Love Love (33 page)

It made sense, Kevin supposed, that Norman's daughter went into the family business. Or did it? It wasn't like his father was in a line of work that was socially acceptable. If anything, he probably would have steered Denise away, but who was Kevin to judge? Perhaps she was happy being a porn star. She certainly came off as a grounded person, at least so far. Outside of the meticulous attention she paid to her looks, she seemed pretty ordinary.

“Do you want to hear about what I do?”

He hadn't meant to hesitate, but his mind ran in six different directions, leaving his mouth in a coma. He was imagining her face in false ecstasy, pretending as all porno actresses must, screaming their fake climaxes to the rolling camera.

“Of course,” Kevin finally managed to blurt out.

She clicked her red fingernails on the table, once, then again. She stared at him, but not as she had just before; this was a penetrating glare. Not exactly angry, just full of command. “Do you have an issue with what I do?”

Kevin clasped his hands on the table, as if in prayer. He could use a little miracle right now, get him out of this potentially ugly situation.
“It's what you do,” he said, feeling like no matter what he said, it would come out wrong. “I respect that.”

“Really? You'd respect me when I'm on all fours with a cock in my mouth? Or one in my butt? Maybe at the same time? After seeing that, you'd still respect me?”

She said this with such dispassion that a fellow diner, unless he was eavesdropping, would think she was describing a day at the office. Which, Kevin realized, was what she was probably doing. He no longer met her eyes, fixating himself on his melting ice cream. The white liquid spread out ever so slowly.

And then there was her hand over his hand, and he looked up to see a bemused Denise smiling at him.

“Relax,” she said, “I'm just busting your chops.”

She patted his hand and dug into her dessert, and Kevin breathed again. “To tell you the truth, I haven't done a DP in years, let alone an airtight,” she said, speaking what must have been porn lingo. He didn't have anything against pornography, but there was something sadly reductive that happened with it, everything devolved into the most crude elements. At its core, it was sex without love, and for him, there were few things more depressing than to wake up in the morning next to a strange woman after a one-night stand.

“You do rougher stuff when you start out,” she continued, “though a lot longer if you're not attractive. I don't mean to sound cruel, it's just how the business works. The ugly girls are the workhorses, the ones who do gangbangs day and night. As you can imagine, they're the ones who need the most support. That's why Dad and I formed the AWS—Adult Workers Sanctuary—to give our people a break they need.”

There was a softness to Denise's voice as she talked about the Sanctuary, curves to her hand movements as she described the Zen-inspired décor of the house, the strong sense of community within, all the work to keep it going, work that was primarily hers. It was a pleasure and a relief to see such genuine enthusiasm from her, but he had to admit, it also made him a little envious, reminding Kevin of how little passion there was in his life right now. They weren't so different, after all; like athletes, porn stars also had a short shelf life. They both needed a second act to their lives, and it looked as if Denise had found hers.

Denise picked up the check, reassuring Kevin that it was a gift from their father. “He really does feel bad about chickening out with the movie like he did,” she said.

“I'll give him a call later today.”

She signed the credit card slip. “A good son. That's what you are.”

They left the restaurant and walked along Shattuck Avenue, past the Berkeley post office and a tobacco shop. People on the street glanced at her then at him, in that order, which only made sense since she was the kind of woman who turned heads. Did they look like brother and sister? Kevin wanted to stop and ask them. Denise clicked on her key fob, and a white Toyota Prius blinked its headlights at them. Their lunch had gone by so fast. Kevin hadn't expected to fit a lifetime in two hours, but there was so much he didn't know.

She opened her arms wide for a hug. As they embraced, he said, “Hey, how about if you take me to the Sanctuary sometime?”

Denise held his hands. He could almost feel the pathways her neurons were taking, the words she was considering as she considered him. Her glare was scientific.

“Are you just saying that or do you mean it?”

He squeezed her hands. “I'm saying it and meaning it.”

“Okay,” she said, and she let him go.

He saw her eyes reflected in the rearview mirror as the car pulled away.
There she goes,
he thought.
My sister.

21

R
oger was switching DVDs of
The Wire
when Judy's cell phone rang. Snaps, who'd been snoozing near the door, barked, and Momo, who'd been sleeping on Roger's lap, yowled his displeasure.

“I love this. And because I love this, I love you.”

“Excuse me?” Judy said.

She heard a man's voice in the background, but the woman on the phone ignored him.

“The drawing you sent to your brother. The sunflower, the tennis ball. You are the one responsible for this work?”

Judy was glad she didn't have to lie to her, because even if she hadn't drawn the illustration, she might have agreed. The woman sounded as if she'd expected Judy to already know what this was about, why she called.

After a scuffling sound, a familiar voice came on the line.

“Sorry, sis, that was Claudia.”

“That drawing was for you,” Judy said, miffed that he'd shared it with someone else without asking her first. “Please don't show it to anyone else, okay?”

“Ummm . . . I think . . .”

More scuffling, and Claudia came back on the line.

“I'm not usually like this, but then again, I haven't been this excited in a long time. Let's start over. I'm Claudia St. James. Since you're an artist, you might know me better as—”

“Claudia X?”

“Oh good, you've heard of me.”

Heard of her? Kevin was shacking up with Claudia X. Holy mother of Christ.

Roger muted the television and asked, “Who's Claudia X?”

