Crazy for Cornelia

by Chris Gilson

  “It’s more you than Sebastian, isn’t it?” She peered at the blob on the Polaroid. “But I think you need to make it glow a little better, Kevin.”

  “Tell me about it.” That casual insight stung and thrilled him in roughly equal measure. “I can’t do anything else until I get Sebastian perfect.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.”

  “What more can you do for him?”

  She pressed on innocently, like a curious ten-year-old. He knew she wasn’t really asking about the noble gases and ribbon fires. She was worming into his deep tissue.

  “Sebastian was my mother’s favorite saint,” Kevin finally said. “She died the day before Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh.” Her hand flew up to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  “She loved Renaissance art,” he told her. “She took me to museums.”

  “Of course,” she nodded with matter-of-fact wisdom. “You won’t do anything else until you’ve made things right for her.”

  He stared dumbly at the girl like some farmer might look at an extraterrestrial. She reached out and took his hand in both of hers, like she had in the cab.

  “What’s the matter with him, Kevin? He looks like a perfectly good neon saint to me.”

  “Well”—he still felt spooked, but tingling and inspired, too—“I have this teacher named Max, and he makes his pieces glow.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Max’s work kind of shimmers. Mine still looks like a beer sign.”

  “Then I’ll have to see Max’s work,” she told him, her enthusiasm beyond intense. “Where do you work on your saint?”

  “On 14th Street. It’s at my school. NYIAT.”

  “Gnat?”

  “It’s called the New York Institute of Art and Technology.”

  “Let’s go over there right now,” she told him, pulling her coat around her, ready to leave.

  “Ms. Lord… Cornelia…” Kevin spoke slowly. “I can’t help you anymore. I need my job.”

  He stepped back trying to get out of her space, an instinctive grasp at survival.

  “No, Kevin, I can help you. Do you know who I first thought our doorman was? When I was little?”

  She totally flustered him, always coming from different angles. “I give up.”

  “Santa Claus,” she said. “One Christmas my father came home with gifts. The doorman had brought them upstairs from the car. The man came through the door on Christmas Eve with a mountain of presents, so I thought he was Santa Claus.”

  He wondered whether she made that up on the spot, to make him like her. He didn’t think so. But if that’s what she was doing, it was working.

  “Anyway,” Kevin said, “my school’s closed for Christmas. I can’t get in. Not legally, anyway.” He forced a laugh but she still looked serious.

  “This Max, is he a very good teacher?”

  “He makes perfect bends.” Kevin shrugged, a little helplessly. “And he told me to become a better liar.”

  “What?”

  “Art is a lie that makes us see the truth,” he told her.

  “Picasso.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Picasso said that. Your teacher was quoting him.”

  For the first time, Kevin felt his awe of Max slipping.

  “How much do you pay the New York Institute of Art and Technology? If it’s not too personal.”

  She got the school’s formal name right on the first try. He was impressed. Most people didn’t bother.

  “About seventy-five an hour, and it’s a three-hundred-hour course.”

  Her eyelids darted up, opening like parachutes and gliding back down. “What do they teach you?”

  “Neon flameworking’s kind of technical. You put on a space suit and work over a fire, bending tubes. The tubes are conductors. After you get all the bends right to make your figure, you shoot neon gas through to give it color. Then you wire your piece to a transformer and plug it in. The electrical current makes the gas shine.”

  She watched him, fascinated, breathing deeply and looking like she needed to compose herself. “Seventy-five dollars an hour. I think that kind of money should buy you visiting rights to your saint. Especially at Christmas.”

  That was the second time he saw her gray eyes explode into a violet constellation.

  “Maybe. But we can’t just break in.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kevin wished he’d taken two more painkillers.

  Now he leapt up in the air, grabbing the ladder of the fire escape with his good arm, his ear and shoulder both throbbing.

