The Sleep-Over Artist

by Thomas Beller

  “Mrs. Gluck,” said the bald man, his shiny bald head lowered a little so his eyes were looking out from under his brow, his handlebar mustache looking strangely like a weapon with which he was taking aim. It was the tone of voice bartenders famously use for their regulars who are at risk of being asked to leave. Then he turned back to his cohort and said, “Al, why don’t you get Renata to show the gentleman our muff selection.”

  They walked to the back of the store.

  “You know, you were not out of line to make that clarification,” said Al under his breath. He moved with brisk steps that for some reason did not propel him any faster than Alex’s more languid pace. “Bud always gets a little tense when he sees an unfamiliar face. Not that we don’t want some unfamiliar faces!”

  They walked up three steps to a smaller area, set off from the rest of the store, where a large bin sat, and where a metal rack held an array of new muffs. “Renata!” he called out. He waited a second, and then hurried through a doorway above which was a sign that read “Repairs.”

  Alex stared at the muffs. They looked like the things one finds furiously spinning at a car wash. They bristled with newness. Most of them were a color which he could only define to himself as “blond.” None of them was what he had in mind. The muff idea was becoming a failure. Alex felt a trickle of grief the way one might feel a raindrop fall down the back of one’s collar.

  “I understand you’re looking for a muff,” came a voice by his side. It belonged to a young woman with curly black hair and thick eyeliner and tight black pants. She was stylish in a contemporary way that for a moment Alex had a hard time reconciling with the interior of the Ritz Thrift Shop.

  “They’re so crazy disorganized,” she continued. “There’s these,” and she gestured to the rack of blond muffs, “but they’re not too nice. Do you like them?”

  “Not really,” said Alex.

  “Yeah. Neither do I. But over here, this is where the good stuff is.” She walked over to a box Alex hadn’t noticed before, something like a wooden laundry hamper for fur, which was filled with muffs. She began to pull them out one after another, providing a running commentary.

  “This is sort of fifties slinky; this one’s crazy sixties; this is all beat up, you’d have to restore it yourself; I love this, it’s beautiful, but between you and me I think it’s in less than ideal condition. But what glamour! So thirties glamour! Is that what you’re looking for?”

  “I was just thinking muff. I didn’t have a more vivid picture in mind,” said Alex. But then he realized he did have a vivid picture. And it was thirties glamour. “Will you try on that muff?” he said.

  She did.

  “What kind of look does she have?” said Renata.

  “It’s hard to explain,” said Alex.

  She cocked her head as though she were relinquishing her own personality and making herself blank, a mannequin onto which the customer could project whatever image he wanted. It was amazingly effective. Suddenly, in a flash, Alex saw the muff as it would look on Christine. It was sleek and elegant.

  “What kind of animal?” he said. “Fox,” she said. “The best.”

  ALEX’S RELATIONSHIP WITH Christine was a beautiful dream, but also an extremely anxious one, because just as some dreams have, within them, a built-in awareness that this is a dream and at some point it will end, thereby giving the dream world a peculiar kind of deadline, a ticking clock against which the dream’s action has to race, so Alex’s relationship with Christine had within it a kind of time bomb, a self-destruct mechanism whose ticking was a constant reminder of the finite quantity of their love.

  Maybe it was that she was so much older than he was (though she didn’t look it). Or maybe it was the blank wondrous gaze she sometimes bestowed on him, as though she couldn’t believe she would be visited by such a nice twist of fate, but it was nevertheless a visit.

  He delivered the box to Nadine’s in advance and left it with the bartender. Then he went to her apartment building. He had said he would pick her up at eight, and when he looked at his watch he saw he was exactly one minute early. The watch had been a gift from her on his birthday almost exactly six months earlier. It was sporty, digital, and not particularly expensive. He loved it. Alex had never worn a watch in his entire life, but kept it on his wrist at all times, day or night, except for showers.