She wasn't as famous as Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol, but that was only because she wasn't dead. Everyone in art knew Claudia; her intensely personal paintings where she thrust herself into the oddest places. Judy's favorite painting was
Army of Eros
, where Claudia painted one hundred soldiers shaped like upright, erect penises, each proudly displaying plump bare breasts and a vagina where the shaft met the testicles, and if the comingling of the male and female sexual genitalia wasn't enough, each duck-footed creature held a handlebar mustache for a shield and a spear shaped like a stretched lipstick. And of course, Claudia's face was on the head of each penis soldier, a horde of one-eyed faces staring at something off to the right, some unseen force available only to the viewer's imagination. The wall-sized painting had fetched more than three million dollars last year at a Sotheby's auction, which was in the news and reason enough that more people should know who she was, but then again, the art world was a tiny subset of the general population. Besides, with the likes of Bernie Madoff and the mortgage crisis, maybe three million was not as newsworthy these days.

Another scuffle, this time with more background shouting, and Kevin came back on the line.

“Judy, you don't have to do anything you don't want to.” Then his voice moved away. “Isn't that right, Claudia? Good. That's what I thought.” Then back to her. “I'm really, really sorry. She's just like this. I can explain later.”

Judy spoke quietly. “Do you have any idea who Claudia is?”

“She's an artist.”

“That's like saying Rafael Nadal is a tennis player.”

The metaphor seemed to do the trick, as her brother paused before speaking again.

“Really?”

“One of the top five artists working today.”

“So you're okay if she keeps talking to you.”

“Maybe you can put her back on the phone.”

As the phone exchanged hands, she heard a simple “Ha!” in the background.

“Thank you for being so accommodating,” Claudia said.

Claudia had just thanked her. Judy almost wanted to ask Claudia to say it again, to make sure it really happened.

“You have other works I can take a look at?”

“Two others,” Judy said. After the one of the ladies and their tennis ball babies, she'd completed another drawing, of a tennis racquet weaved among the squares of a tennis net. It gave off a trapped feeling, like an insect caught in a spider web, or at least that's what Judy hoped. If she were to add a few more racquets and configured them just so, it would make the insect metaphor more overt.

“I want to see you,” Claudia said. “In person. I'm having a gallery opening for some upcoming artists next weekend, and I want to include this and anything else you bring. There's something primitive and raw with what you're doing, and I think it'll fit right in with the others.”

Judy had heard the words that had come through the tiny speaker of her tiny phone, but it was taking her brain longer than usual to process them.
In person, gallery, next weekend, primitive, fit right in.
Did any of this make sense? Was this really happening?

“Okay,” she said.

Claudia told her that one of her assistants would call Judy tomorrow and set up the flight, the lodging, everything that would be required for her to come out to San Francisco, all expenses paid, for both her and Roger.

“If there's something you can do for me,” Claudia said. “Can you fly out of Newark?”

What she wanted was to have her daughter fly out to see her at the same time. Even though Alexa was old enough to fly by herself, Claudia felt safer if she was accompanied by an adult. Roger, as expected, had no issues with any of this, and Judy realized more than ever that the greatest gift money provided wasn't this fancy house or luxury cars or a private yacht; it was the freedom to do whatever, whenever.

“Fantastic,” Claudia said. “Thank you, Judy. I can't wait to meet you.”

She handed the phone back to Kevin.

“Good news, huh?” he said.

Judy laughed. “You could say that.” Snaps trudged over from her spot by the door, tail wagging. “I think your dog wants to say hello.”

Kevin told her what a good dog Snaps was, and Snaps, despite Momo's wailing protestations from the top of the staircase, barked and barked. Their greeting ended with the now-familiar duet, where Kevin howled into the phone and Snaps howled with him, her long
snout raised to the ceiling, holding her single baritone note out of her O-shaped lips, her best wolf impression.

“Are you coming back?” Judy asked him. “Or have you found California that lovable?”

“Going with the flow, sis,” Kevin said. “Not easy for me, so I think it's good practice.”

“Well, take as long as you need. Though Snaps misses you a lot.”

“I talked to Dad yesterday,” Kevin said. When Judy said nothing, he continued. “I know you don't particularly care, but Dr. Elias needs to see him again in order to keep him on the donor recipient list. Something to do with a policy change in the way the hospital deals with transplants.”

“You're right,” Judy said. “I don't particularly care.”

Even though Kevin was thousands of miles away, she could feel his sigh. She could see his face, too, cheeks deflating like a sagging balloon. “I'm telling you this for a reason. I need to ask a favor.”

“You gotta be kidding me. Like I haven't done enough for you?”

Kevin wanted her to go see the doctor with her father because he was going to need someone who could translate. Even though her Korean was no better than Kevin's, according to her brother, it was better than nothing.

“But I'm not in Jersey, Kevin.”

“But you will be.”

The appointment with the doctor just happened to be the day before the flight to San Francisco. It was almost as if Kevin had formulated an itinerary that Judy couldn't refuse, and she told Kevin so.

“You're absolutely right. I called Dr. Elias and changed the appointment so you could do this. So please, Judy, just do this, okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “But you're a sneaky ass, you know that?”

“You can call me whatever you want,” he said. “Thank you, sis. It'll be great to see you, and wait until you check out this gallery for yourself.”

Judy ended the call and sat back in the sofa. Her drawings were going to be in Claudia X's gallery. She couldn't even claim this was a dream come true, because she'd never even dared to imagine something so ludicrous. The whole thing sounded insane—it took months to put a gallery show together—but this was how Claudia worked from what she'd read in profiles and interviews, following her instincts wherever they led her.