Live a Little

by Kim Green

  Before I can up the ante further, Sue carefully sets down an enormous butcher knife she is using to section smoked salmon and moves briskly to the sink. I am expecting her to execute some graceful act of chef’s wizardry, a ninja slice-anddice move or a quickie method of turning water into wine. So I am surprised—no, shocked—when my friend leans over and vomits noisily and violently into the deep stainless-steel basin.

  “My God, Sue.” I touch her back lightly, feeling the muscles convulse under the purple tissue T-shirt.

  Sue finishes, then splashes her mouth with water. Her face is the exact hue of avocado in cream, the rust sprinkling of freckles popping out like specks of mud. I wait while my friend leans against the butcher block, willing her stomach to calm itself. After a moment Sue’s gray eyes meet mine, broadcasting what ails her in loud, clear silence.

  “How many weeks?” I say, already reaching for a packet of salty table crackers and fizzy soda.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I say, scooching away from the toilet. Someone has had too much to drink and overshot the bowl. Instead of grossing me out, the pool of piss is exciting, proof that I have officially abandoned the world of boring seat-cover users and entered the Pee Freely Zone, where anything—fame, fortune, STDs—can happen.

  I find refuge against a rattan stand stuffed with rolls of TP and topped with burning incense. Saskia and I click glasses and gulp our wine. The incense sticks out of the fat, happy Buddha’s mouth like a joint. No wonder he is happy, in spite of the fact that he is carrying a few extra pounds.

  “The Bay Guardian sent someone. That woman with the gray bob,” Saskia says.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I say again. Outside, through the slit of sidewalk-level window, four feet appear and kiss, red stilettos mounting Doc Martens in a rough dance.

  Saskia shrugs. “You tapped in to the zeitgeist. Women are tired of being written off as damaged goods because they had their tits lopped off,” she says in her customary blunt way.

  “It just seems so . . . I don’t know. Sudden, I guess. I never had so many people interested in my work before. I feel like a fraud.” Unexpected tears burn my eyes as I fiddle with my fake-pink-diamond breast-cancer-awareness pin. “All those wonderful women, they’re the ones who should be getting the attention.”

  Saskia tilts her head so that her red cap of hair cuts across her cheek, and stares at me. As I watch impatience glisten behind her frosty green eyes, it occurs to me that she knows I am a little frightened of her and dislikes me for it. A not insignificant part of me will be glad, when Shiny Pony informs me that the last check comprising that oh so needed $245,325-plus has cleared, to confess the hospital’s ineptitude and my own sins and disappear back into obscurity. (This is my plan, in any case.)

  “There’s nothing fraudulent about it if the right people think you’re good,” she says.

  The show is a great success.

  Not just a success. A great success.

  Such a difference between the two, don’t you think? Success, measured in accolades and glad awareness; in the kind, congratulatory words of friends who spare a moment to stroke your arm in passing or slap your back, to share your pleasure. Success brings you closer to people, real people, at least.

  But great success, that’s a whole different ball game. You can see it not in the inexorable pull of others into your orbit but in the opposite effect: In the face of your accomplishment, affection dissolves into deference, connection into distance, overture into seizure. People you don’t know want pieces of you, while people you do know put their need of you in abeyance, preparing themselves for the cold day, not too distant, when you no longer have time for them. The difference between garden-variety success and greatness is the difference between people wanting you for their team and being given the mandate to start your own.

  Without having experienced it myself, I know from greatness. Even in high school, Laurie had it. You could hear it in the hushed click of lockers shut respectfully in her wake, their tenants loath to sully her passing with a slam. You could smell it in the sour need that poured off boys, hell, men, in her presence, their perspirings shouting the depth of their yearning. You could sense it in the weary tribute of our teachers, who were smart enough to know when a student had surpassed them with innate charm, or intelligence, or diligence, or, in Laurie’s case, a devastating combination of the three.

  How do I know my show is great? For one, when I am walking around the room, rendering my dramatization of the eccentric yet tantalizing yet insufficiently lithe artiste, I overhear someone saying she is going to buy not one but two of my busts because—and this is a quote—“they’re great.” Okay, so it is Estelle Gilden from Ma’s Humanistic Judaism group. So what? I happen to know that Estelle knows a lot about art.

