Darla raised her eyebrows. “And I thought it was my sexual prowess.”
“That didn’t hurt.” I put my hand on her leg. “Thank you for agreeing to go to the museum with me.”
“Mario,” she said, repositioning her leg so I could no longer reach it. “I agreed because it’s the only way I can convince you to get help. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I stood. “I’m going to get dressed.”
“What about your food?”
“I don’t want you to be late to work.”
In the bedroom, I put on a black tee, my fedora, and the glasses I should wear but normally didn’t. Then I got the blindfold from our naughty drawer. An inkling of arousal skittered through me. I was still thinking about how warm and toned Darla’s thigh had felt.
When I returned to the kitchen, Darla dropped a half-eaten slice of toast on her plate.
“Wow,” she said. “What’s with the look?”
“You like?”
“I do.”
“Think it’ll get me past Vos security?”
“Do I even want to know why that would be an issue?”
“Probably not.”
###
We drove my old Camry, the same one I had dreamed fell off the pier. My glasses imparted crystal clarity: Darla’s curls tucked behind her tiny ear, her dimple, the shadow between her breasts. “Do you remember how we used to play hooky?” I asked.
She smiled. “We’d drive to the coast, and get a room where we could hear the water. Did we ever even make it to the beach?”
“No, we were distracted by the bed.”
“Those were the days.”
“It could be today,” I said.
“No, it can’t. I’m not that person anymore, flinging myself into sex to avoid getting high. You’re not the same person, either.”
“What about this weekend? We could take a trip, just the two of us.”
“The picnic is on Saturday.”
“So we go to the picnic, then go to the coast and…”
“Please, just stop.”
I pulled into the Vos underground parking garage. We were seven levels deep before I said anything. “What do you mean; I’m not the same person?”
Darla took a deep breath. “You’re strung out. You remind me of what it was like when I quit using, but you haven’t quit anything other than your job.”
“I quit dreaming.”
“And then there was last night,” she continued. “That stuff about the blank pictures was strange, and this idea that you’re what? An art prophet?”
I parked and cut the motor. Somewhere above us, tires squealed like an injured animal. “This really isn’t going how I’d hoped,” I admitted, pulling the blindfold from my pocket.
“Our sex blindfold?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to wear it and all our clothes stay on.”
“You’re trying to make me feel bad.”
“No, Darla, I’m not. You don’t want to have sex with a deadbeat. That’s fair.”
“That’s not why. I’m worried about you, and worry kills the spark.”
“So you keep saying.”
Her hand squeezed mine, but I didn’t respond. A car alarm went off, echoing a warning. Darla let go. I put my glasses in my shirt pocket. “You’re going to lead me into the visiting exhibit. Take a good look at the paintings before you tell me to take off the blindfold.”
“Fine,” she said, “But remember we have a deal.”
On the ground floor of the gallery, I tied the blindfold tight. Darla’s breast pressed against me when she took my arm. I shifted to avoid the false promise of intimacy.
“Turn here,” she directed.
“Is this the visiting exhibit?”
“Yes, and I have to say this is bizarre, even for you.”
“What color do you see?”
“Pink,” she said. “Hideous pink.”
I removed my blindfold. Hideous was a charitable description for Cloud Ninety-Nine (As Seen from Easy Street). Surreal Forest consisted of magenta cherry trees. Even Submissive Ocean featured an overblown pastel sky. I clasped my hands over Darla’s eyes, and watched the paintings. She squirmed, but I held her until the pictures went black.
“Stop!” Darla’s voice echoed.
I let go, hushing her. “Please, I don’t want to draw attention to myself.”
“Don’t ever grab me like that again.”
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Well, you did.”
I sank onto a bench in the center of the room.
“I’ve got to get to work,” Darla said. “I’m taking the Toyota.”
My head in my hands, I listened to the rapid tap-tap of her retreating footsteps.
###
The sound of people’s voices roused me. White-haired women and men leaning on canes milled about the gallery. Where they looked, color and form appeared. I put my glasses on and typed thoughts into a note-taking app on my phone.
PREMISE I: I can only see artwork in Vos when other people look at it.
PREMISE II: I can see my own artwork (unassisted).
PREMISE III: This is only happening to me.
CONCLUSION: ?
The group dispersed, leaving only a man wearing a three-piece suit and too much Old Spice. He looked at Submissive Ocean. It was more beautiful, and far less florid, when he looked at it than it had been when Darla did. I followed him to the next room. Still lives morphed into rich umber and shadowy green. Portraits of prim ladies appeared beneath his gaze. Bright landscapes were born, complete with fields and red barns. When he noticed me, I shifted my attention to a trio of elderly ladies discussing a Picasso.
“She’s so contorted,” said the woman nearest to me.
“Is she sitting on a chair?” another asked.
The third shrugged. “I can’t even tell which way she’s facing.”
Their words continued, but I ceased to hear them. Nor did I see the picture as a Cubist mélange of perspective. Instead, I saw three versions of Picasso’s creation, one per woman.
“I don’t get it,” the first woman brooded.
