Love Love

by Sung J. Woo

  He received a reply when he was two streets away from the house.

  qt pics! luv the dogs. 3022 washington st. 4got2tellu her name is claudia. dont let her scare you.

  Kevin hung a right on Divisadero and gawked at a row of houses, all of them typical San Francisco Victorians, somehow managing to be both capricious and grand as they stood stacked next to one another. One house was decorated with golden fleur-de-lis buckled atop each window frame, while another displayed its family shield above the porch, the copper face shiny like a mirror, while carved wooden sunflowers adorned the molding of its enormous bay window. Every house was flawless, neither a beam crooked nor a window askew, the paint so perfect that it looked plastic.

  The house at 3022 Washington Street was something else entirely. There was an oddness to this tall two-story Victorian that could very easily have been three stories. There were four doors in front, the two giant ones in the middle large enough to fit a delivery truck through, and jutting out to the sky in one corner of the roof was a steeple-shaped bell tower. When Kevin reached the front steps, he saw the four letters embossed above the doors, SFFD, and two brass plates to the left of the knob, each with its own door bell, announcing firehouse and cookhouse. San Francisco Fire Department—that’s what those letters stood for. Alexa’s mother was living in what once must’ve been a fire station.

  He didn’t know which doorbell to ring. Most likely, they both triggered the same alert, but to be on the safe side, he pressed the cookhouse button; food seemed like a safer bet. From inside, he heard the most beautiful throwback ding-dong, a sound right out of Leave It to Beaver, and waited. Considering the depth of the house, if Claudia were on the second floor in the back, it might take her a couple of minutes to open the door.

  Across the street stood a more normal home, cedar shingles and white trim, nothing gold. In the window above the garage door, a black cat parted the curtain and made itself comfortable on the sill to soak up the temperamental flits of sunlight.

  “Kevin Lee, I presume.”

  A deep yet feminine voice, a voice of confidence, had come from the open door. Wearing a purple bandanna cinched around her head Aunt Jemima–style, the woman stood on the porch with her arms akimbo. She was as tall as he was, and even though she was wearing a loose white T-shirt and baggy jeans, he could see how much she resembled Alexa. They both had short torsos and long legs, their shoulders pitched straight and broad like oversized clothes hangers.

  “Hi,” Kevin said, and he offered his hand. “You must be Claudia?”

  It was like shaking a wooden branch, knotted and rough. “And you must be the man who made out with my daughter.”

  The words themselves alluded to jocularity, but her delivery suggested otherwise, except she wasn’t angry or disapproving, either. Kevin tried to think up a reply, but he stood frozen, Alexa’s last text message filling the void: Don’t let her scare you.

  “Yes,” Kevin finally said, thinking that honesty was the way to go. “That’s me.”

  “You seem ashamed, unhappy about it.”

  “Not my finest moment.”

  A faint smile crossed her face. She was older than he was, probably on the cusp of her fifties, though she could easily roll back ten years if she wanted to. Claudia wasn’t wearing any makeup, and curls of brunette hair sprouting underneath her bandanna were salted with grays.

  “But when you were kissing her, that very moment your lips touched, was that pleasurable for you?”

  Kevin cleared his throat.

  “Would you rather I make small talk, like a normal person?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Nah,” Claudia said, her smile deepening. “This is what we should talk about because this is fun. It’s fun for me, and I’m enjoying it, so that’s why we’re having this discussion.”

  “But what if I’m not enjoying it?”

  “You can stop. But if you were to tell me what I want to know, it’ll give me pleasure. But if in your telling, this causes you pain, then you must decide—is the pain you’ll be experiencing in equal measure to the pleasure I will experience? If that’s the case, then we have a net zero in our positive and negative energies, a canceling out, so to speak. You’d be sacrificing, which, I must tell you, is something I never do, so don’t do this in hopes that in the future, you’ll receive some sort of emotional payback.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “What was the question again?”

  “When you were kissing Alexa—just think back to that specific point in time, disregarding the obvious dose of guilt you felt afterwards—were you happy?”

  It didn’t seem like Claudia wasn’t going to let this go, so Kevin closed his eyes and did as he was told. Initially his brain filled up with multitudes of thoughts, most of them having to do with this eccentric woman standing in front of him—what kind of antipsychotic medication she might be on, if she was married to some rich guy or if she’d bought the house on her own, and if so, what she did for a living—but then his mind did focus on Alexa, though not the moment of their kiss but rather her in action on the court, her ponytail flailing as she lined up a forehand, the liquid follow-through of her whip-fast backhand. She was a beautiful, talented girl, and when he recalled the event in question, when he saw her face floating over his, he opened his eyes and shook his head to get away from the image.

  “That was awful,” he said. “I feel terrible all over again.”

  Claudia clapped her hands together with great satisfaction, then walked right up to him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him right on the mouth. And then she bear-hugged him.

  “Well, there you have it,” she said into his ear. “Now you’ll never do it again, because you know it didn’t give you pleasure.”