  She makes a mean cupcake for the Senior Center Purim party, complete with ebony-and-ivory sprinkles that have about them an almost Pollock-esque flair.

  The other way I know is even better.

  On the way to the buffet table, a bony woman grasps my arm. She has tawny skin and a cocktail ring you could knock around the green.

  “Stunning work, Ms. Rose. Stunning. And scathing. Yes, scathing! And stunning, of course. You must come speak at my club. About your experience.” She leans over so I get a gander at her matching earrings, which look like asteroids that landed in a field and had to be wrestled onto gold posts by teams of slaves. “Have your person call me.” She lurches off, her diamond lighting the way like a tertiary moon.

  I am still trying to figure out who my person is when I grasp the identity of the woman with asteroids circling her head. The knowledge expels a thin, oily effluvium from my pores that chills into equal parts thrill and dread. I immediately locate my nearest and dearest, who are clustered awkwardly around the bronze-dipped single-breasted bust of Jean the angry lawyer.

  “Katja von Warburg just invited me to her club,” I say, not too sotto voce, describing the encounter with San Francisco’s leading blue-blooded philanthropist/socialite/De Beers customer.

  “That’s great, honey.” Phil puts the minimum level of oomph into it, successfully avoiding marriage counseling for another week.

  “Mom’s famous!” Micah, at least, looks proud.

  Even Ma is impressed. “She said that? To have your person call her person? Feh.” She reaches up and rubs my cheek with her knuckles. “My daughter the celebrity.”

  “Do you think we’ll get to go to their house?” Now that I am famous, Taylor has apparently forgiven me for not offering her virtue to Biter on a platter of squirming puppies.

  “Where’s Ren?” Laurie says. “He has an early meeting tomorrow.”

  “I’ll find him. I was going outside anyway,” I offer. Laurie is not used to sharing the spotlight. I will forgive her the misstep.

  It takes me fifteen minutes to make my way to the terrace. The well-wishing is constant and fawning and exhausting and terrifying. I love every second of it. It is terrifying in a delicious way, like surfing point breaks with Duke the Molester of Stretchmarked Geriatrics.

  Once on the deck, I take a look around. No one is watching, so I let my stomach pooch out in my black jersey dress and lean against the railing, inhaling the cool bright downtown night. Two stories below, the street seethes with people. It is nearly eleven P.M., but we are in the theater district, and the shows are ending, people flowing into bars and restaurants for post-entertainment victuals.

  “Excuse me. Ms. Rose, I’m Nils Cooper.” The man is tall enough to make me feel dainty, with a head of flowing salt-and-pepper hair and disconcerting pale eyes. He wears a grown-up suit and a thick S&M-looking ring in each ear, an arresting combination, in my opinion. He shakes my hand. “May I?” he asks, gesturing toward the settee.

  He sits down. A tiny computer comes out of nowhere. He is—anxiety alert!—the senior San Francisco Chronicle art critic. I sit down, too. I have no experience with such things. Gray Bob from the Guardian didn’t ask me
anything, just stomped around muttering to herself and left. My pulse is thundering. Can art critics tell when someone is lying about art . . . and stuff?

  “Do you have time to answer a few questions?” Nils Cooper has already flicked open the purring laptop and started tapping on the keyboard.

  “Of course.” What am I, an idiot? Besides, if I run away and/or soil myself, Saskia will kill me.

  “Did you ever think that you were going to die?” he says.

  “What? No! God, I mean. . .” Actually, I did. Exhibit A: that first month, before the call from Meissner, when every breath felt like a spoonful of sugar doled out as a war ration. That month I thought about little else, and it was, well, hell. And don’t forget it!

  He pats my hand. “Nervous?”

  “No, it’s just . . . well, maybe a little.” Something about Nils Cooper’s demeanor—okay, maybe it’s the earrings and the wrinkled, faintly debauched state of his trousers—makes me decide the winningest approach is dominant mistress versus client-baby. Sort of like how I treat Micah and Taylor when they push me past the point of wanting to be liked.

