The Medium of Desire Read online

  Brett’s pallet lay fallow on the edge of his table of interesting things; he felt like a piece of shit. He wanted to work, but he couldn’t escape the seeming meaninglessness of it all. If he wrote that line in a novel, he laughed, some little critic would rip him apart, trying to inflate his own importance by putting down yet another struggling artist. He wouldn’t change the phrase. It was a cliché, but it captured the essence of how he felt. Clichés had currency because of their power of association, of common understanding. That’s why people used them. It was the artist’s duty to portray things anew. But what novelty was there for the artist to elicit when everything had already been expressed before? How do you sneak out of the theater of reality, stowaway on a spaceship to another world?

  He had to call Olivia. He had to call her even if it caused him permanent emotional damage. He searched his pockets, but his phone wasn’t there. With the feigned confidence of an expert tasked in defusing bombs, he stood on wobbly legs and peered over his table of interesting things, gripping the marred wood to steady himself. He scoured the room nauseously. Where was his phone? Had he taken it with him to Hardee’s? He thought of calling both places to ask but laughed at his own stupidity. He had probably left it at home. There was a payphone, however, a couple of blocks away, next to the craft beer bottling plant. If he could hold it together long enough to walk there.

  Chapter 24

  Surrounded by hummingbirds, snakes, bees, silver maple and elm trees, wild hibiscus, false indigo bush, exploding pollen, Olivia felt effervescent as she treaded lightly along the Buttermilk Trail. She had asked Kelly if there was any good hiking, which launched her into a passionate description of the trail. She warned Olivia not to hike it alone. Ignoring Kelly’s warning gave the afternoon an added dose of satisfaction. She couldn’t believe it had taken her a month in Richmond to find this place. She had added hiking to her rotation of how to best spend her time. How to spend time? The question hadn’t arisen before. She’d always been busy at school, joining clubs, working part-time jobs, running around with friends, studying late hours, working late hours. The question had always been where to find the time to spend, the where to spend it had always been a given, because after graduation, there had just been work. Just was such a derogatory word. Just working. Just an associate at the firm. Just just just. She hated it when someone described what she loved with the word just.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She wished she’d left the damn thing in the car. It wasn’t like she’d been receiving tons of calls since she’d been in Richmond. She had, however, been receiving unremitting calls from one individual in particular, and when she held the phone to her face, she saw his name again: “Brett Bale Calling.”

  He hadn’t necessarily been overdoing it. He had called her once a day for the last five days since they last saw each other at Postbellum, since he had left her in the lurch at the bar, all too eager to get home with Carol and sex each other up. Gross, she reprimanded herself, trying to push away thoughts of the pair sweaty and naked, grinding on each other, emitting soft moans. Why did he think she would talk to him? The vibrating ended. “Missed call.” She had plenty of other things to do than deal with guys who couldn’t keep their dick in their pants. She crested at the trailhead, a mere hundred yards from her car. What would she do next? Her parents were out of town at some philosophy conference for her father. She hadn’t the patience for the club, and it was too early to start drinking. She had an unquenchable desire to paint. She had begun her relationship with Brett ostensibly as his art student, and if she was honest with herself, hadn’t she been the one to kiss him? How stupid she must have been, to build up a whole counter-rational analysis of their relationship. He was an artist. Of course he had his women, it came with the territory. She had fallen for his occupation, for his freedom, for his ability to live full-throttle while maintaining a certain sensitivity to, well, everything.

  She had made two friends since she had been in Richmond and currently wasn’t on speaking terms with either of them. Carol had called her a bunch since the other night, too, but how could she be around Carol? Rather than getting filled in on all the naughty details, she would rather pretend, to the best of her ability, that nothing had happened. If she wanted something to do, if she really wanted to paint, then she should call Brett. He knew what he was doing, at least with a brush, and she could paint better with him in her ear than she could paint alone. If she was being completely honest with herself, she might not chance taking another lesson with Brett for fear of having her feelings hurt, for fear of feeling inadequate. But after five days of self-imposed seclusion, she was bored, and had concluded that she’d rather make mistakes than never take risks. She raised her phone, clicked Brett’s number, waiting patiently while it rang.

  Olivia had mixed feelings when she arrived outside of Brett’s warehouse studio. On the one hand, she was glad to be there and excited about the prospect of making something pretty, but on the other hand, she couldn’t lose the vision of him chasing a naked girl around the empty cans of paint, reminded of the night he took Carol home instead of staying to see what might have materialized with her.

  He answered the door with a dry brush in his hand and a pale and nervous look on his face. He excitedly invited her in, acting a bit twitchy.

  “How have you been?” Olivia asked.

  She hadn’t expected him to be so, different. He was lit up with emotion, and she hoped he would stop. He was making her introspective, making her devastatingly sensitive to how aware he was of the situation. Whatever that situation was.

  “I’ve been well,” Brett mustered. He led her to the nerve center of his studio, where they stood, in an awkward silence, examining the unintelligible shadows. If there’d been an opportunity for small talk, it had passed. It seemed like he wanted to say something, maybe something serious, something direct. Perhaps he hadn’t quite determined how to say it. Then again, given his fidgety movements, maybe it was a failure of courage.

