The Love of My (Other) Life (7 page)

“Why not?”

“I was saving it for some wonderful occasion, like when I sell my first painting.”

Brian scanned me. “You have all those beautiful landscapes stacked in the living room, and you’ve never sold a painting?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“Maybe because I’ve never shown them.” I flopped back down onto the bed.

“Never ever?” he queried.

I shook my head again.

“Why the hell not?”

I groaned and pulled the cover over my head.

“Okay, we’ll celebrate being alive today.” He shrugged. “What’s more wonderful than that?”

“You know what I mean,” I grumbled, throwing back the blanket. “Fine. I’ll have a glass. But quit going through my stuff.”

He grinned and left the bedroom. I hoped he didn’t notice my messenger bag in the kitchen.

I looked around my bedroom as if seeing it for the first time: plain white walls with cloudy outlines where paintings used to hang, bookcases with vacant spaces where David’s books had sat, picture frames facing down. It was a symphony of deliberate denial.

Maybe I was seeing with new eyes. When my budding art career fell apart and David left, I packed away my landscapes and displaced all the photos, so I didn’t have to keep looking at my failures. I kept the room clean, but other than that, I had wasted not a second on it.

Maybe it was time to put back up some paintings.

Maybe it was even time to put away some of the photos.

Brian came back in, whistling, and handed me a glass of wine.

“You have a sneaky look on your face,” I observed.

“L’chaim!” he said, raising his glass.

“Here’s to saving eldercare.”

“You’ve got to—”

“Don’t tell me to give the skull back,” I said, quaffing the wine.

“You stole it.”

“It’s not theft.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Because it’s ugly?”

I grunted. “It’s insured. There’ll be a huge settlement.”

“Tessa, please. Frances will call the police, and you will go to jail. He knows you took it.”

“He can’t prove it. The security cameras didn’t work. You said so,” I said smugly.

“Not going to fly.”

“What if it was really actually mine, all along?” I challenged him. “What if I could prove it?”

“You took it from the gallery. You have to give it back.”

“That gallery represents everything that is wrong with the contemporary art world that prevents real artists, good artists, from being successful!” I said, passionately. “That gallery should be burned to the ground as a service to humanity!”

“That doesn’t give you the right to take the skull.”

Brian shook his head and wandered to the dresser.

He pulled up one of the frames. “Why do all your photographs of David face down?”

I buried my head under the pillow. I couldn’t explain any more than I could explain my own responses to Brian, which I knew went up and down like an amusement park car on a rollercoaster. Or maybe I could explain them, and I didn’t want to because then I’d have to face things about myself that I preferred to deny.

I had to get a grip on myself. It was just that for the first time in a long time, I felt alive again. It was like the pins and needles feeling when blood rushed into my foot after I’d been sitting on it for a long time: painful and awkward, so that I’d hop around spastically.

Maybe there was a reason I’d numbed myself.

“Look at him trying too hard. The chiseled face.

He’s too perfect. I think rakish good looks that flirt with nerdy but, asymptotically, never land there, are more attractive. Don’t you?” Brian cut a muscle-man, Mr. Universe pose.

“Anyone who uses the word ‘asymptotically’ is a nerd, by definition. What does that even mean?”

Brian held up his finger in his lecturing posture.

“An asymptote is a line that a curve approaches but never meets.”

“I don’t speak science lingo. I didn’t take science at Columbia.”

“You did at Yale, in my universe,” he said, his voice and his face softening.

“I went to Columbia to be with David. I was accepted at Yale, but I didn’t go. I knew that would be the end of the relationship.” I sat up and tucked the sheets around myself. I wished Brian would let go of the whole mythical-other-universe thing. I wasn’t sure why he’d attached himself to me, but I was giving him a chance. More than a chance. I’d let him into my bed, which was something I’d never done lightly.

To quote Mrs. Leibowitz, “Wheeeeeee!”

I struggled to regain a semblance of control over my life. Maybe if I found out more about Brian, if I pierced his effusive fantasy life. “If we’re married in your mythical world, how do you know David?”

I asked. “He wouldn’t be part of my life if I went to Yale and got with you.”

Brian had crossed over to the window and was looking out into the courtyard. “The guy you’re meeting, does this have anything to do with the skull?”

