The Gallery of Unfinished Girls

by Lauren Karcz

  “How long do you think we could be in here before someone notices?” Vic says with a snicker.

  I turn on the light. The words disappear, but my head floods with warmth. It’s like the way it feels to get into my car on the first hot day of the year—comfortable in the center, but the edges burn.

  I lean over the sink and splash cold water on my face.

  “You okay, dearie?” Victoria asks.

  Oh, right—this bathroom remains a stubbornly towel-free place. I swipe at my face with the back of my hand, smearing my eye makeup in the process. “I think it’s time to go.”

  “Back to your house?” Vic opens the door and reaches down for her shoes.

  “No, not yet.” The apartment looks so normal—the framed Ramones album covers on the wall, the beer cans, the old pull-out couch, the picture of Tall Jon’s mom.

  Who found me here? Was it Lilia, or was it the secret painting itself?

  My hand grapples around for Victoria, but finds a wall instead.

  “Vic, I’m going to show you my new project.”

  It’s late. Almost one in the morning. This is the latest I’ve arrived at Lilia’s studio. Or tried to.

  The Red Mangrove Estate looms above us, its windows dark. It’s an overcast night and if the clouds get any lower, I think the top floor might end up swimming in them.

  “Just a second.” I pause at the glass doors, Vic ten silver-shoe steps behind me, almost definitely assuming that I’ve become a vandal. “Something weird happened when I came here with Angela last night. So we need to go inside really slowly and make sure that the building is, you know, secure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, the foundation and shit.” My voice is a bit wavery on the shit.

  “I’m sorry, should I have worn my spelunking gear?”

  The door on the right opens as usual. The heavy air of the lobby, the hiss in the vents. No movement.

  “Follow me.”

  She does, and I wait until she closes the ten-step gap before I move toward the stairs. She stays only a step or two behind me as we head to the second floor. I am ready to grab her hand or her shoulder if anything happens.

  There’s no music tonight. No noise at all that we aren’t making: Vic’s shallow breaths and my steady ones, our footsteps on the stairs. Vic wiping her sweaty hands on that poor satin dress.

  “Okay.” We’re here. I open the door to the second floor. No Lilia. The floor seems to welcome my feet. Vic stays next to me down the hall to the studio. Lilia has either been there to greet me, or has left the door cracked, up to this point. But with a closed door, should I knock?

  “Does someone live here?” Vic asks.

  “It’s Lilia’s studio,” I tell her.

  Vic laughs—sort of a cascading, nervous giggle that falls to the floor. The floor which, by the way, is perfectly still.

  “You’re working with her?” Vic whispers. “I can’t believe it. I hope she’s not here.”

  “She says you’re supposed to be invited before you can come in.” It’s silent up and down the hallway. It’s how Vic would expect an abandoned building to look. “But, I mean, we’re already here.”

  I tap on the door. Nothing. I try the doorknob, and the door swings open to reveal a dark house. Studio, whatever. To avoid scaring Vic off right away, I’m not going to bother turning on the lights, because the ceiling sculpture isn’t the most welcoming introduction to this place.

  She follows me down the hall, and I flick on the overhead light in my room. It’s a single bulb in a plain round fixture, but it has served me well so far. It’s better than painting under the bright fluorescent lights of Mrs. Pagonis’s classroom.

  Vic stumbles into the room. “Whoa! This is it?”

  “This is it. The two red walls, and the picture over there,” I say.

  She gives herself a walking tour of the room, running her hand along the red walls and coming to a stop in front of the formerly secret painting. Abuela stares down Victoria, and both of them look perfectly serene about this arrangement.

  Thanks to the presence of Victoria, I forget about the possibility of highly localized earthquakes. I flop onto the floor and hold my hands there. Not a single vibration. Would I suffer through another instance of the Estate shaking if it meant I get to see what Vic thinks of my work here? I think I would. And I think I might risk another if she were to say that she liked it.

  “Wow!” Vic sits on the floor, too. She almost slides one shoe off, but seems to rethink this and keeps it on. She stares hard at the walls, her eyes scanning from one field of red to another, her gaze hanging in the corner, like she’s waiting to see something burst forth from the place where the walls meet. And then she returns to studying the Abuela portrait. “It’s amazing, dearie. Like, when I look at it, I feel like I’ve met her. And you said you couldn’t do faces.”

  “Thanks.” A nice acknowledgment from Victoria is not a thing that shakes the floors. Noted. Very much noted. “The red walls were the first thing I did. The Abuela portrait is something else entirely. But everything about painting this room has felt right, so I’m going to finish the red walls to see what happens next.”

  “Well, okay.” Vic looks as overwhelmed as I have ever seen her.

  I kick off my shoes, so she doesn’t feel like she needs to wear hers. “What do you feel like doing?”

  “Are you tired?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Then I’m going to tell you to finish your red walls already! I want to see what the end result of all this is.”

