Lying In Bed (6 page)

“Thanks.”

He was still inspecting it. “It works perfectly. The title will go right here.” And he pointed to the sky. “Great job, Marlowe.”

“This one was tough.”

“Really?” He looked up at me, puzzled.

“Yeah. I was surprised too. Couldn’t figure it out. It was the Venice connection. It threw me.”

He knew about Joshua and understood what I meant right away. “Aw, Marlowe, I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t realize. I shouldn’t–”

I interrupted him. “No. I didn’t realize it either. It’s okay, now.”

“I feel awful.”

“You can make it up to me by getting me some more water.” And I held out my glass. When I did, I jostled some papers on Jeff’s desk revealing a photograph. I know I gasped. Because I recognized it immediately but the small sound was muffled by the louder clinking of ice cubes hitting the sides of the glass as Jeff poured more water.

It was black and white in a thousand subtle shades of gray. Provocative, it pulled you in, demanded you look at the woman’s open mouth. The lips moist and swollen. The unmistakable expression of passion. And a single mark on her cheek. Which could have been anything. The blemish of a man’s fingerprint. Inky and dark. Smudged. A moody brand, suggestive and disturbing. Yet as a work of art, the photograph was beautiful. I could see that, regardless of all the other feelings the photograph brought out in me.

I didn’t have to ask; I knew who had taken this photograph as well as I knew my own body in the mirror. I just wasn’t quite sure why it was on Jeff’s desk. His back was to me as he put the green bottle back in his mini refrigerator, so not really caring if it was any of my business or not, I pushed the other papers out of the way to reveal that the photograph was part of an invitation.

On the bottom, in tastefully small type it said:

Nude Muses: The Photography of Cole Ballinger

I picked it up and turned it over.

You are invited to Cole Ballinger’s first one-man show.
June 2 / 6:00 p.m.
Kulick Gallery
34 West 26th street, NYC
RSVP: 222-3333

Cole Ballinger. A name I stared at as if I had never seen it before, because in that context it was foreign. No, worse than that. It was unsettling. A low-level worry started to hum deep in my stomach. My hand started to shake.

I wanted to take the invitation and rip it into a hundred pieces. At the same time I felt an overwhelming wave of weariness and lethargy. The sense that I’d never be able to move out of the chair, never be able to drink the water Jeff had put in front of me, never be able to put down the photograph but be doomed forever to sit in that chair and stare at the blight in my hand.

No matter how I’d found out about it, it would have bothered me, but like this? By accident?

Looking up, I was not surprised to see Jeff watching me closely.

“I didn’t know Cole was having a show.”

“A one man show,” he said clearly imparting the importance of it.

“Do you know anything about this photograph?” I asked, holding my breath after I’d released the words, watching Jeff’s face carefully.

“Nothing except how much attention he told me it’s getting.”

He meant it. I could tell there was nothing he wasn’t saying. No duplicity in his eyes. No looking away, no embarrassment, which there would have been if he had known.

“I would have thought your mom would have told you,” Jeff said.

“I think she tried. A couple of months ago she started to tell me that something terrific had happened for Cole but I didn’t ask and she didn’t pursue it.”

Jeff shook his head. “Neither of you has ever asked me to get involved. But I think it stinks. After how close we all were. After how much the two of you mattered to each other. That you can’t work it out doesn’t make sense.”

“Cole’s never asked because he knows what a shit he is and doesn’t care. And I care too much to want to have anything to do with him anymore or to put you in the middle of it.”

“It eats him up inside,” Jeff said.

“Really?” my voice was as arched as my eyebrows.

“Really. Does that surprise you?”

“Most of what Cole does surprises me.”

“Isn’t there any way for you two to work out whatever it is?”

“Maybe a long time ago but…” I had to force myself not to look down at the invitation again but instead keep my eyes on Jeff. “Not anymore. So.” I took a long drink of the fizzy water. “Let’s not do this, okay?”

“When
was
the last time you talked to him?”

I shrugged. “Before Joshua died. He’s called since. I’ve erased his messages without listening to them.”

