“That doesn’t give you the right to take the skull.”
Brian shook his head and wandered to the dresser.
He pulled up one of the frames. “Why do all your photographs of David face down?”
I buried my head under the pillow. I couldn’t explain any more than I could explain my own responses to Brian, which I knew went up and down like an amusement park car on a rollercoaster. Or maybe I could explain them, and I didn’t want to because then I’d have to face things about myself that I preferred to deny.
I had to get a grip on myself. It was just that for the first time in a long time, I felt alive again. It was like the pins and needles feeling when blood rushed into my foot after I’d been sitting on it for a long time: painful and awkward, so that I’d hop around spastically.
Maybe there was a reason I’d numbed myself.
“Look at him trying too hard. The chiseled face.
He’s too perfect. I think rakish good looks that flirt with nerdy but, asymptotically, never land there, are more attractive. Don’t you?” Brian cut a muscle-man, Mr. Universe pose.
“Anyone who uses the word ‘asymptotically’ is a nerd, by definition. What does that even mean?”
Brian held up his finger in his lecturing posture.
“An asymptote is a line that a curve approaches but never meets.”
“I don’t speak science lingo. I didn’t take science at Columbia.”
“You did at Yale, in my universe,” he said, his voice and his face softening.
“I went to Columbia to be with David. I was accepted at Yale, but I didn’t go. I knew that would be the end of the relationship.” I sat up and tucked the sheets around myself. I wished Brian would let go of the whole mythical-other-universe thing. I wasn’t sure why he’d attached himself to me, but I was giving him a chance. More than a chance. I’d let him into my bed, which was something I’d never done lightly.
To quote Mrs. Leibowitz, “Wheeeeeee!”
I struggled to regain a semblance of control over my life. Maybe if I found out more about Brian, if I pierced his effusive fantasy life. “If we’re married in your mythical world, how do you know David?”
I asked. “He wouldn’t be part of my life if I went to Yale and got with you.”
Brian had crossed over to the window and was looking out into the courtyard. “The guy you’re meeting, does this have anything to do with the skull?”
But I wasn’t distracted. There were still too many unanswered questions. “If you know Ofee, you know what his name stands for.”
Brian glanced back over his shoulder and drew a line across his forehead. “One Fucking Eyebrow.”
“Would Bard Rubin have the same nickname in a parallel world? Hmm,” I wondered aloud. “Of course, that information is on Facebook.”
Brian came back to the foot of the bed and fixed me with what was clearly an inquiring physics professor look. “Your figure drawings have a lot of heart.
Why not sell them instead of a stolen piece of art?
Or your landscapes. I looked through all the canvases in the living room and in your closet. They’re gorgeous. They shouldn’t be hidden away.”
“You went through my paintings?”
“To get to know you better.” Brian pinched my big toe, which stuck out from under the duvet cover.
“The you here, in this universe.”
“Yes, this universe, that universe. How did you get to this universe?” I asked sweetly.
“I built a decoherence device. It was genius, really. I got the idea when I was ten and watched an episode of Star Trek. I filled up a notebook with my ideas. I kept writing them down in notebook after notebook. But the time I was thirty, I had filled a hundred notebooks.”
I felt frustrated and I jumped up and pulled on some jeans. What was I thinking, sleeping with this kook? Why wouldn’t he just be real with me? Why the elaborate set-up? What was my deal with the bad karma around men? “Cool. I have to go now.”
“To the meeting. Right. With a guy to fence the skull? How do you know someone like that?”
“I met him through a teacher.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, the puritanical artist.”
“I’m not puritanical,” I said, indignant. “I’m idealistic!”
Brian wrapped his arms lightly around me and kissed my shoulder. “Idealists don’t steal.”
“It’s not theft,” I insisted. “And I have to help Reverend Pincek.”
“You have to help yourself, Tessa. I meant to tell you, your super stopped by before you came home.”
I wriggled out of Brian’s arms. “Before or after you went through my personal belongings?”
“He thought your painting on the door was beautiful, but they’re going to lock you out of your apartment.”
“I think I’ll have another glass of wine,” I decided.
“I don’t know how they can do that. Maybe because it’s a co-op. You don’t actually own your apartment, you own shares in a corporation.”
“That’s it! Shares in a corporation! That’s exactly what I need. Then I can sell them and move to Florence and paint the Duomo. And I can take more figure painting classes at the Florence Academy.”
Brian grabbed my head from either side and forced me to meet his gaze, which was serious and saner than could be expected, given his delusions.
“Tessa, focus. Fantasies won’t help. You need a strategy. You owe years of back maintenance fees.”
“I have a strategy,” I said. “Sell the Cliff Bucknell abomination.”
“Then you’re fucked. Because I can’t let you do that,” Brian said, in a soft, determined voice.
* * *
* * *
14
Central Park is where whales swim
I was striding along purposefully, clutching my messenger bag. Brian trotted alongside, keeping up. I refused to look at him.
Around us swirled the throngs of Central Park: dogwalkers, teenagers, runners, mothers and nannies pushing strollers, bicyclists in all their gear and attitude, tourists and pedestrians and gawkers and ne’er-do-wells. Day was waning into night, but the colorful masses teemed outdoors, shifting and reforming, a living kaleidoscope.
