The Medium of Desire Read online

  “Can I get you a shot?” Paco asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  She made a resolution while she sucked on the lime: She would put up an impenetrable barrier between ever hooking up with Brett again. She’d burn the bridge and then there would be no going back to Artland with Mr. Free Spirited. She eyeballed Carol, just yapping it up with Brett, touching his arm when they talked, laughing at what wasn’t funny, fucking him with her eyes.

  Olivia had an epiphany. Destroying her relationship with Brett was going to be easy. All she had to do was push Carol and Brett together.

  Brett turned his back to Carol and Paco, the teeth of his full attention taking Olivia by the neck.

  “So this big art critic came by the studio yesterday.”

  Oh my God, what an ego. Was he about to launch into some self-important speech about how awesome he was?

  “Oh yea? How’d that go?”

  He shrugged.

  So smug, setting her expectations low so he could blow her away with how well it went. How awesome he was doing. How much more successful he was about to become. Couldn’t he see she was suffocating?

  “Hard to know. The review won’t come out for weeks. His articles are internationally syndicated. Salina says he’s kind of spooky though, that he’s destroyed careers. And I’ve heard stories.”

  Like you have anything to worry about.

  “Aw well, I hope he doesn’t write anything bad.”

  “I really don’t know what he’ll write and it’s got me—”

  “Brett, you know Carol is an engineer,” Olivia interjected.

  “Really,” he said, pausing for a moment. He clearly wasn’t finished talking about himself, but he took the cue with some guile. “That explains why you’re so weird. What kind of engineer?” Brett asked.

  “Fuck you,” Carol said, clearly insulted but not apt to miss an opportunity to talk about herself. “I’m an electrical engineer by trade, but I’m not working right now.”

  “Interesting. Who’s your favorite electrical engineer?”

  “Michael Faraday,” Carol replied without hesitation.

  “Oh no.”

  “You’re not a fan?”

  “I mean, I have no idea who that is, but I can’t believe you’re talking science at a bar. Do you have friends?

  “Michael Faraday was a revolutionary. His electromagnetic rotary engines provided the foundation for the practical use of electricity in technology. He ushered in the modern era,” Carol said.

  Olivia waited for Carol to turn nasty, but the conversation hit a pause.

  Olivia was annoyed by her feelings for the painter-playboy and his pseudo-philosophical conversations. She got off the barstool she’d been sitting on for the better part of an hour, and when her weight shifted to her feet she felt off balance. How much had she had to drink? Including the shots, five, maybe six drinks. She carefully edged her way across the bar, full attention fixed on walking with the appearance of sobriety.

  A sense of relief overcame her once she was at rest in a bathroom stall, pants around her ankles, staring down into the toilet bowl, chin in her hand in a moment of deep introspection. Only her thoughts were so fluid she couldn’t grasp onto anything tangible, like reaching into a mountain stream and hoping to catch a drink with splayed fingers. She sat there like this for some time, her eyes closed, until she heard her name called.

  “Olivia? Olivia?” Carol said.

  “Yes?” Olivia said, trying to sound alert.

  “I just wanted to check on you. Haven’t had too much to drink, have you?”

  “No,” Olivia said, trying to focus. “I was just finishing.” She stood, redressed herself and flushed the unused toilet for good show.

  Olivia walked past Carol to the sinks and started washing her hands.

  “So what’s your deal with the Brett guy? I know you both mentioned you’re taking his painting lessons, but what else? I mean, he’s really cute, and I think we’re hitting it off, but I don’t want to step on any toes if you’re interested in him,” Carol said.

  Of course he played down their relationship. Just as a player would.

  “Just art lessons. I guess we’re friends, too, or we wouldn’t be out drinking with him.”

  “So he’s fair game?” Carol asked.

  Olivia locked gazes with Carol in the mirror. “Play ball, sweetheart.”