“Why won’t you hear him out?”

“Because the only thing that would matter to me is the one thing he won’t do. If he did it would interfere with his plans.”

“I don’t understand that,” Jeff was clearly confused.

“I know. But I can’t explain. Don’t want to, really. It’s the past. Or at least it was the past…” I couldn’t help it. I did looked at the invitation again. Quickly. Then I forced my eyes away. I didn’t want to go backwards. Didn’t want to deal with my stepbrother. It was too complicated. Too embarrassing. It had meant too much. To me. But clearly not to him. Never to him.

Cole was on a one-way track to Cole’s success and nothing was going to get in his way. He had been devoted to his career to the exclusion of anything else as long as I’d known him, even if I didn’t always realize it. And I couldn’t imagine anything that would change the single-mindedness of his determination. I knew about wanting success but I didn’t understand how it could be more important than the people you cared about. He’d tried to explain it to me a long time ago, in different ways. None of them had been sufficient to clarify how he could be so insensitive. Bullshit. He knew what he’d done was wrong, and how to right it but to do so would have derailed his plans. And there were plans. There have always been plans.

Cole, at this point, was 29 and one of the bad boys of photography. Sexy, clever, talented, and pushing every edge. His heroes were Robert Maplethorpe and Helmut Newton. His shots were sexual and progressive. Angry and beautiful. They made viewers uncomfortable, which made them think his work was important. Was it? I was too close to it to know. But Cole was getting attention and press at a time when most people felt everything had been done already. He specialized in photographing private moments in a way that made viewers feel as if they were intruding in someone’s life – stepping into a room where they were not invited and witnessing an act that was not for public consumption. And that was exactly what Cole did. He took your emotions, your longings, your wants, your passions, and he exposed them with a click of a camera. He recorded fragments of your soul. And while he was doing it you didn’t even realize what you were giving away.

In several cultures, taking someone’s photograph is forbidden. The fear is that the camera steals your personal essence, robbing you of part of your self.

Cole and his work are proof to me that the superstition is true to some extent. It does happen. And danger can follow when that part of you is lost, even worse when it is given up to the public, allowing them to gape at an emotion you have never even seen on your own face.

In other times, in other cultures, Cole might be considered the devil.

“Marlowe, can’t you give him another chance? He’s not happy that the two of you are estranged.”

“I don’t believe you. He knows – he knew exactly what it would take to work things out with me. He chose to do the opposite. I’m sorry. I’m being cryptic. I don’t want to be but I don’t want to talk about this anymore. And please, don’t tell him I saw this. If you do, I’ll never talk to you again, either.”

“That’s a little melodramatic, isn’t it?”

“No. Considering the breach of trust involved, that’s the last thing it is.”

I couldn’t go
home. Not yet. If I did, I’d focus on Cole and his photographs and our estrangement and the upcoming show. So I went to Ephemera. Even though it wasn’t a day when I was expected, Grace was glad to see me.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Tell me.”

For a second I heard Joshua saying the same thing and that made me sadder than I’d have thought it would. “It’s nothing… No… it’s not. It’s about Cole.”

“Why don’t you tell me–”

“Grace, I love you. But no matter how many times you ask me, I’m not going to talk about it. Not with you or Jeff. It’s between me and Cole. I’d just gone through this conversation with him and I’m sick of it. I love you but I don’t want to hear about forgiveness and families right now.”

She looked at me with that sweet, concerned expression she gets when she senses that I’m upset, put her arm around me and let me into her office. Her touch started to work its magic and I felt the edge of my anxiety start to dissolve.

As soon as we were sitting on her couch, she pushed a dish of chocolate in my direction. Grace is a chocolate connoisseur. At least once a week, she rescues me from my office and we take a long walk to the City Bakery on 18th to imbibe their heady hot chocolate, made the French way – not with cocoa powder but with melted bittersweet chocolate mixed with milk, a secret recipe they won’t reveal. The bark she was offering, deep dark and shining, studded with fat almonds, came from an even more exclusive shop, Le Maison du Chocolate, which was on West 49th street, where everything cost so much it was a true extravagance. Impossible to resist, I broke off a piece, put it in my mouth and let it start to melt. And then I chewed. And then it was gone and I was sorry. I eyed the dish, almost took more, but managed to control myself. The stuff was addictive.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes. If only it was a real cure not a temporary distraction.”