  “I can’t believe that was your first question,” I say in a tone that smacks like a spanking. “Couldn’t you ask me something about, you know, impression casting in bronze? Or the theme of self-renewal? Or impressions of renewal . . . or something?”

  Nils Cooper grins. “Those are good ones. I’ll put them on the list. Now”—he leans over so that his shirt gapes and I can see a tattoo on his chest of a woman with pointy breasts wielding a hot poker the way the rest of us might brandish a spatula over a griddle—“let’s talk about death.”

  I peek at the open doorway. No help is forthcoming. “Okay.”

  He leans closer. His smile is white but strange, with jack-o’-lantern spaces at the outer corners. “Do you let your husband touch your breasts?”

  My eyes flutter closed involuntarily. Just my luck to be interviewed by the world’s leading pervert–art critic. The strangest part of this is that I was just thinking about that very question. Jean the Angry Lawyer told me that breast cancer frees you from self-consciousness. She said that after BC, everyone wants other people to see them, to touch them. I was skeptical. Obviously, I had to defer to her greater knowledge of the subject matter.

  I open my eyes and stare at Nils Death-and-Sex-Freak Cooper, who looked so innocuous in his thumbnail photograph from the paper, even a little professorial. In my experience, there is only one way to deal with this type of provocateur without going down in self-castigating flames: Give as good as you’re getting.

  “Do I let him touch them? Of course, Nils. I have nothing to be ashamed of. That’s really the point here, isn’t it? In addition to promoting BC awareness and early detection.” I squeeze his thigh hard. It jumps lightly under the wool crepe. “I’m talking about the fundamental conflict between what a person looks like and who she is, Nils. It’s the crux of my work. So I really don’t give a shit if my husband or you or Viggo fucking Mortensen”—okay, maybe Viggo—“handles the goods, because I’m more than a set of tits. Get it?”

  He nods. The pale, pervy eyes are electric with heat. “This is interesting, Raquel. Go on.”

  Before I can elaborate further on what I am starting to believe is my own fundamental artistic brilliance—or charge Nils Cooper fifty dollars for the thigh massage—my brother-in-law exits the French doors of the gallery and spots me. He and Nils Cooper size each other up in that roosterish way of men when they aren’t sure exactly what the other guy’s net worth is, or when he last bedded an extremely hot woman. For a second I feel like a trophy, which, because I am forty-three years old and often attired in stretch pants, is quite nice and certainly not a problem in the way it would be if you were actually married to your objectifier.

  “Ren, this is Nils Cooper from the Chronicle. Nils, this is my brother-in-law, Loren White. He has a plastic-surgery practice on the Peninsula.”

  Ren, who looks—perhaps for the first time ever—a bit out of place in his expensive sport blazer and overpleated chinos, grimaces slightly as he shakes Nils Cooper’s hand. Ren places his hand on my shoulder. The gesture is heavy and, I fancy, somewhat proprietary. Like a puppy, I feel myself automatically push upward for a charity stroke.

  “Laurie and I just wanted to say good-bye,” Ren says. Then, producing a neat spin on my sister’s earlier assertion: “She has an early meeting tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Well, okay. Thanks so much for coming.” We do the congenial half-hug thing we perfected in 1993.

  Ren glances at Nils Cooper, who is—oh my goodness— lighting a big fat joint and smoking merrily away.

  “Would you like me to see you inside?” Ren says, I think, rather stuffily.

  “No, I’m fine.” This is clearly the best night of my life.

  “All right, then. We’ll see you soon. Thanks for the, uh, letter you wrote. It was just what the doctor ordered.”

  Nils suddenly coughs—or is he laughing?

  “Well, bye,” I say, watching Ren leave. A week ago, his reluctance to exit would have been a balm to my soul. Now . . . let’s just say I am enjoying the night air.

  “Friend of yours?” Nils asks.

  “ Brother-in-law.”

  “Not your fault, then.”

  “Completely my fault, but it’s a long story.”

  Nils tilts his head. He has very virile hair, thick and springy. “You can tell me about it later.” It is salacious. The way he says it, “later” explodes with dense, succulent promise, the verbal equivalent of being handed a hotel-room key card.

