Be Dazzled

by Ryan La Sala

  Someone hands me a beer. I open it and pretend to drink from it even though beer tastes like rotten water.

  I’m facing down a crowd of clowns. Of angels and monsters and mighty warriors and at least six Spider-Men. Most of the people here are from Controverse, many still in pieces of their costumes. I recognize at least six people right away from the strange prejudging, and then I recognize a few others from reviewing socials in the days leading up to the con. I don’t know what May did to get all these people to show up, but it looks like I’m hosting the unofficial Controverse after-party.

  May pushes through the crowd and hands me a second beer.

  “Shit, Raffy, don’t be mad, okay?”

  A pair of nymphs are right behind May, and they nearly knock her over trying to speak to me.

  “Where is the coat?”

  “In my room.”

  “The most amazing coat! Where is it?”

  “It was falling apart,” I explain quickly, unsure how to handle these new people yelling at me. And then I realize they aren’t yelling at me—they’re praising me.

  “Amazing!” one of them shouts, clutching my hand and looking at me with hazy vision. “Teach me your ways!”

  “Thank you, thank you,” I say, and then May is dragging me up the loft ladder.

  “Listen,” she says, still standing on the ladder as I scoot onto the loft’s edge, “we are a little famous. Everyone thinks you’re either getting kicked out of Controverse, which is legendary, or that we’re going to make it to the finals.”

  “Wait, what? They don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  I shake my head, thinking through what Irma said about the results being posted this evening. They must not have gone out yet.

  “We placed in Primes,” I tell May. “We’re competing again tomorrow in the big leagues.”

  May doesn’t scream for joy like I would. She claps a hand over my mouth and says, “Don’t say that! You’ll jinx yourself. Or…wait, do you already know the results? Did they tell you after I left? Oh my god. So you’re not getting booted?”

  I mumble into May’s hand, which smells like pizza. She removes it, wiping my breath on her jeans as she sits next to me.

  “Irma Worthy intervened. Personally intervened, like some sort of fairy godmother mixed with a crime boss mixed with Martha Stewart, so, a crime boss. She said we’re going to Primes.”

  May ponders this. Does she look a little disappointed? I guess I can see why. Maybe she thought me getting banned was her way out of more cosplay. She throws on a smile regardless and says, “Definitely don’t tell anyone you know you’re in. All anyone can talk about is how surprising the judging was today. Evidently, Craft Club streamed everything and posted it on Ion, so anyone in the world can watch Trip-C this year. It’s like a surprise reality TV show. I heard a rumor that they’re trying to get a real TV show next year. Everyone’s a nervous wreck. People who would normally do great totally bombed in front of the crowd, and other people are sure they’re up for Primes. Can you feel that energy? It’s the energy of anticipation. If you let people know you know the results, they’re gonna tear this place apart.”

  “I don’t know the results,” I say. “Just that Luca and I get to compete. And if anyone tears anything apart, my mother will kill me, and then resurrect my ghost, and then kill my ghost, and then force my dead ghost to lead her to you, and then she’ll kill you, and kill your ghost, and—”

  “Wait, Luca is in Primes, too? But he didn’t do shit.”

  I shrug. She takes one of my beers from me.

  “But I guess he is Western-hot,” May reasons.

  I don’t like that she acknowledges this. I’ll never have Luca’s natural looks or his easy charm. He’s a magnet for compliments just by being himself. I have to work so much harder. I know this, have always known this, and have always resented it. But even the resentment aims itself inward. Luca can’t help what he looks like. So he gets off easy again, and I’m stuck holding my own hatred. Again.

  The crowd of cosplayers below feels overly loud, like at any moment the thin walls of the studio are going to push apart and bring the skylights crashing down.

  “I need some air,” I tell May, handing her my remaining beer and climbing down the ladder. I take the long way through the crowd, forcing myself to say hello to people as a means of distracting myself against the freezing stiffness that webs through me every time I think of that moment with Luca in the hall. When I reach the door, I exit just as someone is trying to enter.

