,” and Jack says, “Okay. Why not?” and Odile laughs viciously and pedals off as quick as she can. And there is something in that laugh, some intimation, some kind of question, and Jack, riding his bicycle, sliding in the wet snow, follows it, and silently tries to answer it, and two blocks away both of their faces are already bright red.

BUT IT'S MORE LIKE FIFTEEN BLOCKS.

Jack follows her green bicycle on his blue ten-speed and they end up at the Blommer chocolate factory farther south on Milwaukee Avenue. It's a triangular-shaped building with faded red and gray bricks and, other than its intoxicating, rich smell, looks rather unassuming.

“What is this place?”

“Can you smell it?” she asks, and he nods and it smells exactly like the entire city block, the whole metropolis, is made of milk chocolate.

“It's pretty incredible,” he says.

“It's just like what we were talking about. Because it's like only a smell. It's like probably something most people don't even notice. But it's one of my favorite things. Because it's a secret. I mean, you have to kind of know about it to come over here.”

“I get it.”

Odile nods, tilting her nose up to breathe in the chocolate scent. “I really love it. If I ever move to New York, this'll be the only thing I miss.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I'm sure I'd miss more than that. But not much.”

Jack pulls down his winter cap over his ears, wanting to say something to rebut her, but does not think of anything.

“So do you want to see something else?” she asks. “It's pretty cool. I found it a few weeks ago when I was riding by myself.”

“Okay.”

“Are you afraid of heights at all?”

“Not really. A little.”

“Okay. Let's go,” she says, and begins pedaling off again. And once more, Jack rides behind her, the pitch of her shoulders, the wuthering hair dancing backward in a brown flutter, meeting his gaze. And now it's starting to get dark, and the lonesome stillness of the end of the weekend, of the final hours of the evening, sets in. And all this time, Jack's thinking this:
What would it take for us to kiss
? But again, he watches her go.

OFF THEY GO TO AN ABANDONED BUILDING.

“Hello!” Odile shouts, and the echo sounds like some future song, her voice ricocheting softly off the empty walls, and Jack is looking up at the abandoned building, and Odile is smiling wide, and he asks, “What is it?” and she says, “It's a secret,” and Jack looks at her with an expression that he imagines must reveal his doubt, and she is tugging his sleeve again, and they are ducking past a fence and sign that says,
No Trespassing,
and he leaves his bicycle against an unadorned beam and there is the sound of dripping water everywhere and he follows her through a square hole in the building and Jack can see her shadow and the back of her head and her hair beneath her hat and she is turning to smile at him and he can see those crazy bangs again and then they are climbing a flight of stairs, and then another, and then some more, and they are eight stories up and now there is the city, and it is submerged in snow, though it's still so big, rising before him everywhere, because the windows in the building, the sashes themselves, have already been taken out, and the wind is pretty strong and Odile is standing near one of the open spots, pointing, and he looks down and he sees how far the drop is and feels his knees go limp and she is laughing, standing beside him, and it's not the city as he always imagines it, it's something altogether different because of the sound of the girl's laughter and the fact that it's so big, so vast and unconquerable, and now it's buried in snow, a ghost city, a blank city, the idea of a city, a city of every conceivable possibility, and then she is saying something he can't hear because of the wind, and he says, “What?” pointing to his ear, and she says it again: “It's getting torn down next week. I rode by this place and there was this demolition crew and they were taking measurements and everything. I talked to them and they said sometime next week. Isn't that weird to think about?”