I crawl behind the house at five miles per hour for a long time before I manage to pass it. I take out the camera and shoot the sky through the windshield, through the wipers, through the sunroof. Somehow, the windshield recalls the format of 35mm film, in which, out of habit, I wait for Stella to appear.
I photograph an Oklahoma washed by the rain and turning gray with the coming winter. At some point, the rain almost completely abates and I find myself in a drier, brighter space. The sky looks higher now, too.
I speed up as I cross the Missouri border. Around Springfield, I see herds of buffalo. The weak, sour gallons of gas station coffee do not wake me much, but they do make me urinate every other hour. The night catches up with me a little short of St. Louis, Missouri (which locals pronounce Muh-zur-ah). I decide to grab a bite to eat, so I find a roadside restaurant.
In the parking lot in front of it, a row of semis rumble, their engines working 24/7 to maintain both a comfortable temperature in the rig and the size of the hole in the ozone layer. I go inside the place, take a seat and, order a bacon cheeseburger and a Coke. Like it or not, I need to use the toilet, almost as urgently as before the Ramona incident. The design of the American public toilet is the embodiment of discomfort. Its door is cut low at the bottom, so one’s legs are visible to the knees, and also on top, so there are no secrets about what one is doing in there. The American public restroom should not encourage suspicious behavior. This seat is cold and unclean, which is why I experiment with stepping on it and squatting over the opening. Very unpleasant. A second later, with loud belching and nose blowing, two of the drivers come in. One of them barges into the stall to my left and drops down his pants hurriedly; his metal belt-buckle clanks on the tiles. The other one, obviously thinking that my stall is vacant because my feet are invisible, tries the door, which I have thoughtfully locked. Since I did not indicate my presence at the very beginning, I hold my breath and try to remain awkwardly incognito while the following conversation, accompanied by loud plops, takes place:
“. . . and she?”
“. . . she’s like, leave me alone”
“. . . leave her alone?”
“. . . she wants me to leave her alone”
“. . . and so you?”
“. . . and so I’m like, oh, really?!
She goes, yeah, really.”
“A man comes home,
he wants to fuck, right?
What’s the big deal.”
“Yeah, what’s the big deal!”
“Leave her alone, huh?”
What kind of screwed up world is this, I wonder, if men want one thing and women want another? The conversation continues on a less existential topic, then carries on with endless ass wiping, hand washing, coughing, spitting, huffing, and puffing. I wait for them to leave and also exit. Half of the distance to Columbus is behind me. Before me is a night that I must stay awake through.
I enter Indianapolis early in the morning, fill up my tank, and ask for the closest Starbucks. I find it, order a triple espresso, buy a newspaper, and go outside. It’s chilly. A thick army-surplus parka with a homeless man in it is sitting in one of the chairs. His bearded face is covered in big pimples, his hair is disheveled. On the ground next to his muddy boots rests a full black trash bag. I nod and take a seat. He nods back. We are the only ones at the outside tables. On the front page of the paper, there is a map of Southern California stamped with huge fiery letters reading RAGING INFERNO. The wild fires are indicated with little fire symbols in different shades of red (depending on their intensity)—they start at the mountains and crawl down toward the ocean. No one really knows how many of the fires are accidental, how many are the work of arsonists and psychopaths, and how many are simply attempts by ordinary citizens to replace their old houses with new ones using insurance pay-outs. The worst part, I learn from the report, is that the Santa Ana winds are still blowing full speed and are unstoppable.
Despite scientists’ warnings that California would be wiped out by either a mega-tsunami or an earthquake, she is on her way to going down in flames.
I lift my head from the paper and look inside the coffee shop. On the other side of the window, at a small round table, sits a lean, blonde girl in a white shirt and jeans. She is bent over a notebook, writing, occasionally tossing a strand of her hair back, and checking something in the open text book in front of her. In the glass between us, the reflection of the homeless man overlaps with the empty seat next to the girl inside. Semi-transparent, the homeless man finishes up his coffee, leans back comfortably, crosses his legs, and extends a greasy sleeve over the back of the seat as if throwing his arm around the girl.
