With or Without You (14 page)

Ross fidgets with his tie. “We grew up across the street from each other. We’ve been best friends for, like, ever. We never fight. But we went balls to the wall over this.”

Mom comes back into the kitchen, triumphantly holding a wrinkled W-4. She looks surprised to see Ross and me talking. “You two know each other?”

I stand, letting Mom sit at the table. “Sort of.”

Mom hands Ross a pen and points out where he needs to start writing. “Well, good. You’ll be training Ross. He starts next week.”

I salute, give Ross a nod, and head to my bedroom. As I peel off my work clothes, my computer chimes. I have a new e-mail. From Davis:

Been talking with Sable. He’s awesome!! Living here at the RYC is great. Big things happening with Chasers. This is gonna be so cool.

I should be happy. Wasn’t that the plan? Help Davis fit in and make friends with the Chasers so I don’t feel like a shit for moving to California.

Then why does it sting to hear he doesn’t need my help? He’s already in.

Days pass and, quite conveniently, Shan and I continue to miss each other. She’s become a master of avoiding me, even when I’m deliberately trying to track her down. I’m tempted to confront her while she’s working, but I don’t think anything we have to say can be said at a regular decibel level. So I bide my time.

Late afternoon on Friday. I decide to quit moping. I grab my new easel, a small circular window, and my paints and head over to Bascom Hill on the UW campus. I lock up my bike near the Mosse Humanities Building. It looks like a concrete sugar cube with massive columns around the perimeter and a waterfall of short, wide stairs leading down from the doors. I make my way about halfway up the stairs and stop.

I unfurl Erik’s easel (which I now realize needs a
name equally as cool as THE CLAW) and position my window to face the building. That’s when I hear a click and a pop from behind me. I turn and Sable’s at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at me. His trench coat hangs loosely on his tall frame. He’s holding an old camera. It’s cumbersome, with a big silver dish on top, from which Sable ejects a flashbulb. As he climbs the stairs, Sable smacks his lips and yanks on a blue tab on the camera’s side. He draws out the picture he just took and hands it to me.

“Hey, guy,” he says with a sanguine smile. “Weird running into you here.”

He peels back a thin paper that covers the photo. There I am in black and white in the lower left corner of the picture. Taking up the majority of the shot is the Humanities Building behind me. There’s something about the angle and how the shadows fall that make the building look like a giant mouth: the pillars smooth, rounded fangs; the staircase a colossal, crenellated tongue. It’s about to eat me.

“Awesome shot,” I say, handing back the photo, but he waves at me:
Keep it
. I’m not sure if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, but he’s a hell of a photographer. “Kind of an old camera.”

He holds it proudly, smacking his lips again. His voice cracks; he’s parched. “Who needs this digital shit? Give
me film any day. And the older the camera, the better. I like the effect it has on the image.”

The pic in my hand is slightly distorted and grainy. There’s a dark halo around the outer rim, framing the picture as if seen through a monster’s eye.

“Well, you’ve really got a talent for this sort of thing.”

“Thanks. I won some awards,” he says. “I like to use lots of negative volume.” He points out the gaping empty space that dominates the photo. “That means the emptiness is your main target and all the objects around just give it shape.”

“Yeah, my sister’s a photographer.” I nod. “She says she likes to define what’s there by what isn’t.”

Sable nods, pulls a liter bottle of water from his pocket, and starts power-chugging. It’s a cool day but I notice for the first time that he’s sweating. And pale. Then Sable says, “So, we’re cool, right?”

“Huh?”

He takes out a cigarette and lights up. I don’t know why, but when he reached into his trench coat for the cigarette, I flashed back to my talk with Ross and half expected Sable to pull out a bottle of HIV meds.

“I was really proud of you the other night at the meeting,” he says, taking a deep drag. “You were the first one to step up to bat and try to get me to stop. You got guts, guy. I admire that. But I just wanna make sure you
weren’t all wigged out. You know I was just doing that to make a point, right? Hell, even Chinky Chinaman shook my hand.”

Great. Creepy
and
a racist.

“Little Dude thought you mighta freaked a bit.” Sable pinches the cigarette between his lips as he loads a new film cartridge. I don’t like the idea of Davis talking to Sable about me. I especially don’t like that he’s reporting on my mood.

