by J. Minter
“Hi,” I whispered. “What are we watching?”
“Actually,” Jill said in a voice a little bit louder than the whisper the event called for, “this was all getting a little boring, and my co-op is having a party. We were only waiting around because Ava thought you might show up.” I saw Ava elbow her sister when she said this. “So you want to come to the party or what?”
As we walked, Ava asked me about the trip up, and I tried to downplay the whole partying in the limo thing. I knew when we had gotten to Jill’s co-op house, because Bessie Smith was playing and people were sitting on the porch smoking cigarettes. “It’s like old-timey night or some shit,” Jill said as we walked up the stairs. She gestured at the smokers. “I don’t know who those people are.”
It was warm in the kitchen, and people were sitting around a table playing cards. A few people looked up and gave us little waves, but mostly everyone remained fixated on the game. “Euchre,” Jill said. “Have you ever played euchre?”
I shook my head.
“It’s sort of like bridge. Old-lady game. And look what we have to drink! Hot buttered rum, ultimate old-lady drink. You kids want some?”
I wasn’t sure I did, but I nodded anyway. Jill ladled out two cups for us from the big pot on the stove, and Ava and I sat down on stools in the corner of the room.
“Sorry about what happened with Lily,” I said. “I hope you don’t think I’m a freak.”
“Yeah, that was weird,” she said. “But you’re not a freak.”
“Phew,” I said, knowing that my brother had already cleared things up with Lily using his magical Ted powers. Then, to change the subject, “This really seems like more of a winter drink.”
Ava took a sip of her hot rum and nodded. “But you know, college kids and their concept nights. They don’t conform to the calendar the rest of us use.”
“Huh,” I said. “So what do you think so far?”
Ava wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know, college is weird. Seems like everyone is trying out a new pose, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath. “But I kind of like that about college—it seems like a chance to change yourself into a newer, better person. You know what I mean?”
“No,” Ava laughed. I was glad she finally laughed, because she had been acting kind of shy so far. “Why would I want to change myself?”
“Well, I don’t think you need to change,” I said. “But I used to be a really superficial person. New York kind of does that to you. And I think college might be my opportunity to not be like that anymore.”
Ava laughed again, and put her hand on her chest in mock protest. “No guy who handles heir loom tomatoes with the care that you do could possibly be superficial.”
For the first time all week, I felt a little burst of acceptance. If a do-gooder like Ava thought I was okay, I had to be, right?
We kept on talking like that for a long time, while the college kids played their granny game and the hot rum drink got drunk up. Later, when I felt like I was getting really good at getting Ava to laugh, Jill came back and told us it time for me to go.
“The thing is, we’re planning a protest tomorrow,” she said, putting her arms around her little sister. “It’s hard always having to make the world a better place, but that’s what we were brought up to do.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting the warmth of the evening to end. “Maybe I can help? I want to make the world a better place.”
Jill raised her eyebrows at me. “Sure. Just be here at noon, okay?”
I stood up awkwardly. Ava gave me one of those happy/groggy smiles, and I wished I could kiss her. But her sister didn’t budge from where she was, so I just waved and told myself that I’d be seeing them tomorrow.
meaning, and how to get it
Arno knew she was there, instinctually. He had been walking the campus grounds a little aimlessly and then, all of a sudden, he caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and his heart went crazy.
There she was, sitting on the steps of one of the dormitories with her elbows rested delicately on her knees. “You’re back,” Lara said, exhaling.
“I’ve actually never been here.”
“I meant back in a more figurative sense.”
“Oh. Well, I would have been back sooner, but I knew I wanted to be mature enough for what happens between us. I think I’m ready now,” he said. She looked at him blankly, so he added: “Also, I didn’t know your last name.”
She didn’t move except to raise one long, dark eyebrow. It was such an Arnolike move it was almost creepy. “Lara Moreno. You’ve never heard of Moreno Wines?”
“Um …” Arno wished he had drunk more wine over the last week. That would have been grownup.
“Lara Sparkling White? It’s delicious.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“My dad named it after me. Because I’m so bubbly.” She rolled her eyes and stubbed out her cigarette. Then she stood up, brushed off the lap of her crew-neck white cashmere mini-dress, and walked toward Arno. She was wearing the same knee-high boots she had been wearing the night Arno saw her in his sleep, and her hair was in the same, slightly off ponytail. “Some grad student friends of mine are having a dinner party,” she said huskily. “Do you want to come?”
And then she took his hand—because, of course, he wanted to—and they walked across campus to the little colony of old servants quarters that had been turned into grad-student housing.
“Lara!” exclaimed the woman who opened the door. “I was wondering when you’d show.”
“Hey, Mel. This is my friend Arno, from the city,” Lara said, after kissing both of Mel’s cheeks. Mel took a step back and surveyed him. She was tall, with big hay-colored hair, and she was wearing a red sixties-style house dress with a cinched waist.
“Come on kids,” she said, ushering them in.
The apartment was stacked with books and papers, and there were a bunch of pale people sitting around a large, utilitarian table and making a lot of noise.