“I have to sell it now. Don’t you understand? I’ve gone this far. I have a vision for helping Reverend Pincek. I can’t back out.”
“There’s still time for you to do the right thing,” Brian said, stubbornly. “You’re better than this.”
I looked at Brian and thought about fessing up.
There was a backstory, and if he knew it, he might look at things differently. His heart was in the right place, even if he was crazy.
But I got distracted, wondering: what does it say about me that I had slept with a crazy guy? Nothing good. Another one of my errors, foibles, mistakes, and blunders. There were so many of them.
But now was not the time to flagellate myself.
Nor did I want Brian to expose himself to risk. I said, “The guy I’m meeting is trouble. Serious, big-time trouble. You shouldn’t be here. Beam back up to wherever you came from.”
“Do you watch Star Trek in this world?” Brian asked.
“Is Captain Kirk one of the voices in your head?”
I asked, sympathetically. “Oh, there’s Rat Rock.” I pointed to a whale-like gray outcropping with blue sky spilling out around it. A tall, sinister, Euro-trashy man leaned against the rock and smoked a cigarette.
But I didn’t focus on Guy, as I should have.
Instead, I had a flash: Rat Rock in a landscape painting, rugged shades of gray with the arching azure sky and the green park.
Painting. We weren’t far from the Met. “Hey, after this, let’s go to the Met!” I suggested. “There’s a Raphael exhibit. His use of color and perspective is mind-blowing. It’ll quiver your timbers all the way to your soul.”
“Raphael, funny.” Brian laughed once, a single ‘ha’ like a bark. “I’m used to hearing you rave about Pab
lo Casals.”
I’d heard of him. “Isn’t he the one who was asked why he practiced the cello for three hours a day when he was ninety-three, and he said, ‘I’m beginning to notice some improvement’?”
Brian nodded and looked away almost too quickly for me to see his face wring out. I didn’t comment because it was clear he didn’t want me to notice his sudden wrenching expression of sadness.
Besides, business called. I got a little queasy.
“That’s him. The guy. Guy.”
“The guy guy?” Brian asked, confused.
“That’s his name, Guy.” I opened my messenger bag. What? My stomach fell out of my torso and I rooted around in the bag, growing more frantic by the second. “Where is it? Why isn’t it here?”
“I took it,” Brian said proudly. “I want you to return it.”
“Brian! This guy means business!” I gasped.
But Brian had marched up to Guy and was waving his finger in Guy’s face. “You shouldn’t smoke, mister. Did you know that it’s the leading cause of premature death?”
Guy smiled and exhaled a sooty purple plume of smoke into Brian’s face. “Not in my line of work.”
Guy shifted his leather jacket so Brian could see the switchblade sheathed in his belt.
Yep, it was Guy, all right. Same accent of uncertain origins; was he Russian? Chechen? Albanian?
North Dakotan? I hailed him. “Hey, Guy, so here we are.”
“Tessa Barnum,” Guy said, his face writhing with avarice. “We meet again. Hell must be a winter wonderland. The ancients reasoned this way: as it is in nature, so it must be in art. Therefore, the cold of Hell is resolved into cold, hard cash.”
“Ha ha,” I said blithely. “You know my flair for the dramatic.”
He dragged so deeply on his cigarette that I imagined the alveoli of his lungs blackening and shriveling. That image gave me a burst of pleasure.
“Nice to see you,” I said, with a smile that was genuine because it commented on his impending lung cancer.
Guy said, “I was surprised to get your message.
It was only the fourth time I was surprised in my life. The number four is a key resolving number.
Four are the cardinal points; the principal winds; the seasons; four is the constituent number of the tetrahedron of fire in the Timaeus; and four letters make up the name of Adam.”
“Yes, um. I was surprised myself.”
“Meet again?” Brian demanded. “Tessa, how often have you done this? Have you stolen before?”
“Cliff Bucknell, excellent commodity, always a market for it. Such is the dramatic struggle between the beauty of provocation and the beauty of consumption,” Guy said.
“It’s not beautiful,” I said sternly.
Guy shrugged. “Show me.”
“The thing is,” I started nervously.
“The thing is, she’s got to give it back!” Brian exclaimed.
Jeez Louise, did he not understand what was going down? I grabbed Brian by his upper arm and dragged him a few yards away, motioning for Guy to excuse us.
“Tessa, have you lost your friggin’ mind?” Brian asked. “What history do you have with this goon?”
“Shh!” I hushed him. “Keep your voice down. It’s just, um, stuff with my old teacher. Brian, listen. For real, for once. Guy is dangerous. He cut the thumbs off someone who blew a deal.”
“My God, Tessa—”
“This meeting isn’t a girl scout reunion, okay?
The art market has an ugly side to it. There are plenty of people who don’t care about the provenance of a piece, if they want it. They’ll pay a lot, wow, a whole lot, to get what they want. Because of that, there’s a whole thriving underbelly to the art business.”
“You’d never be involved in something like this in my world.” Brian was visibly distressed, and he wiped his face with both hands.
