Catch My Fall (15 page)

“Come have a seat, I gotta show you something,” he said when I finally joined him, his words a little mangled by the object he’d just slammed into his mouth. He’d picked up food on the way over and was breaking into a slab of beef teriyaki. The smell was almost nauseating. I was too nervous in his company to eat. I rejoiced in the thought that even if Stellan was appalled by me sexually, at this rate, at least I’d be skinny as hell when he rejected me.

Rejected you? Shut up Faye, you’re never going to actually tell him! You’re going to let it pass, because you know it will. Now shut up, sit down, stop picturing him naked and eat a god damned crab rangoon!

I did exactly that, Stellan content to let me eat for a moment before he unveiled whatever mystical item he’d brought to my door. I made it two bites into the Crab Rangoon before my stomach revolted.

Dear God, I’m fucked.

“So I wanna show you this – what’s up?” He saw something in my face to betray my uneasiness.

I shrugged it off. “Nothing, just a little nauseous.”

Stellan set the back of his hand against my forehead. He held it there a moment, then retracted, seemingly satisfied. I shifted my legs away from the coffee table, hoping to keep the food out of my line of sight. Stellan swiftly collected the bag and hopped up from the couch, disappearing into the kitchen with it. When he came back, he had a glass of water for me.

“Thank you,” I said, and drank gratefully.

“You want me to show you some other time? I can go grab you some ginger ale?”

“No, no. I’m really fine. I’ll be okay.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything. I knew once he was gone, I’d be able to get something down.

I wriggled into the corner of the couch and stared at the TV. When we spoke, I kept my eyes on something innocent, some third party entity like the wood grain of the coffee table or my feet. He didn’t seem to notice, or at least he didn’t comment. Suddenly there was a flat white object in my lap, and Stellan was setting up his laptop on the coffee table.

“What’s this?” I asked.

He smiled. Stellan had one of those smiles that could light up a room when he wanted to. Though I say again, I did not look directly at it.

He was excited. “It’s a drawing tablet.”

I stared down at the smooth surface of the device, then glanced up at Stellan, ensconced in his laptop. As soon as he turned back to me, I realized just how interesting the drawing tablet was, or at least that was the impression I was trying to give.

“Pretty nifty,” I said.

He chuckled, still working at the laptop. He turned the screen toward me, hunched back into the couch and leaned over.

“All right, draw something.”

For a moment, surprise overpowered lusty shame, and I met his gaze. “What, on this?”

“Yeah.”

I stared at the doodad, intimidated and somewhat embarrassed. Stellan pulled the pen from its holder and handed it to me.

“What do you want me to draw?”

“Anything. Doesn’t matter.”

I took the pen and stared at the tablet. There was no paint, no ink – this was a concoction of science that troubled and bewildered me. I dragged the pen across the surface of the tablet, and I could practically feel his smile. I dragged the pen across it again.

“Look,” he said.

I glanced at the laptop and two lines had appeared on the screen.

This time I dragged the pen across the tablet, keeping my eyes on the screen. The lines appeared instantly, as though I were drawing them with a thick tipped pen.

I gave a flourish and a squiggle. “That’s so cool.”

“You think so? Here,” he said and quickly scrapped the doodle that I’d drawn on the screen. The clean slate appeared, no paper to crumple, no failed detail to hide. “Try to really draw something.”

I was on the spot, but curious. I wanted to see if I could, imagined the hours I could spend relearning any gift I might have once had without having to buy the seventeen sketchpads it would most likely take for me to get there. I fiddled with the pen, instinctively letting it pass beneath my nose as I did with my usual pens. The tinge of disappointment at the stale plastic scent was fleeting. I began whirling the pen about on the tablet. As I moved my hand, lines, shapes, an image began to unfold on the screen. It was a grumpy, slouching man in a suit with a rim of hair around his bald head and a tired notepad in his hand. I gave him two Popeye style hairs sticking out of the top of his head and a couple squiggly lines rising from his shoulders to signify dissatisfaction. Stellan laughed as he appeared on the screen, the unexpected image that had been somehow lying in wait in my psyche. What Stellan didn’t know was that I’d been thinking about this guy for a few days – thinking about drawing him, and maybe his exploits. I’d once passed my days drawing comic strips. Ever since Stellan asked for help, I was searching my brain for an inkling of the artist that once resided there. I convinced myself she was gone, but here was Stanley; angry antiques dealer who couldn’t understand why his business was going under. I shifted my attention to the scene behind him, a quaint looking storefront and the sign hanging over the door of his Antique Store. I sketched in some words.