“That’s not what Derrida said,” a guy with wire-frame glasses and a brush of reddish hair said as he reached past the bowls of pasta and salad to cut himself a corner of cheese. The ceilings were low, and the room was lit by candles. Arno noticed several rustic cracks in the walls.
“Pull up a chair, whichever chair you can find,” Mel said as she sat in the lap of the Derrida guy. Then she poured big glasses of wine, which were passed down the table in Arno and Lara’s direction. Everyone made welcome noises.
Arno didn’t see any chairs, but he did locate a crate. He pulled it up to the table and then Lara sat down on his lap. As the Derrida guy justified his point, she listened and started idly playing with Arno’s hair. He stopped listening to the Derrida argument entirely and focused instead on the musky smell of the girl in his lap.
“So what do you study?” asked an elfin girl sitting next to him. She was wearing a lot of eye-shadow and smoking.
“I don’t,” Arno said. “I live in the city.”
“His parents are art dealers,” Lara said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Wildenburger Gallery,” Arno said proudly. It sounded very grown-up.
The elfin girl whistled. “Not bad. You going into the business?”
Arno shrugged. “The art interests me, but not the dealing.” He thought that was a pretty good reply.
“Valerie is in art history,” Lara explained. “She’s brilliant.”
“Mmm,” Valerie said. “Well, maybe you’re an academic then? We live in a more rarefied world, you see. Nothing ever gets bought or sold in academia.”
Arno nodded. He took a grown-up sip of wine and congratulated himself on arriving here, in this very mature world of big ideas. And he fit in, he felt sure. How many guys his age had been in love twice in one week? He was the kind of dark-eyed romantic misfit who just falls in love easily …
All the gaunt faces around the dinner table were saying brash, interesting things, and Arno k
new that he was where he was supposed to be. And he was relieved that he’d done all that hard work over the past week—which had caused him to miss both of his therapy sessions—to ensure a mature relationship with the gorgeous woman on his lap.
what would duchamp do?
Mickey stumbled up the back stairs of one of the big, modern dormitories, behind a girl wearing a miniskirt and messy hair. He’d left David in the limo with all the other girls who had been hitting on him before he took off with this girl to see the stars from the roof of her dorm. This seemed mildly unjust to Mickey. But before he could continue this train of thought, he realized he was winded and had to pause.
“Tori,” he called, “wait up.”
“We’re almost there, Mickey. Hurry up,” she said in her adorable, slightly chipmunky voice.
He saw her silhouette in the doorway that led onto the roof, and chugged up the rest of the stairs. Then Tori grabbed his hand and they walked out onto the roof where the sky was already turning purple.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she sighed.
“Yeah, totally,” Mickey said. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. She twisted around, staring up at him, and slipped her hand under Mickey’s terry-cloth robe so that it rested against his chest. For a minute this annoyed him—she wasn’t Philippa, what did she think she was doing?—but then he realized that was stupid. He was going to have to try dating again at some point. So he blew against her neck, which caused her to burst into weird giggles.
“That limo’s pretty impressive,” she said when she managed to stop laughing. They could see the limo below, and all the people who were leaning up against it.
“You seen one limo …” Mickey broke off in order to nibble on Tori’s neck again.
“You must have done something pretty special to deserve a limo like that.”
“You haven’t heard about my lecture on nudity in public places in contemporary art?”
“Yeah,” Tori said, giggling for no discernable reason. Mickey reminded himself not to compare her to Philippa. “I heard about it.”
“Yeah? Because I’m doing something even bigger and bolder this time around.”
“Really? Does anybody know?”
“Nope,” Mickey said, lifting her chin with the knuckle of his index finger. “Just you.”
Tori smiled and giggled again. She had recently applied red lipstick, but she didn’t seem to have done her best work. At the moment it struck Mickey as poignant.
“Do you want to see them?”
“Okay.”
Mickey pulled a small white box of slides from the pocket of his bathrobe, and led her, tottering a little bit, over to the fluorescent light by the doorway to the stairs. He removed one slide—of a classic SoHo street, empty at dawn—and held it up to the light. She narrowed her eyes at the image.
“Okay,” she said.
“Just wait,” Mickey said. But he didn’t want to wait. He pulled out the picture he was most proud of, which showed him approaching the camera naked from the end of a subway car. The slight shaking of the car gave it a ghostly quality that Mickey especially liked.
“What do you think?”
Tori squinted. “Is that you?”
“Yup.”
Tori gasped, and then she slapped him. It was a good hard slap, and Mickey was stunned for a moment. By the time he collected himself, Tori was all the way at the bottom of the first flight of stairs—he could tell from the clicking of her heels.
He rubbed his sore check and wondered at the powerful effect of his art. Surely that explained the slap, just like in that famous story in which Marcel Duchamp first exhibited his Mona Lisa with mustache and some foxy Parisienne slapped him across the face. If Mickey was remembering the story correctly, it ended with the Parisienne telling Duchamp he was a genius.