  Inaya.

  She’s out of her makeup, in a fluorescent pink hoodie and leggings. Her black hair stands atop her head in three glossy buns.

  We stare at each other, stunned, but only one of us deserves to be surprised. It’s me, but I still find myself apologizing to her.

  “Don’t,” she says. She points at the door behind me. “I heard you were having a party, and I figured I should show up to make nice before tomorrow. But I’m not gonna come in if you don’t want me to.”

  I never know what to do with Inaya. She’s always so…frank about things, like she stores all her artfulness in her fingertips. I will never get how such a ruthless person can create such soft, whimsical things.

  “No, it’s cool,” I say, biting down on the inside of my cheek. As per usual, I feel a mix of awe and jealousy toward Inaya. She is smart, talented, and ambitious. I’m those things, too, but unlike me, she is rock solid. Unflappable. Perfect. It’s as easy to admire her as it is to resent her, and that makes it even harder to compare myself to her, which I do constantly.

  It doesn’t help that she’s gone from being a friend to a rival in just a few months. I liked her more when I wasn’t straining to keep up with her.

  “Cool,” Inaya says. “And by the way, congrats. I talked to Luca. Guess we’ll be in Primes together after all.”

  So she knows.

  “We shouldn’t say anything though, sounds like,” she adds. I nod.

  “For sure. We’ll act surprised when the list gets posted.”

  Inaya smiles as I let her in. She smells like flowers and nail polish when she walks past. I barely register this before I see the second person waiting outside.

  Luca. He doesn’t ask for my permission like Inaya did. He pulls me away from the party, and suddenly we’re on the back lawn together, cool grass licking my ankles.

  “We need to talk,” he says.

  “About what, Luca? We had our moment. We said our sorrys.”

  “Not about that. Raffy, your mom just pulled into the driveway.”

  * * *

  By the grace of some minor god, a call keeps Evie in her car just long enough for me to shush an entire party, force everyone under the studio tables, and make it back into the house with a few minutes to spare. By the time my mom walks in the front door, it’s like there was never a party at all. I hope.

  I am sitting at the kitchen table, a hastily slapped-together peanut butter and jelly sandwich on top of a paper towel in front of me. I have my laptop open, and I’ve just loaded a webcomic when she hits the kitchen and sees me.

  The very first thing Evie does is scream. Like, scream scream.

  I scream, too. I don’t know why we’re screaming until Evie cuts us off, presses the back of her hand to her closed eyes, and goes, “Raphael, that’s enough of that. You scared me. I thought you were…in the woods or something.”

  Oh, right. Camping. Like a settler of CATAN.

  “Mosquitoes,” I explain. “They suck.”

  “Well, you would too, if that were your job.” Evie wears driving gloves almost every time she’s in a car, and she has them with her now, wagging in her bare hand as she gestures at me and my sandwich.

  “What is this?”

  “Dinner?”

  She doesn’t look convinced, which
makes sense. We rarely use this kitchen. I eat most of my meals in the studio or in my room.

  I turn the conversation away from the sandwich. “How was your trip?”

  “Amputated.”

  My mother is always in these flowing scarves that billow from her like sails as she rushes around. Right now she’s bundled in a vibrant chartreuse one with winking iridescent threads that create a strange grid pattern. It’s so ugly it’s awesome. I hate it.

  Evie crosses the kitchen and plucks a chunky mug from the exposed cabinets, fills it with water, and then drinks it in gluttonous gulps. She does this twice more. My mother, who travels almost compulsively, refuses to touch airport bathrooms. So she rarely eats or drinks on travel days. This leads to a fascinating regimen of dehydration and malnourishment. From what I can remember, she was just in Arizona, which means she has likely been traveling for eight hours. She’s bound to be irritable. I am absolutely petrified.

