The Medium of Desire

by Alex McGlothlin

  Alonso’s voice became raspy. Was he getting choked up? Why did he avert his gaze out to the recently darkened sky?

  “What happened?”

  “Bobby tried to kill himself after he read the review. Lucky my brother happened to drop by and made him puke, but the poor kid, he hasn’t painted since.”

  “That’s brutal. I’m sorry.” Brett instantly regretted squeezing the story from a reluctant Alonso.

  “I know you’re in a fun game, man, but to elbow your way into the room with the real money, that’s dangerous. No one is just going to step out of your way. Too many people want it, and they’re willing to do anything to get it.”

  “I think I can make it without making it about the money.”

  “Then maybe you’re the genuine article. Maybe you’re the only one.”

  Chapter 11

  Olivia and her mother, Kelly, sat on the screened back porch, clutching cups of coffee. Olivia watched a pair of golfers parked on the fairway nearby, arguing over the proper place to make a drop. One of them wore a golf glove on each hand and sucked on a cigarette.

  Kelly leafed through Olivia’s employment contract, or as Olivia liked to think of it, her unemployment contract. Olivia had been reluctant to turn the document over to Kelly, but Kelly Martin was known for her persistence, so Olivia relented rather than engage in a struggle she was likely to lose. Olivia sat idly while Kelly read, the situation reminiscent of awaiting medical test results.

  “You’re right about not being able to work for a hedge fund. You aren’t allowed to work in private finance at all. Why did you sign this?”

  “I didn’t read it.”

  “You didn’t read it? You’ve got to read these things. I know you think language is soft and useless, but numbers are marketing material compared to contracts. Read them,” Kelly said. She rolled up the contract like a baton and tapped her daughter on the leg, before surrendering the document to her.

  “So it’s really that bad?”

  Kelly nodded gravely.

  “I do think the way it’s written, however, permits you to work in academia,” Kelly said.

  “Despite you and Dad being profs my whole life, I never wanted to teach.”

  “I know that. But your situation has changed. You’ve got four years of fantastic experience, you have a big gap in time, your father and I have pull around campus. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the band back together?”

  She had never considered teaching. Ever since she started down the finance path, she had single-mindedly focused on her trade, measuring success in units of promotions, bonuses and annual income. But all that had been taken from her. Her parents could probably score her a decent adjunct position, and while it all seemed comfortable and would look good on her resume, for some reason, all she could think about was standing in front of the canvas, with Brett whispering encouragement in her ear.

  “What are you thinking about?” Her mother asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing. I see those wheels turning. How are art classes going? I imagine they’ve been pretty stimulating?”

  “They are.”

  “And what about the boy?”

  “What boy? Did I tell you my instructor was a boy?”

  “I can tell your instructor is a boy.”

  “Why? How?”

  “You seem a little different. I’ve seen you sketching quite a bit, too,” her mother said and nodded at a legal pad filled with doodles and sketches, the open page a rather detailed drawing of an apple.

  “It’s refreshing being creative. I mean, I got a little bit of that from designing financial models, but modeling is quite a bit drier than working with oil paint. Painting is so liberating.”

  “It’s a nice hobby.”

  “I think it could be more than a hobby,” Olivia said, shocking herself.

  “Painting is an extracurricular, like kickball or cycling,” Kelly said.

  “People make a living painting.”

  “So you’re thinking about a career change?”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m not thinking about a career change, but my career is on hold until this do-not-compete runs out. I need something to stay busy, and I like painting. I regret giving it up. Remember those summers I took lessons from Mrs. Wilson? You’d have to drag me away from the easel when it was time to go to the pool,” Olivia said, noticing the jungle-scene floral print cushions her mother kept on the wicker furniture. “I feel like I missed out on a lot these last four years. I feel like this is my chance to atone, to catch up to what I missed out on.”

  “I’m telling you right now I can get you a teaching position for the fall, if not here, then somewhere good. That would give you the summer to dally in painting, but you could start funneling some energy into lesson planning and reading textbooks to incorporate into your curriculum.”

