A while went by. Quite a while maybe. On days like today it was impossible to judge the passage of time. Minutes got stuck in tar and stopped moving. Eventually, I felt the mattress sink with Carla's weight.
“I'm not going to press charges,” she said.
“Pin a rose on you.”
“How did it happen?”
I didn't open my eyes. “With a lug wrench.”
“How did the art happen?”
I opened my eyes some but not all the way, so her form was a fuzzy black and brown shape in the near distance.
“Are you asking if I copied her or if she copied me?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay.”
“You knew and you didn't tell me.” The programs for my show had been printed more than a week before.
She let a breath out. “It could have been a coincidence.”
“Bullshit.”
“It wasn't our place.”
“How many crimes happen with that as the excuse?”
“Don't blow this out of proportion.”
I considered punching her. Six months' worth of work and my reputation were on the line. I was exactly in proportion. In fact, I wasn't sure I'd done quite enough.
“Fuck you again, and you need to vet your assistants better.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“It means you don't send anyone from the gallery to my studio again.”
“I never have.”
“You did.”
“I didn't.”
“She brought my check.”
“I send your checks certified mail. I keep the receipts.”
“Not this one.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“I'll look into it.”
“You do that.”
I heard the clatter of Chuckles's tag as he scratched his neck with a back paw. The weight on the edge of the bed lifted, and Carla
tap-tap-tapped
to the other side of the room. I didn't hear the door open. I wished it would. I wanted to be alone.
I heard the suction release as the refrigerator opened. That wasn't the door I'd been thinking of.
“Do you know you have a blue chicken in here?”
“Yes.”
“I don't think you should eat it.”
There were food noises. Cabinets were opened. Cutlery clattered on plates. There was the
whish
and
purr
of a gas burner sparking. Chuckles meowed. The air conditioner turned off.
Whish purr clatter tap-tap-tap whish tap-tap-tap clatter
. A car siren went off in the distance, and I started to fall asleep.
“Clementine.”
I woke up. Carla was still there, leaning over me and shaking my shoulder. I didn't know what time it was.
“Clementine, you have to eat.”
Eating involved sitting up, and I didn't want to sit up. Sitting up sounded like a lot of work.
Carla set a plate down on the nightstand, hooked a hand under each of my underarms, and hoisted. My butt dragged along the bed as she pulled me into a seated position. My underwear scooted down under my cheeks. She was frighteningly strong, and this seemed too personal. I didn't have enough energy to struggle, so I scowled.
“Are you taking your medication?”
“No.”
“I figured. Eat this.”
My nose started to work. I smelled breakfast smells like in a diner. Pork fat. The unmistakable smell of pork fat. She set the plate on my lap. On it was a sandwich on toast with fried egg and strips of bacon and cheese melted on both slices like glue holding the whole thing together. I wasn't hungry.
“Can I call Dr. Gothenburg?”
“I fired him.”
“Are you seeing another therapist?”
“Nope.”
A small blob of cheese had leaked out the edge and started to solidify. I picked it off and ate it. American. It was the flavor of childhoods and picnics and then it was dust on my tongue. I wanted to spit it out. I heard Carla gathering her patience, or maybe I felt it. I don't think I saw it, but maybe I did.
“What time is Jenny going to come?”
“I fired her, too.”
“Clementine.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against my headboard. It felt cool and hard against my back. All of me felt cool. Goose bumps came up on my arms and legs.
“I don't feel right leaving you alone,” Carla said.
“I wish you would. Why did you come?”
“To talk about your show. To discuss how we were going to handle it after the incident.” Her voice got tight on that last bit.
“I'm not having a show. I told you.”
“I don't think you should at the Taylor.”
“Elaine showed first. Even though she stole from me, it won't look that way. It'll look like I'm copying.”
“It could hurt sales,” she admitted.
“And the gallery isn't going to defend me.”
Carla didn't respond to that. “Eat the sandwich. You've lost weight since I saw you last. No one earns points with me looking like an African famine victim.”
She got up from the bed and walked back to the kitchen. She picked up the phone and started pushing buttons, flipping through my caller ID history. She pushed another button and put it to her ear. I made a note to be offended tomorrow or the next day. That was an invasion of privacy. I looked down at the sandwich on my lap and realized my underpants were still pulled down under my butt. That was an invasion of privacy, too. I pulled them up.
Carla talked to someone on my phone. Told them I was sick. Asked them to come over. I set the plate on the nightstand and slid back down onto my back. I found the corner of a sheet and pulled it up to my chin. I thought about the drugs I'd flushed. Goodnight, Thorazine. Goodnight, lithium.
That's the last thing I remembered.
When I woke up, the light in the apartment was pink and orange. I blinked and wondered if it was sunrise or sunset. Jenny was on the blue stool pulled up to the worktable. She was sorting the stack of magazines and papers. The ones Chuckles had kicked off were no longer on the floor. I rolled onto my side and pushed up to sitting.
Jenny looked up.
“Are you going to work?”
“I'm thinking about underpants,” I said.
“Okay. Do you need to put some on?”
“I need to get rid of some.”