  “If you say so,” Kevin said.

  She released him from the embrace but held him at arm’s length.

  “I do. See, at the core, that’s really all we are as human beings. We are pleasure seekers, which is what we were as children, but then due to societal and religious and cultural limitations, we learn to suppress our very nature. And that’s wrong. It’s not healthy for anyone, but I can talk about this until the day I die, so let’s move on. Let’s get you settled, shall we? I’m so very happy you came, Kevin.”

  She grabbed his suitcase and ushered him through the door. The ceiling rose twenty feet high, and to the right, a golden fireman’s pole shot down from an octagonal hole. There were enormous paintings of Claudia hanging on the walls, all of them featuring her plaintive face, her half smiles expressing regret more than joy. By the entrance was the famous Dali painting with the melting clocks, except all the clock faces were actually Claudia’s face—languidly stretching, forever melting. Others were just as strange, the one next to the Dali homage depicting a spaceship that had crash-landed into a red barn, shards of real metal protruding from the canvas, tethered by thin wires. The iridescently green-skinned alien, whose limbs petered out to points instead of hands or feet, was undeniably Claudia, too, even with moony black eyes and a shovel-shaped head. This masculine, otherworldly version of her stared back at Kevin, and the funny thing was that the creature looked, more than anything, bored, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. The juxtaposition of the explosive surroundings and the placid alien face was jarring in a way that drew him right in. In all the paintings, the level of detail was startling, a photorealistic quality that brought these impossible scenes to lush life.

  “I hope the paint fumes don’t bother you,” she said.

  He hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out. Some of his best childhood memories involved painting with his father, Kevin working the roller while his dad took care of the details, cutting around the trim and the windows. And once, just once, everyone had participated in a project, to repaint Judy’s room. It was the summer before she started high school, and even though it’d been scorching with all the windows open, that was the day Kevin would always remember when he wanted to think fondly of his family, the four of them
sweating together, working together to turn Judy’s room into that deep forest green she so desired. Of course Judy and his father argued—they wouldn’t be who they were if they hadn’t—but there had been a kidding quality even to that, the two of them butting heads almost for show.

  In the far corner of the great room were a pair of vast panels where two Claudias faced one another, on the left a child walking among heaps of old bones, on the right an old woman in the middle of a verdant meadow, and yet their bemused faces were identically middle-aged. Standing underneath these enormous paintings was a canvas on an easel, about as big as a double-hung window, tiny compared to the rest of the works on the walls. Kevin walked over and saw that the edges were missing swatches of colors.

  “I’ll be done with it today, I think,” she said.

  They were two eyes zoomed in close, but instead of where eyes usually were, side by side, these were placed top and bottom. The individual eyelashes were crafted with such meticulousness that they looked alive, like tentacles. Reflected on each iris was Claudia’s face, the top one missing her left eye, the bottom one missing her right.

  “What does it mean?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you painted it.”

  She picked up her gear, a wooden palette with the middle hole long broken. Claudia slipped her thumb through a loop made of frayed duct tape. She dabbed gray paint onto her brush and outlined the top of the eyelid, giving it more definition, making it appear almost three-dimensional.

  “That’s why we have critics, so they can interpret what I do.”

  “I want to make it right,” Kevin said. “That’s what I feel when I look at it. I wish there were moving parts I could shift around.”

  “Like a Mr. Potato Head.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s a really good idea. Not for this, but for something else I’ve been thinking about. I could attach a steel plate to the back of a canvas and place magnets behind the movable pieces. The ephemerality of art—is that even a word? If not, it should be.”

  “You’re always in your paintings?”

  “Artists always put something of themselves into their work, and instead of pussyfooting with style or mood or whatever bullshit, I just made it physical. I am my work, and there’s no better way to convey that than to have myself in it. Besides”—she yanked on the red silken fabric to reveal a standing full-length mirror to her right—“the model’s always available.”

  Kevin stepped into the reflection, which was wide enough for two people. Here he was, in this palace of a house with this very odd woman. Life had gotten very strange, almost dreamlike since he left New Jersey, but seeing himself with her in the surface of the mirror grounded him. A little added distance between her eyes and the shift in angle of her eyebrows made Claudia look like a stronger, bolder version of Alexa. When she smiled at him, Kevin hadn’t realized he’d been staring at her.

  “You don’t get tired of painting yourself?”

  Claudia added a few more eyelashes to the bottom eye, stepped back to assess the entire canvas, then nodded to herself satisfactorily.

  “Not yet. I’ve painted other things, other people. But then I had a vision. Have you ever had a vision?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You’d know if you had one.”

  “Then I’d have to say no.”

  “I’ll tell you about it one of these days. In any case, that’s when I started to do what made me happy, and everything you see here is because of that.”

  Kevin took in his surroundings again, his eyes lingering on the chandelier, its golden branches draped with sapphire orbs and crystal teardrops. The room tapered down to an opening in the back where a staircase spiraled up to the second floor, whose open landing overlooked this room. He saw a ceiling-to-floor bookcase up there.

