Outside the Gates of Eden

by Lewis Shiner

  The space was thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long, shared by five artists, all of them male except Callie. One was asleep on a mattress under a canvas splotched with brown acrylic; one sat on the floor cutting up magazines; one was cooking something on a hotplate; one sat cross-legged on the ravaged wooden floor, watching Callie sketch on a newsprint pad.

  Three work lights hung from the ceiling, only partially relieving the gloom as night fell. They’d improvised a few fixtures to illuminate posters, paintings, and bookshelves made of boards and bricks. What furniture they had was arbitrary: a gray metal office desk; red and orange plastic chairs that looked like they’d been liberated from a laundromat; a wooden hat rack layered with clothes.

  No one, including Callie, reacted to Madelyn’s arrival. Madelyn resisted the temptation to walk out, and instead looked at the art on the walls, perversely hoping to find something extraordinary by somebody other than Callie, whom she could elevate to stardom while Callie looked on in bitter disappointment. Sadly, most of the work was second-hand: a white T-shirt pasted to a canvas with a thick coat of white paint, à la Robert Ryman, or an assembly of incandescent light bulbs imitating Dan Flavin’s fluorescents.

  She stopped at the first of Callie’s paintings. The surface was constructed from a grocery store fruit crate, the thin bottom and side boards removed and then nailed side by side to the thicker end pieces. The partially visible label advertised Washington “Delicious” Apples. Callie had glued a sheet of drawing paper to the slats on which she had laboriously printed, using her rubber stamps, a variation on a word ladder, a game that Charles Dobson had invented:

  She’d painted over the words with a light pink wash and then scribbled a few childlike drawings in graphite on top: three birds perched in the tree and a single apple. On looking more closely, Madelyn saw that the drawings had real authority and a strong gestural quality that betrayed skilled draftsmanship.

  Madelyn caught a strong whiff of Chanel No. 5 mixed with cigarettes and saw that Callie was now standing next to her. The Chanel seemed weirdly out of place in a SoHo loft.

  “Pink?” Madelyn said.

  “It was the least expected color I could think of. So you would have to decontextualize it.”

  “There’s a faux naiveté here that’s undercut by the craftsmanship,” Madelyn said. Callie flinched, so Madelyn hastily added, “I mean that as a compliment. It’s what I like best about it. You’ve been to art school, clearly.”

  “CalArts,” she said, as if admitting to something embarrassing. “I dropped out after my sophomore year.”

  Artists and their tissue-thin egos, Madelyn thought. “Are you from LA?”

  “Chillicothe, Ohio.” Then, after a pause, “I was a cuckoo.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “My egg was laid in the wrong nest. I was too weird for anybody in that town. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there.”

  Madelyn felt the sting of compassion. The odd clothes, the insular humor, the contentious erudition, all made oddness into a defensive weapon. There but for fortune might Madelyn herself have gone. The survival tactics of childhood were so hard to shed, even when long outgrown. “That’s where the Indian mounds are, right?”

  “I used to freak the other kids out by pretending to be possessed by the spirit of a Hopewell shaman.” She pointed to another fruit crate painting. The overlaid paper consisted of an incomplete game of Hangman, s h _ m _ n. Underneath were the attempted letters o,u,t,c. The gallows, body, and two legs were drawn above; in place of the head she had glued an Indian-head nickel. The wash was a thin olive-green.

  “After what you said on Saturday, I’m a bit surprised that your paintings tell stories.”

  “I was talking about Don’s work. You don’t want to put me in the same box with him.”

  Madelyn studied her face, in vain, to see if the pun was intentional.

  “I think of myself as a poet first,” Callie went on. “Poetry with no story is Dada. Which is great, but it’s been done.”

  Callie had three other paintings in the series, and Madelyn had to move one of the hanging work lights closer to see them all properly. Each had something going for it, and together they had a cohesion that would play well in a gallery. She hadn’t entirely warmed to Callie as a person, though she was confident that Callie could lay down a convincing enough patter to impress her clients. Was the work actually any good? Or would shrill cries ring out at the opening, revealing both artist and dealer as rank imposters?

