The Medium of Desire Page 16

  “Why are you so unhappy, Kelly? Don’t tell me it’s because of me.”

  “How could I be happy with the daughter I’ve raised? You’re 26, you’ve been given all the opportunities in the world, and now you’re sponging off your father and me.”

  “Excuse me? I came to stay with you and Dad because I wanted to spend time with you. I haven’t asked you for a dime. Not a dime. You’re just projecting your own unhappiness on to me.”

  “What unhappiness is that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Where the hell is Dad? Why don’t you refocus some of your attention on him for a change? Maybe if you weren’t so unhappy in your own life you wouldn’t be taking out all this bitterness out on me.”

  Her mother started to cry.

  Olivia wasn’t falling for her pity trip. She walked upstairs, hurriedly gathering clothes and packing a bag. She dug around underneath the guest bed until she found another suitcase, and she filled that bag, too. Once she finished packing, she started for the car.

  Her mother stood blocking the stairs, arms crossed, staring at the plush green carpet.

  “I don’t want to see you end up unhappy,” her mother said, wearing a sad look Olivia interpreted as a calculated attempt to make Olivia self-conscious.

  “Then quit judging me.”

  “I’m not judging you, dear. It’s just … I know you’re seeing the artist, and it’s not that I think he’s a bad person. I just know what you are and what you aren’t capable of. I know what makes you happy. Your work, finance, makes you happy. Solving other people’s problems fulfills you. Smashing your way into the men’s-only club excites you. You’re in a critical time in your career, where you can either pick yourself up and start making something of yourself again, or falter and chase some art fantasy into the rabbit hole. Maybe it will work out for a while. But eventually you’re going to run out of savings. Eventually, the artist is going to run off with another girl. Eventually, you’re going to get your heart broken and be left with nothing.”

  “Fuck you,” Olivia said.

  “I can’t believe you’d talk to me that way.” Kelly said, her tears morphing into snot-dripping sobs.

  She didn’t want to talk to her mother that way. She thought about wrapping her arms around her mother and apologizing and promising she would get a new job or even take her up on the offer to teach at the university, and promise to slow things down with Brett, but her mother’s hysterics were too much to bear. There was a reason she called her Kelly instead of Mom. Olivia walked through the front door, glass screen door slamming shut behind her, as she hurried up the little worn brick path cut across the yard to her car.

  Sitting in her car, ignition started, Olivia’s phone rang. It was an unknown New York number. She silenced it. She didn’t have time to field a call from a stranger; it could jeopardize her getaway. The phone rang again. Who the hell was it?

  “Hello?”

  “Olivia Martin?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Anita Simmons, I work for your lawyer Mike Greys. I’m also an attorney with the firm. I have some news for you.”

  “Yes?” She doubted her useless lawyers had anything to tell her she cared to hear, but she kept listening.

  “One of your colleagues sued a few months ago to get out of his do-not-compete clause. The judge just voided the provision for being unconscionable because it was too restrictive.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “All the employment agreements at your firm are drawn from the same form. A New York judge just invalidated the do-not-compete, so it’s a reasonable legal conclusion that the do-not-compete clause in your agreement is also void.”

  “So you’re saying I can go back to work?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes. Anytime you want.”

  “That’s great news, but I’m going to have to call you back,” Olivia said. Anita tried to say something else, but Olivia hung up. There was nothing keeping her from leaving that night for San Francisco and starting back to work. The nightmare, that had started with Matthew Weiss, was over. But now she was trapped between love and the tectonic forces of her career and ability to support herself, her parents’ approval and her own long-coveted image of who she was molding herself to become. Painting was suddenly reduced from a passion she thought she could see herself practicing forever into a hobby she’d picked up to pass the time. But if painting had been only a pleasant distraction, then how did she feel about Brett?

  Chapter 29

  Brett painted the tiger’s fangs last, white ivory hulks leading the sculpted torso through a coat-and-tie crowd in a jungle of jutting towers of glass and steel, origami-like in their sharp angles. The humans who noticed the predator were alarmed, fleeing even; the others stood oblivious. One man, unruffled and indifferent, kept his eye trained on the tiger. That man was Jesus. This piece was the third of the final four remaining paintings he owed the Alexandria collector. He hoped to finish before Olivia returned from doing laundry at her mom’s. He surfed the internet, looking at a variety photos of rolling green hills tangled in grape vines and of images of the sky. He was captivated by nature’s oeuvre: clouds casting shadows over green fields and an occasional day-tripper dotting the landscape. The scene sparked an idea. He should whisk Olivia away to Charlottesville wine country. That would be the place to ask her to move in. Living together, he would always feel this wonderful.

  Olivia’s technique had really been coming along, and she was at a point where she could start helping him with some of the more routine tasks of painting portraits. If he leveraged her assistance, maybe he could attempt more ambitious projects. He’d have more time and energy, not having to mix his own paint or finish background scenery. He hadn’t bargained for a lover when he decided to take on an apprentice, but damn if Salina hadn’t been even more prescient than she could have known.