Stanley’s Antiques: We Sell Old Shit

Stellan laughed. I shaded background, and fiddled until I was done. I signed my name in the lower right hand corner.

F. T. Jensen

Stellan launched himself forward to the laptop, pressed a few buttons, typed a word or two and then turned to me. “And there you go. Saved to file.”

“Really?”

“You can come back to it, color it in, edit it, whenever you like.”

“Oh no. I wouldn’t try to sneak your laptop away from you, are you crazy?”

He took a second to make sure I met his gaze. I felt myself shrinking before him.

“I installed the software on your computer in the office when I was here the other day. It’s for you to use.”

I looked down at the contraption in my lap and back to Stellan. “I couldn’t do that, Stell.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t want to steal your new toy,” I said, and I meant it.

“I bought it for you to use. You’re helping me more than you can imagine. Call it an investment.”

I struggled internally with these thoughts, but I knew refusing was out of the question, and my stomach had gone to butterflies at the mention of him buying something for me. I smiled and thanked him. “I promise to start working on some pieces tomorrow, okay?”

“No rush, babe. I know you’ll get to it when you’re inspired to. Draw something else, will ya?”

I swallowed, glancing back down at the contraption. Ten minutes later, I’d drawn a blown out bridge with haggard apocalypse survivors on one side, watching as a group of people fired a ‘flare’ into the air. I then drew a cartoon of the WWE wrestler Rick Flair flying through the air, his signature ‘Whooooooo!’ scribbled through the sky as he sailed past. Stellan laughed even harder at this one.

He saved it, then reached for the tablet, glancing at me to make sure I was done. When I nodded, he took hold of it, his fingers curling under its edges and grazing my thigh. Pathetic that I felt enlivened by that tiny contact, isn’t it?

He settled into his seat, staring at the television as an infomercial for some outrageous exercise program came on. I had absolutely no interest in watching it, but Stellan seemed oblivious to what was on.

“Have you thought anymore about the game?” I asked.

“I have actually, how bout you?”

He shifted his whole body on the couch to face me, as though he’d been wound up and shot out of a cannon the moment I mentioned the subject.

“A little bit.”

His eyes widened. “Yeah? Whatcha thinking?”

We sat on the couch, the hours drawing later as we bantered about this hypothetical thing we were going to birth and unleash unto the world like some great plague. Stellan’s hands flailed out in front of us as he spoke. Soon he was on his feet, pacing. I explained some of the ideas I was harboring.

“You’re thinking of drawing, aren’t you?” He asked.

I stopped my mind from wandering and met his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Your lips,” he said and flattened his lips, pinching them between his teeth. “You always do that when you draw.”

I forgot myself for a moment and smiled – the kind of smile where your nose crinkles – the kind of smile you give a man you love. “I do not, do I?”

He smiled back. “Yeah. I’d almost forgotten that, it’s been so long. You were drawing good old Stanley there, and your lips pressed together.”

I covered my mouth with my hand. My cheeks were burning. “I didn’t know I did that.”

He stared at me a moment. I had to look away. Stellan and I didn’t need to fill silence before, but somehow, the quiet felt electric, charged almost, and I was certain it was entirely my fault. I prayed he didn’t notice.

I sat there, wishing I had the balls to simply act on these thoughts, just to say them out loud, let alone touch in response to them. He handed me my water and sat back down, plopping his feet up on the coffee table beside his laptop. I sat back and imagined myself crawling across the couch to straddle his lap and kiss him until he took me.