But I wasn’t distracted. There were still too many unanswered questions. “If you know Ofee, you know what his name stands for.”

Brian glanced back over his shoulder and drew a line across his forehead. “One Fucking Eyebrow.”

“Would Bard Rubin have the same nickname in a parallel world? Hmm,” I wondered aloud. “Of course, that information is on Facebook.”

Brian came back to the foot of the bed and fixed me with what was clearly an inquiring physics professor look. “Your figure drawings have a lot of heart.

Why not sell them instead of a stolen piece of art?

Or your landscapes. I looked through all the canvases in the living room and in your closet. They’re gorgeous. They shouldn’t be hidden away.”

“You went through my paintings?”

“To get to know you better.” Brian pinched my big toe, which stuck out from under the duvet cover.

“The you here, in this universe.”

“Yes, this universe, that universe. How did you get to this universe?” I asked sweetly.

“I built a decoherence device. It was genius, really. I got the idea when I was ten and watched an episode of Star Trek. I filled up a notebook with my ideas. I kept writing them down in notebook after notebook. But the time I was thirty, I had filled a hundred notebooks.”

I felt frustrated and I jumped up and pulled on some jeans. What was I thinking, sleeping with this kook? Why wouldn’t he just be real with me? Why the elaborate set-up? What was my deal with the bad karma around men? “Cool. I have to go now.”

“To the meeting. Right. With a guy to fence the skull? How do you know someone like that?”

“I met him through a teacher.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, the puritanical artist.”

“I’m not puritanical,” I said, indignant. “I’m idealistic!”

Brian wrapped his arms lightly around me and kissed my shoulder. “Idealists don’t steal.”

“It’s not theft,” I insisted. “And I have to help Reverend Pincek.”

“You have to help yourself, Tessa. I meant to tell you, your super stopped by before you came home.”

I wriggled out of Brian’s arms. “Before or after you went through my personal belongings?”

“He thought your painting on the door was beautiful, but they’re going to lock you out of your apartment.”

“I think I’ll have another glass of wine,” I decided.

“I don’t know how they can do that. Maybe because it’s a co-op. You don’t actually own your apartment, you own shares in a corporation.”

“That’s it! Shares in a corporation! That’s exactly what I need. Then I can sell them and move to Florence and paint the Duomo. And I can take more figure painting classes at the Florence Academy.”

Brian grabbed my head from either side and forced me to meet his gaze, which was serious and saner than could be expected, given his delusions.

“Tessa, focus. Fantasies won’t help. You need a strategy. You owe years of back maintenance fees.”

“I have a strategy,” I said. “Sell the Cliff Bucknell abomination.”

“Then you’re fucked. Because I can’t let you do that,” Brian said, in a soft, determined voice.

I was striding along purposefully, clutching my messenger bag. Brian trotted alongside, keeping up. I refused to look at him.

Around us swirled the throngs of Central Park: dogwalkers, teenagers, runners, mothers and nannies pushing strollers, bicyclists in all their gear and attitude, tourists and pedestrians and gawkers and ne’er-do-wells. Day was waning into night, but the colorful masses teemed outdoors, shifting and reforming, a living kaleidoscope.

“I have to sell it now. Don’t you understand? I’ve gone this far. I have a vision for helping Reverend Pincek. I can’t back out.”

“There’s still time for you to do the right thing,” Brian said, stubbornly. “You’re better than this.”

I looked at Brian and thought about fessing up.

There was a backstory, and if he knew it, he might look at things differently. His heart was in the right place, even if he was crazy.

But I got distracted, wondering: what does it say about me that I had slept with a crazy guy? Nothing good. Another one of my errors, foibles, mistakes, and blunders. There were so many of them.

But now was not the time to flagellate myself.

Nor did I want Brian to expose himself to risk. I said, “The guy I’m meeting is trouble. Serious, big-time trouble. You shouldn’t be here. Beam back up to wherever you came from.”

“Do you watch Star Trek in this world?” Brian asked.

“Is Captain Kirk one of the voices in your head?”

I asked, sympathetically. “Oh, there’s Rat Rock.” I pointed to a whale-like gray outcropping with blue sky spilling out around it. A tall, sinister, Euro-trashy man leaned against the rock and smoked a cigarette.