  He packaged his latest two paintings and determined to drop them off at Salina’s office before he expected Olivia back at the studio. He dreamt of this vineyard just outside of Charlottesville, beyond the outskirts of the tiny town of Crozet, a place tucked in between rolling hills and country estates, a polo field and the distant shadows of the looming Blue Ridge Mountains. He’d gotten drunk more than a few times in the elegant vineyards and nameless bars. Out in all that empty space it was difficult to get punishably rowdy, loving the thought of a good time without repercussions. Once the vineyard closed, he could take her to an intimate dinner at one of the restaurants in Crozet, then for a drink on the Corner, mingling with the stargazed college kids of summer, bursting in and out of bars. He considered booking a room but liked the spontaneity of no reservations.

  He savored the fantasy until his Uber arrived. He loaded the two boxed paintings into the trunk. He asked the driver take the scenic route through the city to see his people, real people: wage-makers and drifters, those whiling and waiting for busses, along the rows of shops on Broad Street. His driver inched forward, stopped by a red light nearly every block. It gave Brett time to study the bright signs and cackling heads. When he told Olivia about the Charlottesville plan, she would ask why he was breaking his personal prohibition against leaving town, but he would tell her that going to Charlottesville wasn’t really leaving town. Since it was only an hour away, they wouldn’t really be going anywhere at all.

  When the driver pulled up to the James Center, Brett offered the man a few extra dollars, which was eagerly accepted, to help carry the paintings upstairs. They talked on the way up. Arnold was a semi-pro boxer from Chesapeake. Brett could picture the man in the ring, sinewy biceps, beads of sweat clinging to his bristling, buzzed hair. The man’s nose was distinctive, knotty, most likely from a deviated septum. He wasn’t any stranger to a bare knuckle right hook to the face. Outside Salina’s office, Brett pushed the door open into the reception without a knock. Salina kept a stable of rotating interns to work reception; he was met by a new face every time he dropped by.

  “May I help you?”
the girl asked with a clipped tone. She had a bullring through her nose, cat-eye glasses, and a red tattoo spreading up her neck like a rash. He immediately took a liking to her.

  “Is Salina in? I came to drop off these paintings.”

  “Was she expecting you?” the girl asked.

  “No,” Brett said. The girl didn’t warm on the receipt of that information.

  “She doesn’t accept visitors without appointments.”

  “She’s not expecting me, but she’s expecting these paintings. I just came by to drop them off, thought I’d say hi while I’m here.”

  The intern looked doubtful. Brett felt a tug to explain that he was an established artist and a long-term client of Salina’s, but the urge quickly passed as his mind flooded with thoughts of his escape with Olivia. Brett placed the painting in an empty corner and suggested Arnold do the same.

  “Just tell her Brett Bale dropped these off and ask her to call me when she gets in. Okay?”

  “You’re, wait. You’re Brett Bale?” the intern asked, nervously tugging on her bullring, eyes widened, obscuring her purple eyeliner.

  “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Brett said. Admiration spilled over the girl’s face, and he pushed Arnold out into the hallway before she had an opportunity to do something rash, like ask if they could take a selfie together.

  “What was that place?” Arnold asked.

  “That was my art broker’s office.”

  “Why is she so weird?”

  “That wasn’t my broker; that was her assistant,” Brett said.

  Arnold paused. “I get it. Sort of a sports agent, but for painting.”

  “I would think it would be something like that.”

  “Do you think she does sports, too?”

  Salina was known to confuse football and baseball, and had, at a baseball game on one occasion, yelled touchdown after the short stop drilled a homerun. Brett patted Arnold on the shoulder. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”

  Brett got dropped off at his apartment, and immediately started packing for his impromptu getaway. He looked through his closet and underneath his bed, before remembering he’d shoved his canvas duffle bag in an odd little cranny above his closet. When he pulled it out, the white canvas was covered in a thick dust that rubbed off onto his hands. He emptied what few contents were in it: some sketching pencils and a pad, loose coins, an expired condom, a postcard from a hotel in Athens, Georgia, and a hairbrush he had no idea he owned. He never brushed his hair.

  In just a couple of hours, Olivia would be running her fingers through his hair as they laid on a blanket in a field off to themselves, sipping wine and laughing at everything and nothing, feeding each other grapes and brie and fretting over where they’d stay the night. Once he got her anxious about where they’d sleep, he’d make the big ask: Come live with me. The next level in the game of adulthood. He imagined blades of grass sticking gently into his ribs from underneath the blanket, the birds aflutter in the sky, the chorus of drunken laughter in the distance. It made him want to paint a street mural on a heavily trafficked avenue, where he could showcase this shade of happiness. He threw a pair of socks into his bag and zipped it up.

  Brett was packed and waiting eagerly when Olivia finally returned. The timing was perfect. She arrived packed and ready to go, and it wasn’t like she had a job to go to tomorrow. She had no reason to say no.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I have an idea,” Brett said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go to Charlottesville for the day. I know this vineyard we could visit. It’s beautiful, and the wine’s great.”

  Her face twisted in perplexity. “I thought you never left town? I thought that was your thing?”

  “Charlottesville isn’t really leaving town; it’s just an hour away.” He was pleased he’d prepared this little remark, and doubly pleased he got to use it.