  He decided to wait the one minute until eight precisely. He stared at the list of names beside their corresponding buzzers. There were a series of black sticker strips, produced by the kind of handheld machine that punches out the letters one at a time. He stared at her name, Bancroft, its letters now faded because she was one of the more senior tenants. He knew she wanted, in some diffuse way, to leave New York. How could you argue on behalf of New York? he wondered. If you grew up there it was one thing, but to arrive from somewhere else…what was to prevent you from leaving for a more sane and practical environment? And he couldn’t make the only argument he could think to make: you can’t leave New York because I’m here!

  He thought about the muff, how it would look on her, and speculated on her mood.

  Today marked the end of the six-month period when she was ten years older than he was, and began the period when she was eleven years older. It was a Wednesday and he hadn’t slept with her since Saturday, and had not seen her since Sunday night, when, in spite of his cajoling attempts to change her mind, she had said she wanted to spend a couple of days alone, sleep alone in her bed (a fair request, he rationalized, because no matter how well they snuggled it was a single bed and he was a big guy and anyone should be forgiven for wanting to sleep alone on a single bed now and then), and generally collect herself. That he should be the occasion of her becoming scattered was either a good sign or a bad sign, depending on his mood.

  AT THE RESTAURANT, her steak consumed, Christine took a sip of red wine and, putting the glass down, proceeded to make a sheep sound.

  “Mahahha.” A little lamb sound. She took a pleasant sip of her red wine amidst the kooky and subdued festivity of Nadine’s.

  “Oh my God,” he said, delighted. “Not the lamb sound.”

  Now she made a deeper, more feline sound, more like an ominous purr, not a kitten, a leopard.

  “Jesus! What was that?” he said. “That was terrifying. Go back to being a sheep.”

  “It’s not a sheep,” she said. “It’s a lamb.” Then she made the sound: “Mahaha.” Then she smiled at Alex. She liked it when he responded to things she did. His face sometimes took on that look of dumb delight people have when they watch fireworks. She affected him that way. It worried her, though, to think that for anyone else in the world, including the perplexed-looking couple sitting next to them, that sound would mean nothing except, perhaps, that she was weird. Well, she figured, she was weird. When she was happy, she made lamb sounds.

  It had been a lovely dinner. She described her surprise and befuddlement at receiving a singing telegram, related the emotional complications, and both she and Alex laughed gleefully, their comprehension and appreciation of the general absurdity of things in perfect synchronization. These moments of synchronization frightened her. His laughter was infectious. He had a way of simultaneously teasing her and complimenting her—with his laughter, his attention, his lustful eyes, the bright flare of surprise that lit his face when she did unexpected things—that she delighted in. The thought of its absence sent a pang of fear through her. It didn’t linger. It was a single sharp jab of pain inside of her, something inexplicable, incurable. She hadn’t told him about what thoughts the singing telegram had interrupted.

  The Gum Incident was the most obvious example of something she had been feeling more and more strongly for a couple of years—she was like a house that had been overgrown with vines. Her own history had crept up around her and tied her down, made her earthbound. She wanted to fly. She wanted her life to change. And in her imagination this change would come about via a kind of hurricane that would sweep her away, unmoor her,
change her life. There was the possibility, the vague hope, that the hurricane would come in the form of a man, that he would sweep her off her feet. But she was prepared to be her own hurricane, to do it herself. Alex had been a lovely breeze. But his love felt like another constraining vine wending its way around her. It didn’t feel liberating. It was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Gum Incident—more beautiful, connected, real—but it was on the same spectrum. He was part of her past even while sitting across from her, even when inside of her. But she couldn’t tell him any of this. He was too young to understand this restlessness, which is different from youthful, meandering, exploratory, all-the-time-in-the-world restlessness. Hers was an urgent restlessness: now or never.

  She rehearsed the words in her mind: I’m going to move to San Francisco.

  What! he would say, another huge firework thudding into the dark sky. Why?

  “Now what?” he said now, with a jokey petulance. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “You looked…like you saw someone you knew a long time ago just cross the street.”

  “I was just thinking,” she said.

  “Well, never a dull moment, baby,” he said now, his face softening to a smile. “I’ve got something for you, too.”

  He jumped up from his seat and went to the bar, returning with a big box.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  “Alex, what are you doing?”