I grinned, because I did. After dozens of Saturday afternoons at the museum that left me awed but daunted, I finally understood. “Multiple viewpoints are necessary,” I said.
“Are you an art student?” she asked.
“Yes,” I conceded. “I guess that’s what I am.”
The trio abandoned Picasso. I stayed until the canvas blanked out, my eyes blurred with wonder. I wanted to touch the canvas, to feel what it was like when the picture was gone, but a guard stood nearby.
“Were you here yesterday?” he asked.
“Yesterday?” I repeated as I adjusted my glasses.
The guard narrowed his eyes, focusing on the spectacles. “My mistake, sir. You look a little like a man who was here yesterday.”
“No problem.” I tipped my hat, and then pretended to answer a text on my phone. I walked, keeping my face downturned until I rounded the corner.
I ended up in the contemporary art exhibit. The attention of school children roiled the artwork. Like the Picasso, these abstract paintings did not adhere to the concrete rules that applied to realism. Images swarmed in, one for each child who looked at the painting. I added a premise to my list:
PREMISE IV: Style affects how viewers respond to art, and vice versa.
The assault of shifting visuals made me queasy. I staggered to the exit, not even caring that I had to pass the souvenir shop. Exhaustion was a physical weight by the time I made it to the Oak Cabinet liquor store down the street from our apartment. When they rejected my card for insufficient funds, I used the joint card I had with Darla. It was a betrayal to use her money on vodka, but I needed sleep.
###
On Thursday, I woke on the couch with a dry mouth and a splitting headache. The sound of kids playing outside cleaved my mind. Memories nettled: drinking, fighting, Darla leavin
g.
Nausea.
I took the last pull of vodka.
The bottle didn’t make it back to the coffee table. It landed in an explosion of glass.
Oblivion.
###
Darla returned at half-past seven on Friday morning. My body ached from vomiting. Her expression hurt me more.
“We need to talk,” she said from just outside the bathroom door.
“Where were you last night?”
“Mario, you need help.”
“I just wanted to sleep.” I leaned against the wall next to the toilet. The room reeked of alcoholic sweat and bile.
“You were selfish to bring alcohol into my home.”
“You were a junkie, not a drunk.”
Darla wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t live like this. I have to ask you to leave.”
“And go where?”
“Todd and Jackie said you can stay with them.”
“You talked to our friends about dumping me before you told me?”
“No, Mario. I told you. You were just too drunk to hear.”
“This is how it ends? Two years, like that?” I snapped my fingers. The sound ricocheted from the porcelain. Darla flinched.
“This isn’t how I wanted things to be,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not. I love you. But I won’t watch you destroy yourself or risk my sobriety.”
I raised my hands up and swiped at the air. “Something amazing is happening, something bigger than us. I can see the essence of art as communication. Don’t leave before I understand how to share it.”
“I’m tired of being lonely together.”
“Lonely together,” I repeated, and struggled to stand.
Darla backed away from me. “You have until Monday to pack your things and go. Please don’t make me fight you.”
“You’re serious.”
“I’d never joke about this. Don’t call, don’t text. If you decide you want to get better, come to the picnic.”
“So I can have Levitan diagnose my malady.”
“It’s a chance to live.”
I crossed the narrow bathroom and closed the door on Darla. When I was sure she was gone, I took a long shower. Melancholy was thick steam clouding a poorly ventilated room.
For the rest of the morning, I battled nausea with dry toast and coffee. The Vos newsletter distracted me from my memories of the scene with Darla. A visiting artist was scheduled to spend the afternoon in the gallery, sketching and mingling with visitors. I dialed Darla, got her voicemail – a lie. She wouldn’t be getting back to me as soon as possible. Outside, a nasty, soaking rain fell. I put on my hat-and-glasses ‘disguise,’ tucked my sketchbook under my jacket, and left the apartment littered with the shards of bitter vodka and smashed love. I ran across the slick parking lot to my car. At least Darla had left that for me.
###
Of course, the Camry broke down at Fifth and Argonne Heights. I put the car in neutral, and got out to push. Elbows locked and muscles straining, I made it to the center of the intersection just in time to be in the way of cross traffic.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
A squeal of tires coincided with heavier rain drops breaking like eggs. My feet slid across the oil-slicked road. I was losing momentum, gasping, sweating. A few cars skimmed around me, their wheels hissing on the wet pavement. Another honked. Suddenly, the Camry shot forward. I lunged to grab the steering wheel and guide it onto the shoulder.
“Looked like you could use some help,” someone said.
I craned my neck, trotting. Two guys wearing Army uniforms were pushing the Camry. We glided it to the edge, easy as moving a Matchbox car. Rain glittered their insignia. I was the only one breathing hard.
“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“No problem, brother.”
“You have someone you can call?”
“Sure,” I said, thinking of Darla.
The Army guys exchanged a look. “Woman troubles?” one asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“She worth it?” the second asked.
I blinked, forgot to breathe. My answer surprised me. “I don’t know.”
The first guy spit brown tobacco juice. His partner slapped his hand on the roof of the car. “Salvage this, ditch the girl.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Anything else we can do here?”
“No. Thanks for helping.”
