Olivia hadn’t had a drink in two months, having poured every spare moment into designing her world-class algorithm, shutting out friends, screening calls from her parents, neglecting exercise, ignoring leisure time, blocking out the world. That’s what she thought it took to succeed; however, according to Matthew Weiss, success was predicated on how well one placed during fraternity rush. She hated that guy. He must have a little dick. There was no other explanation for it.
Cleo had gone to the bathroom when Olivia noticed her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Resting her forehead on her palm, she stared back at herself. Who had the girl become? Was there enough light left to find her way out of the dark tunnel of corporate finance? She remembered when she was a little girl, standing in Mrs. Wilson’s drop-cloth covered sunroom studio, standing in front of an easel with a paint brush in her hand, studying the architecture of a bowl of fresh cut lilies, trying to accurately capture the curves of the petals and the shadows they cast, the slender sensuality of the stem. Even though her painting lessons with Mrs. Wilson had been terminated by her mother when she was young, she had secretly kept a picture of herself, wearing a paint-splattered button-down shirt borrowed from her father, a smile stretched across her face as wide as a Pacific Coast sunset, surrounded by an exotic assortment of flowers.
Cleo returned from the bathroom.
“Next stop?” Cleo asked.
“Where we going?” Olivia asked, noting a faint slur in her words. It had been a long, long time since that had happened.
“Let’s go to an art museum.”
“I don’t want to go to an art museum,” Olivia said.
“Why? Don’t be such a philistine.”
“I’m not a philistine.”
“Then why not go?”
Olivia remembered her mother screaming at her father in the middle of an art museum in some city, before dragging young Olivia several blocks to an outdoor art market. Many of the paintings at the market were very beautiful, and she wondered why she had never been taken there before.
“Look at these people, my dear,” Olivia’s mother had said.
“These paintings are beautiful. Can we buy one?”
“Can we buy one?” Olivia’s mother asked. “We could because your father and I have real jobs. We didn’t come here to buy a painting, we came here for you to see, first hand, the real life of an artist, one step removed from a bum, not some fairy tale life like its told in that marble art palace. I mean, how many other marble buildings are there in the city? Wait, let me answer that – there are none. Artists aren’t princes and princesses. They’re beggars. Their houses aren’t made of marble, they’re made of cardboard and government assistance.”
“But Mrs. Wilson is an artist.”
“Mrs. Wilson’s husband is a doctor. I want you to be more than a housewife.”
“How she lives her life is her decision to make,” Olivia’s father said.
“Well, I’m going to see that she has a proper education, and in the meantime, see to it her mind isn’t muddied with all of this whimsical art nonsense and you aren’t going to stand in my way.”
“I think we owe it to her to give her a proper liberal arts education.”
“We’ll see about that,” Olivia’s mother said.
“Olivia, Olivia,” Cleo said, tugging Olivia back to the present.
“Sorry.”
“So no art museum?” Cleo asked.
“Let’s table it for the moment.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I thought we were going to walk through Washington Square Park?”
They paid for their drinks and thanked the bartender.
“You ladies visiting town?”
“We live here,” Cleo said.
“I gotcha,” the bartender said. “Just popping out of the office for a mid-morning highball. I had an internship once, too.”
“Bite me. I make more money in a month than you do in a year,” Cleo said.
“Yeah, but my work doesn’t drive me to drink before noon,” the bartender said with a wink, and walked away, swaying his head back and forth, whistling. He began drying some glasses at the other end of the bar.
“He’s cheeky,” Olivia said.
The girls looked down the bar at the man, and he winked at them again. They couldn’t help but giggle.
“If you want to make a day of it, we could grab dinner at my friend’s restaurant, La Lanterna di Vittorio.”
“Perfect. Make it happen,” Olivia said. She would have said yes to about anything at that point, as long as it kept with the theme of leisuring around, disentangling themselves from work and Matthew Weiss, the quintessential male chauvinist.
They paid up at the bar and made the short walk to the park, Olivia’s mood still bubbling from the drinks, her attention shifting wildly between the children being chased by their mothers, the street musicians performing with a primitive soul, retired women rolling up their pant legs and wading through the fountain, water gushing like a geyser.
“Why don’t we do this more often?” Olivia asked.
“Because you’re always working.”
“But why am I always working?”
“Because you’re good at it.”
“You know, when I came to New York, I thought I’d do stuff like this all the time. But instead, I just click and drag on excel sheets. That’s my life. That’s where it’s going. To create spreadsheets only one or two people ever look at, to add some zeros after decimal points to some bank accounts somewhere. How fucking meaningless.”
“You’ll be alright tomorrow, chicky,” Cleo said.
Olivia led Cleo towards the fountain, right up to the water’s edge. Olivia bent down, slipping off her shoes, charging into the water. The cool water stunned her awareness, like all it took to shed four years of stress and living the life of a robot were to submerge her feet in a public fountain and frolic around like these old women, living with abandon, even giggling a little, gazing up into the sky at the big fiery sun until her eyes hurt, until Cleo joined, kicking water at each other and laughing and running from one another, splashing until they were both dripping wet.