  “You make it real and I’ll think about it.”

  “I think even just a semester or two of teaching as an adjunct and you could get a full-time offer. There is about to be a huge wave of retirements nationwide.”

  “I mean, I have every intention of starting work in San Francisco the moment I’m able.”

  “Okay. Fair enough. As long as that’s what you’re going to do.”

  The insinuation that she was going to become some art flunky who dropped a promising finance career because of a boy really, really pissed her off. She’d enjoyed taking art classes in college, until she scored a B+ in Financial Accounting and her Mom flipped out. But her parents weren’t paying her bills anymore. She was an adult, and if she wanted to leave finance behind and study painting, that wasn’t anybody else’s fucking business. And she did like spending time with Brett and there wasn’t anything wrong with that, either. She liked having conversations about seeing and technique and form, more so than sitting in a cubicle lit by cheap fluorescent light, her comings and goings scrutinized, staying up late nights writing reports that were often obsolete before they were even finished. In New York, she’d been chasing an unattainable end. Wasn’t more of the same awaiting her in San Francisco? When would she slow down?

  “I just want you to be careful around these boys. Especially in the Fan,” Kelly said.

  “What? Where’s this coming from?”

  “You’re vulnerable and some of these boys weren’t raised like the boys you went to school with. You don’t know where these artsy types have been, and they don’t always have the best intentions.”

  “Mom, I’m 27 years old. I can date whoever I want.”

  Her mother gave her a my-house my-rules stare, and looking for an escape, Olivia grabbed her phone and pretended to read a startling text message.

  “Hold that thought,” Olivia said. “Cleo has an emergency.” Her mother didn’t excuse her, in fact had this concentrated Jedi sit-down face, but Olivia pushed through the screened door and crossed the lawn to the edge of the fairway, out of her mother’s earshot. She dialed Cleo.

  “Hey girl,” Cleo said.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “I’m at lunch. What’s up?”

  “Kelly is treating me like I’m a teenager.”

  “How? Like hiding the wine?”

  “Like trying to make me take a job I don’t want. Like telling me who I shouldn’t date.”

  “You met a boy?”

  “Not exactly. I’ve been taking some art lessons which happen to be taught by a boy.”

  “You’re banging an artist?”

  A couple of golfers puttered up in their carts, young guys wrapped in seersucker and pastels, speaking provocatively about their sexy new secretary. So foul. Olivia covered her mouth and muffled her voice. “I’m not banging anyone. I’m just taking lessons.”

  “I don’t know, old Kelly always struck me as pretty sharp. Anything on her antenna is on mine. So tell me the truth,” Cleo said. “Have you seen his antenna?”

  “Cleo!”

  Cleo laughed that devil may care la
ugh she had when she knew she’d crossed the line.

  “I’m just saying, if your mother’s nervous, he must be a fun boy. Have fun and don’t be so uptight.”

  “I’m not so uptight.”

  “Then why haven’t you seen his antenna?”

  “Cleo.”

  Cleo laughed again.

  “I’m just saying. You’ve got this golden opportunity to play and live a little. Don’t squander it. You’ll be boxed away in a cubicle again soon enough.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And Olivia?” Cleo said, just as Olivia started to end the call.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t let your mommy tell you what to do.”

  Chapter 12

  Brett and Olivia walked down Hanover Avenue towards the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He’d resisted going to the VFMA, but eventually relented.

  “The cement walls, the security cameras, coat checks, the guards,” Brett said, once they were engulfed by the shadows cast by the grand edifice. “If you want my opinion, this place is a prison for art. This place is supermax. Art will never escape these walls.”

  “It’s a free art museum.”

  “You don’t understand,” Brett said.

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  “If you visited more often, you would.”

  “Okay, Brett,” Olivia said, and patted him tenderly on the shoulder.