  The girls walked back to the bar, where Carol vigorously reengaged Brett, and Olivia got back to drinking. Carol and Brett’s conversation was rapid fire, and more than once Brett tried to capture Olivia’s attention, but she stonewalled him, pretending to seem interested in the roiling UFC matches, one brutal contest after another, or struggling to find common ground with Paco. Paco was animated and ambitious, telling Olivia so passionately about his kebob stand, in love with the idea of his own freedom, of not being a servant to some privileged asshole. She’d certainly dealt with being a servant to her share of privileged assholes. She bought Paco a shot.

  “Hey are you guys going to buy one of those for me?” Brett asked, but Olivia laughed as she flashed two fingers to the bartender. Brett receded back into his conversation with Carol.

  If Olivia hadn’t been drunk before, she couldn’t see straight now. She kept catching herself gazing at Brett and Carol hitting off, until she locked eyes with Carol. Carol’s gaze burned a hole in Olivia, as she looked for final permission to take Brett home. Olivia winked at Carol, not knowing what more she wanted. Go screw him if you’re going to do it. Carol started whispering to Brett, and a few moments later Carol led him by the hand across the bar and the pair disappeared into the stairwell. It was apparent they were not going return.

  It was done.

  “I’m kind of surprised,” Paco said, having watched Brett and Carol leave without saying goodbye.

  “What? That they didn’t say goodbye?”

  “No, that you let them leave together. I thought you and Brett had a thing,” Paco said.

  “Why do you think? Did he tell you that?”

  “Of course he told me. Why did you pawn him off on your friend?”

  “Because he’s a player. I don’t know. I can’t manage boys,” Olivia said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I won’t have what I can’t manage,” Olivia said, standing, staggering through the back-emergency exit, fleeing down the stairs, swallowed by the jaws of the dark, sad, lonely night.

  Chapter 22

  Brett’s Hardee’s egg and cheese biscuit crumbled over his lips and down his grey t-shirt, the crumbs as dry as his sleep-deprived eyes. Even an atomic sandwich and supercharged glass of orange juice couldn’t soothe last night’s emotional hangover. Paco could soothe, but Paco was late, leaving him to battle his demons alone. He washed down a huge bite with orange juice, distracted by visions of the previous night, of Olivia avoiding him, pretending to not hear him. He must have done something to piss her off, but he didn’t know what he had done.

  He’d graciously accepted his consolation prize. My God, why had he taken Carol home with him? She’d been so annoying all night, so cynical and standoffish. But he’d gotten drunk and become helpless to refuse her.

  He had woken up feeling tingly until he saw not glorious Olivia lying next to him, but Carol. Why had he left Olivia at the bar with Paco? Why had he taken Carol home? He coughed, the stagnant taste of last night’s liquor mixing with a lingering hint of throw up. As if taking the wrong girl home wasn’t bad enough. The sticky sheets, clearly not recently washed, were sickening. He vomited a little in his mouth. Okay, okay. Let’s get some perspective. Maybe Carol wasn’t that bad, at least she was a character, but what irreparable damage had he done to his relationship with Olivia? Why had he hooked up with this girl when he was in love with another? He couldn’t justify it. Does anyone know why they do what they do? Maybe people are only semi-conscious, watching their lives play out like a movie, left to rationalize their motivations in hindsight.

  Paco finally s
trolled in.

  “Eating without me?”

  “You’re late,” Brett said.

  “We said ten, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you know I’m late if you don’t know what time it is?”

  “Because I’m here.”

  “Says the guy who refuses to wear a watch,” Paco said. “I’m going to grab some grub. You want anything? Coffee?”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “You look like you could use a coffee before we meet with the lawyer,” Paco said.

  “It’d probably help me focus,” Brett said, “but I don’t think it’d be worth the anxiety.”

  Paco ordered at the breakfast counter, chatting with the cashier, while Brett forced down the rest of his biscuit. Paco returned with a tray loaded down with a wrapped biscuit, a coffee, an orange juice, a water, and a Styrofoam box of biscuits and gravy. Paco put fork and knife to his biscuits and gravy.

  “Hungry?” Brett asked.