  “Close your eyes,” he said again. She closed them. “Put out your hand. Palm up.” She did so. She could hear the sound of the box open, and the soft ruffle of that tissuelike paper that is used to cosset shirts and sweaters in boxes. Except the box was a strange round shape. This was going to make her announcement about leaving more difficult. She steeled herself for it; maybe over dessert, she thought. And then she had a bizarre thought. Maybe he was going to give her a ring. Was Alex going to propose? Was the box an elaborate fake-out? He would ask her to marry him and half the restaurant would turn to see what she had to say in response and she would blurt out that she wanted to break up and move three thousand miles away, thereby causing a level of emotional carnage in the restaurant that would stream through the gossipy tributaries of these other people’s lives for weeks and months to come.

  “Happy birthday,” he said, and as he said the words a soft furry thing descended onto her hand, enveloping it. She opened her eyes. Alex sat across from her, beaming, and on her hand, precariously balanced, was a black fur thing that bore a very strong resemblance to a dead animal.

  “What is it?” she said, a little mortified.

  “It’s a muff,” he said. “For your hands.”

  The extremely unwelcome words “anal electrocution” flashed through her mind, courtesy of some anti-fur literature that someone had once thrust into her hand on a street corner. She stared at it. She could feel her mouth drop open. She pushed one hand into the enclosure, and then the other. It was warm in there.

  “It’s sort of an antique, I hope you don’t mind. It was the nicest thing I saw. They don’t make muffs like they used to. Well? Well? Is it too weird?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

  She stared at him, stricken, thinking of how to break the news.

  Alex saw that Christine had a strange expression on her face. She was clutching the muff with both hands, holding on to it for dear life. Her white fingers dug into the black fur. His body tensed with expectation, not knowing what was going on.

  “Christine?” he said. A huge wave of panic crashed against him.

  She saw it in his face. She knew he sensed her impending detachment. Yet rather than retracting into himself, pulling himself upright and standing on his own two feet, he was instead throwing himself at her.

  “Oh, Alex,” she said. It was, he thought, the most deliciously complicated statement, partly patronizing, partly a cry for help. They sat there in silence for a moment.

  He leaned in towards her across the table, and it was as though he were flying at her through the air, and she felt like a trapeze artist who won’t extend her arms at the crucial moment. You can’t really catch other people, she thought. If they’re going to fall, they fall.

  “Christine,” he whispered, and, bracing himself on his elbows, he leaned forward to kiss her on her forehead.

  Personal Style

  ALEX FADER SAT ON SALLY BROWN’S COUCH HAVING THE following thoughts: She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful.

  “Everyone from Yale is jealous of you,” Sally was saying. “I just talked to a guy who went there and all he could talk about was you.” Her voice was low, almost sultry, except when she got excited and it leapt to a high register.

  “I didn’t go to Yale,” said Alex, emerging from his reverie. He mentioned the name of his considerably less distinguished college.

  “That’s what I meant,” she said, unfazed.

  “Why would anyone be jealous of me, anyway?”

  “Because of what a success you are!” she said. Her voice leapt up on the word “success.” “I mean, how many people have made a movie at such a young age? And been written up in the paper? How many people have done that?”

  He was tempted to point out, somewhat tersely, that what he had made was a short documentary, which, though it was a movie, wasn’t really a movie, in the usual popcorn-eating sense of the word. He was also tempted to point out that hundreds if not thousands of people his own age had made things and been written about in the papers. He was tempted to point out that she was behaving like a grandmother who takes exaggerated delight in every accomplishment of her grandchild. He was tempted to point out many different things, but didn’t. Instead he sat in a docile stupor on her couch, looking at her.

  Sally belonged to that class of men and women (though mostly women) who were associated with all the city’s great charities but who, aside from substantial outlays of cash, projected an atmosphere and ambience that was the exact opposite of charitable. Most of these women were very old, and though Sally was still in her late twenties, he wondered if she pretended to be old (and a little senile) to better fit in.

  She cocked her head a little to the side in a manner that reminded him, for some reason, of an absurd movie he had been dragged to as a kid, Benji, about a dog with a personality so intense that it was able to communicate with humans with its facial expressions. It wasn’t that she looked like Benji. It was that she looked like she owned Benji, that Benji was her dog, whose intense, questioning gaze she was now returning. She seemed to be expecting him to say something.

