Lion's Share (8 page)

Ed began the meeting by introducing them to Phyllis Mason, vice president in charge of publicity. “She'll be working closely with plans for the exhibition from this point on.”

“In addition to media coverage throughout the metropolitan area, we'd like to begin contacting newspapers around the country,” Phyllis said as she leafed through the folder Jana handed her. Jana observed her bright blue and green scarf, not tied but carefully threaded through a gold ring—neat but tasteless. Like most PR people, she would probably not be willing to take many chances. “These profiles list the cities where these artists currently live, but they seem somewhat sketchy regarding towns where they grew up or might have studied and taught,” Phyllis continued, looking up.

Towns where they grew up, studied, and taught … As Jana opened her own folder to the first artist, she wondered whether Phyllis would want to know about the jails, too. Matt Fillmore had been jailed as a result of his participation in half a dozen anti-war and anti-nuclear demonstrations. The jail population has probably changed by now anyway, she assured herself, smiling at the thought.

“Let's see,” she began, burying her smile in the papers in front of her, anxious to get this meeting over with. “As it says here, he currently lives in Boston, and he studied at Rhode Island School of Design. I know he also spends summers on Cape Cod. As I recall, he's New England through and through, raised in New Hampshire.”

Jana was turning to the next bio when Natalie placed a hand on her arm. “Why don't you let us double-check the backgrounds of all the artists, then write them up for you?”

“We were planning to get working on this early next week. Any information you can give us now would be helpful.”

Jana and Natalie glanced at each other. Neither wanted to get off on the wrong foot with APL's PR people, but they also worried about giving out inaccurate information and recognized the obligation to their artists not to disclose facts he or she might wish to keep secret.

“Much of the information you need is on file at the gallery. I'll put together as much as I can this afternoon and drop it off tomorrow morning,” Jana said before she realized tomorrow was Saturday and the offices would be closed. Then she laughed, and said she'd have it messengered first thing Monday morning.

“Better yet, why not drop it off at my apartment?” Ed suggested. “That way Phyllis will have it early Monday, and we won't lose any time.” He'd been preoccupied with work last time he'd seen Jana and wanted to make it up to her.

Jana agreed and jotted down his address, doodling with the letters of his name and reassuring herself this was all in the line of business.

“I notice that seven of these eighteen artists are women,” Phyllis continued. “As concerned environmentalists, I assume their interests reach out to feminism as well, and we'd like to interest the feminist press. Can you expound upon these concerns a bit?”

Jana had anticipated this interest. She wasn't involved in the feminist movement herself, but she knew how to go through artistic résumés, selecting feminist credentials for reporters, noting feminist spaces where they'd exhibited, collectives with which they were associated.

“Whew,” Jana exhaled as she and Natalie left the building. “Who ever thought a corporate sponsor would become this involved?”

“If this exhibition wasn't also a promotional vehicle, APL wouldn't be investing nearly a hundred thousand dollars,” Natalie replied. “Now they've got to make certain their interests are protected.” The two women made their way through the 85-degree heat back to The Paperworks Space to go through the files on these artists and make a few quick phone calls to whomever could be reached. “Didn't I predict you'd get a chance to see Ed alone,” Nat chortled between calls.

JANA GLANCED at the clock by her bed: Cinderella's two arms were on top of each other, pointing to the nine. She sat up and dialed Trailways—the morning's final express bus left in twenty minutes; afternoon expresses left at 12:30, 3:00, and 5:30. She pressed the receiver down and called Ed, saying she'd drop by around 11:30. “The earliest bus is at 12:30,” she told him.

“What are you doing over the next two hours?”

She had to admit she wasn't doing anything.

“Why not come over now? I'll get coffee started and put on the air conditioner—it'll be nice and cool by the time you get here.” He recalled Jana's previous complaints about how hot her apartment was, so he had a feeling that last comment would convince her to come right over.

