Lying In Bed (12 page)

“You sound as if you were duped.”

“No, that’s not what happened.”

“You’re upset about it.”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“The expression in your eyes. You look betrayed.”

I shrugged. “I just wasn’t strong enough to fight for it. Besides, it’s all for the best. There’s too much competition in painting. I never would have gotten anywhere. Certainly never would have made a living at it.”

“That’s a defeatist attitude.”

“That’s a survivalists attitude. How would I be able to make a living now if I hadn’t become adept at collage?”

“Maybe you’d have become a fine enough painter so that you wouldn’t have to do collages.”

“You have no idea how hard it is to make a living as an artist. Even if you are lucky enough to get a gallery. With how long it takes to do one painting and then you have to subtract the 50 or 60 percent that the gallery takes…”

He was making me uncomfortable, listening too intensely and watching me too intently, even in the dark, as if he were hearing things I wasn’t saying. And when he asked me the next question his voice was too intrusive. It wasn’t a breeze, but part of the storm’s wind. Blowing open the door and tossing everything around, mixing me up.

“Do you want to go back to painting?”

Everything about him was too strong, too hard to ignore. Too suggestive of a sensitivity that I knew he couldn’t have but for some reason I was imagining.

“You don’t know what it’s like… art isn’t a hobby or only a job. Creating, really working to find something worth saying and then struggling to make the expression worth the thought… it’s wrenching.”

He was nodding, almost smiling. I felt – and I couldn’t believe this – understood.

On the other hand, I had to remind myself how susceptible I am to endowing people with qualities they don’t have based on a few aspects of them. I had taken leaps and assumed that because someone was both sensitive and intelligent then he must be understanding and fair. It was as likely that because he was strong and sure of himself then he must be also be arrogant and egotistical. Seeing the way someone holds his head or says my name I have been known to then assume he will fit other criteria that I have in my mind.

I’d been fooled. I’d been disappointed. So I had tried to break myself of the habit, keep my imagination in check and not give people attributes they didn’t have.

But.

A man who asked questions, who seemed so interested in me, might not be at all interested. It could all very well be a well- practiced ruse, a technique, fine tuned to relax his subjects, to seduce a woman into revealing herself so that he could cull what he found and use it for his own reasons.

“What is it you are so afraid of, Marlowe?” Gideon asked.

“I think the storm’s letting up. Maybe we should go while we can.” I stood, and avoided both answering him and looking his way.

In ten minutes we were back in his Jeep and on the road. He turned the radio to a local NPR station and we listened to a news program and then classical music. Our conversation, when we had it, was as direct as the route back to the city.

It was all the things that we weren’t talking about that were the loudest. And not even the most strident phrases in the symphony we were listening to could drown them out.

I went to
work on the short story when I got home. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. Anything would have been easier. Anything would have been more pleasant. Nothing would have distracted me as much.

Gideon had dropped me off at six. I didn’t stop to eat anything till nine. And then all I did was heat up a bowl of soup, cut a piece of seven grain bread from a loaf I’d bought the day before and pour myself a glass of wine. I liked to eat but not to cook, and usually kept food from one of the neighborhood gourmet stores in my freezer. But that night I didn’t even want to spend the time defrosting anything.

Even though I’d taken a shower, I could still smell the salt on my skin, as if I’d been swimming in the ocean for hours, not walking by the shore. If I’d found seaweed in my hair, I wouldn’t have questioned it. The feel of the sand on my feet wasn’t gone either, I could summon up the silk grittiness as if I were still walking on it.

As I sat on the bed, propped up by pillows, working on my laptop, the present disappeared. No longer in my loft, I was back on the beach, hearing the voice in the shell saying the things I’d told Gideon as well as the ones I’d kept from him. I was seeing the water, the clouds, the waves.

My fingers danced over the keyboard. I didn’t even have to think the words. I was the conduit for the sentences and paragraphs.

In a rush, the story poured out in less than three hours. At least the first draft of it. And that was all I could manage that night. Editing it would be the hard work and could wait for the next day.