  “I’m not so young,” he said. He was twenty-five. “And also…” He was going to continue with a series of self-deprecating and down-to-earth comments, but lost his train of thought.

  The couch on which Alex and Sally sat was a white pillowy two-seater. Sally was sitting about as far away from Alex as possible, reclining against the far armrest, and Alex might have thought that she had concocted this whole meeting for some strange anthropological reason—a field trip in which the field came to her—but for her two bare feet, which were comfortably propped up on his knee. She wore faded blue jeans with a hole in one knee the size of a dime, and a silky white button-down shirt with the top three buttons undone.

  Alex was wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons and a white button-down shirt whose sleeves were a little too short. And black jeans. They were new, so he hoped they registered not as jeans, but as black. He was striking out for new ground, clotheswise; like Sally’s couch, the blazer was unfamiliar territory. He had recently decided to stop dressing like a graduate student who also played drums in a rock band (his friends, whom he barraged with postcard invitations to every show, told him that when he got carried away, which was more or less always, he looked like the drummer in the Muppets) and start dressing like a serious filmmaker or one of those neat but slightly raffish television reporters who knock on the doors of ne’er-do-wells, camera crew in tow, and confront them ab
out their misdeeds.

  This was exactly what he had done in his short documentary, Petty Cash, which retold the story of his expulsion from the Wave Hill School, in eleventh grade. His crime was having started a renegade newspaper, the Student Herald, whose first issue had a front-page headline which read, in a type size usually reserved for the outbreak of war, “Student Faculty Animosity: Whose Fault Is It?” Alex’s crime had been greatly compounded, in the eyes of the administration, by the fact that he had obtained, through completely honest and legitimate means (he insisted until the bitter end), the mailing list for the entire school, as well as the school’s bulk mail stamp, and had sent out the premier issue with its inflammatory cover story along with a passionate piece of fund-raising literature to every parent in the school. Even this infraction against the established (in 1907) order of the Wave Hill School might have been survivable but for the fact that Alex, as both author and editor of the newspaper and the accompanying letter, had managed to average about three spelling mistakes in every line, and so to go along with some very generous checks he received from a few progressive and open-minded parents, the school was inundated with irate letters and phone calls demanding to know what kind of school was this that they could have an illiterate going unnoticed in its midst? What kind of education were their kids getting in return for these astronomical fees?

  “You know who I liked the best?” said Sally. “The science teacher, what’s-her-name. She was so intense, talking about her son. Her eyes had this, I don’t know, pooling effect. Like she was on the verge of tears but stoically holding back. I loved that.”

  The whole event had been a gruesome episode in Alex’s life, and it seemed deeply perverse to him that it should in some way be responsible for landing him on Sally’s couch. His documentary approached the whole affair in the spirit of an investigative report, as on 60 Minutes, into a long-covered-up crime. Alex appeared on camera dressed in a jacket and tie, made some preliminary remarks about the time and the place and the cast of characters, and then embarked on a quest to interview the key players, almost none of whom had any desire to be interviewed by a formerly expelled student. It became, almost by accident, a farce; after being politely rebuffed by his old nemesis, Mr. McPherson, he found out where he lived and staked out his driveway. For some reason there is an enduring Candid Camera kind of delight in seeing people being filmed who were not expecting to be filmed; to see their discomfort, the way they draw themselves up, to see their faces make calculations, get their bearings, and try and behave in a proper manner. Mr. McPherson declined to be interviewed, as did several other administrators—serious, tweedy men who took their jobs as educators seriously, and who had seriously presided over Alex’s breach of etiquette, decorum, criminal law, and, most maddeningly to him, “the spirit of community that is so important to Wave Hill,” as Mr. Laverman, the most tweedy and bow-tied of the bunch, had put it to the assembled culprits and their parents on the first day of the proceedings, with all the sick glee of a torturer dripping a little hot wax on the bare asses of his victims before getting down to the serious business of pain administration.