Ruin Me

by Jamie Brenner

  “Um, hey!” I call out. “GoST—your work is amazing!”

  He turns, stilled for a split second, a deer caught in the headlights.

  Then he jumps on the bike and takes off, heading south.

  “Fuck!”

  I break into a run, but there’s no way I’ll catch him. I glance around—not a cab in sight.

  After running a block, I reach Ninth Avenue and I see the Citi Bike station.

  When the paid bike-share stations sprang up all across the city two years ago with their obnoxious blue Citibank logo, I hated them. My mother served on some board that helped with the planning, and told me to get used to it—the bikes were here to stay. She gets free annual membership, so she gave me the key.

  “For emergencies,” she said.

  I slow to a jog, then stop, rummaging through my black, bottomless Urban Outfitters handbag. When my fingers close around the plastic keychain, I almost laugh with relief.

  And then I do something I haven’t done since I was six years old: I get on a bicycle.

  *** ***

  GoST rides his bike like a maniac. He jumps on and off the sidewalk, swerves in and out of traffic, and doesn’t stop for a single light. I do my best to keep up with him, certain all the while that the next block will be the one that kills me.

  Despite my best efforts, I lose him. Still, I think I know where he is going.

  I drop the bike at the Mercer and Bleecker Street station. I start running again, hoping to reach the corner of Prince and Broadway before he does.

  I pass The Mercer hotel, and something is askew at hipster central: a bike is strewn across the entranceway.

  A guy is walking casually toward Prince. He’s wearing jeans, a gray t-shirt … and a ski mask.

  This time, I don’t yell out. I don’t run. I power walk as quietly as possible until I am past him. And then I whirl around.

  “Please don’t run away,” I say. And there they are: the dark eyes that flashed at me the night of the gallery party. Does he recognize me? “I just wanted to say I really love your work. I want to know more about it … ”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, walking away.

  I can’t believe I’ve actually heard his voice.

  “Look,” I say, trailing after him. “I’m an art student. And I missed everything interesting—Warhol. Basquiat. Keith Haring. I don’t want to miss you, too.”

  “Go away,” he says, sharply. We’re on Prince now. He lifts the hatch on the edge of the sidewalk, and descends below the street pulling the hatch shut behind him

  I look around helplessly. Then I bend down and lift the hatch.

  Chapter Eleven

  The greasy smell of the subway hits me immediately. And it’s hot—maybe fifteen degrees hotter than street level.

  But the worst part is the darkness. Once the entry hatch closes on top of me, it’s complete blackout. Halfway down the ladder, I change my mind. This is crazy. I start climbing back up. My heart is pounding, and I press on the hatch but it doesn’t open. I feel around for a lever or knob or something, but I can’t find it.

  “Help!” I yell, totally panicked.

  And light shines up from below.

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  I know without even looking that it’s GoST.

  “The, uh, hatch won’t open.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Um, stalking you.

  I resume my climb downward.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Get back up there.”

  “I told you, the hatch is stuck,” I say, making my way slowly, step by step. I see the New York Post headline now: “Art Queen’s Daughter Plunges to Underground Death.”

  I feel him watching me and it’s more excruciating than the solitude and darkness from a minute earlier.

  My feet hit a landing. And I turn to face him. He’s still wearing the ski mask. I wish I’d caught him by surprise and been able to see him without it. “I really just want to talk to you about your work.”

  “My work speaks for itself,” he practically growls.

  Okay, now I am starting to feel like an asshole. “Fair enough. Can you shine that flashlight so I can make my way back up?”

  He points his flashlight at the stairs, and with the illumination in this direction, I see the wall next to us, covered in graffiti.

  “Oh my god,” I say. Now I know how the archeologists who discovered King Tut’s tomb must have felt. There, in all caps, inside a thought bubble, are the words: MUSEUMS REPRESENT THE MUMMY OF A CULTURE THAT HAS LONG SINCE BEEN DEAD! “That’s Apollinaire. Is that an original? Or did someone else write that?”

  “What do you know about Apollinaire?” GoST asks, skeptically.

  “Everything,” I say. “Although I have to admit, I thought Apollinaire was strictly West Coast.” I lean closer to the wall, fighting the urge to run my fingers over the writing.

  “I think it’s legit. All this stuff is mid 80s.” He steps back so the light gives me a broader view. I gasp when I see the names Sane and Smith.

  “No! No fucking way.” This time I do touch it. It’s the holy grail of New York graffiti.

  Sane and Smith were brothers from Washington Heights who tagged all over the city. When Ed Koch died in 2013, NY1 News ran an interview with him talking about the graffiti boom during his time in office, and he mentioned Sane and Smith by name. Sane drowned in 1990. End of an era.

  We stand in silence for a few minutes, and I drink in the images and tags of artists whose work I’ve only read about or seen photos of online. Until GoST says, “You should get out of here.”

  I turn to him. “Let me come with you one night. Watch you work.”

  He shakes his head. “You’ll get in the way. If the cops show up, you’ll get me busted.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m the one who kept you from getting caught the other night.”