  “I think the work is very interesting—” Madelyn began.

  “‘Interesting’?” Callie said, with a bitter edge.

  “—and I can’t give you a yes or no on the spot. But I’ll think about it, and talk to my boss, and I’ll get back to you one way or another by the end of the week.”

  “You’ll call me either way?” Callie said. “You promise? Because that’s what kills me, the waiting and never knowing.” She lit a cigarette; her hands were trembling. “With all the theory and posturing and intellectualizing that happens around here, when it comes down to it, I am pouring my heart into this. This is what I live for. I can handle it if you don’t like it, as long as you take me seriously. You know? Whether it’s great or it’s worthless, it matters. It matters to me.”

  Madelyn nearly let her guard down and admitted her own inexperience and self-doubt; her natural reticence saved her. “I promise,” Madelyn said, “to have a decision for you by noon Friday.”

  That seemed to cheer Callie up and she shook Madelyn’s hand and walked her to the stairs. As Madelyn started down, Callie called after her. “That cute guy who was with you Saturday, is he your boyfriend?”

  “A friend of my husband’s.” What she lost in strict accuracy she gained in concision.

  Callie smiled. “Okay.”

  Madelyn continued down the stairs, thinking, Uh-oh.

  *

  She called Kindred in San Francisco as soon as she got home. He had a copy of Callie’s slides and glanced at them quickly. “You say it presents well in person,” he said, “so I say let’s try it. We can put her with a couple of slightly more established neighborhood artists and get some press and some goodwill, at the very least, for supporting the locals. And if she hits, we make out like bandits.”

  “And if she tanks?”

  “You need to be more positive. Critics can smell fear before they get in the door.”

  “I am terrified.”

  “Have a glass of wine. This is a milestone—your first discovery.”

  She was not overly tempted to call Alex. He had no phone in his apartment, and negotiating in Spanish with whoever answered the hall phone was more than she was up to. She also decided to hold off on informing Callie, so that she could sleep on her decision. Callie herself might not sleep, but Madelyn was prepared to live with that.

  She called the loft the next day at noon and Callie answered. If Madelyn had expected her to scream with excitement like a radio contest winner, she would have been disappointed. All Callie said was, “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  Madelyn explained that there would be two other artists, yet to be determined, that the gallery took a standard 50 percent commission, that they would have exclusive rights to sell the pictures for a year from the date of the opening, and the rest of the fine print. Callie was unfazed and agreed to come by the gallery on Friday to sign the contracts.

  Feeling equal parts pleased with herself and panic-stricken, she called Alex and invited him to a late lunch.

  *

  Alex could not remember the last time he’d suffered through such an agonizing cocktail of obsession, helplessness, and desire. He sat in Madelyn’s office on Friday afternoon and waited to “accidentally” run into Callie, who was already later than Alex had been early. Alex was talking about his next-door neighbor, Maelo, who was in the Young Lords.

  Madelyn said, “Aren’t they like the Puerto Rican Black Panthers or something?”

  “Kind of. Le
ss gun waving and more community action. They changed their name to ‘The Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization,’ which I think was kind of a dumb move. Everybody, including Maelo, still calls them the Young Lords.”

  “They wear berets, right?”

  “Yeah, purple ones. That’s the only uniform. If there’s an action and the cops come, they take off their berets and blend in with the crowd.”

  “What kind of action?”

  “The one they’re best known for was in sixty-nine. They got hold of a bunch of brooms, swept all the garbage into big piles in the street, and set fire to it. They forced the city to start picking up garbage in the Latin neighborhoods.”

  “They didn’t have garbage pickup?”

  “Life in Fun City,” Alex said. “Anyway, Maelo is after me to make a film about them, and I’m thinking about it.”