Once they’d had their fun, they gathered their purchases and suit jackets and idled over to a grassy area where they laid on their backs to catch their breath while they waited on their clothes to dry. From habit, Olivia busted out her cell phone and scrolled through emails. There were two politely asking “where the fuck are you,” both from Matthew Weiss. He could go to hell. She switched accounts to check her personal email, which she rarely did these days. She found a two-day old email from her mother, Kelly, not reporting anything terrifically new going on in Richmond other than that she was passing the summer by at the country club pool, where she read the Financial Times every day, cover-to-cover, and ate vegetable sandwiches. Her father was well, though being a philosophy hermit, he preferred to spend the summer reading in his study rather than being bothered by what he perceived as the challenge of pulling on swimming trunks, driving to the pool, lathering on sun screen, politely shooing away unruly children, the environment always pregnant with the risk of distracting him from his reading. He was an introvert, which made his choice of profession as a college lecturer an interesting one. Olivia had sat in on his classes before, back when they all still lived in Ann Arbor, and he put on a different persona, temporarily becoming a man who loved the spotlight, who loved having his deepest held beliefs challenged in public. He was an enigma, really. She was disappointed for having not visited her parents since they left University of Michigan for University of Richmond, but it wasn’t like her work life cut a path through the provincial capital city, with its streets lined with statues of Confederate generals and southern pride. Shame crept into her mood. Her parents alone should have been a good enough reason to visit.
She scrolled through her phone, vaguely looking for flight specials, but when she came across an email advertising job openings in San Francisco, she c
licked on it. There was an opening at the unusually named Dorsal Fin Fund, a start-up hedge fund with some top shelf talent heading the marquee. With the click of a button, she submitted her on-file resume and a generic cover letter. She scrolled through her inbox until she uncovered an email with the latest flight specials. She opened it but didn’t find any discounted fares to Richmond. She scoffed, but then surmised, having neglected to visit her parents for two years after their move, that it was worth paying full price to see Kelly and her father. She could book a ticket later, though, after she’d had a chance to discuss the visit with Kelly. She dropped her phone on the grass, clasped her hands underneath her head and gazed up at the broad blue sky.
Chapter 3
Brett crawled onto the opposite riverbank of Belle Island and took a few moments to regain his breath. He had made it despite being convinced halfway across that he wouldn’t. He started to trudge across Richmond’s urban landscape, navigating expressways, panhandlers and crosswalks, until arriving at the North Bank Trailhead. He entered the parking lot cautiously, paranoid a lingering police officer might recognize him and give him grief, but there were no cop cars in the thinly occupied lot. Lizzie’s bike, formerly chained to the rack, was gone. All good signs. He snapped the lock open and coiled his bike chain around the stem of his bike’s frame before peddling down Texas Avenue. What to do now? He could go back to his studio and try to get some painting done, but he wasn’t really in the mood to work. The odyssey across the river, followed by the two-hour walk, left him exhausted. He felt subdued, and that was no state from which to paint, unless he wanted to practice craft instead of art. But his patrons weren’t paying him to paint mirror reflections of bowls of genetically modified-fruit or fat geese pecking grass seed on the bank of a man-made pond. They paid him to extract the beauty of the subject, to represent what he saw when he was inspired, not to copy a faithful line-by-line representation of an image. There was no point spending hours doing what a camera could accomplish in a shutter.
He careened his bike towards the fabled Fremont Street, where his best friend Paco worked at the critically-acclaimed restaurant, Comida del Sol. He peddled through modest suburban streets until he picked up Fremont, riding past the novel little coffee shops, bars, sandwich nooks, thrift shops and record stores. Comida del Sol had the luxury of a small parking lot tucked behind it, and Brett peddled around back, per custom, to sit on a wall and wait for Paco to get off work. The restaurant was closed between lunch and dinner, and the lot was nearly empty.
Paco had worked all day yesterday, which meant if Brett’s logic was correct, his friend should be cut loose early. Just as Brett was texting Paco to make certain he could get off soon, Paco’s golden retriever, Sioux, greeted him, tongue wagging. Brett threw a stick across the empty, off-hours parking lot to his favorite dog while he waited for Paco to emerge from the kitchen’s screen door.
Brett played fetch with Sioux until the dog refused to play, then reclined and looked up at the clouds crossing the sky, drifting one direction at one altitude, and colliding and merging at another, electrified by the sun.
The screen door slammed shut, and a disgruntled Paco stormed across the parking lot. Paco shifted direction and tossed his apron in the air. It floated to the gravel, and Sioux quickly picked up the scent and began scratching at what morsels were to be had on the soiled garment.
“Everything alright?” Brett asked.
