Taysha takes the stool on my other side and shoots a nod at my lap. “Apology?” she says.
I glance at the door, but no Kevin, and turn back to her. “Can you help me change my look? I need to mix it up, but I have no money.”
“No money is my specialty. Check it out. Kevin just walked in.”
He grabs the stool next to me and sets down his gear. I hold out my foil-wrapped apology with two hands, it’s that heavy.
Kevin takes it. “What’s this?” he says, loosening the foil.
“I’m sorry.”
“Funny, it smells like banana bread.”
“Chocolate-chip banana bread, to be precise.”
“I like precision.”
Kevin smiles, but there’s a coolness in his eyes. It’s been a long time since I apologized to anyone, but what I’ve said so far isn’t enough.
“I mean it, Kev. I was angry the other day, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
He nods, and his eyes warm as he carefully folds the foil back in place. “I didn’t know you bake.”
“Truth: I did not bake this bread. I made a deal with my landlady and she baked it.”
One eyebrow goes up. “What did it cost you to regain my allegiance?”
“I have to clear out the sunporch and wash ten windows.”
“You value my friendship highly.”
“I value your friendship highly.”
The smile that takes over his face is worth the hours with a bucket and squeegee it will cost me. Kevin, Taysha, Adam—without them, this place would be intolerable.
Krell comes through the door, chai latte in hand, and I force myself to sit up straight and face him. I screwed up, bringing in that stupid tetrad color study, but I have as much right to be here as anyone else.
“A quick announcement before we begin. I will not be here on Friday, but Fitz, our teaching assistant, will lead the class in my absence.”
“Fitz? Who’s Fitz?” Keiko mutters to Birch.
He sniffs. “You saw him at orientation before he turned invisible.”
“Fitz is not completely invisible,” Taysha says behind her hand. “There have been sightings of him with Bernadette.”
Are you kidding me? I tried three times to schedule meetings with Fitz to talk about how I could fix things with Krell, but the guy blew me off every time. Now I find out he’s hanging with Bernadette?
Krell launches into his lecture, and everyone reaches for their laptop or notebook. “It is not enough to present the viewer with a dynamic image,” he declares. “An image alone is not enough to make a subject iconic. It is how you paint, the brushstrokes and the physical energy you transfer to the canvas that move us!”
He strolls the room, pontificating about “inflection” and “psychic temperature” and “surface energy.” His gaze skips over me and focuses on his favorites, Bryian and Bernadette, and now David Tito, as if they’re the only ones worthy of his wisdom and the rest of us are filler.
Krell’s not going to make an effort to teach me. Once again, it’s abundantly clear that I can’t rely on anyone but myself.
So maybe the best I can do is to take his advice and immerse myself in a work by a contemporary painter I respect. Like that Basquiat at the Broad, the one with the horn players?
I slide my phone out of my pocket and sneak a glance at Duncan. That’s what I want to learn: how to create a portrait as evocative and mysterious and unexpected as his. I put my phone away.
It sucks that I’ll never get the chance.
Unless…I could ask Krell for permission to copy his painting. Yeah, right. Like Krell would open his studio to me. It’s back to the Broad.
It’s disappointing on so many levels, not the least of which is that while I can study the Basquiat up close, the Broad won’t allow me to bring in anything to work with except a small sketch pad and colored pencils.
Drawing won’t make me the painter I need to become, only painting will.
The next day Adam texts me. TAKE A LUNCH BREAK?
SURE. I smile to myself because I’d hoped this thing with Adam wasn’t just him doing a good deed.
I tell Kevin and Taysha I’ll see them later, but don’t tell them where I’m headed. I’m not exactly sure why, just that everyone at CALINVA gossips. I like how Adam’s picked me out of all the first-years to hang with. Maybe it’s stupid to think this makes me special, but I don’t want to share.
