The Love of My (Other) Life (3 page)

“See ya,” I said and turned to hightail it.

“Wait!” he grabbed my arm. “Don’t you have a faint sense, a vague feeling, that we’ve met before?”

“Nope,” I lied, warily.

“You must,” he said. “Because reality is non-local, and once two particles have interacted, they’re forever intimately connected in some way.”

“I’m not a particle, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know, it all sounds very technical. I’m a physics professor.”

Enough was enough. “Let me go, Professor!” I barked. I know, I’m a pansy, but I can drum up a really nasty voice when I need to. Brian kind of jumped. I fled and ran around the building.

Brian was already waiting on the other side. Was he possibly in two places at once?

No, he was just fleet of foot, faster than me!

I skittered off at an angle. Picking up speed, I flew toward Broadway, threw myself into a crowd of pedestrians, and then descended into the 72nd Street subway station. A train was pulling up to the platform, and I just made it through the turnstile and into the train. I didn’t see him. Relief.

Cello music spilled forth from Brian’s beat-up boom box. Rajiv sat on Brian’s desk because the office was only large enough for a desk with its own chair and another chair beside it for visiting students.

Brian crumpled up quiz papers and tossed them to Rajiv, who shot them toward the wastebasket.

Despite the three foot distance, Rajiv missed every time.

“Is this all we can listen to?” Rajiv asked.

“Yes, until she comes to my office, hears it, and is impressed with me.” Brian picked up another quiz, smooshed it into a ball, and lofted it to Rajiv.

“She may never come to your office.”

“She’ll come. She’s a Yalie, and by definition, all Yalies are grade grubbers.”

“True,” Rajiv said, missing another shot. The pile of papers beside the trash can got larger and more unruly.

“Also, Rajiv, there is my unifying theory of everything.”

“You solved that?” Rajiv yodeled, falling onto Brian and gripping his collar.

“Not that theory of everything, the Brian Tennyson theory of everything,” Brian wrested Rajiv off his shirt. “That is, the fundamental axiom that there’s good at the root of everything.”

“Good at the root of everything? The Vedas say the entire universe is pervaded by God.”

“God? I don’t know. It’s less personal than that. More neutral. Like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It’s just a statement of nature’s intrinsic inscrutability; it has nothing to do with the ability of experimenters to find a particle’s position and momentum. It’s not a commentary. It just is.”

“Heisenberg went out for a drive to get cat food for Schrödinger, and he was stopped by a traffic cop.

‘Sir, do you know how fast you were going?’ asked the cop. ‘No, but I know where I am,’ Heisenberg said.” Rajiv looked triumphant.

Brian grinned but wasn’t distracted by Rajiv’s joke. “Relying on the universal goodness, I, very elegantly, set the conditions for her to come in: I offered extra credit for visiting during office hours.

She knows her quiz wasn’t good so she’ll come.

When she comes, she’ll hear the music. She’ll fall in love with me, and we’ll get married and live happily ever after.”

“Good luck with that,” Rajiv said.

A knock sounded at the door. Tessa poked her head in.

Rajiv fell off Brian’s desk onto the crumpled papers.

“Oh, you’re busy,” Tessa said.

“Not at all, come in,” Brian said. He waved her in and then kicked Rajiv.

Rajiv whimpered and limped to the door.

Tessa eyed the flotsam and jetsam tide of paper on the floor. “Are those our quizzes?”

“Everyone got a B+,” Brian said.

“Except Debbie Doll, who got an A,” Rajiv said from the door.

“Is that because she shows her boobs around campus or because she understands the material?”

Tessa asked. She sat and twisted around in her seat to hang her backpack off the chair. The side lace of her black thong panties peeked above her jeans.

Rajiv’s eyes widened with appreciation. With two hands, he outlined a figure eight in the air, the universal sign for the beloved female form.

“Tell your TA that’s sexual harassment,” Tessa said.

“Debbie knows the material,” Brian said hastily.

He kicked the door shut in Rajiv’s face. Then he fiddled with the boom box as if to lower the volume.

All the while he gazed adoringly at Tessa.

“Pablo Casals?”

“The great Catalan cellist and conductor?” Brian cleared his throat. “Famed for his recording of the Bach cello suites. You did a nice job with the sara-band the other night.”

“Think so?” Tessa’s eyes softened and filled with light.

