He had walked them into the living room, a wide space that yawned out from the narrow entrance. Ava’s mouth dropped. She did not know where to look first.
“Sure,” she answered.
“You make yourself comfortable,” he said to her, pulling on Alex’s arm. “You come help.”
The living room was lit from above by some shimmery sun through a skylight. Not dingy frosted glass like you see at the top of some stairwells but beautiful bright glass full of sky and old rain that collected like tears along the cracks. She looked up, she spun around, she was Alice in fucking Wonderland.
“What the fuck?” Mink said, once he had Alex in the kitchen. “Is that woman safe to be around?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Like Monk didn’t tell me she hit you twice.”
“She’s been through a lot.”
“You sure she’s not going to go psycho on us or some shit?”
“I’m sure.”
“Why doesn’t she go to the cops?”
“Trust me. The cops can’t help her.”
“I’d believe that if she was a spick like us. She’s a white girl, Alex. I never took you for the naïve type.” Mink came closer and lowered his voice. “How do you know she didn’t off that guy in the paper? How do you know she’s not standing in my living room right now with a gun in her hand?”
Alex let those night images wash over him, of Ava moving in the moon dark. Of Ava lying beside him in bed. Of his fingers touching her wet face.
“I just know,” he said, right as the tea kettle started to whistle.
It was warehouse size, it was loft without the tepid grandeur of Soho. It was Grand Central Station, the high ceilings all starry starry night, the smell of acrylic and wood. Stars zipped across walls, leaving trails like the kind she remembered seeing in children’s books. A big leather couch. A group of theater seats swiped from somewhere, four in a row placed directly in front of the flat-screen TV.
Mink grabbed some mugs, popped teabags into them.
“When I first saw her face,” he said, “I saw things there, even in sleep. It’s a beautiful face. It has a smooth purity, like a black-and-white film sequence from a ’30s film. It made me think briefly of Tamara de Lempicka, maybe of her Sleeping Woman painting or maybe Young Girl with Gloves, without, of course, that trademark tagliatelle hair. But there’s something else, Alex. A hardness. A knowingness. She pulled strings. She’s no curly haired innocent who just washed up on an island. She has a past, a heavy one.”
“Everybody has a past,” Alex said, picking up the tea kettle and pouring hot water into mugs. “Did you ever meet somebody and feel like you’ve already known them? Just from the get, have a sense of what they’re capable of, and of what they’re not?”
“No,” Mink said, “I haven’t.”
“Me neither,” Alex said.
There, bookcases full of art books exploding outwards across chairs, and end tables burdened with magazines and newspapers. A fat ashtray loaded with butts and roach clips. The paintings, up on the walls around her. She could spin around and around and still not take it all in. She sat down on the couch. Barely had she settled before she noticed, nudging against her with a papery crackle, a copy of today’s EL DIARIO, a paper she hadn’t seen, hadn’t picked up, already folded to page five, all those Spanish words about her and that big picture of her and David. That sudden deep stomach spasm.
“Oh boy,” she said, looking up. There were those green vines hanging down. Were those fake, or had she stepped into Mesopotamia?
“Actually, the Babylonians had the hanging gardens,” Mink said. Green lush hanging from sky lit by nature so jungle she expected to hear birds, the flapping of wings.
Mink slipped a warm mug into her hand. She pushed the newspaper away but he saw, he knew. She was bracing for questions, she was looking at Alex, but he sat beside her on the couch clutching his mug, that calm face showing no sign of tension.
“I hope you like chamomile,” Mink said to her.
“Yes, thank you.” She took a slow sip. “I know these paintings from somewhere.”
“Those on the far wall are some of my personal favorites: ALBIZU CAMPOS SKIMMING STONES WITH ALGER HISS; BULLET-RIDDLED BLOCKS AND CUBES NO. 6, and HECTOR LOVOE CAN FLY. They’ve made the rounds at shows and catalogs but I haven’t sold them. My agent is furious, but I refuse to sell them, even though some are pretty well-known. That one there is called HE BELIEVES IN BOOTY. It was featured in a Björk video.”
“What is this?” Alex said, tasting his tea.
“That’s green tea. Helps fight off those free radicals. Why do they have to call them ‘free radicals,’ incidentally? Why not ‘free conservatives’?”
“Conservatives are never free,” Alex said, starting to roll a cigarette. “They always charge something.”
“Have you been painting a long time?”
“Since 1993 or so, after dropping out of college. But I haven’t really painted in about a year.”
“I thought it was two years,” Alex said.
“Will you stop nit-picking? The fact is, I just finished my first real painting in over a year. It’s vastly different from anything I’ve ever done. I’m a little nervous about it, really.”
Alex’s phone rang. He whipped it out, checked the screen. “Hello,” he said.
“I know where I saw you,” she said, snapping her fingers. “It was freaking TIME magazine.”
“I was in there, yeah.”
“There was a picture of Kurt Cobain wearing a shirt you made, with these blocky cubes on it.”
Mink was laughing. “Yeah, yeah, I have that picture around here someplace. He autographed it for me.”
Alex snapped the phone shut. They both looked at him. “It was my boss,” he said. “I kind of walked off the job today.”