Adam sends me an address not far away, a fifteen-minute drive south and west of CALINVA. But when the road I’m on crosses a ravine, I leave South Pasadena’s tree-lined streets. Mercaditos replace wine shops and cleverly named toy stores, and the only shade in front of the tiny bungalows comes from palm trees shaggy with dead fronds and spindly poinsettias taller than I am.
When I get to the address Adam gave me, turns out it’s a commercial building, not a restaurant. There aren’t any windows in the front, so if it wasn’t for the words RHODES GALLERY over the door, I’d assume it was an old machine shop.
Adam’s waiting out front, his long wavy hair pulled back in a high bun. “You found it.”
“It wasn’t hard.”
The sign says closed, but Adam presses the buzzer. “Florian’s a friend.”
A tall, trim guy in a pressed denim shirt opens the door. His balding red hair is cropped short, and I see in his eyes that he’s expecting us. “Adam, come in,” he says.
“Thanks for opening for us.”
Florian’s smile is welcoming, but I don’t get the feeling he and Adam are super close. “So this is Sabine?” he asks. “Congratulations. I understand you’re this year’s Zoich recipient.”
I try not to blush as I thank him. Adam has literally opened a door I couldn’t have opened myself.
Florian gives a slight bow and says, “Enjoy the show,” then disappears into a back room.
“I can’t believe you told him about me.”
Adam shrugs. “I’m doing Florian a favor. A couple of years from now you’ll be looking for a dealer, and now you’ve met.”
Now that Florian’s gone, I look around the space. Skylights between the open rafters fill the windowless space with light. A dozen gleaming chrome sculptures dominate the cement floor. The polished steel is bent, layered, as if someone welded old bumpers together, then twisted and branched them like coral.
We walk among them, following a sinuous path formed by their outstretched branches as Adam talks about the relationship between flexion and extension, posture and composition. I glide my hands just above the surface of the metal as if I find them fascinating.
They’re repetitive, boring even, as if the artist had only one creative thought, but I don’t say that aloud. Adam’s a grad student, and I don’t want him to realize how little I know about contemporary art, so I act as if I agree with everything he says.
The path among the sculptures narrows the farther we go. Adam takes my hand as we weave through the final ones, ducking our heads and contorting our bodies.
At the end, Adam gazes at the installation and murmurs, “The steel shapes the sculpture, which in turn shapes how we move in relation to it in an iterative process of engagement.”
He sounds like copy lifted from an art show catalog, but when he squeezes my hand, I smile. I still don’t love the installation, but I can try seeing it differently.
By now Florian’s returned. We chat for a minute, praise the installation effusively, and thank him again for the private viewing. He lets us out the back door and we walk through the alley to the street.
“Hungry?” Adam says.
“Starved.”
He leads me around the corner to a tiny place with a patio that’s hidden behind an explosion of magenta bougainvillea. We order a couple tortas, take our drinks outside, and sit at a picnic table to wait for our food.
A half-dozen cats come running and Adam scoops up a tabby. “Here,” he says, handing it to me. “This is Angelia.
“And this,” he says, holding
up a large black cat, “this is Diego.”
“You must come here a lot,” I say.
“I live around here, so my ex and I would eat here at least once a week. Neither of us liked to cook.”
I fuss with Angelia while she nestles into my lap, so it looks like I’m smiling at her and not at how Adam let it drop that he’s single. I don’t have a lot of experience, but guys don’t tell you they’re single unless they like you.
Adam sets Diego on the table, and the cat stretches and purrs as Adam scratches behind his ears, then draws his hand along his skinny back all the way to the tip of his tail, showing me a nurturing side of himself I didn’t expect.
Then the cashier comes out with our food, and Diego leaps down and disappears. I go to bite into the warm torta, and carne and beans slop out the sides. When I reach for a napkin, I can’t help thinking this dish is messy and authentic, not styled for social media.
Adam names a bunch of galleries in the Arts District, asking if I’ve visited them, and I have to shake my head and confess that no, I haven’t. The hope I had that he likes me dims. Adam’s a grad student, light-years ahead of me, and now he’ll see how unsophisticated I am.