“There’s art theft, of course, on spec, for resale, or for ransom. There’s fraud and forgeries and trafficking. Looting. A hideously ugly side to the business of masterful beauty.” I willed him to understand: he could not treat Guy in a cavalier fashion.
“This isn’t you, you’re not like this.”
“In your world, I must be some kind of sanctimonious nun, who won’t do what it takes.”
He stiffened and glared. “You’re my wife, the most amazing woman and friend and musician ever.
You’re strong and wonderful.”
But I had had enough. I didn’t want to participate in his hallucinations any more, even if he was the most considerate lover I’d ever taken to bed. Not that I had a large sampling to compare him against because I’d married young, but still. I reached inside myself for the union of patience and firmness, the way I often did at work. “Look, I’ve been humoring you.”
“Humoring me, that’s what you call what we did?
I knew we should have done it again right away. The decohering slowed me down. Damn!”
I felt my cheeks burn scarlet. “You seem harmless, despite the delusions and fantasies. But this is real. And there’s a side to it you don’t understand.
So please, just shut up and let me work it out, so I can keep my thumbs and go back to painting.” I marched back to Guy, steeling myself for a difficult conversation. I could feel Brian’s forlorn eyes on me.
* * *
* * *
15
Like a Virgin
Brian sat on the floor of Tessa’s dorm room in Branford College. She had a tiny single, which seemed wallpapered and carpeted with sheet music.
The cello leaning against her desk made a dissonant contrast with the boom box, which was blasting
“Like a Virgin.”
“Isospin should be allowed, it’s a real word,” Brian grumbled. He looked across a scrabble board at Tessa.
“Not in the scrabble dictionary,” Tessa said, wagging her finger at him. “You know the rules. Drink!”
“The scrabble dictionary is out-of-date, unfairly biased against scientific terminology, and just plain wrong, ” Brian said. He reached through the pile of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans on the floor to find a full can. His woozy fingers curled around one. He pulled off the tab top and then chugged. Then he belched, an elongated sound like a cow lowing.
Tessa fell over, laughing.
“You’re gonna win just because I can’t spell anymore,” Brian said.
“I’m going to win because I’m the superior player.”
“In your dreams,” Brian returned.
“It’s true, I got 800 on the English SAT.”
“Show off.” Brian sniffed. Then he gave Tessa a serious, brooding look. “What did the male magnet say to the female magnet? From your backside, I found you repulsive. However, seeing you from the front, I find you rather attractive.”
“You don’t like my backside?” Tessa leapt to her feet, turned, and wiggled her tush at him. Just then, the boom box experienced a moment of quiet. “Justify My Love” kicked up.
“This is the song I first got laid to!” Tessa said.
She swayed her hips. She danced rhythmically, seductively, as she sang along with the song—and all the while she stared into Brian’s eyes.
“You said we could only be friends, but you don’t have to have a PhD to know that’s not friendship music.”
“‘Don’t want to be your sister, either, I just wanna be your lover,’” Tessa sang, huskily. Then she ran her tongue over her lips.
Brian grabbed her by the ankles. She tumbled down, laughing. Brian rolled her onto her back and climbed atop her. “What poor schnook did you date rape to this tune?”
“He loved it,” Tessa said, weaving her arms around Brian.
“I bet he did,” Brian said. He pressed his lips against hers, softly and quickly.
“My brother’s math tutor. He was twenty-three.
I was sixteen. I never told anyone, not even David.
Kiss me again, Prof.”
But Brian paused. “Wh
at about old David, Mr. Perfect from back home? I don’t want to share you with him.”
“That’s done,” Tessa said. “He wants a girl at school with him. Besides, he was getting boring.”
She faked a yawn and rolled her eyes.
“Good,” Brian said. “Just so you know, I’m telling everyone what we’re about to do. Twice.”
Tessa laughed. “That’s not very gentlemanly of you.”
“Yes, it is, because I’m going to marry you, too,” Brian said. Then he kissed her for real because he meant it.
* * *
* * *
16
Picnics are such sweet sorrow
The ugliness that repels us in nature exists, but it becomes acceptable and even pleasurable in the art that expresses and shows beautifully the ugliness of ugliness,” Guy said. “I will have that skull.” He passed by Brian, blowing dark smoke in his face and sneering in warning.
“I’m not on board with the ugliness of ugliness,” I said, but affected my most unctuous manner.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” I called to Guy’s departing back.
Brian was looking dispiritedly at three teenagers bouldering across Rat Rock, cheering each other on.
He mused, “Climbers have such fun together. That sport is all about camaraderie. I always wanted to do it.”
“You have to give me back the skull before tomorrow,” I told him.
“I never got to learn, though. No time, and other priorities. But I’m glad I spent the time the way I did. I wouldn’t change anything.”
“Brian, focus!” I snapped. “I need the skull.
Seriously!”
He gave me a wan smile, and it was as if most of the fizz had gone out of his internal ginger ale. But as he looked at me, his eyes brightened. “I know.
Let’s get food and have a picnic, like the people in your drawing.”
I snorted. “They’re not having a picnic!”
The Love of My (Other) Life Page 6