  “What?”

  “Snow White, on Houston? The cops were on top of you right outside here. I pretended to faint. And you got away.”

  He smiles. Barely. “That was you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I know I should go. But I’m rooted in place. I feel myself close to greatness, true greatness. Something bigger and more important than anything that has hung in the walls in my mother’s gallery. And if I leave now, I might never get close to it again.

  “Just one night,” I say. I am sweating so hard. My hair is clinging to my neck, my back. I resist the urge to pull it into a ponytail. “Look, consider it a contribution to art education. Giving something back to the community.”

  “You have some balls.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Let me see your phone,” he says.

  “My phone?”

  He nods, crossing his arms in front of him. I reach into my bag and hand over my iPhone. As soon as he takes it, I realize what he’s doing.

  “Look, I want to preserve all this stuff. Half of it gets painted over … ”

  But he’s busy tapping away; erasing the photos I just took of him working on crack pipe Cinderella.

  He hands it back to me, and our fingers touch for the briefest moment. Something hot and sharp shoots straight through me—a strong, irrational attraction. I swallow hard.

  “Meet me on the corner of Broadway and Houston tomorrow at midnight,” he says. “Without the phone.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Have you heard a word I just said to you?”

  I sit in front of the computer in the back office of the gallery with Inez. She is showing me how to update and maintain the client database. And no, I haven’t heard a word. I can’t stop thinking of GoST touching me.

  “Sorry. I had a late night,” I say.

  Even after I got back to my apartment, I was awake for hours, replaying the conversation with GoST in my head. I thought about that wall, a priceless archive of decades-old graffiti. And I held my phone against my chest, thinking about him holding it.
<
br />   “We all have late nights. Still have to get things done.”

  If Inez had had a late night, it doesn’t show. She looks like she just stepped out of the pages of W. She’s wearing a white Marc Jacobs t-shirt, a military-style bolero jacket, and black capri pants. Her eyes are made up with black liquid eyeliner, her lips inWithout honey-colored skin is flawless, her face inin signature deep-red lipstick. I’ve been trying to replicate the look since high school, with mixed results.

  “So what did you do last night?” I ask, trying to stay focused, to get in the moment.

  “Clearly nothing as interesting as you. What’d you do? Party?”

  I haven’t told anyone about meeting GoST, but I can trust Inez.

  “Have you heard about the street artist GoST?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen his stuff. Did you notice that Snow White painting around the corner on Houston?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Well, I first noticed him about a year ago. Look up his stuff online—it’s sick. And last night, I met him.”

  A strange smile plays on her red lips. “Does your boyfriend know you spent last night running around with this insanely talented street art dude?”

  I know she is teasing me. “Seriously, Inez. The stuff is incredible.”

  “If he’s so good, why not tell your mother about him?”

  “I did. She doesn’t care.”

  Inez nods. “Yeah. Anna has never cared for that sort of thing. What’s his name?”

  “His tag is GoST.” I spell it for her.

  My phone buzzes. I whip it out of my bag. As of eight this morning, I still hadn’t heard from Brandt. He never replied to my are you home, I’m coming over text.

  “Hello?” If my mother caught me on the phone she’d kill me. But luckily it’s just Inez and me today.

  “Hey. It’s me,” he says. I breathe a sigh of relief at his voice. The run-in with GoST was a distraction, but deep down I’ve been a wreck about what happened with Brandt yesterday.

  “Hey,” I say. “I was going to stop by last night but I guess you were already asleep.”

  “Um, yeah,” he says. “Look, I feel bad about the way things went down. Can you meet for lunch? I’ll come to you. Lucky Strike at, say, twelve thirty?”

  “Okay. See you there.” I’m still unsettled from the argument, but at least we’re talking.

  “Who was that?” Inez says.

  “Brandt. We’re meeting for lunch.”

  I’m surprised to see her flinch with annoyance. What does she care?

  “Here you two are! What are you showing her, Inez? The client database?” My mother breezes into the room in a cloud of Chanel.

  Inez perks up. “Yes. And then I’m going to get into the remit files.”

  “Perfect,” my mother says, a hand on Inez’s shoulder. “Lulu, come to lunch with me at one o’clock. We’ll go over some things.”

  I feel Inez looking at me. See, I told you so, her glance says. But my mother told me to be supportive of Brandt. She’s not going to mind.

  “Actually, I’m meeting Brandt for lunch.”

  “Remind him about the luncheon on Friday.” My mother is hosting a gallery preview at the new space at the end of the week. The brick building hadn’t looked like much when she bought it two years ago. I had thought she was just making a real estate investment, maybe renting out apartments. But instead she hired the best architects in the city, gutted the place, and made it nearly unrecognizable. The exterior is now one giant glass window. The rest of the façade is cream-colored brick, with new cornices crafted to look antique.

  The luncheon will be a catered affair with long tables filling the empty space. The walls will be covered with art by her most famous clients, most just on loan for the day. And the guest list all press, celebrity friends, and her top-tier clients. One thing I really admire about my mother is her expertise in creating buzz in stages. Each show is rolled out with carefully orchestrated, strategically scheduled events. And I see my mother doing the same thing for the new gallery.