But then he says, “Don’t be embarrassed. Parking’s expensive downtown. I probably wouldn’t have gone to half of them if I wasn’t bartending at an opening.”
I smile and for the first time since we sat down I relax. I ask him about his favorite galleries, and when there’s a lull in the conversation, I say, “You haven’t told me what you’re working on.”
Adam glances from me to the street, then he dabs his mouth and offers me a sideways smile. “The theme is uncertainty. Things never play out the way we think they will.”
“Story of my life,” I mutter.
“Tell me more,” he says.
I wave him off. “Another time.”
He sips his limeade. “You know what you’re going to paint for the First-Year Exhibition?”
“I’m avoiding thinking about it. Is it as bad as they say?”
“Nothing you can’t handle.” Adam gets up. “I could use some sriracha. You want anything?”
I shake my head then follow him with my eyes, taking in his broad shoulders and how he draws himself up as he moves. He walks so straight and tall, so sure of himself, that even though I should look away, I don’t.
He comes back and as he douses his food with the sauce says, “I have a confession—I saw your portfolio.”
I peer at him over my drink. “The one I submitted with my application?”
“Yeah, I was cleaning the faculty lounge last spring and they had work by the Zoich nominees set out for the faculty to review. I remember seeing the encaustic portrait you did of the old lady.”
He’s not blowing smoke, I think. He really saw my portfolio. “My art teacher thought I’d get Krell’s attention if I submitted a painting in encaustic instead of acrylic.”
“It was gutsy. Not a lot of artists use encaustic. Acrylic’s much more forgiving. When I saw it I thought, ‘Whoa. This girl’s got talent.’”
I feel the color rise to my cheeks, and can’t help smiling. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“Another rough day with Krell?”
“I’ve had worse.”
Adam bends over and holds out a tiny bite of torta to Diego, who takes it and runs off. “You’re very good at capturing what you see.”
“I credit my mom for that. She learned to play guitar by listening to the greats, so when I said I wanted to paint she insisted I copy the greats. She memorized the free admission days for every art museum in LA and made sure I got there.”
“She must be really proud of you.”
My heart skips a beat, and I nod. I don’t want to ruin this moment by telling Adam that she’s gone.
“So you’re a transcribing veteran,” he says.
I sigh. “You know I’d never even heard that word until the other day when Krell ordered me to transcribe a contemporary piece.”
“What’s the problem? That should be a no-brainer for you.”
I push a bean around on my plate, because I’m almost embarrassed to answer. “The problem is, I can’t stop thinking about Krell’s painting. That’s what I want to transcribe.”
Adam laughs. “Duncan? You know Krell would never agree to that.”
“Right? Can you imagine me even asking permission to do it?”
He sips his drink, his gaze following something in the bushes above my head. “What if you didn’t ask Krell?”
“What are you saying?”
“What if I were to let you in at night and you paint when Krell’s not there?” Adam’s face is completely calm, which tells me he’s not joking, he’s really offering to do it.
“No. No, that’s nuts…” I say, even as the longing to paint Duncan swells in my chest. “I can’t afford the materials. The wood panel alone would be a couple hundred, not to mention the oil pigments and beeswax.”
“Yeah, I could probably scrounge you up some pigment, but even with your employee discount the panel wouldn’t be cheap.”
I knit my hands behind my neck as I search for another reason to give him. I can’t admit to Adam that I’m afraid I’d get kicked out if Krell caught me. I don’t want him to know how close I am to losing the Zoich.
I look at him carefully. “Why are you offering to help me?”
Adam has been fiddling with his unused fork ever since finishing his torta, rubbing his thumb over the tines, but now he presses down on them so hard the veins in the back of his hand bulge. Whatever Adam’s about to say, he doesn’t really want to say it.
“Krell’s doing the same thing to you that he did to a guy in my class.”
His face is a mix of anger and sadness, two feelings I know way too well. “How did he survive Krell?”