  Without waiting for my response, Nils grinds out the joint and slips the roach into his laptop case. The gesture is both roguish and elegant; the bag may as well be a codpiece and Nils Cooper a latter-day Errol Flynn.

  “I need a quote,” he says, fingers poised.

  It is clear that I have one chance to run with this greatness thing.

  I draw a breath. “Breast cancer is a curse, and breast cancer is a gift. This is not something you can understand pre-BC. It is something you learn. It changes you. Most of us like ourselves—really like ourselves—better now. I mean that. I guess what I’m saying is, ending BC . . . it’s almost harder than beginning it.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Of Alien Abduction and Adultery

  Following my show, three things happen, or, more accurately, begin to happen, with alarming regularity.

  The first is that commissions start rolling in. E-mails flood Saskia at the gallery, querying her about my whereabouts, availability, and willingness to sculpt this or that commemorative statue/fountain/play structure/retaining wall. Messages start appearing in Phil’s and my voice mail, the unknown voices plummy and obsequious. A napkin-dispenser tycoon wants me to construct a toddler bed shaped like a serviette container. The Contra Costa Unified School District has a grant to fund protective booths for the school guards. Can I design one that doesn’t make the school look like a prison? And repels 9-caliber bullets? I get a call from a Mormon sect with bank accounts swollen on tithes: They would love a rendering of Jesus Christ Our Savior wearing the Brigham Young football jersey. Am I so inclined?

  The second thing is so unexpected, I am inclined to view it with a mixture of suspicion and hilarity.

  Phil is a BC activist.

  Runs, walks, lingerie shopping,pin-wearing,placard-waving, knit-ins, doctors’ appointments, recuperative yoga— no activity is too womanly or cloying for the new and sensitized Phil Rose.

  The first time was even his idea.

  “Hey, you,” he said a couple of Saturdays ago, spreading the paper out on the kitchen table. “How’s the energy today?” He was learning not to take the little things—breakfast on the table, toilet paper in the bathroom, basic civility—for granted.

  “Good,” I said, promising myself another hour in the hair shirt.

  “So there’s this walk/run thing up in the city this afternoon, at Crissy Field . . . the, uh, Breast Cancer Awaren
ess Walk. I was thinking it would be something we could all do together, you know? You, me, the kids. . .”

  “You want to walk for breast cancer?” I couldn’t help it; doubt narrowed my eyes.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  Four hours later, we strode along a sandy causeway toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Phil clad in a hot-pink T-shirt and bandanna, arms linked with two grandmothers from Marin, all of them chanting and beaming while I brooded over the loss of my husband to alien abduction. Don’t get me wrong: I liked the change, but there were questions. How long would it last? Would people start to think I didn’t deserve him? Could I still cash in on his life-insurance policy if he was running on green goo instead of blood?

  A challenging situation, you see.

  We stopped for a photo op in front of the Warming Hut café dock. News cameras flashed. Pink ribbons glistened. Bald heads shone. Phil was the undisputed star of our cluster, belting out “Hell no, we won’t go!” and Joni Mitchell standards with gusto. I knew this kind of enthusiasm was what I signed on for, but honestly.

  The node-negative, stage I, divorced orthodontist simultaneously bared her veneers at me and glanced at Phil admiringly. “Hang on to that one, honey, he’s a gem!” she hissed at me.

  I made sure to stand between them on the walk back. The woman may have had cancer, but she also had one of those swivelly walks that make a person think of beds and Kama Sutra positions and silk scarves. Her auburn hairpiece was top notch.

  Phil was communing with the couple of other men in our immediate area like an old pro.

  “I’m flying to Taiwan next week to ink a deal for these BC fortune cookies to sell at my restaurant,” the thirtyish Asian guy in the expensive tracksuit and fancy Bluetooth headset told him. “They’re dipping them in this really sweet pink. It’s called ‘cow’s teat’ in Mandarin. No, I’m serious, it is! Anyway, my wife and her support group wrote all the messages. They’re inspiring as hell, but there are also practical tips.”