They went back to their Humvee and I started walking, shielding my sketchbook from the rain with my coat.
###
In the Vos entryway, a poster board announced this week’s visiting artist. The photograph of Sarah Noe, graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, revealed wide, brown eyes and a shock of black hair. A museum docent approached, eager to help. It was the same woman from my ill-fated visit to the Souvenir Shop. I faked a coughing fit, hid my face behind my arm, and hurried past her into the visiting gallery.
There was no one in the room, and the paintings were dormant. Sarah Noe wasn’t in the contemporary exhibit, either. I turned a corner into the solidity of eighteenth century still lives, and there she was.
An angel with a pixie cut, she sat at the end of a bench. She conceded a small, welcoming smile before shifting attention to her work. I wanted to swallow her whole, digest the miracle of her fixed stare. Instead, I took a place next to her and started drawing. Together, we created twin reflections of Melendez’s still life with figs. We caressed the sensual curves of the fruit; lovingly shaded the leavened bread; detailed the sweet-juiced slit of an opened fig. Sarah and I finished at the same time, a sort of sex/wine triumph.
I glanced at her. She laughed and said, “I never noticed how thoroughly sexual this painting is. Even the bread looks feminine.”
“Maybe it’s only erotic because we looked at it together.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
I closed my sketchbook, hiding the juicy fig.
“Don’t blush. I didn’t mind.” She extended her charcoal smudged hand. “I’m Sarah.”
“Mario.” I felt my blush deepen when we touched. We held hands a moment longer than necessary, grinning.
“Did you walk here?” she asked.
“My car broke down, and I wanted to see you.”
“Me?”
“I have a theory, and I hope it’s not crazy.”
“Your theory has my attention.” Sarah pushed the fringe of her bangs away from her eyes and leaned closer. “I’m interested in anything that causes a stranger to walk through a storm to talk to me.”
I lay my sketchbook on the bench and took a deep breath. “I can only see paintings when someone else is looking at them. If no one is there, they are completely black.”
“Go on.”
“Not crazy enough yet?”
“Strange, but not crazy.”
“I believe that art is communication, but it only works when there is a receiver. The painting is half of the conversation, and the audience is the other. How and why I intercept these communications is a mystery, but I wanted to know what would happen if I looked at the same time as someone else who was also focused.”
She toyed with the edge of her sketchbook, eyes downturned. When she raised her face to me, my breath stopped. “It was pretty hot when both of us were looking, right?”
“Yes,” I managed.
“Is it like that when you are, um, looking with other people?”
“It’s nothing like that was.”
She licked her lips, stretched her legs. Her eyes locked on mine and she said, “Can you see what you draw? Like, when we were sketching, could you see your own work?”
“I can see anything I draw in my, I don’t know, transcriber mode…”
“No.” She shook her head with enough emphasis it transferred to her body. “You’re not transcribing. It’s a vision, an oracular vision.”
“Darla w
ouldn’t agree.”
“Darla?”
“My girlfriend. Or she was. I don’t really know.”
Sarah sighed. “Of course you’re not single. No guy who rocks a fedora without looking like a douche would be.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“It was a compliment.” She sat up straight, withdrawing from me a bit. “What happens if I look at an abstract?”
“Want to try?” I asked.
“Well, I can’t keep looking at these figs without having filthy thoughts.”
We gathered up our materials and walked down the hall to contemporary. The security guard’s eyes traveled from Sarah’s face to her feet. “I think you have a fan,” I whispered.
“Too bad it’s not the one I want.”
The contemporary gallery was empty, except for one couple. They stood, arm in arm, staring at a painting. The canvas bloomed with pure and passionate red.
“What are you seeing?” Sarah asked, nudging me.
“Their lust.”
“Do you have any idea how fucking amazing this is?”
“Only because of you.” I touched her arm, and her body pressed against mine. My hand slid down her arm to her waist, and I pulled her closer.
“You!” someone shouted.
Sarah jerked away, startled. It was the security guard. With belated insight, I realized that he had probably paid me the extra attention due a competing suitor.
“I have to go,” I said. “Thank you for taking the time to look…for helping me.”
“Wait! How will I find you?”
The guard barreled into the room, distracting even the lovers in the far corner. I ran until I found myself in the art boutique district.
###
I entered a small, private gallery where I’d never managed to place a piece. A customer in a tailored suit contemplated a painting by Henri Benoît entitled Red, Encroaching on Understanding. For an instant, I saw the painting as it was created, a solid pane of vermillion next to an onyx vertical. Then the customer’s vision of the work took hold, and the cinnabar shaped itself into a woman with an obsidian backbone. I sketched the blazing woman. Her might conquered doubt, even in shaded pencil. The customer turned away from the painting. The huntress disappeared.
I left the shop too full of excitement to be fazed by the continued downpour. This journey had chosen me – I was sure of that now. All I had to do was give up everything.
###
A brilliant, clear Saturday followed Friday’s storms. The police phoned to tell me my abandoned car had been impounded, and if I did not claim it within thirty days, it would be sold. As I listened, I put the last of my things into a cardboard box. The apartment looked the same. It was Darla’s, had only ever been Darla’s.