Tease (9 page)

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.

CHAPTER 13

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 he 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.

To my left, a pile of hair accessories: a brush and a scrunchy. And a disk of birth control pills. Open. Half-used.

“Are you sure you’re taking these right?” he’d said one month when I was a day late.

“It’s easy enough.”

“Not if you’re knocked up.”

The lights changed and illuminated the walls, making the little piles of my things disappear in the darkness. The scribbles became legible, and more than my things on display, more than the exact value of what I’d left behind, those words, written as one long, run-on sentence, brought months of sidelined emotion to the back of my throat.

I didn’t say she was more important why do you have to make everything about you she needs me she tried to kill herself, Kevin, what the fuck do you think is going on in your life that’s more important right now how can you tell me I can’t practice how can you try to silence me again I’ve put everything on hold for you I can’t do this I can’t take care of everyone I can’t be there for everyone I need to go I need to go I need to go I need to go.

“Bullshit in a box?” Jonathan asked from a safe distance, as if he knew coming closer would be inappropriate.

“These are the last things I said to him.”

I walked to the other side of the room. More scrawled words on the wall.

I’m not telling you not to work I’m telling you to stay with me when I’m with those guys they make me feel inadequate and stupid and you’re the only one I trust you’re the only one I know who doesn’t make me feel small without you I’m not a man you don’t understand I need you I need you I need you I need you I need you.

I walked out as fast as the low-hanging entrance would let me.

CHAPTER 14

Having been inside the relationship described in the Faulkner Coal Mine, I knew how brave Kevin was to create and display it. We had been impeccable together. We looked good. We never fought in public. No one heard a word from him or me that anything between us was less than perfect. He dragged his confidence around like a skin he seemed to own. That installation fearlessly let his friends and admirers know that not only was our relationship imperfect, but he himself lacked confidence and swagger.

But that was Kevin. Mister one hundred percent. When he’d loved me, it was with all of his heart and soul. I never worried about his commitment or his fidelity. I never found a leak in his passion. I was his everything, and as suffocating as that was, I never wondered where I stood. That in itself was liberating.

But now all our friends would know our last straw. Tuesdays had been his poker night. All the guys would sit in Jack’s loft smoking cigars and talking about didactics in postmodernism, or definitions of folk art from the twentieth century’s cultural diaspora. The girlfriends would sit in the kitchen talking about sex and drinking wine. It was like the fifties.

Gabby and I had finally put together a band because playing music made her feel better. That burned his ass. Because ever since Gabby had tried to kill herself, I got less available. Harry got us free studio time on Tuesday nights, for rehearsals. Perfect. He could go play poker so I could rehearse. But he threw a fit. He needed my support. He needed me
there
. Why was I abandoning him for Gabby? And you know what? I felt
bad
. My first reaction was that he was
right.
Because that was the whole relationship. His needs, and they were plenty.

In the sculpture garden, behind a little pagoda, was a spot the lights didn’t reach. I knew about it because I’d given Kevin a blowjob back there the night he helped his mentor hang his retrospective.

I was headed there when Jonathan grabbed my arm on the patio. “Monica?”

I took his hand and pulled him along with me until I caught a glimpse of Jessica. She smiled at us. I was trying not to burst out crying, so I nodded and let Jonathan do all the smiling.

He let go of my hand.

I glanced back. He and Jessica were talking. He half-faced her, one foot still pointing in my direction, like he wasn’t committed to either one of us. I had no time for that. I didn’t need him anyway. I ran down the stairs.

I was halfway to the courtyard when I heard his shoes tapping behind me. “Monica, wait up.”

I slowed, and he took my hand again without another word.

When we got to the ground floor, I turned into the sculpture garden. It was empty, mostly, so I slowed down. I wasn’t breathing well. That was how I cried: breathing badly. Then fat tears would come. I was a ladylike bawler, more or less, which was why I let Jonathan put his arm around me and slow me down. If I was a messy blubberer, I would have run away and gotten the bus home. He sat me on a quiet bench, slowly, as if remembering the damage he’d done to me.