  “You must be famous.”

  “Kim Kardashian is famous,” Claudia said. “I’m just a painter.”

  “Are the bigger ones more expensive than the smaller ones?”

  “Not always, but usually. The one here’s a bargain, three hundred big ones.”

  “Three hundred . . .”

  “Thousand.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Depends on how much you have.”

  Even if he had a billion dollars, Kevin couldn’t imagine spending that kind of money for a single painting, and yet it must happen at some gallery somewhere, for sums far greater than three hundred thousand dollars.

  “So Alexa tells me you’ll be attending a funeral,” Claudia said.

  He looked at his watch. “About two hours from now. It’s at the San Francisco National Cemetery.”

  “Really? Only high-ranking ex-military are interred there. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a funeral. I’d like to come with you. Is that all right?”

  Kevin didn’t know what to say. He had a feeling this was something that was going to happen often with Claudia.

  “I think it’s open to anyone, so yes, I don’t see why not.”

  “Good, then it’s settled. Besides, I’ve been talking your ear off. This way, you can fill me in about who you are while we drive out to the Presidio.”

  But before the Presidio, they drove downtown because Claudia was hungry for the best croque monsieur in the city.

  “We’re going the opposite direction, but we have time,” she said.

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “Sure.”

  Kevin had no idea what a croque monsieur was—it sounded like something a French person would yell out in exasperation—but right now, he was afraid to say anything. Claudia drove with the distractedness of someone texting while drunk, the car slowly veering to the shoulder until she jerked it back into the lane. Thankfully, buckled all around the cabin of her whisper-quiet Mercedes convertible were oval airbag logos.

  “Hey,” he said, pointing at a street sign, “we’re on Mission Street?”

  “Mission Street in the Mission District. Lots of Latinos live here, though not as many since the housing boom.”

  He dug through his wallet and found Vincent DeGuardi’s business card, the one in the envelope containing his mother’s centerfold.

  He asked her to stop at 2318, which was just a block past where they needed to go. The Mission was more blue-collar than where he’d been staying, but there was a certain charm to the place, like the Chinese grocery on the corner with a mural painted on its side wall, the scene depicting a gaggle of children running around and playing soccer on a bed of white and aqua-blue swirls. At 2310 was a furniture store, and 2318 stood beyond it. MISSION JEWELRY & LOAN CO., the white letters announced on the forest-green background of the sign. And just in case that wasn’t clear enough, a canary-yellow box jutted into the sidewalk: PAWNBROWKERS, and underneath it, MONEY LOANED. No doubt it lit up at night so desperate people could find its services. A line of electric guitars hung down from the ceiling, abandoned by their cash-craving owners, serving as a warning for those dreaming of a career in music.

  “Do you want to go in?” Claudia asked.

  Somehow, it seemed fitting that the place where his mother posed naked so many years ago was now a pawn shop.

  “No,” Kevin said. “That’s all right.”

  They parked in front of a nondescript storefront without a sign. If it wasn’t for the line of people snaking from the door, Kevin would’ve thought it was closed. When he opened the car door, he was welcomed by the yeasty scent of baking bread.

  “I’m starving,” he told Claudia, and she nodded knowingly, as if this was how everyone who came to Tartine Bakery reacted.

  The queue moved quickly, and once inside, Claudia surveyed the seating situation. All the communal tables were occupied, so she found them seats at the bar facing the window and asked Kevin to sit while she got them their lunch. When he tried to give her some cash, she ignored him.

  The mysterious croque monsieur turned out to be a fancy grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich on a thick piece
of crusty bread, and it was as exquisite as Claudia had promised. Chunks of roasted tomatoes were like tiny bright bursts, and the pickled carrot was an unexpected surprise, a sweet and vinegary chaser to the rich meal.

  Alice would’ve been proud of him. Breaking down a dish to its component parts was something they both enjoyed doing. They’d either find restaurants in the Zagat guide or the local newspaper’s food section and devote their gastronomical senses wholly to the experience. Even when things were bad between them, they still found solace in a plate of vodka penne or a seared filet mignon, talking only about what was on the table, what was on their tongues.

  He told Claudia about the significance of the Mission Street address on their way to the funeral. And once he started telling her about his centerfold mother, it led to everything else he’d gone through these last few weeks.

  “I like it,” Claudia said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your story.”

  “I didn’t make it up. It’s real.”

  “I know. Real or fake, our lives are just stories we tell ourselves. You’ll be better off for it, believe me.”

  Kevin didn’t agree, but he didn’t see the point in arguing.

  Claudia turned onto Presidio Boulevard. The city fell away to a dense forest of straight, sky-pointing trees, and with less traffic, Claudia’s driving became calmer.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said.

  “My favorite part of the city,” she said. “Mostly eucalyptus trees, here at the national park, and they’re taking over. Every year the rangers plant pine and cypress to even out the numbers, though I think they’re wasting their time, fighting nature.”

  “But what if it makes them happy to fight nature?”