Ruin Me

by Jamie Brenner

  “Something. But not enough,” I say, heart pounding. It’s so tempting to just give in, to pull on a pair of jeans and run down there, for one last adrenalized night. “I’m starting to think about my future. There’s a lot I want to do. Last night, all I wanted was to be with you. I thought I would give up everything just as long as I was with you. But I can’t give up everything before I’ve even seen what I can do.”

  “I want to see what you can do, too. What we can do. Starting now on the bridge.”

  *** ***

  The bridge feels entirely different in the dead of night, surrounded by city lights. There’s barely any foot traffic, so I spot him yards before I make it to the middle of the bridge.

  On a personal, emotional level, meeting him is probably not smart. But from an art fanatic standpoint, I can’t resist. Niffer’s camera—a Canon Mark II she left behind before Spain—is slung over my right shoulder. My phone doesn’t have the capacity to capture the peak of the bridge.

  He’s wearing all black and a ski mask. If I didn’t know his body so intimately—his stance, the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his waist—I might wonder. It’s hard to tell if he sees me, but he’s facing me. As I get closer, I know he’s aware of my approach. And now I can see the outline of his backpack, and the black leather gloves on his hands.

  “You sure look ready for action,” I say.

  In reply, he pulls up his mask and tugs me close, kissing me. “Now that you’re here,” he says.

  “I can’t keep doing this. Give me one good reason to stay.”

  “What’s with the camera?”

  “I’m going to photograph it. Whatever you’re doing.”

  “Don’t post it.”

  “Why am I here, Rory?”

  “I don’t want you to give up on me.”

  “Give up on you? I couldn’t believe in you more.”

  “Then be with me. We’ll figure it out. Just stay, all right?”

  He kisses me again, running his hand down my back. My arms barely fit around him with his stuffed backpack.

  “What do you have in there anyway?”

  “Stuff. Will you be with me?”

  I think about how my mother counted on my father, how she believed that their life together could overcome his fear, his nihilism—whatever it was he was up against. I don’t want to make the same mistake. I can’t force Rory to want things he doesn’t want, and if he goes along with it just to keep me, it will be a disaster.

  “I can’t.”

  He holds me tight. My tears are sloppy, uncontrollable.

  “Will you be here for this? Tonight?”

  I don’t answer.

  He hands me binoculars.

  *** ***

  Rory balances himself, walking precariously along the metal pipe spanning the length of the bridge. Cables flank the pipe, and he assured me that they are secure enough to facilitate his walk to the peak of the bridge. The problem is that at the last quarter of the pipe, just before it slopes up to the roof of the bridge, the path of the pipe is interrupted by spikes designed to protect the gothic arches from exactly what Rory plans to do.

  In his black clothes, he’s still remarkably visible, even without looking through the binoculars. The bridge is brightened by hundreds of lights along the entire length. Only the stone arches are dark.

  My stomach churns with nerves as he creeps along.

  I unscrew the lens cap on Niffer’s camera, and take my first shot.

  When he reaches the spikes, he pulls a tarp out of his backpack and tosses it over the lowest point. The cloth covers about five spokes, enough for him to use some kind of climbing gear to hoist himself over what is essentially a fence.

  I exhale sharply when he finally lands on the other side. He then scrambles up the rest of the pipe, and uses a series of hooks and pulleys to get himself onto the flat top of the brick structure above the arches. For a minute, he disappears from sight.

  That’s when I notice that other people on the pedestrian walkway see him. They have their phones out. Flashes go off like a dozen fireflies.

  I train the binoculars on the top of the arches. Rory is hanging from the roof, a harness around his waist, suspended by a cord anchored by pitons or some kind of bolting gear. He braces himself against the flattest panel of bricks above the right arch.

  A police siren wails. And it’s close.

  Rory has a can of spray paint in his hand. I lower the binoculars and take out the camera. I focus the shot as the first burst of red paint hits the bridge.