  It seems obvious, now that she has mentioned it, that Brandt is going on Friday. And yet he never mentioned it to me.

  “Brandt’s going on Friday?”

  “Yes, he needs to be there, “ my mother said. “If the renovations stay on track, I’m thinking his show will be the debut of the new space. So make sure he’s with the program.”

  *** ***

  Lucky Strike is an institution, a French bistro that opened its doors on Grand Street in 1989. The black-and-red sign with white lettering out front is like the unofficial flag of SoHo.

  The menu is written on mirrored walls, and I sit facing it, across from Brandt at the long dark leather banquette in the middle of the room.

  He looks especially gorgeous this morning, with two-day stubble and wearing a powder-blue t-shirt that brings out his eyes. I have the urge to reach out and touch his face. But then I think about the little episode in front of the window, and I don’t.

  We make small talk until the waiter takes our order for a couple of burgers. And then Brandt says, “I’m sorry about last night.”

  I feel limp with relief. “Thanks for saying that. Did you get my text last night, or were you already asleep?”

  He looks down at the table. “I needed time to think. It’s the pressure of this show, Lu. Seeing Dustin’s stuff the other night … I don’t want to disappoint your mother.”

  “She’s investing in you for a reason. And it has nothing to do with me. I know that was just the stress talking—that you don’t really believe that.”

  “Okay, so let’s just drop it. I’m sorry I took it out on you.” He reaches for my hand across the table. “I need your support.”

  “You have it,” I say. “But I wasn’t upset about you asking me that. I mean, I was upset that you would think that—that you would doubt the merit of your work in that way. The thing that really bothered me was what you said about, um, the sexual stuff.”

  He looks at me blankly. Maybe he doesn’t remember. Maybe it had just been said in the heat of the moment. You didn’t get off? Because frankly, I can never fucking tell.

  Whatever made him say it, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. And it’s my fault.

  “I’m sorry if you weren’t into it. I shouldn’t have pushed,” he says. Then he smiles a devilish grin. “But doing it in front of that window was kind of hot, you have to admit.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say. “But I’m talking about what you said after—about not being able to tell if I’m into it or not? Not just yesterday, but not ever. That’s—you’re right. And it’s my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?”

  “I basically never, um, have an orgasm.”

  “What do you mean? Lately?”

  “No. Like, never ever. I never have.”

  He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. Then he leans forward, looking at me like he’s never seen me before. “How could you lie to me about something like that? Faking it this whole year. I feel like an idiot!”

  I reach for his hand but he pulls it away.

  “No—don’t. I’m sorry. I just kept thinking that if I didn’t talk about it, didn’t put so much pressure on it, it would happen.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I think these things just take time.”

  “You know what?” he says, leaning back against the booth, his eyes scanning the room behind me. “I can’t deal with this right now. I need to focus on work. Okay? I need your support.”

  Of course he does. It’s all about what he needs from me. Maybe that’s all it’s ever been about.

  The burgers arrive and we eat in silence. Or, rather, he eats and I sit there with my mind racing, vacillating from wanting to make up to thinking the worst about our relationship to thinking about GoST.

  “You’re not hungry?” he says. He sits back and looks at me. “Look, come o
ver tonight. Stay the night. We need some time together.”

  He’s probably right. But I’m not sure I want time with him right now.

  “I have a … work thing tonight.” And it’s sort of true.

  Brandt shrugs, and goes back to eating his burger.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The night is thick and dark, clouds covering the full moon.

  It feels strange to be without my phone. An almost dangerous type of freedom.

  GoST and I stand at the base of an old apartment building in the shadow of The High Line. It’s twelve thirty, and the air is as still and hot as inside an attic. I’m dressed in a black t-shirt, jeans, and Converse. GoST is in his black ski mask, camouflage pants, and a black t-shirt. My heart is pounding with excitement.

  Two hours ago, I was at Prune for Niffer’s farewell dinner with five of our friends. I could barely sit still, waiting for it to be midnight so I could get to the designated meeting spot on Houston. When I got there, I saw Snow White had been painted over. My stomach dropped.

  “It lasted longer than I expected,” GoST said, coming up behind me. His voice made my body jump with anticipation. “Come on—we have work to do.”

  Now we’re in place, in the alley behind the five-story brick building that is his mark. He’s carrying a bucket, a paint roller, and a scrolled-up piece of paper or poster board that is bulky under his arm. On his back, a black bag that a hiker might carry.

  “You should have let me bring my phone,” I say. “What if your stuff tonight gets painted over even faster than the one on Houston?”

  “The point is the act —not the painting. If one person sees it, great. If a million do, fine. But I still did it, either way.”

  He sets the bucket on the ground, and pulls a jar out of his backpack. He pours a thick liquid into the bucket.

  “What is that?”

  “Wheat paste,” he says. “I’m hanging a poster tonight.”

  He puts his backpack over one shoulder, but leaves the bucket and paper on the ground.