The Medium of Desire Read online

  Brett had never been to the Cardinal Club, had never had a fancy to go to the Cardinal Club, but now he was inside the gilded walls of the bourgeois stronghold and it smelled like lavender. Crisp vacuum lines in the carpet, like directional arrows, pointed them towards an interior pro shop, and given that it was the antithesis of Deep Dive, a whiplash of cultural contrast, he wasn’t surprised that he was glad to be there.

  Carol procured a couple of buckets of golf balls, and they walked passed the pool, leaving the clubhouse cavorters behind, walking out to the driving range, where a handful of men dressed in plaid and effeminate pastels swung at golf balls. Carol poured the balls into a tray attached to an AstroTurf box. Brett leaned the golf bag against a stand and kept his doubts to himself. He’d never held a golf club, never connected with a golf ball after coming out of a backswing. What he’d seen of it on television looked easy, but people always talked about how hard it was, how bad their golf scores were. People spent a lifetime practicing what they never perfected.

  Golf was like art in that way, only the struggle for art left a record. Perhaps art was even more materialistic, in its vain effort to produce something, rather than enjoying the charms of just being as time faded away.

  Carol took one of the irons and started connecting with the balls, hitting every other one straight and far. Brett took one of the clubs, raked a ball onto the fraudulent grass, and took a big hack at it. The ball slid off the carpet and rolled a few yards before coming to a rest, not even traveling from the rough grass to the manicured green. He took another swing and missed entirely. He was doubly ashamed to be making a fool of himself and leading people to believe he was mocking their sport of choice.

  “Spend a lot of time on the links?” Carol asked.

  Brett didn’t respond.

  “Want me to show you?” she asked.

  Brett winced. Not really, but Carol was already behind him, wrapping her arms around him, interlacing her fingers into his own.

  “Bend your knees. Grip the club like this,” she said. She showed him how to link his little finger through his index finger. “Keep your left elbow straight, and focus on the ball. Don’t worry about where it’s going, just focus on hitting it square.” She pulled back on his arms. He torqued into a back swing, followed through and struck the ball. He hit it square, and when he looked up he saw the ball sailing. It bounced just past the 125-yard flag.

  “Nice shot!” She released him, returning to her practice box.

  That felt damn good. He raked another ball onto the carpet and sent it sailing. Then another. And another. This was therapeutic. He liked standing on the turf, his only worry concentrating on striking the little white pebble as far away as possible. As much as he had held golf courses and country clubs in utter contempt, he actually regretted hitting his last golf ball.

  “What did you think?”

  “Two more buckets?” Brett asked.

  “That much, huh?” Carol giggled. “Let’s do something else before sunset.”

  “Like what?” Brett asked. Carol shouldered the golf bag and they started towards the parking lot.

  “Let’s get some beers and go to the river.”

  “I’m not going to say no.”

  They picked up beers and drove to Texas Beach. Carol wrapped her arm in Brett’s as they started down the trail, hiking to the river, surrounded by green-leafed trees, mysterious rustling along the forest floor, chirping, distant chortling, his heart bumping.

  They descended the trail, across the garish bridge over railroad cars loaded with coal, the dirty hated rock, the fuel of civilization, down cement stairs and through more thick forest and finally over a sandy path, where sunbathers and grizzly-faced hikers passed each other in single file lines; dogs lapping thirstily, begging to be taken home. Carol led Brett to a shaded beach with only a few other people around, hip girls in one-piece bathing suits, an old man covered in Orvis, wading in waist-high water casting away from river grass.

  Carol lay on her back, all limbs stretched, grinning wickedly with that trust-fund abandon of hers: no present, no future, and no problems because her tab had been settled by someone else long ago. Perhaps she always felt how he felt when he was stretching a clean canvas. He popped a beer and dropped down beside her. She rolled over, stealing a sip of his beer, then rolling to her back, his beer still in her hand. He popped the lid on another beer, gazing up at the foliage-obscured sky. Carol was the embodiment of antagonism, but she was original. Maybe he would rather have a girl with an odd outlook than a girl who was perfect save for her savage neuroses. God knows what went through Olivia’s head, why she did or didn’t, acting on motives alien even to herself. How could he live with someone who had no idea what she wanted?