“Absotively, posilutely!” Brian exclaimed, feeling himself dazzled again.

“I don’t know, I think I drifted a little,” Tessa said, but her smile warmed him. “It didn’t quite have the power and lilt I was going for.”

“Gorgeous,” Brian assured her. “I had no idea you were so talented.” He paused to pointedly catch her gaze. “What brings you to my office?”

“Bonus points. How many do I get for coming?”

“Half a grade, at least. You’ll need the boost, too.

That quiz indicated that you don’t grok the material.”

“‘Grok’? Is that from Star Trek?” Tessa teased.

“You probably know the episode and season, right?”

She held up her hand in a distinctive hand motion.

“Live long and prosper.”

“Right genre, wrong work. But your technique is impressive.” Brian shrugged. He crumpled another quiz and shot it toward the trash can. He missed.

“Baseball is your genre,” Tessa observed. “I hear you play first base.” Her voice affected a casual tone, but Brian could see a sparkle in her eyes.

“You heard that, huh? Are you asking around about me?” Brian arched his eyebrow.

“Well, you know, people talk,” Tessa said, eyelids drooping.

Score! Brian tossed another quiz at the garbage.

“Glad I have the chance to play here. I was never good at basketball, but I practice shooting hoops.

Never give up, right?”

“Sometimes it’s wiser to accept what you can’t change. How long do I have to stay to get the points?”

“Are you interested in learning the material?”

Brian said. He leaned toward her, so she had to look at him again. “I could actually teach it to you.”

“Is it really necessary?” Tessa mimed a yawn.

“I’m fulfilling a distribution requirement. I’m not much for math. I’m never going to use it.”

“I’d rather be teaching physics. Or better yet, working on my research. But this was part of the deal. Anyway, you’re a musician, and music has the elegance and precision of math.” Brian wadded up another quiz, shot, and missed again.

“Too much backspin, Prof. Good thing you’re not a pitcher. Can I go now? I have a rehearsal. We’re playing again at Woolsey next week.”

“I’ll be there,” Brian said in a steely tone.

“Because you’re a Casals aficionado?” Tessa’s lips quirked, and her expression was knowing.

“I will be by then.”

“I just bet you will,” Tessa said. She twisted and rose to retrieve her backpack. Her delicious lacy knickers rode up while her jeans drooped, revealing a heart-shaped strawberry pink birthmark on her sacrum.

Brian’s eyes gleamed. “Want to go to Naples for a slice sometime?”

“Aren’t I already getting an A?” Tessa asked in a reasonable tone of voice. “You know you want to give me one.”

“Have a slice with me and you’ll get an A+.”

Tessa paused with her hand on the door knob.

“I’m no math and physics genius who got a PhD at age seventeen from MIT while matriculating at Buckingham Brown, and then came to Yale to major in American Studies and play baseball, but even I know you can’t go higher than 4-point-0, Prof. Hey, have you heard that entropy isn’t what it used to be?”

She threw a wink over her shoulder and opened the door.

Rajiv leaned inward with his ear where the door had been and pitched forward into the office.

Tessa made a sound of disgust, stepped over Rajiv, and stomped off.

“Four kids and a white picket fence!” Brian sang.

He could see his whole bright future stretching ahead of him, starring Tessa, and it was beautiful, the ultimate proof of goodness inhabiting the known universe.

It was a typical Chelsea gallery, which meant I was sorely tempted to burn it to the ground. This could be considered not arson but public service.

José’s warning about the co-op board had put me in mind of finding a gallery to show my landscapes.

Now that I was painting again, and because a few years had elapsed since everything imploded, I was ready to go out into the world with my work once more. Maybe. Almost.

But this was the wrong gallery. It was filled with Damien Hirst knockoffs and Jeff Koons wannabes. I looked at some tags and my ire bubbled up: everything was outrageously overpriced. If I sold even ONE of my beautiful landscape paintings, at a fraction of these prices, I could fund Reverend Pincek’s programs for a year. Two, and I’d be out of trouble with the co-op board.

It had a personal hook too since I’d run afoul of the art world three years ago. I’d labored diligently for years to master my craft and it had all gone up in a plume of betrayal, rumor, and false accusation.