She doesn’t mind.
He pulls out a Zippo from his torn breast pocket and lights a cigarette.
She sips from her cup without lifting her head from the book.
He blows a cloud of smoke, drops his head back, and scratches his knee.
She fixes her bra strap and keeps writing in her notebook.
There they are—another impossible couple. I take out the Nikon, place it carefully on the table, and take a few shots. A minute later, the girl finishes her coffee, closes the notebook and the textbook, puts them into a leather messenger bag, leans toward her reflection in the glass, adjusts her barrette, slides lipstick over her lips, and smacks them a few times to soften the effect. Then she tosses the bag over her shoulder and walks out. Only the semi-transparent homeless man, who grinds the cigarette butt on the sidewalk with his muddy, untied shoe, remains in the window glass.
*
Stella’s first solo exhibition was a success. There were reviews, articles, a radio show, a few seconds of TV time, a paragraph in Art Globe magazine. There was also a producer who wanted her to be the art director for a music video. There was talk about including her work in a catalog about contemporary American art. The thing about Stella’s paintings, however, was that they seemed as if they were created by different people. Massive squares in rusty browns, which Stella achieved through mixing oils and graphite powder with fine metal particles that she borrowed from the metal shop next door to her studio, had attracted Jane Goldstein to her work. These were non-representational works, save for some atavistic slashes, lines, strokes, and circles. While she was working on them, she would come home as black as a coal-miner and would cough over the sink, spitting out graphite. I convinced her to wear a mask—there was no point in ruining her lungs.
The militaristic brown texture of her next painting cracked, however, and a piece of the blue California sky shined through. In the following few works, the sky gradually pushed the graphite toward the periphery of the canvas. This series ended abruptly with a white, thickly layered rectangle in oils. After that came two nine-foot squares in black and white, which some saw as an aerial view of burned forests, while others likened to bird feathers. Totems in dark green and dark red followed. Then a series of self portraits—almost black paintings —suggesting female bodies or depicting female torsos in dark rectangles.
In the beginning, Jane Goldstein almost cut her out of the circle of artists she promoted, but, gradually, she became accustomed to Stella’s randomness and eccentricity.
At times, Stella’s interest in painting would cease, and she would spend days reading Anna Karenina, writing in her journals, or doodling in the margins. I’d find her miniature proto-projects scratched onto the back of bills, car insurance forms, or the calendar next to the phone, scribbled down while she was talking to somebody. Sometimes she would spend days searching for the meaning of a single word, like identity, for example. She would dig out everything that could define it—passports, drivers licenses, all sorts of diplomas, marriage licenses, birth certificates, credit cards, library cards, and just about every form of identification—and would arrange all these in a certain order that made sense to her.
Other times, she would concentrate her entire attention on a single number. Or a symbol. Or a letter. During these periods, she didn’t go to her studio a
nd we spent more time together. Then the appetite for work would take over again, and she’d disappear into her creations.
The labels describing her work varied from neo-abstract expressionism, through late postmodern minimalism, to meditative realism. Those -isms, of course, had nothing to do with her.
After summer break, Stella quit her job and dedicated all of her time and energy to painting.
The curator of S gallery in L.A. invited her to join a project with two video artists. For it, she created an installation made of 274 white sheets—the idea came from a dream of clothes hung on a line to dry. The curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seattle included her in an exhibition with her series entitled On Kinkade, which consisted of twelve paintings rendered over Thomas Kinkade reproductions, which Stella had salvaged from a dumpster behind an office building. She kept their melodramatic titles—The End of a Perfect Day, Home Is Where the Heart Is, The Light of Calmness, Last Autumn Morning and then covered them with a thick layer of charcoal and paint.