  “What do you want to work on today?” Olivia asked.

  “Right,” Brett said, tracing his finger through the air. He led her to a canvas, its back to her. He stood on the viewing side and smiled. He waved her over. She came close to seeing the painting, but he stopped her.

  “I started this the day we went to the museum together, after you left. I painted most of it on the spot, and I’ve been finishing it slowly since.”

  She maneuvered around to get a look. One glimpse and her eyes began to mist. It was an oil-based image of her, pedaling a bicycle through the Fan, wearing her bluejean shorts, looking forward with all the calm of the beach in her smile and the hypnotizing depths of the ocean in her eyes, a romanticized beauty electrified by his sharp lines and contrasted by the serene hues of the row houses in the background, the sky a Mediterranean blue, as if he’d stolen the sea and suspended it in the air above her. A pair of birds flew overhead and craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the girl on the bike. He represented her as a studied, beautiful and carefree girl. He had seen her. She loved what he captured in equal part to what he revealed. She loved that girl and thought maybe he did, too.

  When she finally pulled her attention away, she realized he hadn’t been studying the painting with her; he’d been eyeing the genuine article. He had a hopeful look on his face, as if showing her the painting would help her understand. But she couldn’t be certain what he was trying to communicate. Maybe that he was falling in love with her? She was projecting, more likely. How could he love her when he’d been with that naked girl in his studio when they were supposed to have a lesson, when he’d slept with Carol, when he’d likely been with countless other girls between now and then?

  “Maybe you’re curious why I painted you on the bike instead of somewhere more enchanting. I thought about painting you by the river surrounded by the sycamores and vines with the river flowing by while ducks fished, or on the street in Carytown with all the bright commercial signs, passing cars and mash of characte
rs, but I picked you on the bike to bring out your fullness and energy, to represent how,” he said, stopping himself in mid-thought, his idea fully expressed. He had telegraphed his thoughts. He had been pained by their separation; it had hurt him to be away from her, unable to get her on the phone, probably wondering whether they had spoken for the last time. He’d lost something over the last few days that he was desperately straining to find, and now he exposed his heart, hoping to recapture what he had let escape through his own negligence. Maybe the other girls were old habits? Maybe he could change. Maybe if she exposed herself like he had, if she let herself be vulnerable, things could work out. She needed to say something, to meet him out in the void, where he had wandered and clearly gotten lost.

  “When did you paint this?” she asked. She realized after she spoke that he’d already answered the question.

  “That day, after we went to the museum,” he said.

  “What else have you been painting?”

  Although they had been intermittently exchanging glances before, now he searched the shadows of his studio. Olivia walked to the place where he kept his fresh paint supplies, but when she faced the canvas, it was blank.

  “Is this where we’re painting today?” she asked. He scratched his neck and walked over to join her at the canvas, as if he didn’t know what she was looking at.

  His fingernails were clean, his arms unblemished from paint splotches, and his shirt unspoiled. He hadn’t been painting anything. Their silence had affected him, but how could she trust him? Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she could just take a chance, maybe for once she could trash her calculations, embrace the risk and see what fate had in store.

  “Do you want to mix your colors?” Brett asked.

  “What are we painting?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far. What would you like to paint?” he asked. Her eyes fell on the fortune-teller floating in the star encrusted heavens, transforming a deck of tarot cards into the ether. She looked into his piercing, almost onyx, eyes. He held her gaze.

  Without shifting, Olivia whispered, “I want to paint you.” Warmth crept to her cheeks, and she took a small step toward him.

  “Figures can be very difficult to paint,” he said, breaking their trance. “Anatomy, proportion, very difficult lines and perspective.”

  “Have you ever been painted before?” she asked, pretty sure she was no longer talking about painting.

  “Once,” he said.

  “How did it turn out?” she asked. Did he wince? She couldn’t be sure.

  “Not as well as I would have liked,” he said.

  “Would you let me try?” she asked.

  He tilted his head and scratched his neck. “Where do you want me?”

  “On the couch,” she said.

  He dropped on the couch with a suddenness that appeared to be an effort at comedy.

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Some aboriginals believe if you have your picture taken, you lose your soul.” He glanced at her, and she captured him once again, locking eyes.

  “I’m not taking your picture, though,” she said. She thought about sitting next to him. Instead, she climbed on him, pressing her lips against his. Settling on top of him, he did not resist. His hands caressed her back and massaged her neck. She had a lingering doubt that she was behaving badly. Her mind filled with red flags. But she was thinking too much.

  She raised her arms above her head. He lifted her shirt.

  Chapter 25

  Two days later, Brett and Olivia were putting the cap on a feverish painting session that lasted through the previous day and night and through the early hours of the following morning, pausing only to relight the torch, discussing Olivia’s form, feasting on Chinese delivery. Olivia had composed an inspired cityscape at night, glistening from a recent rain, faintly lit by street lights, a single pedestrian strolling down the sidewalk with hands shoved in pockets, shoulders arched, pensive.