  A chorus of voices became audible in the distance, growing louder until their once quiet beach flooded with vaguely familiar teenagers, brandishing stolen alcohol from parents’ liquor cabinets, squealing with freedom. They gathered wood in a pile, doused it with lighter fluid, sparking a blaze, a dazzling display of reckless abandon. Billowing weed smoke mixed with a wet wood fire, drifting past. Brett and Carol’s beers emptied quickly. Had a few gone missing in the chaos? Shifting his glances between the fire and the faces, he contemplated sentience and the burning force of the world.

  “Should we get more beers?” Brett asked. “Oh wait, shit, do you have somewhere to be?”

  “I don’t work on Sunday. Or anytime, for that matter. What about you?”

  “I don’t work on deadlines, so time’s only relevant to me on birthdays and holidays.”

  “What about doctor’s appointments?”

  “Don’t need them.”

  “What about dates?”

  “They happen spontaneously.”

  “Is this spontaneous enough for you?” Carol asked. She didn’t wait for an answer but leaned in and kissed him, her acid lips peeling away his inhibitions. He instinctively leaned away, but didn’t disengage her lips, and in a reversal, rolled on top of her, letting his weight bear down on her. Her hand found its way up his shorts. Strangers hovered all-around them. He rolled over, pulling her on top of him. Fire christened the air when the kids poured gasoline on the naked flame and ashes crackled into the empty sky.

  Chapter 32

  After a couple of days of heavy drinking and fierce lovemaking, days corrupted by debauchery and vice, secrets squealed and souls exposed, Brett and Carol lay around her townhouse while she read dime store novels without makeup, her unhygienic breath made agreeable only by the strength of her coffee, leaving Brett to forage for something suitable to read among shelves filled with volumes of dog-eared paperback romances and a conspicuous absence of television. They had made love in every conceivable position, and now that their quest for total mutual physical exploration was complete, they were gradually settling in to a less exhausting routine.

  She filled the air with insights into wage slavery, how the masses had been fed a false promise and, like sheep, would forever search for a pasture that would never exist, and while there would be talk of cutting, blasting and seizing paths to utopia, society’s puppet masters would see to it that there was never anything more than talk. The struggle wasn’t just to prevent the widespread dissemination of material wealth; it was to perpetuate the power of the elite. The great hoodwink was that everything was nothing, so we named a lot of nothing to make everything so complex and trick them into thinking there’s actually something. She was so damn vitriolic, and the structure of her arguments were always shapeshifting from negligent to barbaric to regicidal. The lust that flared in her eyes when she lectured made him question whether the brutality she fantasized about in the name of world order wasn’t really motivated by a more primitive impulse, namely her own personal entertainment.

  Following what must have been a two-hour lecture on the manufacture of morality, Brett’s mind turned to painting and catching up with Salina, matters he had neglected over the past couple of days. He excused himself from the conversa
tion and took an Uber to his studio. On the way, he checked all the texts from Salina that he’d not answered, ranging from friendly anecdotes to downright hostility. Five stars for the quiet Uber driver, and he was back standing in front of his easel, dry paintbrush in limp wrist.

  What was the fundamental artistic principle? What kept creatives returning to their medium with something to represent, something to create anew for the first time? Was there truly anything new under the sun? King Solomon couldn’t have predicted the emergence of the iPhone, much like many of Brett’s contemporaries couldn’t comprehend the blood of Christ.

  Brett strained to summon something inspired, for a combination of objects and beings yet unseen, prophecies unrevealed, images never before represented on a canvas, suspended in a furious struggle of romance and war, tantalizingly just beyond the grasp of a holy unity. He racked his brain and smoked cigarettes while trying to stir his heart, but he saw nothing.

  He felt nothing.