A half hour later his strong arms enveloped her, pressing her against him despite the heat. “I've got coffee all ready,” he said, pulling away. He poured two cups and brought them to the living room, then sat on the sofa, leaving room for her beside him. After a few swallows, he picked up the folder Jana had brought: “Let me take a quick look at these profiles.” He still found himself getting mixed signals from Jana; best to keep the business aspects of this visit within reach. Almost absentmindedly he leaned close as he read. Relishing the thought that her body might be able to respond normally after all, Jana moved closer.

The mood was broken by the telephone's harsh ring. Ed reached for it. Jana moved to a chair across the room, but couldn't help overhearing his end of the conversation. “Look, you're extremely lucky this time,” he was saying. “You're able to see what's going on.” Jana walked over to the large bay window. The last time she'd seen a window like this, complete with a cushioned window bench, had been in her grandmother's house. “We've all been through periods where we need to talk to someone, if only to sort out conflicting feelings. There's nothing to be ashamed of.” The window needed washing, but the sun managed to shine through anyway; the apartment was high enough to avoid soot and traffic noise. “It's a beautiful day out,” Ed said into the receiver, almost as if reading Jana's thoughts. “Go out on your balcony, read a novel. The work will still be there tomorrow, or the next day. No one's standing over you.”

Turning back into the room, Jana held the entire apartment before her. The front door opened onto a long hallway that had two rooms off it: the kitchen and the bedroom; the bathroom, between these, could be entered from either room. The living room itself was huge and had French doors which could be closed to form two rooms. It impressed her as more comfortable than her own apartment, with her paints everywhere and no place to sit except the bed. Two people could easily live here. Taking a deep breath, she recalled an article she'd read a few years ago in
New York Magazine
or
The New Yorker
discussing life in singles bars—it mentioned that people with rent-stabilized apartments were very much in demand. The superficiality had struck her so much at the time that she'd quoted passages to several people. Yet here she was stooping to that level.

“I know, dear, I know,” Ed said. “Nobody promised it would be easy. But remember, I'm here. Call me back if you want.” He put the phone down, lit a cigarette, and stared off into space, almost unaware of Jana's presence. “I'm sorry,” he said finally, expelling a long stream of smoke. “She was desperate, and I didn't want to say I'd call back later.”

“No problem. Was that your sister?” Jana was anxious to reassure herself this wasn't some girlfriend.

“No, no. She's an old friend. An old friend with a lot of problems.”

“Sounds like she's got a good friend in you.”

“She used to, I guess. But there's a limit. I don't want to get caught up in her hysteria again.” Ed listlessly stretched his arm across the back of the sofa but got to his feet before Jana could come over to join him. “Why don't we get out of here before Kathe calls back? Come on, I'll treat you to brunch.” Jana glanced toward her watch, then decided the time didn't matter, she could always take a later bus. She wanted to learn more about Kathe.

They took the elevator down, walked through the cool marble lobby that was the high point of most pre-war buildings, and emerged onto the hot, muggy street. They walked along West End Avenue in silence among Orthodox families returning from the dozens of synagogues tucked away in this area, the men in heavy black coats that looked out of place in this heat. In stark contrast, there were groups of people with beach towels over their arms.

Ed guided her toward the doorway to Marsala Cafe, a little place on the side street just west of Broadway. “The heat's been getting to me this weekend,” Jana said, cautiously eyeing the outside tables. “Would you mind sitting inside?”

“My sentiments exactly. I usually love sunlight, but this humidity is intense even for me.” Inside the air-conditioning was on high, but people were packed close enough to absorb any chill. They let themselves be ushered to a booth whose high back gave off a somewhat exaggerated air of privacy.

“Have you ever heard that old saying about how people come to resemble their dogs?” Ed asked once they were seated. “Kathe has long, straight, strawberry blonde hair, parted in the center and curling slightly upward at the ends—just like a Yorkshire terrier.”

“And she has a Yorkshire terrier as a pet, right?” Jana replied. She quickly decided on scrambled eggs and let the menu rest unopened on the table in front of her. Her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness after the bright sun outside. Ed exchanged a few words with the waitress; this obviously was a place he frequented.