  Growing up, he had perfected scaling fire escapes. He had needed that skill to get in and out of the apartment at night to meet his friends and do nothing. Now he felt he was definitely going to do something here at the deserted New York Institute of Art and Technology building. The not-knowing-what part kept him interested. He caught the bottom rung and pulled it down.

  They scrambled up the fire escape, then over the roof of the building. Kevin twisted the lock on the metal door. If he could force it open, they could go down the staircase. He kicked the door around the lock but only made it whang defiantly while he worked up a sweat. The lock dented, but wouldn’t loosen.

  “Don’t hurt yourself.” She watched him work, tiny in the oversized coat.

  He gave the door a savage look, partly meant for the school that had taken his money, and partly for Max, who wouldn’t share his neon-glow secrets with him. Kevin looked around the rooftop and found a cinder block that weighed about thirty pounds. He came back and raised the cinder block over his head with his good arm like Thor, then smashed it onto the doorknob. It snapped off and the disabled door fell open.

  They went down the cement stairs together, down to the empty NYIAT studio floor.

  She sniffed the air like a rabbit, her nose with its freckles wriggling. “Did they have a fire?”

  “Every day. Look at the worktables. Those pipes with the nozzles on the end that look like periscopes? That’s where the fires come out. We bend the tubes over them.”

  He hadn’t noticed it since his first day, but the school resembled a bombed-out building from all the soot. Nobody ever scrubbed or even dusted the place. He felt embarrassed by his school. A small reflection of city lights peeked through the filthy windowpanes of the skylight, but failed to illuminate the coat of dinge over the workstations. A single dull night-light burned in a corner of the huge, blackened floor. Kevin took her by the hand to Max’s workspace and showed her Max’s pieces, still softly glowing on the table, mocking him.

  “Look how Max’s stuff shines,” he pointed.

  “Oh?” she picked up Max’s pieces and studied them.

  “Neon only lights up when you plug it into an electrical source. But his pieces glow all by themselves.”

  “I see that.”

  Kevin guided her to the storage closet. They found Saint Sebastian covered with soot where he left him, next to the neon Fat Elvis.

  Together they carried the saint out of the closet and placed him on Max’s worktable. Kevin took a cloth and dusted the white tubes carefully, revealing it to her a little self-consciously.

  He watched her touch the curves of Saint Sebastian’s face, and the thin arrows that stuck out from his torso.

  “Ouch,” she said appreciatively. “So what do you have to do to his halo?”

  “Bend the tube into a perfect circle,” Kevin explained.

  “I’ll help.”

  He took two Mylar space suits out of Max’s supply closet and helped pull one of them over the hospital greens she’d borrowed. Then he placed the shiny black Pyrex safety mask over her face, tightening the strap around her hood. The black eye mask and suit made her look like a junior astronaut. He could see her trembling a little, even through the suit.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No. Just excited.”

  He reached for Max’s suit to put on himself. He’d be the teacher today. Cornelia helped him
slip it on so he wouldn’t hurt his tender shoulder or ear. Then she strapped on his mask for him, which he kept flipped up so he could talk.

  “I like music when I work,” he said.

  Kevin searched the cabinet where he kept the only two discs he ever listened to when he worked, depending on his mood. He reached for Portishead first but changed his mind. Instead, he found his Rossini CD by the opera diva Cecilia Bartoli.

  As the singer filled Max’s studio with her voluptuous mezzo-soprano, he led Cornelia to the flameworking table. Its charred surface now inspired him with the residue of Max’s perfect, glowing work. Kevin fired up the burner, keeping Cornelia slightly behind him where she could watch closely.

  “With neon, you’ve got three common fires,” he explained to her. “This is called a ribbon fire.”

  She grasped his good arm as he lit the burner, a blue spurt hissing, then a blast of hot orange flame exploded from the pipe. He put her mask down over her face, and the flame reflected in the Lucite, a ring of fire on the glossy black surface.

  “Now I’m going to start. I’ll try one long, smooth bend to make the halo arc over his head. I need a perfect circle.”