  A rotten orange sat on top of a large coffee table book of Van Gogh paintings. Its brown blemishes roughly resembled a representation of North and South America. He put the orange on a small table and began painting it, painting it as though it were a globe, the world writ large in everything regardless of how small and perishable, everything standing in as a representative of the other, brothers locked in a civil war, ripped apart by the conflict of desires sourced from the most mysterious wellspring, a tale of inexplicable origins comprehensible in only the most general terms of life and death. He painted the orange dutifully, refusing to manipulate the blemishes to heighten the suggestion of the globe, but painting it as it was, ordered but imperfect, straining to imbue the piece of fruit with meaning.

  Once the composition of the orange was complete, he painted a fiery red tulip, which he embellished to give just the slightest suggestion it wasn’t a flower but a flame, burning matter into the artistic void, ashes clinging to the air like the powder of extraordinary events caught in the cycle of ordinary time.

  He painted a few more of these simple, uninspired paintings, their only flare derived from the possibility of being something else. These works were unimaginative to be certain, but at least he was working. Mixing his paints, drafting other simple, yet characteristic, paintings, one after another, hoping he could convince Salina to pass them off as accomplished works, he realized that he wasn’t falling for Carol, but needed the stability of having a woman there, a substitute for love, He shouldn’t be using her, but if he didn’t use her, then who would he have? Without Carol, he had no one. With Carol, at least he could paint, albeit average work. He couldn’t paint without Carol and being alone and being unable to paint read like a recipe for depression.

  Chapter 33

  In front of Tarrant’s Café following a long lunch, filled with metaphysical speculations, three orders of mussels served in a white wine broth, washed down with gin and tonics, Brett and Carol walked hand-in-hand. The August heat left him breathless, unmotivated to even light the cigarette he badly needed. Carol started towards the valet with their parking stub, but Brett snatched it from her.

  “Let’s go to Steady Sounds.”

  “What’s that?” Carol asked.

  “This record shop. You’ll like it.”

  She acquiesced, and they started down the street, their skin glistening with sweat, the malicious sun beating their eyes into a squint.

  Carol spontaneously laughed.

  “What?” Brett asked.

  “You don’t even have a record player.”

  “I used to. If I get records, I’ll get another one.”

  “What happened to your old one?”

  “Well, I mean, I’ve still got it. I just keep breaking needles.”

  “You buy junk just because, don’t you?”

  “I’m an American. I like to shop.”

  “You’ve got that whole table of junk at your studio. All those little useless novelties you squander your money on.”

  “It’s not junk,” Brett said, the defensiveness in his voice undeniable. He liked his table of interesting things, they were inspiring, happy little distractions. They didn’t cause any harm. Carol and her cynicism could go to hell. He’d buy as many purposeless little contraptions as his heart desired.

  “You’re taking me to buy records, and you don’t even have a working record player. You can’t tell me you don’t think that’s at least a little eccentric.”

  “Records are collectible, they’re an investment. I wish my record player worked, but I don’t need a record player to appreciate good records. Tons of people buy records they never listen to.”

  “It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of time,” Carol said. “It’s such crass consumerism. You’re so manipulated by mass marketing and material desire. It’s even worse that it’s for things you don’t even use.”

  “It’s my money I can spend it how I want.”

  “You work to spend money on things you don’t even want.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t work for money. Other people work for money, I work for passion.”

  Carol paused for a moment. “Okay, in your case, that may be true.” She squeezed his arm, the closest he was going to get to an apology. He leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, but she halted abruptly, causing them to bump heads.

  “What the,” Brett said. Carol’s eyes widened. When he turned, Olivia stood right in front of them. She wore a red and blue thigh length light-weight Navajo poncho so revealing it made him wonder whether she was wearing anything underneath.

  “Hi, Olivia,” Carol said, squeezing Brett’s arm tight.

  Frozen, both Olivia and Carol searched for his eyes. He had dreamed of running into Olivia and making an argument to change her mind, even if reason was ruled by passion, he still yearned for the chance. Carol had not been cast in this dream, however. He also hadn’t dreamt he’d lose the nerve if he ever had the chance.