“Not one dog—Kathe had sixteen when I met her,” Ed said, turning his attention back to Jana as soon as the waitress left. “And they weren't pets, they were an obsession.”

“You're kidding. How could someone have sixteen dogs?”

“Kathe bred them. She had as many as twenty for awhile there.” Ed's voice became animated as he eased into the story: Kathe went with a friend to a dog show, met a guy, and fell passionately in love with him. Kathe, the guy, and all his dogs spent two days together, leaving his RV only for meals. Then he was gone, promising to write and call, but he never did. Kathe started attending dog shows in the area, hoping to run into him. When she finally did, he seemed distant. She reasoned it was because they didn't have enough in common, so she started breeding and showing Yorkies.

“I discovered Kathe with a pack of caged dogs in her living room. Yap, yap, yap all night.” Ed yapped himself. “She was thrusting her motherly instincts onto puppy after puppy. I watched her hair grow uncombed while the dogs were treated to Brillcreem. A tiny red or blue bow above each ear became two bows, then three.”

It was the wrong time to laugh, but the image Ed was presenting of this woman with the uncombed hair was too vivid. Besides, laughing prevented Jana from thinking about how, in teenage rebellion against the suburbia that threatened to engulf her, she'd let her hair go uncombed for days on end. Her mother once spent five hours brushing the knots out. It happened once, and it could happen again, but next time her mother wouldn't be around. If she continued to live by herself, no one would be around to give a damn next time. She might end up an old woman with uncombed hair and sixteen dogs. Or sixteen
stuffed
dogs and one stuffed lion. Even if the dogs were live pets, she doubted she'd care enough to brush their fur and cart them off to shows. She'd more than likely stay cooped up in her apartment with the yapping, paint-stained dogs and a hundred cityscapes.

“Go ahead, laugh,” Ed said, interrupting her thoughts. “At least now I can laugh, too. But at the time, I had myself convinced that all Kathe needed was someone who would care about her. And it worked for awhile. She gradually stopped going to dog shows. After a year, she had only two dogs left. You could sit down in her apartment without getting hair all over you. I honestly thought I was helping her.”

“It sounds like you
did
help her.” Jana reached across the table and gently squeezed Ed's hand.

“I don't know. Sometimes my being with her was more detrimental than anything else. I remember once she arranged to sell a dog to a woman in New Paltz. We drive sixty miles, drop him off, stay and chat with the woman, then drive home. Later that night Kathe became hysterical—the woman mentioned having an ulcer, and Kathe worried it might interfere with the care she would give the animal. The next day we drove back, returned the money, and picked up the dog.”

“So having the car made it too easy?”

“Sure. If Kathe'd had to traipse back and forth by train, she might have thought twice about it. And if I hadn't been with her, she probably wouldn't have spent time chatting with the woman to begin with. She'd have never found out about the ulcer, and the dog would be fine.” Ed took a long sip of coffee. “I wanted to help, but I couldn't live her life for her.”

Jana stared at him. She could easily imagine him chatting away with some woman to whom he was delivering a dog. Ed enjoyed talking, enjoyed learning about people, and easily drew them out. His sensitivity on the phone with Kathe entranced her. But maybe he was fed up with nurturing love-starved little girls who worked out their frustrations through dogs or paintings instead of with other human beings.

“Anyway, enough about Kathe,” Ed said, buttering a slice of whole wheat toast. “How's your painting going?” She answered easily. They talked about the panels she was painting, about being out of the city.

“When I first took the job with APL, I thought it would give me more time to spend weekends at the shore, but the longer I'm there, the more I realize I'm happiest spending weekends in the city, working part of the day, maybe taking in a movie or a concert Saturday night,” Ed said. “And it's interesting what advantages there are to working under stress: I've been running myself so ragged lately I don't spend much time eating, let alone dreaming about food.”