More and more circled dates started to appear in her calendar.
Things were happening for her. “If something has to happen, it will,” she’d say. “If it doesn’t, then it wasn’t supposed to.”
Then came the job offer from the Los Angeles Art Institute. Before she accepted, however, she asked for two weeks to think things over. She bought a plane ticket to New York with an open return.
Her last year with me was a year of things-come-true. The biggest thing, however, was yet to come.
*
I enter Columbus at dusk. I park in the familiar driveway, get out of the car, and am just about to ring the doorbell as Ken opens the door and hugs me.
“Zack!” He pulls away a little, then hugs me again. “Come on in. How was the drive? Here, here . . . I’m sorry about the mess, but I had to call a plumber to fix the pipe that broke off behind that thing.” I don’t see any mess except one old cabinet that’s been slightly moved. In Ken’s world, perhaps, this is a major event. “Let me close the door, so the cats stay out.” I sit down just as I used to—on one of the bar stools. “Do you have any luggage?” he asks as he opens the refrigerator.
“I have a bag in the trunk of my car. I’ll get it in a minute.” I stretch my shoulders, stiff from the long drive.
“How about a beer first?” He lifts a brow.
“Oh, you’re drinking these days?” I’m surprised.
“Only on special occasions. And only beer.” A couple of glasses appear on the bar. Two green bottles go bottoms up.
“I’m flattered.” We raise our glasses for a toast. There are very few things, I do believe, better than the first sip of good beer. I close my eyes to stretch the moment as long as I can.
“So, tell me, what’s going on with you?” Ken smiles.
I have no idea where to start or end my story. “You go first. How are you?”
“OK. I’m OK.” Ken looks at the edge of the counter for a moment.
“How are things with Linda?” I finish what’s left in my glass.
“Fine.” Ken gets up and brings two more beers. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Zack.”
“Then why don’t you live together already?” I ask the question that is likely on everybody’s mind. “What are you waiting for?” Since Stella left, I’ve obviously forgotten some of my manners. Ken tops us off again. We look at each other over the foam in our glasses. He sighs and tears his eyes away. I drink.
“We almost did.”
“So?”
“I fucked up.”
“What do you mean, you fucked up?” I take a look around. It’s been a while since I’ve been here. God, everything looks so . . . bachelory. I bet that nothing has changed since Ken bought the place. It has been left untouched for years and is poorly lit. I feel the urge to jump off my stool and pull down the old curtains, peel off the appalling wallpaper, cut the ugly sofas to pieces, and knock out most of the walls.
“She was going to move in with me here, right? So, before she . . . well, the night before that . . .” Ken stops and swallows hard. “I got really drunk the night before.” He looks at me with the blue eyes of an alcoholic. “I drank till I got shit-faced. Alone. Here. And I felt so lonely—I almost went out of my mind. And I couldn’t stand another second without her. So I decided to convince her to move in earlier.” He pauses. “Can you imagine? I get drunk alone, here, at this very counter. So, I’m talking to my cats and one of them—that one, the black one, she is the devil, I swear—makes me go and bring home my fiancée. I swear. The black one made me do it.” I glance at the cat on the other side of the glass door. The animal opens its mouth, meowing soundlessly, throwing green looks at us. It really is demonic. I figure that if I had to spend months and years in this brown, gloomy house, I, too, would start listening to what cats had to say to me. “So, I get in my car and drive to her apartment in the middle of the night. I ring the doorbell. She answers the door—who knows what she was thinking. I stagger, reach out and try to kiss her and take her home with me, but I lose my balance and land on the floor, facedown. You get the picture?” I nod. “Months passed before we revived the relationship. I don’t think it’s the same, you know. The trust is not there anymore somehow, but on the whole . . .”