“Jefe wanted me to work again,” Paco grumbled. “Another shift. They expect me to work three straight fourteen-hour days.”
“I guess you got out of it?”
“By telling them to go to hell.”
“Did you quit?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get out of here before he comes looking for me.”
“Okay by me.”
Paco retrieved his skateboard from behind a mature boxwood, and they started around the side of the building.
“Where do you think you’re going?” an intense voice called after them. Brett recognized the voice of the Jefe, Alberto Vareja. Brett hoped they’d tuck and run, but Paco froze.
“My shift is over,” Paco said, meekly. “So I’m leaving.”
“Didn’t I just say I needed you to work the evening shift? It’s Saturday night, and I’m shorthanded even with you working.”
“You mentioned you wanted me to work, we didn’t agree I would.”
“Do I have to spell out every single fucking word for you? I need you to work. You want this job, you stay here and work tonight. ¿Yo entiendo?”
Brett had never liked the Jefe. Even his nickname was meant to be condescending. The bastard was always bossing people around, and even though on paper Comida del Sol was a fancy restaurant, and Paco technically had a good job, the reality was that the Jefe took pains to make sure the job bore a closer relation to wage slavery than a meaningful pursuit.
“I’ve worked too many shifts in a row. Either I leave now and come back tomorrow or I don’t come back, but I’m not working tonight. I’m too tired.”
Jefe’s face turned blood red. His shirt had these pearl studded buttons, and the way his gut pushed against that skin-tight shirt, well, Brett was just waiting for one them to pop. Jefe was fuming. He definitely wasn’t the type to listen to what he didn’t want to hear, especially from a mere employee. But what could the Jefe do? He needed Paco that night, but he also needed him the next day and the day after that.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jefe said, wagging a menacing finger. “And pick up your apron,” he said, disappearing back into the kitchen behind the rattling screen door.
Paco started again down the alley.
“What about your apron?” Brett asked, looking at the crumpled garment on the ground.
“Leave it,” Paco said.
The threesome started down Fremont, Brett on bike, Paco on skateboard, Sioux on all fours. Fremont was more crowded than usual, with happy hour revelers crowding into their favorite watering holes. They turned down Grove Avenue, and Brett did his best to remain understanding while Paco swore obscene epithets at the Jefe. He had dealt with this side of Paco countless times. Work could get to anyone. Brett pulled ahead, using the speed of his bike to his advantage, to turn them onto Strawberry Street. Brett leaned his bike against the market window, and while keeping a continually anxious eye on the handlebars, ran inside and had purchased a couple of 22-oz Coors Lights by the time Paco and Sioux caught up. From there, they naturally drifted over to Scuffletown Park and posted up on their customary park bench with the beers.
To Brett’s chagrin, Paco’s list of grievances intensified, to the point Brett felt it necessary to intervene, if not for Paco’s sanity then for his own.
“Why do you stay in a job you can’t stand?”
“What else am I going to do? You know I’ve got to help Mom pay the bills. Comida del Sol’s got the best reputation in town, I’d be trading down if I left.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be as fancy, but you’d work somewhere they know how to treat their employees.”
“Yeah,” Paco said, taking frequent, tiny sips of his beer. “But I mean, if I want to open my own thing one day, and I do want to open my own thing one day, I need to have a good track record with the best in show, you know? I can’t just be working to work, I need to get experience and street credit.”
“If the whole idea is to start your own thing, why don’t you just start your own thing now?”
“Man, I don’t have the beans to start my own thing. I’m a sous chef at a fucking restaurant, not some banker or lawyer or avant garde painter boy.”
“Could you get a loan?”
“With what collateral?”
Brett didn’t know exactly what constituted collateral, but it was probably safe to assume Paco didn’t have the kind he’d need to get a bank loan.
“I mean, even if I did have collateral, there’s no Brazilian restaurants in town. They’d think I was crazy trying to get all ethnic up in here.”
“
There’s plenty of ethnic restaurants in Richmond. What are you talking about? Besides, if you opened a Brazilian restaurant you wouldn’t have any competition.”
“That’s not how banks look at it. They want you to do what’s already being done. New businesses are a financial risk, brother.”
“But that’s not how we see it. We know people love Brazilian food. I love it when you and your Mom invite me over for dinner. It’s best in class.”
“Yeah, but you’re biased, man.”
“Bullshit I am. Anybody would love your cooking. They love your take on Mexican at Comida del Sol, I know they’d love your home cooking.”
“Yeah, but how am I going to get my food in front of a banker? Cook up some braised beef and rice and beans and take it to him in a Tupperware? Slide a luke warm meal across his desk and hand him a spoon? That shit’ll never work. I’d just get laughed out of the place.”
“That’s not a terrible idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea if I say it’s a terrible idea. Besides, so what I can cook one decent meal. What does that tell them? It doesn’t mean I have any business sense.”
“So start a business.”
The Medium of Desire Page 3