I grab my palette and start to mix some color. I think about the e-mail from Davis. “Is that why I haven’t been invited to any meetings?”

Sable laughs. “We haven’t had any meetings yet, guy. I promise. Yeah, some of us just kinda got together. I’m new in town; guys were showing me around. As long as you say you’re still in, I’ll be sure you know about the next meeting. In fact, expect an e-mail soon.”

“Hey, there you are.”

We both turn to see Davis jogging up the stairs toward us. He holds out a small bag. “They didn’t have the flashbulbs you need at Walgreens. I had to get them from a specialty photo shop. They’re damned expensive. Hey, Ev.”

Hey, Ev? Hasn’t seen me for days and all I rate is “Hey, Ev.”

Sable tears into the package of flashbulbs. “They’re
classics, my friend. Sometimes you pay for the classics.”

Davis’s voice is all Boing. “Cicada’s teaching me about photography.”

And he’s calling him Cicada now? I was hoping the nicknames were a joke.

Davis continues. “Did you know that if you were to mix all your paints, you would get black? But if you mix all the colors of light, you get white?”

“Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.” Like fifth-grade science. Or maybe it was the time I tried to teach Davis to paint years ago. It’s hard to hear my own words taken seriously for a change, simply because they were spoken by Sable. Like somehow, when I said them, they didn’t matter.

As Sable fusses with the flashbulb package, Davis pulls me aside. “Ev, Cicada is so cool. If he’d been around when we were in school, nobody would have messed with us. He doesn’t take shit. He used to pound guys who called him ‘fag.’ I wish we’d been more like that.”

Yeah. “Cicada” doesn’t take shit. Being six foot four probably didn’t hurt either.

Davis studies the new easel. “Hey, what happened to THE CLAW?”

“Traded up,” I say, turning back to the pool of dark gray paint I’ve just mixed.

Sable jams a new flashbulb into his camera and squishes
Davis and me together. He hops back two steps and takes aim. Davis throws his arm across my shoulders and I try to smile as the bulb goes
pop!

Sometimes belonging sucks.

Negative volume consumes my life and I’m defined by what’s no longer there.

No Erik—he loads up on double shifts at the hospital to pay for the big move in August. Between his schedule and mine, our relationship is reduced to e-mail and quick phone calls.

No Shan—she trades shifts with Gina so we never work together. She even seems to know when I’m sitting at home waiting for her, and she makes herself scarce.

No Davis—our work schedules keep conflicting, and on those rare occasions when they don’t, I go to the RYC and Malaika informs me he’s out somewhere with Sable. The “regular” Chasers meetings Sable promised have yet to happen but the “unofficial” ones continue. I start to resent Davis. Has he even once said,
Hey, let’s invite Evan
? Doubtful.

With nothing else to do, I throw myself into Haring.
I trace the outlines of the paintings in library books with my fingers, trying to get a feel for what it’s like to be him. Try to see how he saw things.

Distillation. Reducing detailed images to outlines, the barest components needed to render it. Fusing individuality and community, creating a symbiosis so that each requires the other to survive. My dreams at night fill with recurring themes from his work: babies, couples, UFOs, people within people.

I’m almost ready to paint my Haring.

Just when I think I’ll really go crazy, Fourth of July weekend sneaks up and I get a call from Erik:
Clear your schedule, pack a bag, we’re going out of town.
I don’t ask any questions. I just get on the phone and start giving away my shifts at the store until the entire weekend is free. I tell Mom that Davis and I are going for a “presemester retreat” to the University of Chicago. She’s just glad I found someone to cover my shifts. I practically run with my duffel bag all the way to Erik’s apartment, where he’s waiting with the top down on his Jeep and soon we’re cruising east down I-94.

We step over each other, trying to catch up. He tells me about every drunk, pervert, and pregnant woman he’s treated at the hospital. I tell him that Keith Haring is officially the coolest person on the planet who isn’t my boyfriend. He talks about how close he is to finishing the
Angels
sculpture. I talk about how Shan has been avoiding me. It’s a rapport that’s taken a year to master, but it’s all so natural now as we fall into a cadence, both of us relaying all the vital information, both of us listening intently, both of us just eager for a weekend away.