I got up and shuffled to my dresser. I had to pee again. I made a note to deal with that later. I opened the top drawer and started digging through my lingerie. I was wearing cotton briefs. They'd been black, but too many hot washes had turned them dark gray. I liked them. They were comfortable. I pulled out the underwear I didn't like. I pulled out the ones that were binding and made of silky, non-natural fabrics that didn't breathe and gave you yeast infections. The underwear I'd bought for the men I'd dated. The sexy underwear I hated to wear. I pulled out the thongs. All the thongs. The thongs were the worst offenders. I dropped them all in a pile on the floor, and when there was nothing left in the drawer but cotton briefs that had gone through too many hot washes, I scooped up the pile and carried it over to the loveseat.
“Bring me some scissors, please,” I said.
“What do you want with them?”
“Just do it.”
The corners of her mouth turned down, but she did what I asked. “I put the sandwich Carla made in the fridge,” she said. “Do you want me to heat it up for you?”
“No.”
“You didn't touch it.”
I picked out a hot pink thong and started cutting.
“Clementine.”
I made long strips and put them in another pile on the other side of my lap.
“Clementine, why are you doing that? I can go buy you underwear to cut up if you want. You don't have to use your own.”
I picked up a black satin pair next.
She came at me another way. “Carla said she would move your show to the Contemporary. She called while you were asleep. It's all set. It'll matter less about Elaine's show if you have yours there.”
“It'll matter exactly the same amount.”
“Maybe not quite as much.”
I put the strips into a pile.
“I wrote the dates down,” Jenny said. “They're expecting your call.”
I kept cutting, and Jenny went into the kitchen. People were always going into my kitchen. A few minutes later, she set a bottle of sparkling water by my feet. “Are you going to cut up the rest of your clothes?” she asked.
I really hadn't thought about it. One project at a time.
By ten o'clock that night, the television was on, and the sandwich crusts were on a plate by the sink. Jenny had gone off to meet her new boyfriend, and I was weaving my strips into four-inch squares.
The phone had rung three times before Jenny left. I'd told her not to answer it. I could see the red light blinking on the machine. I didn't need to listen to the messages. I knew what they said. I'd heard them when he left them. Dr. Gothenburg wanted to come over. Carla had called him when she got back to the gallery. That seemed like an invasion of privacy, too. I was going to have to do something about that.
I put a loop in the corner of the square I'd just finished and held it upâone perfectly functional potholder. It was far more functional than the underpants. If I hung them on a gallery wall, critics would talk about the sexual symbolism, the conversion to a homemaker's tool, the whore-to-mother business. Bullshit. I hated those underpants, and everyone needed potholders. Even Carla.
I stood up from the loveseat and almost fell down. I'd been sitting cross-legged for so long I couldn't feel my feet. I was numb from the knees down. I waited for the pricking and stinging and tingling to start as the blood opened the veins up and the flesh came back to life.
Yep, there it went. I curled my toes. That never stopped hurting no matter how old you got. It hurt when you were a kid and hurt when you were an old lady in her underpants. That reminded me I should probably change my clothes. I might smell.
I gathered up the potholders I'd made and found a large manila envelope in Jenny's desk. I picked up a Sharpie marker from the cup of pens and wrote the Taylor Gallery's address on the front, shoved the potholders inside, sealed it, and set it by the door to go out, right next to the overnight bag I had never unpacked.
I unzipped the bag and pushed around dirty laundry until I found the small bag of coffee and carried it to the kitchen sink. I slipped a paring knife out of the block and used it to slice through the tape holding the coffee closed. It split, and the smell of mornings and cafés and an ex-boyfriend with a serious espresso addiction came rolling out. I upended the grounds into the sink until I heard the
ka-chink
of glass on metal. I stopped pouring, picked up the small bottle, and dusted it off.
Dropping the half-empty bag in the trash, I carried the vial of liquid to the bathroom, rolling it between my palms, heating up the glass, appreciating how open to transference the material was. I flipped on the light, knocked a few stray grains of coffee off my palms and the bottle, and moved my toothbrush holder to the left. There was a small shelf above the pedestal sink and below the mirrored medicine cabinet. I slid two bottles of perfume over a few inches and placed the tranquilizer right in the middle, spinning the vial around so the label was facing forward. Then I looked at it. The display was calming. I could feel my blood pressure dropping and my shoulders relaxing just standing there. This, I thought, is how some people feel about fish tanks.
I gave it a few more minutes, and when I was as relaxed as I was going to be, I flipped off the light and went to bed.
“Well, that could've gone better.”
Chuckles was in his carrier licking the pouf of fur on his chest. He was refueling. All the reserve hair in his stomach had been yacked up on the carpet of the only people who had responded to our ad. They were going to “think it over” and “call me,” which I was pretty sure was code for “leave the state” and “never speak of this again.”
The yowling hadn't helped either.
“Is he always this vocal?” the young couple had asked.
They were newly married, newly moved in together, both with jobs that involved cubicles and their own extensions. The husband had given me his business card when I arrived. I assumed that was new, too. The condo looked like they'd robbed the showroom of a Pottery Barn. I suspected Chuckles was to have been their practice baby. They'd given me a tour of the place when I arrived, and there was a suspiciously underdecorated spare room that seemed to be waiting for something to happen. “Why buy decorative throw pillows,” it seemed to say, “when you're just going to have to pick out a crib?” And I was okay with that. They were nice enough, unlikely to use Chuckles for dogfighting bait, and had brought out the good cookies for guests.