  Callie stuck her head in the door. “The girl said I should just come on back.” She glanced at Alex. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” Alex said. He stood up. “I guess I should be going.”

  “Aw,” Callie said. “Do you have to?”

  Thank you, Jesus, Alex thought. “Well… not really, I guess.” Callie smiled at him and at that moment he only wanted to please her. “I’ll, uh, hang around out front for a while.”

  Twenty minutes later, when Callie came out of Madelyn’s office, Alex was staring at a canvas on the gallery wall. It had been laboriously hand-painted from a halftone photo as different-size black dots on a canvas that was 12 feet on a side. From a normal viewing distance you only saw the dots themselves, and you had to stand on the far side of the studio to resolve the image into that of a dark-skinned girl in a dirty dress, sitting on a sidewalk and crying. Alex had spent the last few minutes trying to find the exact point at which the random became meaningful.

  “I overheard you guys,” Callie said. “Were you talking about the Young Lords? They are just the coolest.”

  And they were off, both of them talking fast, sometimes on top of each other, as if the contents of their brains had been under pressure and were spraying out uncontrollably. At some point they moved from the gallery to the street and by a mysterious, unspoken consensus walked east through Little Italy to Loisaida and into a working class Puerto Rican restaurant. Callie ordered pastelón, a casserole of ground pork, eggs, plantains, and green beans, while Alex went for the less adventurous chicharrones de pollo, fried chicken strips. They both drank one Cerveza India after another.

  Callie was the single most opinionated person Alex had ever talked to. She loved Van Gogh and hated John Singer Sargent, loved Otis Redding and John Coltrane and hated Motown and Steely Dan, loved Breathless and hated The Godfather. Just when Alex thought he was beginning to get a grip on her taste, she would passionately defend Jacqueline Susann or Norman Rockwell and attack Stockhausen or Albee. Her disdain for what she deemed Alex’s lapses in taste seemed absolute, yet before the pain completely registered, she had moved on.

  The personal stuff came out only in passing. Alex touched on his rich father and private school background and told her he’d broken free and was living on a shoestring. She skimmed over an impoverished childhood, scholarships, CalArts.

  At 11 pm they had ended up standing in front of Alex’s tenement. “This is where I live,” he said. “Want to come up and see my movie?”

  They smoked a joint first and then sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, while Alex projected it onto one dingy wall. When it was over, and Alex had turned off the lamp, and they sat listening to the quiet whirr of the fan, the silence was both profound and natural. Alex felt he’d watched the film through her eyes and seen that it was good. Finally he switched off the projector fan and she said, “Wow.”

  She made love with a ferocity he had never experienced, scratching, biting, making guttural noises, at one point flipping him onto his back so that she could straddle him. He was crazy for her body, for the hard edges of her ribs, her shoulder blades, her hip bones straining against her pale skin. After he came she had him bring her to a climax with his fingers, then she took him in her mouth until he was ready to go again. When they were finally both exhausted, a dark mood rolled over her, and she turned away from him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just loony tunes. Go to sleep.”

  When he woke up a few hours later in the gray dawn, she had left nothing behind except a few cigarette butts stubbed out in a saucer and the smell of sex and Chanel No. 5 in his sheets.

  *

  Late Saturday morning Madelyn got a call from Alex. After a wild night of passion, Callie had neglected to leave her phone number.

  “Alex, I can’t give out personal information about my artists, it’s a breach of confidence. I could lose my job.”

  “After last night, believe me, we don’t have any secrets from each other.”

  “Apparently there’s one.”

  “Why are you so dead set against her?”

  “I’m not. I do think this is precipitous.” Then, unable to stop herself, she said, “At the very least, I think she’s manipulative.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For one thing, because she didn’t give you her phone number.”

  Alex’s panic seeped through the phone. “Look, will you call her and ask if it’s okay? If she gives you permission, you can do it, right?”

  “You’re putting me in a really lousy position, here.”

  “I’m desperate.”