  Above my head, I hear a loud, low helicopter.

  “Evacuate the bridge.” The command comes from behind me, through a speaker. Turning around, I see police cars blocking the entrance to the footbridge.

  My eyes go back to Rory, willing him to drop the spray can and start heading down. But I realize it’s pointless—he’s going to finish the painting. He’s forming a red circle, and filling it in—a giant red dot.

  “Go!” I yell, a useless cry for him to get the hell out of there.

  “You have to move,” a police officer brushes past me. “Off the bridge.”

  Dozens of officers have swarmed the walkway.

  “Evacuate this area,” one of them speaks through a megaphone. The small crowd that has gathered to witness Rory breaks up reluctantly, until the only one left—aside from the mob of police—is me.

  There is nothing I can do to save him—no fake fainting, no distraction to stop the inevitable. Still, I can’t move. I can’t leave him alone.

  “You need to clear this area immediately,” an officer tells me.

  I ignore her, watching through the binoculars as Rory tags the giant red spot with “GoST.”

  Rory is going to be arrested tonight. I raise my binoculars, just in time to see him tagging the painting.

  And as a female officer pulls my hands behind my back, I know I am being arrested, too.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  They call it a holding cell, and now I know why: I’ve had to go to the bathroom for hours.

  My cellmate tells me she was wrongly busted for dealing heroin. But if the story she told the cops was as lame as the one she told me, I don’t think it’s going to hold up in court.

  I tell her I’m there for “obstructing an arrest in progress.”

  “Where were you when I needed ya?”

  That makes me laugh.

  The female guard unlocks the gate, calling my name. I jump up and follow her out.

  The first person I see when we reach the processing hall is my mother’s attorney, Robert Leeds. In the middle of the night, he is dressed in his usual suit and tie. Blinking against the harsh fluorescent glare, it takes me a minute to notice my mother by his side.

  “Oh, thank god,” she says, rushing to me and giving me an awkward sort of hug. I can’t remember the last time she touched me. “Did they mistreat you?”

  “No, Mom. I’m fine.”

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  “I can’t leave Rory here.”

  “Who?”

  “Um, GoST.”

  She looks at me like I’m out of my mind. “What do you expect me to do?”

  I look at Robert. “Can you find out what the bail is?” Then I turn to my mother. “I’ll pay you back.”

  She starts to tell me I can’t possibly afford to pay her back—then she remembers that, actually, I can.

  We stare at each other.

  “It could take a bit of time,” Robert says, looking at his Rolex.

  “Yes,” she says, holding my gaze. “But, I suppose, since we’re already here…”

  *** ***

  We watch the sunrise sitting on the roof of my building. Holding hands, we don’t say much. It’s the first all-nighter I’ve pulled in a long time, but I don’t feel tired. I feel wired.

  “Do you get it?” he asks. I know he’s talking about his dot on the bridge. And by dot, I mean five-foot circle sprayed solid red.

  “Yeah, I
do.” At first, I didn’t. But I had plenty of down time in the holding cell to figure it out. When it hit me, I gasped and put my head in my hands.

  All this time, I’d been upset with him for not making a statement owning up to his work—thinking he was just letting Brandt take the credit. Meanwhile, he had been planning the biggest statement possible.

  “You knew you were going to get busted,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to stress out.”

  “When did you decide to do it?”

  “That New York magazine story. I knew the GoST thing was over. I just had to figure out the exit in my own way, y’know?”

  “I should have known you weren’t just hiding. I’m sorry.”

  “I was hiding. But I’m not anymore.” He runs his hand down my back, and I lean into him, my head in the crook of his neck. He kisses the top of my head. I tilt my face up to him, and his mouth presses gently to mine. The whole city melts away.

  “So what now?” he asks.

  “You should just plead out and pay the fine.”

  “That’s not what I meant. But as far as that, I can’t pay. They are nailing me for every tag I’ve ever done.”