  She tightened her fingers on his arm. He felt a surprising heat from her, even through their fire suits.

  “I use a thin tube to get a perfect arc.” He explained his main problem. “But a thin tube like this breaks easily when you bend it. I have to keep my moves real fluid. Cornelia?”

  “Yes?” Her voice was small and muffled under her hood.

  “This halo, it’s what you call a corona, isn’t it? An electromagnetic field.”

  She said nothing.

  “Did you see a corona around my head the first night you saw me?”

  “Yes. It’s around your helmet now.”

  Uh-huh. Kevin felt a small seizure of panic, a thought that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come here with this girl and, even in his space suit, let her hand stay on his when he was working with fire. But he wouldn’t be here with her at all if he hadn’t trusted her. He just needed to go with the flow. So she saw a kind of halo around his head that nobody else could see. Like the guy in the Waldorf-Estonia coffee shop swatting at the fly. Maybe she was the new art concept he had left to simmer on a back burner.

  He listened to Bartoli begin a languid aria. It crept under his skin, keeping his nerves taut the way they should be, especially with Cornelia’s body pressed so close to his, as the fabric of their suits slid together.

  “I never did a perfect arc,” he told her, his voice muffled through the mask. “It’s like finding a black orchid, Max said. The hotter the fire gets, the better the bend. But heat makes the glass more brittle.”

  He held the flame of his torch to the glass tube. It stuck straight up next to the saint’s head, like a skindiver’s snorkel.

  “I’ll bombard the glass now. The trick is to go with gravity.”

  Her fingers rested on his glove. What was she doing?”

  “Uh, be careful…”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll help.”

  “I’m starting the first curve now,” he said. She seemed to caress his hand inside the glove. Just a tingling, but definitely something.

  “I have to feel the bend now,” Kevin’s voice rasped. “Pivot with me toward the table… good.”

  Her suit seemed to melt into his arm, her fingers guiding him.

  He felt her energy race under his suit with Bartoli’s voice, and didn’t want her to remove her hand from his after all.

  The arc took shape, the molten glass the tube only an eighth of an inch thick. Now it swelled dangerously, the way it did before snapping, so he’d have to start over.

  “I’m slowing it down,” he told her, “working with gravity. There. That’s the first curve. I have to be careful not to let it wobble. Now I let it cool.”

  His back felt prickly. The fire coming from her suit pressed up against his burned like the fire from the table. He felt as though her body had completely molded into the shape of his back.

  “We can’t force cold tube into the fire now,” he rasped. “Okay, slow. Maintain the curve… let it warm… Oh, Jesus.”

  “Yes?” she exhaled through her mask.

  “It’s a perfect arc. I’ve got to stop.”

  He started to pull the half-finished halo out of the fire.

  “No,” she told him. “Keep going. Finish the circle.”

  Together, her gloved hand helping his, they continued the arc encircling Sebastian’s head.

  “We can finish it,” Kevin yelled through the black Lucite face mask. “I can feel you with me… just hold it in the fire now… help me…”

  He felt her hand guiding his through their space suits. He finished. No, they finished the halo together. He inspected it.

  “Oh Jesus!”

  “Is it perfect?” she asked him.

  “Yes!” he yelled.

  “Yes!” she yelled with him, their screams muffled by their suits. She clawed at the fastener of her mask, and then his.

  She opened up his face mask and kissed him in a frenzy. The tip of her tongue crept inside his mouth and touched his gums, sending shocks through his body. Her fingers held the hair at the nape of his neck.

  She pulled away from him. “Wait a minute. You have to trust me, now, Kevin. Close your eyes.”

  His heart, his ear, his shoulder all pounded together like an anvil chorus. He closed his eyes and heard her run off, swishing in the Mylar space suit. Then he felt her hands on his waist, guiding him.

  He waited.

  “Open.”