Mickey looked over the railing and saw Tori running into the Sarah Lawrence night. He rubbed his check and reminded himself that it was better to be free. And, possibly, a genius.
it’s not breakfast at tiffany’s, but i’ll take it
When I woke up in the Sarah Lawrence admissions office, I felt surprisingly refreshed, and that was even before I discovered the coffee and donuts that had been set up in their little waiting area. I slipped into the bathroom and used water to sort of get my hair in place and make myself a little more protest-ready. Then I peaked into the office of Jenny Markal, the nice woman who let me in late last night.
“You sleep okay?” she asked me. She was wearing a headband and twin set.
“Yeah. And thanks for letting me in, by the way. Did you get your work done?” When I had come by last night, still a little queasy from the hot buttered rum and unable to locate my guys, she had been going over the students who would be attending in the fall and trying to figure out whom to accept off the waitlist. She made a little growling frustration noise now. “Go have fun, and try not to think about applications for as long as you can manage. And when you do, try and keep your essay to 500 words, okay?”
I said I would try. Then I waved, donut in mouth, and made my way out onto the campus, which was just as leafy and full of Frisbees and open notebooks as you might imagine.
When I got to Jill’s co-op house, I saw that it looked a lot different by day—more airy and open. There were people lounging on the porch swing and on the front steps, which added to the general wholesomeness. Not ironic wholesome, but actually wholesome, with its white cornices and modest cherry trees out front. Also, there was a group of girls bending over an art project that they seemed to be working on ardently. Ava jumped up from this group.
“Jonathan, where have you been?” she said. She was wearing navy gauchos and a white U-neck that revealed all the freckles splattered across her collar bones, and her hair was back in an effortless ponytail.
“Admissions office,” I said, offering her the other half of my donut.
“Really?” she asked, taking a thoughtful bite.
“It was all breakfast, no schmooze.”
“Come on, we’re making masks,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me onto the porch. Her palm had that magical thing so rare in palms—it was warm without being damp.
“For what?”
“For the protest, of course.”
Jill gestured hello but didn’t say anything because she was holding a paintbrush between her teeth. Then she handed me one of the many papier-mâché masks that were scattered around on the floor. I smiled at the other girls, who smiled but kept on at what they were doing.
“Why do we need masks?” I asked.
“Well,” Jill said, “we don’t need them of course. But it’s sort of in the spirit of masked protest, you know what I mean? Like the Zapatistas or the Guerrilla Girls.”
“Oh, right,” I said. Were those names supposed to mean something to me? I made a mental note to Google them later.
“We’re doing animals, see?” Ava said. “Look, I made you a penguin!”
Ava handed me the penguin mask, and I had to admit, with its widow’s peak and yellow nose, it was pretty adorable. “Thanks,” I said, hoping she didn’t ask me anything else about penguins.
“Aw, that’s sweet. But we gotta get going. The lecture’s in like an hour and the paint still has to dry.”
I looked up at Jill to see if she was kidding. Maybe about the sweet part, but there was no reason to believe the word “lecture” had been uttered in jest. “Lecture?” I said meekly. “What lecture?”
“The lecture we’re protesting, of course.”
“Which is …?” I felt like a miniature bomb was about to go off in my throat.
Jill sighed heavily. “Every other Saturday they have a visiting artist speak—nearly always male, and the guy they have this week is a real creep. Just a showman, really. He took all these pictures of naked girls in a restaurant, and he projects them real big on a screen. Well, we call that sexism around here. And we’re protesting it.”
“Mickey’s not a creep,” I said.
A girl with thin, set lips, who had been busy making a bear mask, looked up at me sharply. You could just tell that she wore her hair the same boring way every day.
“You know him?”
“Yeah, he’s a friend of mine. I can’t protest my friends.” I looked at Ava, whose cheeks were turning pink, which made her eyes look especially crystalline. She looked at me and then quickly back at Jill. They did some eye-talking, and then Jill sighed.
“Look, Jonathan, you’re not a creep, and I’m sure your friend Mickey isn’t, either. But this whole campus has lost its head and we want to make a statement against the absurdity.”
“That’s just not a thing I would do to a friend,” I said. I looked at Ava, and wondered if she was wondering if I were a really bad person. Or if she already knew it.
Some of the other girls who were involved in the mask-making were listening in now, too. “It’s not even really about your friend,” Ava said.
“That’s true, actually,” Jill said. “The thing that we want to make a statement about has nothing to do with your friend per se. It has to do with the fact that a disproportionate amount of money goes to male artists—and male art historians, and male lecturers—while at the same time, a lot of the art they’re selling and writing and talking about prominently features T & A.”
“Which, you have to admit, is a dynamic at work here,” the girl with the thin lips said.
I nodded. “So you’re not going to heckle him or anything?”
“Heckling was not on the agenda,” Jill confirmed.
“Jill and I have been to about a million protests, and they’re always fun,” Ava added brightly.
“I do think the art world is a pretty ridiculous place,” I said hesitantly. “A lot of my friends’ parents are in that business, and it’s not very kind to women.”
“Hell, it doesn’t even pay them,” said the girl with the thin lips. “Except to take their shirts off.”