The Sleep-Over Artist

by Thomas Beller

  Long after all of this drama had subsided to a low hum of animosity, he had nevertheless jumped with gleeful joy when he came upon, deep in the Metro section of the New York Times, a strange photograph in which six portly men in bad suits marched towards the entrance of a building all handcuffed to each other. Each of these men held a newspaper up to his face. It was a lyrical image, this parade of men with newspapers for heads. But the caption below the photo identified the men as having been convicted of taking bribes from contractors. People were always thirsty for culprits for why New York apartments were so expensive, and here were six of them in handcuffs, with newspapers over their faces. In an amazingly spiteful gesture to those obscuring newspapers, the newspaper of record named the indicted chain gang pictured above and the company they worked for. There in black and white was the name of Mr. Fred Tuba, the very man whose name had appeared on the bottom of all those surly letters that had always so upset his mother.

  He had called his mother up excitedly. She had seen the picture too! They laughed about it, he with glee, she in a different way. She was not so vengeful or possessed. She laughed as though she was reassured about her judgment, her instrument of discernment, and sense of justice. But he knew that she could, when she wanted to, hate.

  HIS EYES BORED into Arnold Lovell’s profile. Lovell turned slightly on his hips, swaying a little and alternating his gaze between the piece of paper and the crowd before him, looking less and less at the scripted speech and speaking with more and more passion. As if Arnold Lovell didn’t have enough troubles in the world, he was now volunteering himself for a meat grinder of a task: to be on the board of directors of The Babe Ruth. To attend all those meetings, to sit in breathing distance of vituperative, sinister Ms. Ganesh, Evil itself. Alex could think of no worse fate.

  Yet the forces of Good had to somehow mobilize against the forces of Evil, and they (the forces of Good) had descended on Lovell and made him their man. Could he not rise to the call? How long had it been since anyone called? Maybe he was flattered? Two days later a piece of paper was posted in the lobby listing the newly elected board of directors. Elaine Ganesh had a seat, but was no longer president. And there was one new name: Arnold Lovell.

  WHEN THE MEETING was over, and the shareholders had all cast their votes in the ballot box, Alex and his mother went up to the apartment.

  “Do you want some tea?” his mother said. “Or are you hungry? We could order Chinese food.”

  “Let’s order Chinese food.”

  He dialed. She paused to consider what she wanted, as she always did, and then got beef with snow peas, as she always did. They sat at the kitchen table and ate. In the study, and in his old room, and even in her bedroom, there was a terrifying accumulation of debris. His mother was getting worse and worse at throwing things out, and he had, in the past, erupted in outbursts of exasperation on the matter.

  The sight of his mother pausing over a piece of junk mail to give it, if only briefly, her full attention sent him into near hysterics which he struggled to contain. Couldn’t she tell right away it was junk mail? On his last visit he had found stacked in his room about twenty empty shopping bags. What did she need all these bags for? Against what natural disaster was she hoarding shopping bags?

  Whenever he allowed these thoughts to escape into the articulated world they had a terse, almost nasty exchange. She was at work on another book, and it required all her attention, and when she had time, she said, she would deal with the disorder. So now he bit his lip. He didn’t want to fight with her about it. She put the Chinese food in bowls and they ate in silence. At one point he looked up at her, and for a moment, as he saw her chewing, he was struck by a terrible flash of grief on her behalf. She had been widowed with a ten-year-old boy. Who could prepare for that? This grief was as sudden and blinding as lightning, and like lightning it disappeared an instant after it arrived, and was followed a few moments later by a low dull thunder that rumbled plaintively through his chest.

  “What’s the matter?” she said instinctively, looking up at him.

  “Nothing,” he said. He ate a little more.

  “It’s too bad about the windows,” he said. “I always liked the way that they got frosted on the inside on really cold days.” He glanced at her to see how she would respond to the pragmatic nugget lodged in the comment; the whole point of the new windows was they saved on heating. They were theoretically going to cut down on waste.

  “It’s awful,” she said, sighing, and putting down her chop-sticks. “They are so ugly. But there is a special attachment you can put on them that makes them look like French windows. I’m going to get it.”

  “What’s a French window?” he said.

  “These,” she said, and gestured to the old windows behind her.

  The windows did not look particularly French. They were divided into panes of glass, six rectangular panes of glass on the bottom part and six on the top. This was, as far as he was concerned, what a window normally looked like. The new windows wouldn’t have the wooden slats dividing the panes. It would be one big piece of glass.

  “Mom,” he said. “Part of me thinks this is absurd, the whole deal about the windows. And part of me is incredibly sympathetic. I’m sort of torn on the matter.”

  “What is absurd? They’re very unpleasant, the whole way they have gone about it. And the windows are just…”

  “Ugly. I agree. But it’s also like, people are…so resistant to change!”

  “Well,” she said. “Some changes are worth resisting.”

  “Really,” he said. “Which ones?”

  She didn’t answer, just looked down at her food for a moment and then back at him. She gave him a knowing smile. “You’ll have to find that out yourself,” she said.

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance, in one way or another, in the writing of this book: Jerome Badanes, Jill Bialosky, Mary Evans, Elizabeth Grove, St. Ann’s School, Yaddo, Kip Kotzen, Daniel Pinchbeck, Scott Smith, Rob Bingham, Robert Towers, Randall Poster, Jan de Jong, Sam Green and his excellent documentary Rainbow Man/John 3:16, Alba Branca, Paul Beller, the Writer’s Room, Liselotte Bendix Stern, Hava Beller.

  Thomas Beller’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, and Best American Short Stories. He is a founding editor of Open City magazine and edited Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of 20 Young Writers. He has worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the Cambodia Daily. He is the author of a collection of stories, Seduction Theory, and a Web site, mrbellersneighborhood.com.