But I didn’t focus on Guy, as I should have.

Instead, I had a flash: Rat Rock in a landscape painting, rugged shades of gray with the arching azure sky and the green park.

Painting. We weren’t far from the Met. “Hey, after this, let’s go to the Met!” I suggested. “There’s a Raphael exhibit. His use of color and perspective is mind-blowing. It’ll quiver your timbers all the way to your soul.”

“Raphael, funny.” Brian laughed once, a single ‘ha’ like a bark. “I’m used to hearing you rave about Pablo Casals.”

I’d heard of him. “Isn’t he the one who was asked why he practiced the cello for three hours a day when he was ninety-three, and he said, ‘I’m beginning to notice some improvement’?”

Brian nodded and looked away almost too quickly for me to see his face wring out. I didn’t comment because it was clear he didn’t want me to notice his sudden wrenching expression of sadness.

Besides, business called. I got a little queasy.

“That’s him. The guy. Guy.”

“The guy guy?” Brian asked, confused.

“That’s his name, Guy.” I opened my messenger bag. What? My stomach fell out of my torso and I rooted around in the bag, growing more frantic by the second. “Where is it? Why isn’t it here?”

“I took it,” Brian said proudly. “I want you to return it.”

“Brian! This guy means business!” I gasped.

But Brian had marched up to Guy and was waving his finger in Guy’s face. “You shouldn’t smoke, mister. Did you know that it’s the leading cause of premature death?”

Guy smiled and exhaled a sooty purple plume of smoke into Brian’s face. “Not in my line of work.”

Guy shifted his leather jacket so Brian could see the switchblade sheathed in his belt.

Yep, it was Guy, all right. Same accent of uncertain origins; was he Russian? Chechen? Albanian?

North Dakotan? I hailed him. “Hey, Guy, so here we are.”

“Tessa Barnum,” Guy said, his face writhing with avarice. “We meet again. Hell must be a winter wonderland. The ancients reasoned this way: as it is in nature, so it must be in art. Therefore, the cold of Hell is resolved into cold, hard cash.”

“Ha ha,” I said blithely. “You know my flair for the dramatic.”

He dragged so deeply on his cigarette that I imagined the alveoli of his lungs blackening and shriveling. That image gave me a burst of pleasure.

“Nice to see you,” I said, with a smile that was genuine because it commented on his impending lung cancer.

Guy said, “I was surprised to get your message.

It was only the fourth time I was surprised in my life. The number four is a key resolving number.

Four are the cardinal points; the principal winds; the seasons; four is the constituent number of the tetrahedron of fire in the Timaeus; and four letters make up the name of Adam.”

“Yes, um. I was surprised myself.”

“Meet again?” Brian demanded. “Tessa, how often have you done this? Have you stolen before?”

“Cliff Bucknell, excellent commodity, always a market for it. Such is the dramatic struggle between the beauty of provocation and the beauty of consumption,” Guy said.

“It’s not beautiful,” I said sternly.

Guy shrugged. “Show me.”

“The thing is,” I started nervously.

“The thing is, she’s got to give it back!” Brian exclaimed.

Jeez Louise, did he not understand what was going down? I grabbed Brian by his upper arm and dragged him a few yards away, motioning for Guy to excuse us.

“Tessa, have you lost your friggin’ mind?” Brian asked. “What history do you have with this goon?”

“Shh!” I hushed him. “Keep your voice down. It’s just, um, stuff with my old teacher. Brian, listen. For real, for once. Guy is dangerous. He cut the thumbs off someone who blew a deal.”

“My God, Tessa—”

“This meeting isn’t a girl scout reunion, okay?

The art market has an ugly side to it. There are plenty of people who don’t care about the provenance of a piece, if they want it. They’ll pay a lot, wow, a whole lot, to get what they want. Because of that, there’s a whole thriving underbelly to the art business.”

“You’d never be involved in something like this in my world.” Brian was visibly distressed, and he wiped his face with both hands.

“There’s art theft, of course, on spec, for resale, or for ransom. There’s fraud and forgeries and trafficking. Looting. A hideously ugly side to the business of masterful beauty.” I willed him to understand: he could not treat Guy in a cavalier fashion.