  This must show on my face. She places the mug in the sink and asks, “What? What’s that look?”

  I’m looking out the back door at the studio without even realizing it. I see a light turn on, then off. I look back at her and offer a wan smile.

  “Nothing. I’m good. Did you meet with the muralist?”

  “Of course I met with the muralist,” she says. “But she won’t do walls outside of the Southwest. She says that she doesn’t paint on walls. She paints on time. She paints on the temporal texture of a place, and she doesn’t feel the same need to…what did she say? Oh—dress up places that are too young for makeup. Fascinating. I love her mind. I could eat it for every meal.”

  Anyone else would be annoyed by this, but Evie lives for the eccentric bullshit of artists. The more restrictive their rules, the better for her sales. The more bizarre, the better for her galleries. Right now, she seems to be entirely swept up in the assessment of surfaces as time canvases, and she’s sweeping around our spacious modern kitchen with an air of disgust. Like she’s about to tear off the backsplash with her bare hands.

  “So what happened?” I prompt.

  Evie is now at the freezer. She stands with the door between us. I cannot see her face as she says, “I found a buyer for her walls and a truck big enough to drive them to Miami. We’ll tear off the front wall of the gallery to get them in and maybe leave it like that for the show. Just concrete and rebar ribs.”

  Evie plucks a microwave dinner from the freezer, tears it open, and then makes me read the instructions on the box to her. I can barely focus. She puts the dinner in the microwave, then goes to throw out the box. She stops, peering into the garbage.

  “Raphael,” she says, and I know she knows something is up. She gazes from the garbage to me, and there is no indication she’s looking between literal trash and her darling child.

  “Raphael, are you hiding something?” she asks, her eyes turning to slits. Quickly, she assesses my casual act, likely seeing it for the curated art it is. It’s what she does professionally, after all. The hum of the microwave is the only sound in the kitchen, which suddenly feels like the whole world. And then there’s a noise from outside. Someone laughing.

  “Someone is here!” Evie exclaims.

  I don’t have time to answer before she pulls a knife from the knife block and charges past me, out into the backyard and toward the studio. I’ve barely caught up with her by the time she’s at the door, and I get a hand around her elbow.

  “Wait, stop,” I say, pulling her around.

  The knife slices through the air between us, but that’s not the thing that gets us both to freeze. It’s my hand on her elbow. We don’t touch in this family.

  I release her, but Evie’s judgmental horror keeps me firmly in place as she turns and pushes open the studio door.

  The studio is empty. I try not to make a show of my shock as we walk in and Evie glances under the tables. She checks one of the closets and finding nothing, gives me an annoyed look. Behind her in the loft, I see a whole crowd of shadows vibrating, but I keep my face calm as I say, “I forgot to lock it. I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

  “Yes,” she says, drooping as though suddenly tired. “You will. Your access to this space is a privilege, not a right. This is not your home, it’s—”

  “Your investment, I know.”

  “Right. Here.” She hands me the knife like it’s much too heavy for her, and I carry it out of the studio. She locks the door pointedly, and we head back into the house. Inside, Evie gathers up the bags and packages she brought in from the car, then grabs her microwaved dinner and a plastic fork. Her heels click on the tile floor as she walks the length of the house to the stairs. I follow, the knife at my side, and I am conscious of every single thing that is out of place. I see a single petal from my costume on the floor, and I crush it with my heel.

  “Raphael, I have something to tell you,” Evie says, stopping on the stairs. “While I was in Arizona, I was visited by a vision. It came to me through one of the murals.”

  This isn’t surprising coming from Evie. She loves Ambien. She doesn’t love sleeping on it, though. She has all sorts of visions. Most of them involve traveling to ironically no-name places and staying at cheap motels, where she often has her best business breakthroughs. I fear what this latest one might entail, especially if she feels the need to tell me the details instead of just vanishing like she usually does.

  “What was the vision?” I ask.