“Shit, that’s right,” she said. “I got you in trouble again.”
“No you didn’t. I told him I had an emergency.”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t want to—”
“Forget it.”
“No, I really feel bad.”
“Just stop, okay?”
Mink watched them. Smiling to himself, he reached over to a nearby end table and pulled a framed picture out from under some magazines. He handed it to her.
“Ah shit,” she said, her face softening.
It was the picture of Kurt Cobain, guitarist and lead singer of Nirvana. He had short blond hair and darkrimmed glasses, his big blue eyes staring back earnestly. He was wearing the blocks and cubes T-shirt and had signed the picture.
“Boy, I miss him,” she said. “I was nineteen when he died. So many of the people I admire have killed themselves.”
“Oh yeah?”
Alex lit his cigarette.
“Yeah. Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, van Gogh. And a poet named Anne Sexton.”
Alex’s eyes seem to glaze over for a moment. He puffed on the cigarette. He was thinking about how suicide must be the meanest trick one person could pull on another, a painful stabbing, a forever jab. Maybe a way to get back, a way to get even. A way to leave a throbbing wound that never heals. He passed Ava the cigarette.
“You never stop blaming yourself,” he said.
Ava puffed deep. Cigarette tip blazed orange angry. She didn’t say anything. Mink noticed that just for a moment they both looked incredibly similar. Something in the eyes, the face. The way they passed that cigarette back and forth.
“Anne Sexton,” Mink said slowly, as if trying to recall an image. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know her.”
The poem she recited was “Music Swims Back to Me.” She rolled out the lines effortlessly, as if they came from the moment and not from the pages of some book, digested long ago. Mink’s eyes went round and troubled. Alex took pensive puffs. It seemed a poem about being institutionalized. It seemed a poem about Ava herself.
After the words died down, there was a moment of silence, just for Anne.
“Wow,” Alex said, passing the cigarette.
“How do you do that,” Mink asked, “memorize a whole poem? I’m lucky I can memorize my phone number.”
“I have a photographic memory. I know all of Anne, all of her.”
“Can you just look at a page and know it?”
Ava grinned at Mink. “I can read a page, then give it back to you, word for word.”
Something crossed Mink’s face. It was puzzlement or suspicion or just the need to rise to a challenge. He fished around under the pile of magazines and pulled out a paperback. It was American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Mink opened the book, picked a page, and handed it to her. “Let’s see,” he said.
Alex sighed, looking at Mink as if to ask, is it really the time for this? Ava took the book. Took a moment. Read the page. Then she shut the book and handed it back.
Mink laughed. “But shit, I lost the page!”
“It’s page 278,” she said.
There were four major air disasters this summer, the majority of them captured on videotape, almost as if these events had been planned, and repeated on television endlessly. The planes kept crashing in slow motion, followed by countless roaming shots of the wreckage and the same random views of the burned, bloody carnage, weeping rescue workers retrieving body parts. I started using Oscar de la Renta men’s deodorant, which gave me a slight rash.
“Okay, I get it,” Mink said, snapping the book shut after he had followed her line by line on the page. “I think I need a drink.”
“Do you really want to start that?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t drink during work hours,” Alex said.
The door buzzer sounded.
“I’ll be right back,” Mink said.
“I’m expecting a courier.”
The moment he left, Ava leaned forward and whispered, “What the hell are we doing? Should we even be here with this guy?”
“I’m telling you, we can trust him.”
“Trust him how? We should get out of here, get moving.”
“Well, what is it you need to do? You went to the bank, didn’t you?”
Ava listened. There was someone at the door. Mink had opened it with a creaky steel clatter.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Ava seemed to hesitate between telling and not, between trusting and not. She could also be by herself. But this didn’t seem the time for her to be telling stories, creating identities and making up facts for consumption. Alex knew her as Ava Reynolds. David did too. She swore she would be a person this time. There was no Anne voice this time to warn her about the treachery of a one-eye.
“I went to the bank and I picked up another key,” she said.
“Another one?”
She waited. Voices from the hallway. The clatter crash of the door again.
“Yes. And a slip of paper with a number on it.”
“A number. What kind of number? An address, a phone?”
“011493044377983,” she said fast. “What?”
“011493044377983.”
“That’s a lot of digits for a phone number.”
“That’s all there is, a number and a key. The number on the key is 53.”
“That’s not much help either,” Alex said, just as Mink returned. He was ripping open a courier envelope and pulling out a CD-Rom.
“I was waiting for this. Could be my next commission. You wanna see?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
“I’ll need your bathroom first,” Ava said.
“No problem. Down that corridor, right behind the wall of glass cinder blocks.”
Alex watched her head down the hallway. Mink was pulling him toward the desk with the computer, but Alex wouldn’t budge.
“Hold on,” he said, and he followed after Ava. She stopped when she heard Alex coming from behind.
“What?” she said.
“You’re not going to do that, are you?”
“Do what?”
“Disappear. Sneak out. Run. Are you going to do that?”
“No.”
“Because if you are, just do it now. I told Mink not to be worried about you, that you were okay and that he didn’t have to worry. No surprises no guns no conks on the head.”