Instead, we sat quietly and watched a sweaty man sell exercise.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
was feeling a bit introverted the next day and left my phone in my bedroom when I meandered downstairs for a morning coffee and a think. The kitchen was empty, but the coffee pot was simmering quietly as my mother had left it for me – four cups still in the pot. My mother was a miracle of a human being. I drank up, leaning onto the kitchen counter reading the back of the Frosted Flakes box with the focus of a broker reading the Wall Street Journal. It was going to be one of those days.

I was adamant that I avoid my phone for the afternoon. The allure of its mystical 3G powers was simple – I could send and/or receive texts from Stellan. Therein lies my trouble. I’d felt almost teary eyed when he left the night before, like some urgent business had yet to be attended to. It was as though when he was near, the world was as it should be – there were no miserable flashes of Cole berating me for being opinionated or loud, there were no thoughts of naked women in Cole’s bed. In fact, when Stellan was near, there was no Cole. Still, my better senses assured me that this magic elixir I found in Stellan was the death knells of a desperate and broken heart. It was easier to remind myself of that when he wasn’t around. When he was, I was fucked.

Unplug Faye. Just Unplug, I thought.

Odd that after this well thought out advice, I sought solace on my computer.

I watched the screen come to life and reached for my coffee, tapping it sideways as I swung toward it. I jumped up from my chair, snatching the cup before it had a chance to fully fall to its side. It lost only a tablespoon or so of its contents, but that was enough to give me a heart attack given the object it spilled on. I launched myself out of the office and into the kitchen, grabbing no less than seven paper towels in my panic. I wiped down the Drawing Tablet, as though I’d somehow managed to spill coffee on the baby Jesus. Once I wiped it down with the fourth paper towel and was certain that it was dry, I glanced at the computer screen – fully powered up and ready.

There was only one way to be sure you didn’t just completely destroy Stellan’s gadget. I turned it on.

There’s something about blank paper and pen that begs for marks and doodles. I’ve found that to be true my whole life – a blank canvas, a sketchpad, a brick wall behind the old Brigham’s – these were surfaces that cried out like the dead on the River Styx. I stared at the screen, frowned at my coffee, and took the pen in hand.

I revisited Stanley, now a restaurant manager installing a sign in the kitchen to announce to his waiters the exact moment when a patron has something in their mouth. I drew the light coming on and the first waiter in a line of trained sprinters bounding out the kitchen door and assaulting the chewing patron with the time honored question, “How is everything?”

Drawing the confounded restaurant goer with a mouthful of meatball was the best part.

After a few sketches of the random and mundane, my mind searched for new inspiration, new subjects to draw. Stellan’s game, however I tried to avoid it, came to mind. I let myself draw a gorilla. I let myself draw the façade of a jungle painted zoo enclosure, vines and cracks across its bricks.

I let myself draw a chimpanzee throwing shit.

No, actual shit. I drew a brigade of feces throwing apes, and despite myself, I began laughing. I drew a tableau of apes with the crazed looks, some of them excited with rage, some of them mad with laughter, all gathered around a chalkboard with calculus equations showing the best trajectory for shit flinging. The notion of what I was drawing or the unmitigated joy on the creatures’ faces made even me laugh. I deleted a few quick sketches, but more and more, I found myself saving them to file. I was actually going to let him see these.

“Faye, honey? Have you eaten?”

I startled at the sound of my mother’s voice. I looked at the clock – six. Dear God, I’d been sketching
for seven hours.

My mother convinced me to have dinner with her to celebrate an exhibit the museum approved at her behest. I started to shut down the computer when I noticed the tiny envelope symbol in the corner of the screen was obscured by a red circle. I paused. There was a number by my mailbox. I opened the folder.

Dear Ms. Jensen,

We reviewed your resume and would like to schedule an interview with you. Please call at your earliest convenience so we might set up a time.

Look forward to speaking with you,

Dennis Shay

Head of Marketing, Chalice Enterprises

I called to my mother in the kitchen. When she arrived, I had tears in my eyes. I was freaking out.

I ran upstairs to grab my cell, and when I finally returned to the office, my mother was smiling at me.

“There’s no rush, hon. Take your time. I’ll be in the living room.”