  “I’ll give you the money.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “You can’t mess around with this. You’ll go to prison.”

  “I’ll go to prison before I take money from you. Or worse, your mother. It’s bad enough I owe her for springing me tonight.”

  “Actually, my father paid for it.” I smile and tell him about the letter and trust.

  He shakes his head. “I still won’t take your money.”

  “Okay, you want a way to pay off the bounty on your head? I’ve got an idea. But you might not like it.”

  “No more talking,” he says, pulling me down on top of him. I feel him hard against me, and my stomach flips.

  “What are we doing?” I ask.

  “You tell me.”

  “I told you what I want. And you said you can’t be in a relationship.”

  “So show me how,” he says, kissing my neck. A delicious shiver runs through me, but I can’t let him off that easy.

  “Do you mean that?”

  He takes my face in his hands. “I didn’t come out of hiding for my art.”

  My eyes fill with tears. He kisses them.

  And we stop talking.

  *** ***

  The phone calls started at nine in the morning. Earlier, if she counted the voice messages. By nine thirty, Inez stopped answering the phone. One by one, the buyers for Brandt’s show were dropping out.

  Even the gallery receptionist seemed grim-faced. The pile of newspapers outside of Anna’s office was a smoking gun.

  The New York Times was the only one that printed GoST’s full legal name: Rory Abequa. It included photos of the vandalism of the bridge—some horrendous red circle, and a twenty-five-year-old grainy photo of the bridge with SANE SMITH.

  But it was the tabloids that really hurt. the Post called Brandt a fraud. The Daily News wrote about the upcoming show as “haunted by lies.” But the worst, by far, was Damian Damian’s post. Damian, that fuschia-haired fucking traitor.

  If You Believe That One, I’ve Got a Bridge to Sell You

  For those of you who believed Brandt Penn was behind the subversive works of genius popping up (or swimming along) NYC this past year, I love to be the bearer of bad news: I was right, you were wrong.

  Last night, in a feat of street art daring not seen since the late 1980s (the favorite decade of yours truly), the artist formerly known as GoST tagged the Brooklyn Bridge. This time, the police got their man—and so did we: He’s twenty-two-year-old Rory Abequa.

  My guess is that this isn’t great news for the Anna Sterling Gallery, which has been selling their upcoming (and lackluster) Brandt Penn show on GoST’s bad-boy notoriety. So for you bargain shoppers out there, today’s the day to make some calls. I have a feeling Mr. Penn’s one-man show is going to be pleasantly affordable.

  Oh, and as for Mr. Abequa’s painting on the bridge? All of us in the art world know a “sold” sticker when we see one.

  Inez’s phone rang again. Fighting nausea, she reached for it and checked the incoming number. Brandt.

  “Yeah?” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Jesus, Inez. My phone is going crazy, there are reporters camped outside my building. What should I say?”

  “Don’t say anything. I have to talk to Anna.”

  “Maybe we should postpone the show.” Either she was losing it, or he sounded relieved.

  “Are you fucking high again? That’s not going to happen. Just sit tight, wait for my call, and keep your mouth shut.”

  She hung up the phone, and pressed her fingers to her temples.

  The worst part, by far, was Inez knew she was stuck at the gallery—at least for the foreseeable future. No one else would hire her in the midst of this scandal. Of course, it would blow over. Everything did. But she had no leverage, no influence over Anna, and no power to leave her behind in the dust.

  The front door slammed closed, and Inez peeked her head out of her office to see Anna strolling down the hall in a white suit and dark glasses.

  “Thank god you’re here. I don’t know what to do. Nina pulled her offer. The Roths are out. Four other collectors left messages. …”

  If Anna heard her, she showed no sign of it. She walked straight into her office, and closed the door.

  What the hell? Inez didn’t have the patience for her ice queen treatment. Not in the middle of this crisis.

  She followed her.

  “You don’t have anything to say about this?”