“And you’re worried?”
“I’m worried you’re going to pull a fast one, yes. That’s all I know about you, you come and go. So I’m saying, if you’re going to go, just do it now, in front of my face. No cheap tricks, no lies, no stories. Just go, if that’s what you want.” There was a strange burning in his chest.
She sighed. “But I didn’t even bring my purse. I left it in the living room. With you.” The way Alex was standing in front of her in that narrow corridor, she could not get past him even if she tried.
The painting across from Alex was a series of colorful boxes with keyholes in them. A pile of glittery keys stood at the far end of the canvas. It was called FIFTEEN PUERTO RICANS WHO PRAY FOR RAIN.
“Yeah, okay,” Alex said.
The image of the two brothers on the computer screen seemed almost digital, as if they themselves were some electronic construct. Their faces were similar but their clothes looked different. Jose Romero had a large Fiorrucci flowered shirt with an orange tie, while Julio “Major” Romero was wearing a checkered shirt with a large black tie. (“We have to dress different, or our friends will kill us,” said Jose in TIME OUT.) There were three Mink paintings behind them, paintings Mink remembered they had purchased three years ago. (That was a good year.)
“Estimado Mink,” Jose said on the screen, “we both send big love and in this moment hope you are happy and close to loved ones. My brother and I are embarking on a phenomenal adventure that will change the landscape of the South Bronx forever.”
“The South Bronx, to us, is the whole world,” Julio continued. “It is music, it is fashion, culture, style, grace, passion. It is vision and violence. It is sublime and it is senseless. It is an inspiration and it lives in South Bronx people.”
“To us,” Jose said, “you are the South Bronx. Your work is all those things. It captures in a heartbeat everything we feel about the South Bronx that makes us salsa, makes us merengue, hip-hop, rock. Your work is freedom.”
“We are starting a dance club in the South Bronx. By now you’ve heard about this. We have the space and are already almost done with it.”
“There is just one thing missing,” Jose went on, “and that is you. The touch of you, the touch of what we feel is the South Bronx. To us both, your work is the one crucial element that will make this place happen.”
“I feel dizzy,” Mink said.
“We feel we must tell you that hanging a painting or two of yours up on the wall will not do it. We want you to cover the entire inside of this magnificent structure with your colors, your dream.”
“Your South Bronx,” Jose added.
“Jesus Christ,” Alex said. He was standing beside Ava, behind Mink, who was sitting at the desk staring at the computer screen like he was hallucinating.
“We’ve devised this CD-Rom specifically for you, to give you an idea of what we’d like to ask you to do.” Now Julio looked at his brother, then continued: “We assure you that no copyrights have been infringed, neither have we put this CD-Rom or the work herein to any use other than as a special presentation, especially for you.”
“That’s right,” Jose said, looking away, his eyes glittery wet. “Because we love you, man.”
“We love you,” Julio picked it up. “And so we hired some amazing graphic specialists to enable us to splatter your work all over this magnificent landscape. Your work IS the landscape, Mink. You can completely navigate the environment, explore the rooms, get a feel for what we were thinking.”
“This graphic tool,” Jose said, dabbing his face with a tissue, “enabled us to splatter your work all over these environments. Sort of like the work you did on our favorite Björk video? Only that was blue screen, honey.
This is your work, truly made into walls, rooms. Atmospheres.”
“The lounge on the third floor is your blocks and cubes piece, MU LATA TU LATA. The dance floor is your BACHATA BATATA, and the small lounge on the first floor is your bitter but somehow lyrical RIKERS BY NIGHT. We’ve used twenty-one of your paintings, some from your book, even on the surface of the roller rink.”
“Of course,” Jose rounded it up, “this CD-Rom is completely between us. If we have in any way offended or displeased you, just chuck it in the can and forget about it. Our respect for you and what you represent is such that we would not, could not, carry on with this project without you.”
“We spent five thousand dollars making this CD-Rom for you, and even if you say no, it will still be the happiest five thousand we ever spent. I suppose we’ll try to do the space without you if you should say no—”
“Not me,” Jose interrupted. “I told you!”
“I heard you, stop!”
“Well, just don’t lie! Don’t play the suave businessman! It’s life or death!”
“You be cool, just lemme finish it.” Julio composed himself. “We’ll call your agent again to talk about the money part, but it would be even better if we heard from you, Mink.”
“We can only offer you $500,000,” Jose said abruptly.
“Will you not talk money on the CD-Rom please?”
Mink pressed stop.
Alex put a hand on his shoulder. “Congratulations, man. Did you hear that?”
Mink turned, looking at both of them. His eyes were wet. “And that wasn’t even the nicest part,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“But Mink,” Alex said, “it’s a huge commission. You got to at least look at it.”
“It’s a big space,” Mink said, getting up from the computer like he was hypnotized. “It’s a lot of work.”
“It’s a half a million dollars,” Ava said.
He looked at her like she was a small child.
“They want blocks and cubes,” he said, and left the room, heading down the slim corridor and out of sight.
“Well, there’s one guy making money,”
South by South Bronx Page 22