“What happened?”

“Can I tell you the details later and leave it at the fact that I got yet more proof that I have a stepbrother who is a brilliant photographer and a very selfish prick? Okay?”

She didn’t want to, but she agreed, and we spent a half-hour talking and trying not to finish off the whole dish of chocolate but we failed.

When her client showed up, I returned to my office and sat down to work, buzzing from the caffeinated confection, trying not to let my anger bubble to the surface now that I was out of Grace’s calming presence.

The project I wanted to work on that day required a special rice paper, which I’d ordered, and since sitting still was proving an effort, I went into the back room where deliveries were unpacked to look for it.

Ripping open boxes and unwrapping the packages was therapy. I pulled at cardboard with my fingers, not caring if I broke nails or shredded skin. I picked out staples with my fingertips and tugged at tape that seemed cemented on. I went to work on box after box as if the thing I was searching for might actually be found there.

One box was full of velvet ribbons. About three dozen rolls in pastel colors that felt the way cotton candy tastes. Interrupting my search for the rice paper, I took each roll of ribbon out and put it on the unpacking table in the middle of the room. A tower of hues and tones. Baby blues the color of robins’ eggs, pinks the color of little girls’ ballerina skirts. Greens and yellows that looked like the fancy mints made with white chocolate that my mother bought every Easter and put in a bowl for guests after dinner.

The colors were like lullabyes, finishing off the job Grace had begun calming me.

I cut strips off of eight of them and laid them aside on the table as I continued to search through the boxes looking for the rice paper, which I finally found.

The paper and streamers of ribbon in hand, I went back to my office, more tranquil than I’d been after leaving Grace’s office. Much more so than after leaving Jeff’s.

I opened my door. The windowless room was waiting for me. Small. Cramped. Overflowing with half-finished projects and supplies. It didn’t matter. It was a space that was utterly without emotional connections to anyone or anything in my personal life, and I was free there to work without being bombarded by any of my ghosts. The dead ones, or the ones who were still living.

At 4 p.m.
, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day except for Grace’s chocolate, so I grabbed some money from my bag and went across the street to Dean & Deluca to get some coffee and an apple.

The store is a food museum with every item displayed as if it were a treasure. The fruit and vegetables stand in towering, glittering piles, everything bigger and better and more intensely colored than what you see at an ordinary supermarket. Strawberries the size of your fist. Carrots, thick and robust with deep green leafy stems - beautiful enough to be a bouquet. Giant artichokes from Israel that seem sculpted from jade, Meyer lemons all year long. Raspberries and blueberries that beg to be eaten straight out of their wooden crates. Fresh herbs and more choices of lettuce than you could try in a week, all sparkling with diamond droplets of water from the tiny automatic sprinklers that spray the produce every few hours.

Cases show off an extravagant array of cheeses, chocolates, and pastas as if they were expensive jewelry. The bakery offers more than fifty types of scones, muffins, croissants, and breads, and standing in front of its counters, the scent is so overwhelming you have to hold yourself back from reaching out and breaking off a heel of a three-foot baguette or ripping into a sourdough loaf.

There is something to lure even the most worn out foodie, from the glistening caviar and sushi to the opulence of thirty different kinds of honey, three dozen different salts, four dozen jams and jellies, and almost a hundred varieties of olive oil and vinegar.

Usually I wandered up and down the aisles, allowing myself to give in to the temptation of one treat: a portion of lobster saffron ravioli for dinner, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil infused with garlic along with one perfect head of butter lettuce, or a small sack of fleur de sel tied with a black ribbon.

But not that afternoon.

I grabbed one green apple and went straight to the counter at the front and got on line for coffee.