  Anna removed the dark glasses. Her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, but she had an odd smile on her face.

  “Yes, actually. I’m canceling the show.”

  Inez’s mouth dropped. “We can’t do that. There’s no way to get a replacement artist in a week. We’ll have an empty gallery.”

  “There is no gallery. I’m retiring.”

  Inez had to lean on the edge of Anna’s desk to steady herself.

  “You can’t. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Get your résumé together.”

  “To send where? This is a huge scandal. The Roths said they might sue for fraud. Who would hire me?”

  “I have a friend who’s looking for an assistant.”

  “An assistant? I’m a gallery director.”

  “I wouldn’t split hairs if I were you. Besides, you’re quite the climber. I’m sure you’ll be running the place in no time.”

  Inez trembled with anger.

  “What gallery?” she hissed.

  “Iris Penz. In Beijing.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  We’re calling it Underground Art.

  It took a month to get it up and running. We found the URL we wanted, and thanks to my obsessive need to chronicle Rory’s work for the past year, we had tons of images to upload. I photographed all the new stuff in a single afternoon.

  We made our first sale within an hour of being online. It was a small one—just a couple hundred dollars for a reproduction of crack Cinderella. But since Damian Damian bought the rights to the image to use as his Web site logo, we know it will get a lot of exposure. More, even, than being on the side of a building in Manhattan.

  Dozens of other sales followed. Some modest, some respectable. Every day, we are amazed at people’s hunger to buy art. There is something primal about connecting to someone else’s creation, and being able to hold onto it.

  But all of those sales added up don’t compare to the one I got today in a surprising call from my mother’s former client, Nina Saroyin. She’s interested in one of Rory’s sculptures. I told her I’d discuss it with the artist. Although Rory said from day one he didn’t want his art in the hands of rich collectors who would hide it away, he also still has a seven-figure fine from the City of New York
that he refuses to let me help him pay off. And the clock is ticking.

  “It’s your choice,” I tell him, buttoning my navy-blue baby doll dress with the white Peter Pan collar. I bought it at a vintage store. It’s probably a bit lightweight to wear in the middle of February, but the sales girl swore to me Courtney Love wore it during her Live Through This tour. I’m not sure I believe her, but it’s still nice to imagine. Besides, as soon as I saw it, I knew it was what I wanted to wear tonight.

  “You think I should sell it to her,” he says, his eyes sweeping over me from head to toe. Then, “You are too beautiful.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject. Yes, I think you should sell it to her because it’s your chance to pay off the fine. But it’s your call.”

  It’s weird. Being in business with Rory makes me feel closer to my mother than I ever felt working with her. Now I know that whatever she did in the past, she did it to build a future.

  “I’ll think about it. But don’t commit to her if you see her tonight.”

  “You won’t come?”

  The Web gallery took only a month to get started. But my other project took half a year, and tonight is the celebration of all that hard work. It’s the grand opening of a place I dreamed about my entire life.

  He shakes his head. Looking into his riotous dark eyes, I know I am asking too much. He has come so far, but he still has his limits.

  And I accept them.

  *** ***

  A crowd waits outside 133 Greene Street behind a velvet rope, hoping to be let inside. I wanted the party to be intimate—homey. But the crowds came.

  The press calls my name—Rory’s, too. The rabid crowd of photographers and journalists is the reason he can’t be with me tonight. But I need them here. I climb the metal steps and stand in front, letting them take my photo. All I really want is for them to get shots of the name on the door: The Shane Holland Sculpture Museum.

  With a deep breath, I push open the door. Inside, I feel immediately calmer. I’ve been walking through that door since I was barely out of a stroller. While it’s always felt like home, for the first time, it feels truly complete. The white walls are bare, but the floor space is host to eight of my father’s sculptures, most of which have not been seen publicly since the early 1990s. There are still a few out there—with buyers who didn’t want to part with them, or who gave me prices that I can’t afford yet. But I’ll get them someday.