  Despite his canned protest, Brett was secretly eager to get inside: the VMFA was actually Brett’s favorite place in the city. This was all a nonchalant set up for when he and Olivia just happened to stroll past his painting that he had managed, through backchannels, to have hung in the grand institution, projecting modesty through feigned recalcitrance. Like he was insulted to have his work displayed here, not like it was the pinnacle achievement of his career. He grabbed Olivia’s hand and led her upstairs, past the colossal Egyptian columns and relics, not more than a second to admire the Faberge eggs, and into the Evans Court Gallery where they housed his favorite exhibit, the African tribal masks. The room was filled with masks bearing a vague human resemblance, elongated bird-shaped masks emulating ghostly apparitions.

  “These are kind of scary,” Olivia said.

  “Aren’t they? Can you imagine being in a rural African setting, no electricity, just blazing campfires and stars, villagers dressed to the nines in these fantastic dream masks, singing, moving, shaking in ritual dance, the village audience entranced.”

  Olivia examined the masks with a renewed vigor, with a keen interest in the awesomely schizophrenic masks, agreeing their inspiration impossible to trace. The rare vision of a native craftsman captured and preserved on display. Brett was pleased and relieved she connected to the exhibit in the way he had hoped.

  They finished with the African exhibit and turned to the American oil paintings, where she asked Brett all variety of questions she could summon, from technique to subject selection, and Brett responded with a range of replies, from serious explanations pulled from a place of deep thought to cynical jabs. He tried to seem unimpressed, but in truth, while examining Winter Nightfall in the City by Childe Hassam, he’d wondered, as he often did, what it was like to be world famous. He wouldn’t even want the money, but would be satisfied to live the rest of his life without having to encounter another locked door. How had some of the most famous artists, some of them no more skillful than a crayonist, achieved such nauseating heights? However, they’d pioneered that hidden path to the peak, he yearned to stand alongside them on the precipice’s edge, locked in the cross-current of exhilaration and vertigo. Although he loved visiting the VMFA, he hated how humbling it could be.

  “Let’s see the exhibit,” Olivia said, standing beneath a banner for a special exhibit, Hollywood Shoes.

  “Absolutely not,” Brett said.

  “Come on. Just because you don’t appreciate shoes?”

  She led him around a corner, his corner, into the corridor that housed his sole representative piece of work at the VMFA, Monks at Midnight. She picked up the pace as they approached the painting. He had the urge to point it out, but he wanted her to notice it on her own, too. She took out her phone and stared at the screen. He wanted her to see his painting, was startled to discover he needed her to see it. On her phone, she was going to walk right by it without even a comment.

  “Brett Bale,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Oil-based paint on acrylic. The artist resides in Richmond, Virginia. Monks at Midnight was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2013 as a generous gift from the Houghton Foundation,” Olivia read, before dropping her phone in her pocket and turning to examine the painting. She stared at the painting, alternating her attention between Brett and the painting. Now she knew, his anxiety dissipating as quickly as it came.

  “I’ve got something better.” He took her by the hand, and led her out of the museum. They passed a troop of grumbling rednecks waving confederate flags. Across the street was an abortion clinic, where a man held a sign with a picture of a dead fetus lying on an examination table. The sign predictably read ‘Life is not a choice.’ The image made Olivia visibly uncomfortable. On the yard of the abortion clinic were a half-dozen other people, wearing green vests that read ‘Volunteer Escort.’ He didn’t know if she would be offended or just think it was a colorful corner like him, but in either event he didn’t ask her and rushed her through the crowds of Carytown and led her into the sanctuary of Bev’s Ice Cream.

  She was unsure where he was taking her when they passed the racists and what appeared to be a tense situation at the abortion clinic, but they turned onto Cary Street with its shops and cafes and ambling pedestrians and she was reminded of her day with Cleo in Greenwich Village and she knew why he’d brought her here. It was really cute that he was taking her to get ice cream. They each ordered a strawberry milkshake and sat on the same side of a small table near the window and examined one another’s eyes. She wanted him to touch her.