“He didn’t. The guy took it and took it until the day Krell told him he had no business being here, he’d never be an artist.”
“That’s horrible,” I say quietly.
“Guy dropped out. We never heard from him again.”
The food I ate is a rock in my stomach. “So that’s why you’re trying to help me. Because you think I could be next.”
He avoids my gaze. “No, of course not,” he says, but he’s not at all convincing.
I’m in more trouble than I realized and it’s Krell’s fault. He’s such a prick.
“Even if I could afford a panel, I can’t carry a copy of Krell’s painting in and out of CALINVA.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think of that.” Adam motions to the street. “We should go,” he says, and picks up our plates and dumps them in a trash can.
I know that sneaking into Krell’s studio to paint would be ridiculously stupid and insane, but I’m actually disappointed I can’t do it.
We walk down the broken sidewalk to my car. As we pass a row of tiny bungalows, I ask, “Do you rent one of these?”
“Not exactly. My roommate and I share a dumpy RV parked in a driveway.” He shrugs. “Could be worse, right?”
For a moment I wonder if it shows—the nights I parked my car in the line of RVs along Silverlake Drive in the spot a retired teacher saved for me. “Yeah, could be worse.”
When we reach my car, Adam relaxes against the fender. “We could lock the painting in Secure Storage,” he says.
I realize he means my copy of Duncan, and my first impulse is yes, but… “What’s Secure Storage?”
“It’s part of shipping and receiving. We could stick the painting in an unused locker.”
I unlock my car and swing open the door. What Adam’s suggesting would work, but…“I don’t know. I need to think about it.”
Adam pushes himself off the fender and comes up beside me. I hold my breath as he leans over and kisses my cheek. “I’d hate to see Krell beat you, Sabine.”
As I drive away, the kiss smolders on my skin, and I reach up to touch it, expecting it to feel like ash.
Late at night, Adam texts me a shot of a
wood panel. Apparently, Krell rejected it because of an almost invisible crack, but Artsy won’t take it back, so it’s been sitting in a storage room for months.
ITS YOURS, he says.
I glance at the painting of Mom on my bureau. Adam finding the panel I need, this is a sign, right?
Adam and I go back and forth, making plans. I’ll start painting after work tomorrow.
I tell myself I wouldn’t have to do this if Krell would do his job and teach me instead of eviscerating me. And with Adam’s help, I’m going to show Krell he’s wrong.
When I arrive at CALINVA, it feels different, as if someone changed all the lightbulbs to brighter ones. Taysha intercepts me after class. “Where did you disappear to yesterday?”
“No place special.”
“Liar.” She laughs.
I know my face betrays me, but she doesn’t push it.
My phone buzzes and I slide it out, sure it’s Adam, but it’s Mona. “Mona wants me to stop by the admin office.”
Instead of walking away, Taysha insists on tagging along. “I want to see what goodies the Zoich sent you this time.”
The office is on the first floor right off the lobby. It’s basically a glass box with a clear view of the lobby and the exhibition gallery by the entrance.
There’s an awkward, bony-framed kid sitting on the lime-green couch with his portfolio by his feet, and I know by the anxious, hopeful look in his eyes that he’s a high school senior here for an interview. He’s me. Last year. Desperate to come to the school of my dreams.
Run, I want to tell him. Apply to UC San Diego or Cal State Fullerton.
Mona sits at her sleek white desk outside the president’s office, where the blinds are shut. Mona always looks polished, from her straightened hair to her perfectly glazed bronze nails and immaculate white silk blouse.
“Hi, Mona. You wanted to see me?”
She cocks her head, her eyebrows raised as she holds up a pink “While You Were Out” slip. “This woman called, looking for you. She wanted to know if you were a student here.”
I read Iona Taylor in Mona’s big round handwriting and my stomach lurches. Why did I think Iona wouldn’t find me? Taysha and Mona are exchanging looks, but I try to act nonchalant. “Did she say what she wanted?”
What I Want You to See Page 6