  “It told me that I could help you. Now, I know what you’ll say—that this defies everything I’ve taught you about self-reliance—but I think it’s time to capitalize on all the opportunities for younger artists. It’s time to modernize. To seek out new avenues of creation. Don’t you agree?”

  Evie can’t see, but down the hall and out the back window, I see the lights in the studio come on again. Shadows pass quickly, fleeing. I play it off like I’m thinking hard about what she’s saying.

  “Of course I agree,” I say.

  “My vision told me you’d say that. It told me that not everyone is destined for greatness right away and that I need to give you time to find your…upward momentum. I think that’s a nice way of putting it.”

  I bite down on my lip to keep from flinching. “Super nice, thanks.”

  Evie doesn’t catch the sarcasm. With an air of benevolence, she says, “I know how much you like to make those…costumes. I think perhaps I’ve been taking the wrong approach, deterring you from it.”

  Is Evie about to get behind my cosplaying? Is she still high?

  “So I’ve arranged to introduce you to an old friend of mine. Tobias Graham. He designs for everyone. Donatella, Dior, those sorts. He owes me several favors and several thousand dollars. I called him right away, and he offered to meet you for consideration as an apprentice. Isn’t that kind of him?”

  Evie says this with profound disappointment, as though the idea of her son going into editorial fashion design is a major step down from…I don’t know. Whatever she does. From taking Ambien and talking to murals in Arizona.

  “Awesome, thank you,” I say. “That sounds great.”

  “I knew you’d see it that way,” Evie says, relieved. I’m sure the last conversation she wants to have is one about cosplay.

  “I’m tired,” she announces. “I’m at the South End gallery tomorrow, but we can talk more on the plane on Sunday.”

  “What?”

  “Sunday. The day after tomorrow. We’ll meet Tobias for dinner, and if all goes well, you can spend a few days with him at his studio in New York. He has a friend with a room. I already checked.”

  A great silence pushes through the house, separating me from Evie, sweeping me off into the far reaches of my own mind. Evie has threatened to push me into various artsy scenarios before, but dragging me off to New York? Making a decision about my whole future based on a single drug-induced speculation?

 
Evie turns, ascending to the landing.

  “What about school?” I say, fumbling for some reason not to go.

  “What about school? If you do well with Tobias, you can skip all that and really make a name for yourself, Raphael. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I don’t mean college. I mean school. On Monday.”

  Evie shakes her head like I’ve said the most perverted thing possible.

  “Priorities, Raphael,” she clucks. Then she turns and enters her room, shutting the door behind her.

  I’m outside in a flash, slipping back into the darkened studio.

  “Hello? May? You still here?”

  I shine my phone flashlight up at the loft, and an entire mass of costumed people blinks back at me. Belatedly, I realize I’m still clutching the knife, and I hide it behind my back.

  “Party’s over. Sorry, guys.”

  As quietly as I can, I lead them out the studio’s back door, finding a few more cosplayers hidden near our garbage cans and in our bushes. I collect them all and release them into my neighbor’s yard like colorful balloons drifting silently into the dark.

  Back in the studio, it’s just May and me sitting in the loft.

  “Sorry,” she whispers.

  I shrug. I’m exhausted.

  “We tried to clean everything up in the dark before she came out here. Did you get caught?”

  “Nope,” I say, and it sounds sad instead of relieved. And I am sad. Every interaction with Evie shows me just how little of me she sees, and this last one certainly takes the cake. A whole party—a whole costume party—was right in front of her, and all she’s got on her mind is murals and Tobias Graham. I should be happy I didn’t get caught, but even that would be better than my continued covert life among my mother’s galleries.

  “Good! That’s good.” May pulls several bloated bags of cups and beers out of the loft. I help stuff them into the trash outside, thinking it’s risky to leave this much evidence in one place. But I’m the only one who takes the trash out, so unless I tell on me, I’m safe.