  “Big day,” Paco said, cramming his face with food. He twisted the lid off his water bottle and chugged. “McPherson’s going to tell us if we got all the licenses we need, when we can start business.”

  “When’s the cart coming in?”

  “Came in this morning,” Paco said, the fallout of a nuclear grin rippling across his face. “They called me soon as they opened this morning. Came in the night delivery. All we gotta do is sign a few papers, pay the balance, and it’s ours.”

  “Big day,” Brett said.

  “Huge day.” Paco moved his coffee into Brett’s space. Paco continued shoveling food into his mouth. “What happened between you and that Carol chick last night?” Paco asked. Then he whispered, “You hit that?”

  “Yes,” Brett groaned, immediately regretting having made the disclosure, looking around to make sure no one was listening.

  They weren’t.

  The restaurant was nearly empty, the front counter unmanned. A table of Guatemalan construction workers ate their breakfasts in silence. An old man sipped coffee, stretched out in what appeared to be his regular booth, a newspaper folded out before him. The old man had to be eavesdropping; he didn’t have anything else to do. But what harm could he be?

  “What are you so upset about? Couldn’t get your thingy to work?”

  “My thingy worked just fine,” Brett said. He dropped his forehead in his palm then looked up. “I wish my thingy hadn’t worked at all.”

  Paco broke into a toothy smile and shrugged.

  “Saying shit like that is bad juju, bro.”

  “Honestly, I’m pissed off at myself. I have these feelings for that Olivia girl, but she wasn’t feeling me and I drank too much and that other girl basically dragged me home. Now I’m nervous I blew it with her.”

  “Why are you calling her that Olivia girl? You talk about her all the time. We hung out last night. I know who she is,” Paco said.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to put as much emotional distance between us, so I can quit feeling so godawful.”

  “So if you like Olivia, why did you go off with Carol?”

  “Because Carol acted like she liked me, I guess,” Brett said.

  “But Olivia likes you, too.”

  “Did,” Brett said. “Did like me.”

  “She was talking like she likes you after you left with Carol,” Paco said.

  “What did she say?” Brett asked, a renewed interest in life returning to him.

  “I mean, I don’t know. She was pretty drunk, but she kept talking about how she won’t have what she can’t control or some shit like that,” Paco said.

  “I don’t understand. What can’t she control?” Brett asked.

  “She said something about you being a player, and that’s why she pawned Carol off on you,” Paco said. He sponged up the last remaining resin of gravy, neatly placing the lid back on the Styrofoam box, moving on to his egg sandwich.

  “I’m not a fucking player!” Brett screamed. The old man looked up from his newspaper. The Guatemalans continued eating, undisturbed.

  “That’s not what it looked like last night,” Paco said.

  “She set me up, though. That’s not fair.”

  “But if you’d do it last night right in right front of her, then what would you do when she isn’t around?” Paco asked.

  “Whose fucking side are you on anyway,” Brett said.

  “I’m on yours, bro,” Paco said, waving his sandwich around like it was a conductor’s baton. “Just trying to lend my perspective, not get you all riled up. Damn. Why do you always fall so hard?”

  He had fallen hard for Teresa, and maybe a few others before her, but Paco was making unfair characterizations. Paco hadn’t even met Olivia until last night, and last night was obviously different.

  “Damn, look at the time, cuz,” Paco said, holding up his watch for Brett to see. “Think we ought to roll?”

  “I don’t know if I can do the lawyer today.”

  “But Brett? Come on man. You bailed early last time. I don’t understand some of this McPherson business talk.”

  “I don’t understand anything.”

  “Come on, Brett. You went to college and stuff. You understand about business licenses and all that stuff.”

  “I’ve never had a license for anything in my life. I’ve never driven a car, um, legally driven. I pay an accountant to do my taxes. Salina handles my other business. All I do is paint. My whole life orbits around partying and painting. Everything else is a mystery.”