I got myself another glass of wine and got back in the bed, pulling the laptop over and rereading what I’d written.

That’s what I was doing when the phone rang. I might have reached for it if I hadn’t been so engrossed in the story. Might have picked it up and said hello. Instead the machine answered. And a few seconds later, I heard the message as it came though.

“Marlowe?”

It was my stepbrother. The aftereffects from the beach dissipated. The sensations swirling around me from the story broke apart like a shattered mirror and dropped in pieces to the floor. I sucked in my breath, afraid that if I inhaled or exhaled too deeply he’d hear me. Impossible, I told myself. Take a breath. It’s okay. There’s nothing he can do to you anymore.

“I just left Jeff. He told me you’d been up to the office and seen the invite. I sent you one. So why did he think it was all news to you? Don’t you open my mail? Marlowe, you can’t hold a grudge this long. It makes me feel bad, baby. And I don’t like that feeling.”

I’d stood up, clutching the wine, gripping it too tightly in my hand. I wanted to kick the phone over. To shut off his voice. I wanted to pick up the receiver and tell Cole how selfish he was being. Ask him how he dared use that photograph on the invitation? Mostly I wanted to stop listening to him… but I was immobile. My feet stuck to the floor in the middle of my bedroom. Listening to every single word.

“I would love for you to see the show, baby. Everyone’s coming in for it. Dad and Carla want us all to have dinner afterwards. Can’t you give it up? You’re going to love the show. Everyone is talking about it. It’s going to be
the
show. Uber show. What we do for art. You understand that, don’t you? A little sacrifice, but what price beauty? And it is beauty. Thrilling, fucking sexy beauty. Call me, doll.”

I didn’t think. It wasn’t about logic or sanity. It wasn’t about reality or fantasy. The glass shattered against the phone as soon as it hit. Pieces scattered everywhere, appearing, in the darkened room, like stars splashing across a night sky.

I worked on
the story all of Saturday, revising and editing it. I was done early that night and emailed it to the address that Gideon had given me. I didn’t check my email on Sunday morning. I’d slept late and had to rush to meet Grace at a flea market on West 26th street.

It was our weekly ritual. I looked for scrap and ephemera to use in my collages, she searched for vintage costume jewelry, accessories and clothes.

Some days I didn’t find anything. Others one or two items. She always found too much.

That morning, every time I turned around there was something else to pore over. At one booth I found two dozen old erotic postcards from France. Sepia-toned and innocent in their nakedness, the women posed and flirted with the camera, their breasts bared but with silken fabrics hiding their privates. Some of them wore stockings and garters, others wore only high heels. They entreated the viewer to come a little closer and be delighted.

I though of Cole’s nudes in relation to these. His were erotic, too, but raw and edgy. There was no charm to the photographs he took of naked women in the throes of passion. He was a voyeur; these photographers were lotharios. He took more than his models offered; these models offered more than the photographer could capture.

I bought them and tucked them into my bag and found a long pair of silk gloves at the next booth. Cream colored and in excellent shape, I imagined them stuffed and positioned in one of my shadow boxes, the fingers beckoning.

A bolt of violet tulle sat on another booth. It sparkled with tiny diamante flecks.

I’d come up with a new idea for the boxes I was going to do based on Gideon’s stories. Teasing the viewer with the scenes inside. Arouse curiosity. Each would have curtains or drapes hanging over them, in different materials, but all transparent so that you had an idea of what was inside the box, but to really view it you would have to push apart the fabric. I wanted each to be its own secret. Worth studying, worth spending time with. But none of them clear at first viewing. Layered, complicated juxtapositions of images and objects that would suggest eroticism the same way that we perceive it in other people. Under the clothes, behind the eyes, in subtle gestures and unspoken words.

I could imagine the collages, even picture how someone would inspect them - how he would push back the violet tulle to peek inside and be delighted with the gloved hand holding a tiny, naked, male doll that I found at yet another table at the market.