  Madelyn sighed. “All right, I’ll ask her to call you.”

  “Thank you. You’re wrong about her, you’ll see.”

  Knowing it was a bad idea, she called the loft. When she asked for Callie, a male voice said, “You want me to wake her up?”

  Madelyn checked her watch. Eleven-fifteen. “No, that’s okay. I’ll try later.”

  “Hang on, I think she just woke up.”

  Half a minute later Callie said, “’Lo?”

  “It’s Madelyn. This is really awkward…”

  “That’s cool. Awkward is the story of my life.”

  “Alex called me. He’s concerned that he doesn’t have a way to get hold of you.”

  “Did you give him my number?”

  “No, I consider that confidential.”

  “Good.”

  Madelyn couldn’t get a handle on Callie’s mood. She was cheerful enough, with no audible hostility toward Alex, and yet she had also shut down the conversation. “Well, okay then. I won’t bother you any further.”

  “It’s no bother at all. I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

  Madelyn couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate; she said, “I’ll talk to you soon,” and hung up.

  Alex was predictably incredulous. After she went over the entire conversation, word for word, he said, “What am I going to do?” He sounded very young.

  “She knows where to find you. The best thing you can do in a situation like this is to play it cool.”

  “Cool is not what I’m feeling.”

  “Well, these artist types all know each other. You could walk around SoHo and ask everybody you see in ratty clothes if they know where to find her.”

  She had meant it as a cruel joke, but Alex said, “That’s a good idea.”

  “Alex—”

  “Do you not remember what it feels like to be in love?”

  If it had been anyone else she would have hung up. “I consider that a highly insulting question.”

  “Sorry. I’m half out of my mind.”

  “Which is exactly the condition she wants you in. The only way to win this game is not to play.”

  “Not an option,” Alex said.

  After she hung up, Madelyn asked herself if Alex could be right. She hadn’t defined herself in terms of a relationship since the early days with Cole. Was she jealous because Alex had not fallen madly and desperately in love with her? That in fact no one had, or even come close to it, in years? She didn�
��t think that was the issue. That kind of love seemed a hysterical condition, kin to the “vapors” of the Victorian era, exacerbated by too much introspection.

  Some up-and-coming artist was having a party that night at his loft. Callie would probably be there, and Madelyn could have brought Alex, except that she was annoyed with both of them and regretting that she had let them violate the boundaries she had so carefully maintained around her work. Instead she decided to barricade herself in her apartment with leftovers and public access channels C and D of New York City cable tv.

  *

  Around eight, Alex got a bowl of soup at food, all he could afford, and tuned in to the surrounding conversations. The group two tables over, clearly identifiable as artists by their paint-spattered jeans and inappropriate hats, were on their way to a party at the loft of somebody named Julian. Everybody, it was said, would be there. When they got up, Alex did too.

  “Did I hear you say you were going to Julian’s party?” he asked a rather severe woman in cat-eye glasses and a leopard print dress. She smiled and nodded. “I’m Alex. I’m headed that way myself. Mind if I tag along?”

  “Not at all,” the woman said, and offered her hand. “I’m Becky.”

  She introduced him to a few of the others as they walked down Wooster to Spring Street, then east to Mercer. Alex let it come out that he was working in film, which piqued their interest. Everyone argued about Art, but they all loved movies.

  Nobody vetted the guests at the loft. After a few minutes Alex broke off from Becky and her friends and roamed the perimeter, stopping only to pour a Dixie cup full of Gallo Hearty Burgundy from a jug and eat a handful of off-brand pretzels. He was in a lousy mood. Maybe it was Callie not being there. The paintings on the walls, presumably Julian’s, were crude knockoffs of late-period Picasso. The scraps of conversation he overheard were frustratingly pedestrian, the kind of thing he could hear anywhere:

  “George Lazenby in a kilt was bad enough, but Roger Moore? I don’t think the world is ready for a gay James Bond.”