“So much money for so little talent,” I was murmuring. I was triggered, and I couldn’t uncouple myself from the steam engine of my bitterness. “I paint better than this. I have to show my work. I have to get out into the world, so people know they have options, they don’t have to put up with this drek.”

Then I froze. An entire wall was covered with Picassoesque female nudes that were duplicated in checkerboard after Warhol. It was trite-cum-gimmicky, with a soupçon of cheesy, and I knew it well.

Too well, all too well.

My heart almost stopped beating in my chest when I saw the price on the label.

Why did the bad art command these prices?

Why wasn’t good art recognized and valued?

Why did people rush to believe hearsay and refuse to hear the truth?

An elegant, bearded man in a hot-pink suit approached. “I’m Frances Gates, the proprietor of this fine establishment. How do you like these original Cliff Bucknells?”

“Original?” I squeaked. There was nothing original at all about Cliff Bucknell. I knew that first hand.

“Of course, they’re original. I heard about the big scandal a few years ago, but those rumors were just a marketing ploy, I can assure you. Only Cliff Bucknell has a genius this masterfully droll.”

“Masterful,” I repeated, not breathing at all. The volcano inside me was building up pressure.

“Come this way, darling, I have something that will really take your breath away.” He ushered me toward a small grinning skull covered with rhinestones and colored sequins. “Cliff Bucknell’s rendering of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. Isn’t it witty?”

The numbers on the placard swam in my vision and made the room flicker around me. “It’s. It’s. It’s a million dollars?”

“There are those, and I am one, who think it’s better than Hirst’s!” Gates placed his hand on his chest.

“But, but …” I squeaked, as my throat closed and my past erupted, molten hot and viscous. Why had I ever thought I could elude it?

Was there no way for me to rectify it?

“I can see how moved you are,” Gates said with a sympathetic nod. “Listen, we’re having an opening of Bucknell’s work, his first show in years.” He leaned toward me, to whisper directly into my ear.

“His first show since that scandal, which was completely false, you understand. Here’s an invitation.”

He placed a gaudily-printed postcard in my hand.

“Oh God,” I gurgled. The postcard slipped to the ground as I threw my hands up into the air.

“Darling, do you need help?”

“No, but these artists do!” I cried. I couldn’t help it. I was so appalled.

Gates recoiled. “I show the finest post-modern art in the city!

“You do? So where is it? The finest post-modern art in the city. Where is it?”

Gates gestured with his hands like an orchestra conductor. “What do you think all this is?”

“What do I think it is? Or what do I know it is?”

I grabbed his sleeve and dragged him to a tank in which floated a cubit-zirconia encrusted thighbone.

Price: $300,000. “This is expensive merchandise.

Expensive, ugly, meaningless merchandise. The mercenaries who made it ought to be shot in the kneecaps!”

Gates shrugged out of my grip. “If you’re one of those people who—”

“One of those people who loves real art?” I demanded. In my mind, I stood in the Vatican beneath Michelangelo’s sublime Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Magnificent and awe-inspiring, God reached out his hand to his creation Adam, and a symphonic chorus of Alleluia’s played … .

But my mouth was still moving as if it were a car without a driver careening down the highway. That happened to me sometimes when I was taken over by the bright, fierce spirit who lived within though was mostly occluded. “One of those people who loves the kind of art that uplifts and ennobles people? The kind of art that sees you through your darkest hours and inspires you? One of those people?”

“That’s so archaeological,” sniffed Gates. His words punctured my happy Renaissance bubble.

I stood, once again, in Chelsea, in a gallery filled with tawdry baubles that some sneering, condescending, punitive, mentally challenged art demi-god had deemed worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“There’s nothing archaeological about beauty.”

“If you want beauty, take a taxi to the Met. I thought you admired Cliff Bucknell; you had such an obvious emotional response to his work.” Gates looked wounded.

“Cliff Bucknell is a has-been fraud,” I said.

That pushed Gates over the edge. He turned on his heel and flounced off.

I trailed him. I heard a noise behind me as someone came in, but I didn’t turn my head to look. I was too intent on reaching Gates, on somehow making him understand what he, the art community, and the world at large needed to know: that art isn’t about irony and wit and commercialism and fashionableness and all that superficial glamour that means nothing and goes nowhere fast. Art is about something deeper, more real. Something transcendental that shows us the way to our better, truer selves. Art is about beauty. Art is about meaning.