“That fabric is amazing,” Grace said, coming up next to me and fingering it. “Do you have an idea of what you are going to do with it?”

I told her about the boxes I was going to do based on Gideon’s stories as we walked around and inspected all the wares, pulling dresses off racks, inspecting their old handstiched labels, opening ancient Vuitton bags, fingering Hermes scarves, trying on faux gem rings, and Bakelite bracelets and holding extravagant pins up to our collars to see what kind of impact they’d make.

The only item Grace never looked at was shoes. In the Jewish religion you never wore the shoes of the dead, lest you follow in their footsteps and since there was a good chance that most vintage shoes had belonged to someone now long gone, she avoided even being tempted by them.

“What do you know about the woman Gideon Brown is sending the letters to?”

“Not much, why?”

Grace looked up from investigating a box of Chanel buttons that she’d found under a cashmere sweater that someone had left on the table. “I don’t know. I was wondering. That’s unusual isn’t it? That you don’t know anything?”

Normally, I found out as much as I could about the recipient of the letters or stories. It was one way to make sure to please him. Or her. “Yes. It’s unusual. But he doesn’t want to talk about her.”

“Any idea why?”

I shook my head.

A woman walked up to the table, maneuvered around us, and grabbed a pink sweater Grace hadn’t looked twice at.

“You’re usually better than that at getting information out of your clients.”

“Yeah… I am… so I don’t know why I couldn’t do any better this time. He’s complicated, Grace. I’d say he makes me nervous but that wouldn’t be the right word.”

“He gets to you.”

“What?”

“You’re interested in him. He’s getting under your skin. In your head.”

“No, he doesn’t, he–”

She put her arm though my arm, the way I’d seen my grandmother walk with her friends. “Come on, let’s get out of here and go get brunch. How about the Empire Diner? You’re not going to want to hear what I have to say, and if I tell you here it will be too easy for you to walk off instead of hearing me out.”

“Have I ever done that in my life?”

“No, but I’ve never pushed you as far as I’m prepared to push you now,” and then she grinned. Like a medieval executioner about to behead one of Henry’s wives.

“You’re not connected
to your own feelings, Marlowe. You haven’t been for a long time,” Grace said, over her lox, eggs, and onions.

“I know you think you have a right to do this, but I don’t understand why you think you have that right.” My omelet was undercooked. I pushed it away, searched for and caught the eye of the waiter, who surprisingly came over right away. Grace waited until I’d explained what was wrong with the eggs and the waiter had taken them back before she continued.

“I think I have a right to do this because I care about you.”

“No. If you cared about me you wouldn’t want to upset me.”

“No, because I care about you I want to point out some things you’re doing that are ensuring your unhappiness.”

I sighed. “Okay, Grace, preach to me,” I was annoyed. She knew it. But we were close and honest with each other. She needed to have this conversation with me as much as I needed to let her know it wasn’t welcome.

“You look at everything so closely. Objects, colors, swatches of fabric, images… everything but your own life. And by doing that you aren’t seeing what’s really there. You are missing signals that might lead you forward… that might help you figure out what you really want… what might really make you happy. Or, if not happy then at least satisfied.” She picked up her fork and took another bite of her eggs. The waiter appeared and returned my now golden browned mushroom and Swiss cheese omelet.

I took a bite and expected her to continue talking. She didn’t.

“That’s it?” I asked finally. “No more? Short rant for you.”

“That’s it.”

“You’re not going to explain why I need to listen to you, why I need to change my way of dealing with my reality? You’re not going to give me seven examples of situations that I–”

She interrupted. “No. I’m your friend, not your mother. Or your therapist.”

“Or my physic?”

She grinned. “I know better than to go there with you. You and your skepticism. This isn’t about that. I’m not talking about how the stars are lined up or the I Ching or what I see when I read your Tarot cards.”

“You don’t read my Tarot cards. I’ve never let you do that with me.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t read them without you.”

“Don’t tell me–”

Her smile gave her away – she was teasing. “No. I can’t read your cards without you being involved.”