  “What was your favorite painting?” she asked.

  “Besides the African masks? I like the Native American moccasins and tunics,” Brett said.

  “But paintings, not things.”

  “I like that painting overlooking the sea at night with that electric moon piercing the dark night sky, the way it faintly lights the rest of the landscape. I wish I knew how to capture light like that. That’s mastery.”

  “You’re not without your tricks.”

  He smiled.

  “My favorite painting was your painting of the monks carrying the candles across the veranda to the chapel. There’s so much mystery in the night, the dim candlelight I think you captured masterfully, and the anonymity of the monks under their hoods. They look like phantoms, but good phantoms because they’re monks and they aren’t scary. It’s maybe the first time I saw a picture of ghosts that made me feel safe. Why did you paint that?”

  “That was my first painting after I got back from my trip. I’d seen the monks by chance one night when I was wandering around outside the Vatican. It was so mysterious and awe inspiring. I came back several nights in a row to watch, and they did the same march at the same time every night. They went into one of the chapels and sang for an hour, but they must have left through a hidden exit because I never saw them come out.”

  “How do you get inspired like that?” she asked, as she leaned in a little closer. Was she laying it on too thick?

  “It’s always just what you find yourself looking at. You go for a walk and catch yourself gazing at something. What is it you’re looking at? Why?” Brett said.

  “I never catch myself looking at things,” she said, ironically catching herself staring at Brett. The contradiction between her words and her actions didn’t appear lost on Brett, who unflinchingly returned her gaze.

  “Maybe you catch yourself seeing and don’t even realize it,” he said.

  He leaned in. Her heart started leaping. She wanted him to kiss her. Would he? Should she?

&
nbsp; “Do you think I’m seeing right now?” Olivia asked, bungee-jumping off a 1,000-foot. precipice.

  “I think so,” Brett said. His hand fell on top of hers, caressing her arm, but he didn’t lean in any closer.

  To hell with protocol. She leaned in and pressed her lips against his. He didn’t kiss back at first, but when she stroked her fingers through his hair, his lips engaged.

  Children giggled nearby, disrupting the exchange. Olivia blushed, not sure what had come over her. Brett giggled along with the kids. She had every reason to be giddy, too. Brett grabbed Olivia’s hand and they took their milkshakes out onto the street. They kissed again. The crowd maneuvered around them on the sidewalk. Brett pulled back.

  “This is really nice,” he said softly. “But let’s not do this here.”

  She surveyed their surroundings. Across the street was the Byrd Theater. Casablanca was scrawled across the marquee.

  “Do you want to see a movie?”

  “It started like an hour ago,” Brett observed.

  “Let’s go anyway.”

  Brett took Olivia by the hand, guided them across the busy street, purchased the discount tickets, and smuggled their milkshakes into the stately old movie theatre. They sat in the back and kissed intermittently at first and frequently at last, sucking on their milkshakes until they were slurped dry. Had she ever felt like this? What had come over her? Whatever it was, it was working. She felt pride at taking her situation in her own hands, relief at watching it turn out marvelously. Maybe she would stay in Richmond, even if she had to take Kelly’s job offer. Or maybe she could get good enough to paint for a living? Maybe she didn’t want to work for another hedge fund, no matter how cool the people were. She’d still be in that work-yourself-to-death culture. Maybe it was time for her to start a second life. Maybe Brett was a catalyst for her transformation.

  By the movie’s end, they’d shared countless kisses, and on the bike back to the Fan she felt unchained from prior anxieties and giddy and excited about the life she had before her. She remembered the seemingly endless cycle of working in New York, anxious every morning, always in a rush, glued to her computer for long hours, dining alone on frozen organic dinners. What had it all been for? She thought it was for upward advancement, but advancement to what? Wasn’t the whole point of climbing the corporate ladder to eventually settle into a life you could be happy with? A day with Brett was happiness. A bird in hand.