  “Are you going to let me look at any of your paintings?” Olivia asked.

  “I never said you couldn’t?”

  “Are you serious? I’ve been itching to look. Let me see.”

  Olivia walked behind his table of interesting things and studied the drying canvases.

  There was a painting of the handsome young couple on the yacht with their bright smiles in frame, the boat slightly tilted as though they were at risk of falling off, but neither revealed the slightest degree of anxiety.

  There was a painting of an insurgent with a bandana-wrapped head, clutching a machine gun in one hand and a lit Molotov cocktail in the other, standing in what looked like a sandbag fortress surrounded by a landfill, the IED cocked back just before being heaved.

  There was a landscape dominated by a snow-whitened and stone boulder environment, at a place and time where the sun did not shine, a group of primordial humans thrusting spears into the chest and head of a giant mastodon, the beast rearing on its hind legs in a final act of defiance.

  There was a painting of an unpopulated, fog covered beach, lined with closed shops and a vacant street to the left and crashing surf to the right. A lemon and white striped cabana housed a solitary man in methyl blue Cabo square-cut swim trunks. He observed the crash and the rhythm of the surf, but the leash was still wrapped around his surfboard.

  In the final painting, a man ripped the cover off a clock to unpack a moment, like splitting an atom to create a nuclear reaction, all the raw energy spilling out of the frame.

  Above the clock was scrawled the word “moment” and the cosmic rays were labeled “variables.”

  “These are incredible, Brett.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He liked them pretty well, too.

  “I don’t want to break your artistic drive or anything, but what would you say we get out of here and get something to eat? Besides Chinese?”

  “I could do that,” Brett said. He had been holding his palette, and he started to lay it on the table, but he had some trouble putting it down. In that moment, he felt if he was never interrupted he would never have to stop.

  After painting nonstop for twenty-four hours, it felt good to finally take a break. At a picnic table in front of Lamplighter, he studied the freckles on her face, as countless as the birds in the sky. And just as with bird watching, a sense calm lifted him.

  “So how did you get into painting in the first place?” Olivia asked.

  Straining, Brett started to answer but remained mute.

  “Do either of your parents paint?”

  Brett swallowed, took a long swig of his Mexican Coke, and shook his head ‘no.’

  “Mom was an R.N. My Dad and I don’t really talk.”

  “What’s his story?” she asked, in a whisper.

  “He’s an accountant. He’s in town, actually, but he never really approved of my whole lifestyle. I probably haven’t talked to him in a couple of years.”

  “Do you have a better relationship with your Mom?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Olivia’s mouth contorted into an O, her face flush with anguish.

  “I’m sorry, Brett. I feel like I keep stepping on land mines.”

  “Don’t sweat it. It’s not a fresh wound.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She, um, she was a great lady, very socially conscious. She worked for the World Health Organization and would go on these mission trips to places that lacked proper medical care. She usually went somewhere in Africa, but on one occasion she went to Bosnia during the war. I guess she was only supposed to be in these green zones where there’s no fighting, but shit, she was in a warzone. I guess a gunfight broke out around the clinic where she was working. She didn’t make it.”

  “Brett, that’s terrible.”

  “Yea. Like I said, it was a long time ago, and I’ve still got Belinda and my friends.”

  Devouring the rest of his sandwich, he noticed Olivia hadn’t touched hers. “You want to get out of here?”

  Olivia look
ed down at her barely nibbled-on sandwich.

  “I mean, like after you finish eating.”

  “I think I’m good. Let’s go.”

  She took his hand as they walked, entering a protean moment, uncomfortable to be sure, but a moment where he could tell her anything. The kind of moment when two people really got to know one another. Now that he had told her the hard stuff, he wanted her to know the rest, to fill her in on every little quirk, meet his friends, divulge his schedule and his private logic. A young man ahead paddled sticks on an array of plastic buckets, the sound reverberating up the street, an upside-down hat laid in front of him filled with change and small denomination bills.

  “Do you want to meet some of my friends?” Brett asked her.

  “Definitely. When are you thinking?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Where do you guys get together?”

  “Just at parties, usually.”

  “When’s the next one?”

  “They happen kind of spontaneously. We aren’t exactly the kind to mail paper invites. We just sort of show up.”

  “How does one of these soirees get started?”

  “Like this,” Brett said. He dropped five-dollars into the street drummer’s hat.

  “Alright, man,” the drummer said, intensifying his set.

  “How much for you to come play for us the rest of the day? You know, at a party?”

  The drummer kept beating his buckets, but he slowed his pace and turned down the volume a marked degree. His eyes pored over them.

  “Two-fifty.”

  “How about a hundred?”

  “How long?”

  “Two, three hours tops.”

  The drummer quit playing.

  “Let me pack up my set.”

  Brett’s friends trickled into his studio, gradually at first, in ones and twos, until suddenly the place went bang. Brett set up the drummer, Mactavious, on the roof where he liked to entertain people when he was trying hard to impress.