  Kevin saw the face and halo of Saint Sebastian glow between the girl’s hands, like Max’s work. The face shimmered in a luminous flesh tone like a living thing, not a bar sign anymore. The halo radiated in saintly fashion, perfect as any of Giotto’s gold disks. The change was subtle, but it made art out of his tangle of white tubes.

  He touched the sculpture.

  “Fiber optic coils, thin little threads. I saw them on Max’s workbench. They’re called freestanding coils because they light up by themselves. You can only get them in Europe.”

  “How did you know about them?” he croaked.

  “A museum curator showed me.”

  Naturally. Kevin felt hot, and not in a completely good way.

  “That’s how Max illuminates his work,” she said. “Didn’t he show you?”

  “No. I can’t believe you did that.”

  “You made Sebastian,” she said modestly. “I just gave him a little charge.”

  “It was so easy for you, making the bend, lighting it up.” Kevin kept his voice down. “Let’s see. I’ve been working on this two years, trying to get it right. I guess you figured it out in, what, two minutes? I brought you here to show you what I do…”

  She owned his eyes, he realized. She burrowed into them and found his vanity, then his heart.

  “I only wanted to help.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he breathed out. “Cornelia, how do you know this stuff?”

  She crossed her arms in the space suit, raised her chin up. “Do you know who Nikola Tesla is?” she asked.

  “He made the Tesla coil.”

  She shut her eyes as though patient but slightly exasperated.

  “He did a little more than that. If you really want to know.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Well, how about in the morning? I wouldn’t mind staying here, if you want to go home.”

  Leave? Kevin felt as attached to her now as a magnet to a refrigerator door. Should he invite her back to his place? He fumbled with that idea, which could mean a slog through the snow, maybe running into a police car, and in the pisshole of his apartment groping with the question of sex.

  Now she looked tired enough to sleep. Her eyelids were at half-mast. “Let’s stay here, both of us.” But he wouldn’t touch her.

  “You’re sure I’m not keeping you?”

  “No, I’m single.”

  “Of cour
se. Saints have to stay single.”

  He reddened. “I mean…”

  She touched his cheek, warming it.

  “Maybe next time, you’ll show me your heart.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kevin woke up first, Cornelia’s hair in his face. He peeked over her head. The wall clock read 9:37 A.M.

  He didn’t immediately feel the aching despair that had been his wake-up call for the past three weeks. His first sensation was the scent of her hair. He imagined a meadow in Florence, Italy, where the Renaissance artists painted. If they had meadows in Florence.

  He also failed to notice, for the first few minutes, the rousing anthem of pain now pounding away in his ear and his shoulder. He realized that he hadn’t filled his prescription for painkillers.

  Then he remembered that he was supposed to work the 8:00 A.M. shift this week with Andrew.

  He slowly disengaged from her body spooned into his. They’d slept in their clothes, to keep each other warm on the narrow, ugly sofa in the director’s office. They were outlaws, he remembered. They’d be looking for her. He just hoped they wouldn’t be looking for her with him.

  Carefully, he leaned on his elbow and surveyed her. Her smooth shoulders, a little bony under the fabric of the hospital scrubs she had stolen, were striped with broken light from the snow-covered skylight. The hair on her arms sparkled like tiny silk threads. He felt her breath on his hand.

  He traced his finger lightly across her profile. He studied her small waist that dipped under the flimsy green, rumpled hospital scrubs, her slender legs and the calf that stuck out where the pant leg rolled up. They were finely proportioned, so aristocratic. He looked at her slightly freckled nose, her flat, peach-colored belly just visible under her green top. There was no part of her that wouldn’t drive him crazy. This could be an infatuation, mostly based on looks and some lust, just like high school. But he was older now, so it had to be a mature infatuation.

  Her sculpted forearms were still wound together under her cheek.

  He had to laugh at himself, then carefully inched off the sofa. He found Philip Grace’s gray leather coat she had worn to his apartment and laid it gently over her, tucking the bottom around her toes.

  He padded through the untidy office to a telephone, and punched in his number to pick up messages.