“So,” I finally ask when we hit the Lake Mills city limit, “where are we going?”

He teases. “I’m not sure I want to tell you.”

“It’s a surprise?”

“Sort of.”

“Can I have a hint?”

“We’re going to Milwaukee to see Nolan and Anna. Grill some burgers. See some fireworks.”

We’ve spent time with Erik’s friends at their house on Lake Michigan before. But the fact that he’s being so secretive tells me there’s more.

“And?” I ask.

“And that’s all I’m saying.”

I shoot a gaze at the back of the Jeep. A big furry blanket tied down with bungee cords hides mystery cargo. Earlier, when I went to load my duffel bag into the back, Erik jumped to block me, took my bag, and gently tucked it behind the passenger seat. Mystery cargo is apparently not for my eyes. Yet.

“Does this have anything to do with the buried treasure?” I ask, thumbing toward the rear.

“By Jove!” He shouts, posher than posh. “The boy’s a genius!”

I’ve been to Milwaukee with Erik twice before, both times to visit his friends. Today, we’re nowhere we’ve been before. The streets are choked with cars and pedestrians, the buildings loom higher the deeper into the city we go. The smell of hops permeates the air.

“Okay,” I concede, “we’re in Milwaukee. What’s the secret?”

“Learn, you will,” his voice burbles in his Yoda impression. “Patience, young Jedi.”

A turn here, down a street, then down an alley. Five minutes later, we pull up to the curb and stop. The streets are nearly deserted here. The architecture of the dilapidated buildings feels old. But in the middle of all this, a small, very modern building of marble and glass and sinewy brass demands attention. The front has a half-moon steel awning around which, in long, thin letters, are the words FEDOROV ART GALLERY.

I start to unbuckle. Erik crawls over me and out my door, blocking my exit. He holds a single finger up and presses gently on the tip of my nose, as though he’s training a schnauzer. “Evan. Stay. Stay, Evan. Stay.”

I chomp playfully at the finger and he darts into the gallery. He returns a minute later with a small cart, nods at the back, and commands, “Help me.”

He removes the blanket and I freeze. Wrapped in foam and cushioned with bath towels and old coats are six small windows.
My
windows. These are the gifts I’ve given Erik over the past year. Birthday. Christmas. Valentine’s Day. “Just because” presents. Every one accounted for. Erik gently loads them on the cart.

“Erik, why are—”

“We need to work on your definition of ‘help me.’” He winces, loading a heavy oak-framed window on to the cart, completing the job himself. He pushes the cart toward the building, pausing only to call over his shoulder. “This’ll work a lot better if you actually come with me.”

Zap. I’m at his side, holding the door as he proceeds into the gallery. The reception area is small and very, very beige. The floor is mottled, the walls are two-tone, the desk is boxy and speckled, but it’s all beige. Against the far wall, I see Erik’s robot sculpture—
Some Assembly Requited.
A young woman, not much older than me, hangs up the phone and grins at Erik.

“Oxana’s on her way down,” she informs us.

Here’s where Evan goes berserk.

I should have recognized the name from the front. Oxana Fedorov is Erik’s friend who owns an art gallery.
This
art gallery. The one I’m standing in right now. “Friend” isn’t even right; she’s actually his godmother, an old college friend of Erik’s father.

And she’s a world-renowned art expert. Not Wisconsin renowned. Not United States renowned. I mean, people in places like Barcelona and Zurich pay her a bajillion dollars to fly to them and appraise work and give lectures and teach master classes. USDA Grade-A Prime renown. In short, someone I do
not
want looking at my work.

My breathing grows shallow and my extremities go numb. I want to claw at Erik’s arm and beg him to turn around and load the paintings back up into the Jeep. I don’t want my last thought to be,
So this is what a stroke feels like.

But a somber chime announces the opening of the nearby elevator and Oxana Fedorov, Art Goddess, emerges. She’s wearing a sleeveless ebony top with billowing milk-colored slacks that ripple as she moves toward us. Her dowel-like arms are folded in a self hug. Bright red-framed glasses hang from a sterling chain around her wrinkled neck.

Her pink lemonade lips part in a smile as she kisses Erik once on each cheek. I’ve only ever seen that in movies. Davis and I used to make fun of it, but suddenly it’s very, very cool.