  “Hey guys,” Olivia said.

  “Hey Olivia. What are you up to?”

  “I was headed to Cordwainer to get something for my dad. His birthday’s tomorrow. What about you guys?”

  “We just got lunch. We’re going to go look at some records,” Brett said, stuttering, his tongue unusually dry.

  “What have you been up to?” Carol asked. “I haven’t seen you at the club.”

  “Yea, I’ve been pretty busy getting ready for San Francisco. I’m heading out in two days.”

  Two days.

  Suddenly the prospect of taking Carol to a record store and trying to keep her cynical comments in check long enough to enjoy shopping seemed about as appetizing as eating undercooked gas station chicken wings. He wished he could ditch Carol. He’d rather take Olivia shopping, maybe grab a drink between shops and chat about other things, like new albums, movies they could see together, sports they could play, bicycle adventures he could take her on. He could lead her on a scavenger hunt for inspiration, and if they didn’t find what they were looking for, they could speculate about it and stalk it until it was in their grasp, sprint to the studio and try to hurry it out onto the canvas. It would be incredible to spend some time with Olivia. He was already beginning to imagine Carol’s acidic perspective on the afternoon ahead. He half wanted to laugh and half wanted to cry that Carol, when in a fit of frustration, often calmed herself with the mantra: “Everything is meaningless.” Maybe everything was meaningless, but he wasn’t prepared to give up so easily.

  Olivia would be gone in two days. He assumed she’d already left. He’d already gone through the emotional turmoil of having lost her once, but now he felt like he was losing her again, only slowly this time over the next 48 hours.

  “Well, it was good to see you guys,” Olivia said. She skirted around them and took off at an explosive clip. Brett wanted to turn his head, to watch her walk away, but Carol dangled from his arm, in an excessive sort of way. He was too polite to be so obvious.

  “If you’re going to squander your money, let’s get it o
ver with. I want to get home by three to watch a documentary.”

  “Documentary on what?”

  “It’s called When America Was Capitalist.”

  “I thought America is capitalist?” Brett asked.

  “Capitalists until World War II. Democrats briefly, communists today.”

  Chapter 34

  Olivia hustled down the street. She couldn’t put enough distance between herself and Carol and Brett. Where had the “leaving in 48 hours” bit come from? She inventoried to confirm not a single arrangement had been made to move to San Francisco. Not only had she not packed, not made travel arrangements, not started looking for a place to live, but she hadn’t even notified the Dorsal Fin Fund she’d been released to work for them. She hadn’t even told her parents, and if she was being honest, she hadn’t thought about the move since the day she got the news. Standing across the street from Cordwainer, staring through several busy lanes of traffic that separated her from the store, she tried to subdue her tears. She wanted to run in the store and hide before Brett and Carol could wheel around and find her under any of the innumerable pretexts of which day drinkers were capable. She had coveted the move to San Francisco for so long, but now the city built on a foundation of art and culture felt alien. Who did she have in San Francisco? What did she have there? No doubt, she would develop stronger financial analytical methods, make more money, and invent a new self. But if the San Francisco stop was a layover to her ultimate place of happiness, then where was happiness? In an even hipper, cooler city? Portland? Austin? Was Austin her ultimate destination? What did she know about Texas, other than cows and football?

  She thought about the dull conversations she would have about cows: breeding them, droving them, butchering them, selling them, processing them into boots. Images spinning through her mind, like the flickering images on the reel of a slot machine. Sure, Texas would be cool, but couldn’t that be true of anywhere? Could she ever learn to be happy in the moment? She thought of herself as the girl in Brett’s painting, on the bicycle, free in a way she could only be when racing from one moment to the next, unshackled from commitment and calculation, unencumbered by her past, fueled by the raw potential of the future. That was her ideal self. What did it mean to be the girl in Brett’s painting? Had Brett captured her, or was the painting of a fantasy that she would never be? It raised a series of complex questions of identity and perception. She hurried across the street, braving the traffic. A car hurtling towards her came to a screeching halt, another foot and it would have hit her.