  “Yea, I guess so,” Paco said, his disappointment transparent. Brett wished he had more to offer. “Even if you don’t know anything about this stuff, I’d really like for you to be there.”

  He was such a dirt bag. How many people was he going to disappoint in twenty-four hours? He needed to snap his streak, but he shivered at the thought of spending an hour in McPherson’s office, sitting idly, lost in his own tormented thoughts, holding Paco’s hand while he filled out applications.

  “I just can’t do it, man. I can’t play start-up today. Not after last night.”

  “What the fuck, bro? I thought you were all in on this. I thought we were in this together. How do you expect me to make this happen all by myself?”

  How the hell was he supposed to know. His head was pounding so hard, it was difficult to think about much else. Maybe this start-up experiment, like many other experiments before it, would fail. How the hell did he know what was going to happen? He wasn’t a business man.

  Paco stood.

  “Let’s go,” Paco said.

  “I said I’m not going. Sorry.”

  “This is bullshit,” Paco screamed. He slammed his hands on the table. Heads turned. “This is such complete fucking bullshit. I quit my job to chase this thing, and now these licenses are holding up everything. I’m burning through the money you lent me. What am I going to do when it’s gone? What am I going to do?”

  Chapter 23

  Once Paco had finished scolding him, Brett returned to his studio. Salina had called and texted, nagging him for his next batch of paintings due to a collector in Alexandria: twelve paintings for twelve thousand dollars. Brett had already requested the deadline be pushed back twice. He wasn’t a vending machine. You couldn’t just feed him some change and expect an oil painting to pop out. He prepped brushes and placed tubes of assorted paint next to his pallet, but rather than paint, he grabbed a stack of recently arrived magazines and reclined on his sofa, waiting for inspiration to catch up to him.

  He flipped through pages, distracted, tossing one magazine after another aside. He squeezed his eyes tight and waited for a vision to startle him out of his lethargy. Many images came: a cardinal, wings spread, looking over its shoulder; a white, single-gear back-peddle brake bicycle leaned against an ivy wall next to an orange nine-foot surf board; a wolf sniffing at a fire, surrounded by hikers snoozing beneath a quarter moon and glassy-eyed stars; a young boy in t-shirt and shorts laying into his first bi
te of cheese pizza surrounded by cheering friends, ensconced by wall murals of the Italian Riviera and a litany of classic arcade games.

  None of these scenes roused Brett off the couch. He looked at the naked pallet lying on his table of interesting things, next to the tubes of paint with seals unbroken. He meditated about transformational works of art, the first pieces created by the Impressionists, hell, the first works birthed by the Renaissance masters, and how on their first display, the sensitive felt awe and the public panicked. Certainly, the artists hadn’t felt the same shock as the viewers, the work having no doubt been the result of a slow evolution of technique and gathering of skills, unmonitored by the public eye. Critics dismissed early Impressionist work. How had educated eyes steeped in the mythos not appreciated the beauty of Gaugin, Van Gogh and Monet? The most highly trained observers had failed to see the genius of the road that was paved before them. If the critics hadn’t recognized it, then how did anyone know, with authority, what art was? Expending energy for an objective that was anything less than greatness was pointless. But if achievement wasn’t objectively measurable, what was the point? Wouldn’t that reduce achievement to fame? Was fame reducible to the person, and the person reducible to the everyday?

  He imagined Olivia lying on a gilded white sand beach underneath a tangerine sun, ocean glowing blue-green with gentle falling waves. Lying there alone, his heart broken not to be lying next to her. Brainstorming ideas to garner her favor, he realized, for the first time, he knew shockingly little about her despite their encounters, despite having opened his life to her. He’d been like a butterfly beating its wings against a fan, baffled by the inexplicable force that powered the turbine, like an innocent, mindless creature who had never learned of electricity. Perhaps he’d been close a few times, but each time he’d been burned. He kept a Hindu proverb taped to his studio wall, along with pictures and other mementos for inspiration: He who has walked through the fire will not be burned by the sun. He’d been heartbroken before, but how much scarring did it take to become numb?