  But she craned her head sideways, not letting his logical slip slide. He’d never told anyone about getting shanghaied in Barcelona, waking up with his hair soaked in blood, crawling down an alleyway and finally falling unconscious on the street. He woke up days later in a hospital, alone. The bracelet attached to his wrist gave him an identifying number because he’d been completely stripped of any other indicia of identification. On regaining consciousness, he explained who he was to a relieved nurse, along with the events that transpired leading to his assault, perhaps omitting a few details which cast his own secret habit of that era in an unfavorable and likely illegal light. Belinda came as soon as she heard, accompanying him on the flight home. She swore never to speak of the incident to anyone. After returning home, he swore to himself never to seek out hard drugs again. He also swore that he would never again leave the warm bosom of Richmond.

  “I don’t like wasting time going back and forth, but we don’t have country like this in Richmond.”

  She nodded her head. “Okay. Okay. How are we going to get back? I assume we need to take my car?”

  He discounted the slight annoyance in her voice.

  “I thought we’d stay the night,” Brett said. He scooted to the sofa’s edge, giving her room to join, but she walked to the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

  “It’s been kind of a long day for me,” she said.

  “It’s not even one,” he replied.

  “I know, I know. I just don’t feel like going out of town.”

  “You’ve got your bag packed,” he said, hoping she’d see the opportunity in the idea.

  “I’m not mentally prepared,” she said.

  She had her hair in a ponytail, and she did a thing where she tightened the band and tugged on her hair. He had never noticed before, but now it made him really uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t she want to go?

  “Okay, well we’ve got the whole day. How would you like to spend it?”

  She looked absently around the apartment, and he feared she’d picked up some lingering sadness in the few short hours they’d been apart. He waited for her to reply, but she was lost somewhere else, beyond the walls of his apartment. He needed to do something to jar her out of this rut. He needed an audible.

  “We don’t have to leave Richmond. There’s actually a wine bar, Secco, that had a soft opening earlier a while back. Want to go there for a drink?” Brett asked. He wished he knew what the hell was going on with her. What had caused her funk? Had he done something wrong? He decided to double down on Secco. He felt confident if he could get a couple of drinks in her, then she would soften up and they could start having fun. Once they were having fun, he could ask her to move in.

  She walked over to the large Palladian window, which he counted among his favorite features of the apartment, and stared down onto the street. Was she thinking about Secco, or had she even heard what he said? He’d never seen her so distant and while part of him wanted to just pick up her slack with his enthusiasm, he was taken by the idea that the smart play was to let her have her awkward moment, and maybe he could help shake her out of it if he was happy and fun and patient and didn’t overdo it.

  He let her be, sympathetic to the fact that everyone gets down from time to time, resisting the curious urge to ask if anything had happened between her and her parents. His gut told him to be patient, to let her open up in her own good time.

  “Can I get you a drink … water, seltzer, a beer? We can stay in. Whatever you need.”

  “The wine place is close?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s in the Fan. Like a 10-minute walk,” he said.

  “Do they have food?”

  “I think so,” he said. “I think they have to, to serve wine.”

  “Breweries don’t sell food,” she said.

  He was no legal scholar. “I think they’ll have food,” he said, not really knowing.

  He offered to help her bring her bags upstairs, but she insisted her stuff could wait. They started out on the street. Even though it was a muggy ninety degrees, she wore a long-sleeve
shirt, her hands stuffed in her pockets. He would have liked to have held one of them. He thought about wrapping an arm around her, but he could see her wheels turning. He could almost hear the gears groaning, the aim of their effort undetermined.

  “Is this the place?” Olivia asked.

  It was. Brett had become so enamored with his own thoughts that he’d failed to initiate a conversation along the walk. He reevaluated Olivia’s mood as she passed the patio and through the front door. The interior of the restaurant was devoid of furniture save for the two stools parked in front of a copper bar. There were a few choice bottles of wine on a large floor-to-ceiling shelf. The whole place smelled of fresh plaster. A lanky restaurateur with a head of thick cashmere hair appeared from the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, but we aren’t open,” the man said.

  “What time do you open?”

  “Not for a couple of months,” the man said, glancing around the restaurant in its incomplete state, as if as much should be obvious.

  “I was here just a couple of weeks ago,” Brett said.

  The restauranteur leaned against the bar and kind of fondled the only beer tap in the place. His cashmere hair was thicker than Brett’s imagination. Brett made an artistic note of that hair, a detail he might profit from later.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Olivia asked.

  She asked so helplessly. Like the restaurant being unopen presented an emergency of sorts, as if restaurants on the always bustling Robinson Street were in short supply. Despite the restaurateur’s mild indignation that they were trespassing in his cozy, unopen restaurant, Olivia took a seat on one of the two bar stools and laid her forehead down in her arms.

  The restaurateur shot Brett a queer glance, and Brett looked back at him, in all sincerity, like I have no idea, but it wasn’t me. At least he didn’t think it was him. The restaurateur looked around, as if to ensure the three were alone. Satisfied, he waved Brett over to the other available barstool.