“Listen, man!” I clear my throat, imitating deep thought. I know one thing about Ken for sure. In his head, Stella—whom he’s never seen—and I are the perfect couple. Everybody thought that. Until two weeks ago. At this moment, though, Ken doesn’t know that we are not the perfect couple. Hell, he doesn’t even know that we are not a couple at all. The only thing that’s left of us is me, whatever is left of me. But at this moment, Ken doesn’t know any of that. He still believes in me, in us. “You have no reason, whatsoever, to be ashamed of what you’ve done.” I cut directly to the point. “You shouldn’t think too much.” Now, I have to continue with a personal example. “For example, at Stella’s birthday party—the first one we celebrated together—I got so drunk that I shat myself!” I take a sip of my beer. “I mean, literally. Don’t even ask.” Ken bursts out laughing. “That’s right. In my pants. It’s not funny . . . Well, it is funny now, I mean, but it wasn’t funny then. I shat myself. Right in my pants. So please stop talking about screw ups. You are cool, so if somebody doesn’t appreciate you, it’s their loss.” Several beers later, we’re more relaxed and cheerful. We drink ten bottles each, so we need to pee every half-hour. I stop caring about the brown interior, as well as some other things. Here we are—two losers in Ken’s brown house, drinking beer, keeping the cats out.
At one point, Ken gets up. “Zack, I’ll make us something to eat. I cooked something here.” He opens the fridge, takes out some containers, turns on the microwave. I am tired to death from all the driving and loneliness and so exhausted that I don’t have the energy to tell him I’m not hungry. I slip down from the bar stool, go to the bathroom (decorated with a dusty plastic flower), urinate for a long time, flush the toilet once before I finish, and flush it once more while I’m zipping up my pants. I go back in the room and recline on the sofa for a while. I find a pillow and hug it.
I wake up to laughter. I wake up after the most beautiful experience I’ve had in a long, long time. A warm spring day. Stella and I are walking slowly, shoulder to shoulder, in the shadow of young, green, blossoming trees, on a road that climbs upward. Stella slows down from time to time to admire the acacias. Further up, we pass some apple trees with large pink and white blossoms. She pauses at one of them, reaches up, picks a handful of petals, and puts them in her mouth, squinting with pleasure as she chews them. Then, she opens her eyes, comes closer, puts her hands on my shoulders, and smiles. She looks me firmly in the eyes, and says: “Do you think we are finally free?”
My spontaneous answer is, “Of course,” but I don’t remember saying it. Then we both laugh. We laugh loudly. We laugh purely and deeply like innocent, innocent children. Her laughter wakes me up, but when I open my eyes, I hear onl
y mine.
*
It was one of the few nights we spent together during that last year. We sat in the patio chairs, wrapped in blankets. We lit a candle, sipped wine, and gazed at the dark canyon before us. The frogs were croaking.
Suddenly, the phone rang in that particular way it does when someone from far away is calling. The neighbor’s cat was on my lap, so Stella picked up. She stood quietly for a long moment, then said, “But, of course. Thank you!” She replaced the receiver, topped off her glass, and asked me if I wanted more. “No,” I said. “I don’t.” She came back, sat in her chair, hugged her knees, narrowed her eyes, lifted her head up toward her favorite Orion, and started rocking back and forth. I swear I saw a tear roll down her cheek, but she quickly wiped it away with her shoulder. Or maybe I just imagined it. I watched her face for a while—lit by constellations, softened by the trembling candlelight. For the first time in a long time I felt the urge to get my camera and photograph her. I suppressed the impulse.
“I’ve been invited to the Berlin Biennale next year, in October.”
“What!?” I shouted. The frogs grew quiet. I lifted my glass to toast her but it was empty, there was nothing in the bottle either. Stella smiled, leaned over, and poured some of her wine in my glass. We toasted. We drank. Then she gently held my face with both her hands and kissed my lips. She kissed me like she never had before. Again. And again. She kissed me wetly and warmly, she kissed me long and deep, she kissed me as if one of us was dying.
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