  There’s still no sign of Lilia or a shaky floor as I go into the kitchen cabinets where she keeps all the paint and other supplies. I poke my head out the door, expecting to hear music or the strains of a party, but the hallway is silent. I wonder what would have happened if I’d brought Angela tonight, and if she’ll ever get to see this place again. I kind of want to show her how inspired a person can become here, but it’s possible that she doesn’t need it. After all, the piano and Lilia came straight to her. I’m the one who has to go sneaking out of windows and dashing across the city in the middle of the night to do my work.

  But that’s okay. Because despite all the trouble, the rewards are pretty great. The red walls. The free drinks. And tonight, there’s Victoria.

  Back in my studio, she is sprawled out on the floor, so welcomingly out of place, like when your math teacher drops the name of one of your favorite bands in class. She is staring out the window; the view from here is nice because at night it is always the same. It is the dark rooms across the way, and it is the sky, and the gulf. You don’t have to worry that you’re missing anything, that something has changed without you noticing.

  I start painting the third wall red, announcing myself with a wide slash of paint across the center of the wall, and then moving outward to the corners, becoming more strained and careful as I go along. Victoria doesn’t interrupt—her view shifts from the window to me, but she doesn’t say a word.

  A sound from outside. No, from above.

  The music. It’s back.

  “You hear that?” I put down my roller and brush.

  Vic nods. Her eyes ask me to tell her something, anything about what’s going on.

  “They have parties upstairs. It’s kind of a practice space for musicians.”

  Last night, with Angela, the music was chaotic, focused on the level of noise it made and seemingly nothing else. Tonight, it is quieter, and more settled into itself. It bounces along, assured, like Vic when she dances. Like me with the red paint. I sit on the floor (a few feet from her—now that we’re not in an enclosed hallway, I can’t figure out what is the best way to be with her). I stare at the wall across from me, the first one I painted. I stare at it long enough that it starts to have texture and movement. Almost. Maybe. And it is calling out for something more from me.

  “Be back in a minute,” I say to Vic, who is still taking in the music.

  I grab more p
aint from the kitchen. Tubes of blue and black and dark green. Thinner brushes. A palette and some rags and a cup of water. I wish Mrs. Pagonis and Gretchen and Rider could see me now.

  Or maybe not. Because this is my place.

  In the room, I start with a black outline, keep my hand steady, decide on form and orientation and size and such. I shape a head and a back and arms and legs. I begin brushing in fur in strange shades of blue and green, because there have been enough paintings of brown and gray lemurs already, I’m pretty sure. They look just like the lemurs in the head-picture that I didn’t even know I had—so much like them that I expect one of them to pick up a paintbrush himself and start drawing his own dishwasher.

  “What is that?” Vic asks.

  “Something inspired by Angela.”

  “Hmm. It’s pretty cool.” She has come up behind me and is looking over my shoulder, watching me craft the lemur’s fur. Thick and thin strokes of blue and green, each made with a strategic flick of the wrist. It’s sort of like when I would start off any picture I drew as a kid with a thick brown line for the ground, and then meander a zigzag of green grass across it. Actually, it is only a little like that, because my fingers are getting cold and shaky, and my knees are prickling, and I’m not sure how many times Victoria has heard me swallow hard.

  “Ooh, do you hear that?”

  “What?” I let my brush hang at the top of the lemur’s right paw.

  “The music! It’s a bossa nova. Don’t you love it?”

  She sashays backward—some sort of step-touch-step-touch movement that she makes look easy. Of course she knows the steps to this. Of course. If we were to find ourselves at a Self Saint Rage show (against our will, for sure), she would find the perfect way to dance to their cabaret metal. The music upstairs seems to get louder, and its melody changes a little, but Victoria stays right in time. It’s as if the music is fitting itself around her steps. Maybe it is.

  “Come on,” she says.

  I lay the brush and palette on the floor. “I don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

  “I’ll lead,” she says. “Watch and follow.”

  She takes my hand. She grabs my hand and does not seem sure of what to do with it, whether to lace her fingers with mine, or to nudge my fingers at the knuckles to lock with hers, or to envelop my hand in hers. We do the knuckle lock. Her hand is cold and small and I don’t even know when the last time was that I touched it. I think it was accidental, like I was handing her a pen or a spoon and she reached at the same time I reached. Or, no—it was when we both reached toward the stereo of my Pontiac at the same time, me to change the song, her to turn it up. I brushed her hand and she looked at me, and I let her have the control. Sure sure, I was totally going to turn up that song, too.

  Step forward, step together, step back, step together. That’s what we’re doing. It’s not that hard.

  “You’ve got it!” Vic says.

  I think I do.

  I slip my fingers between hers without losing the rhythm. Step forward, step together. Maybe I am leading now.

  The song flows into a different one with the same beat, and Victoria tilts her head upward, as though the musicians are sending a message down to her. “Yep, I thought I recognized it. I remember my parents listening to this song. It’s called ‘No More Blues.’”

  “I like it.” I tighten my grip on her hand, which is getting warmer.

  “Does this always happen here?” she says, looking at our hands, and then at my face.

  “No. You make everything here better.”

  And it is true, isn’t it? It is the truest thing I have said all night. The music is brilliant and I have almost finished the red, and I have new ideas for my work, and I can dance a little bit, and the floors are still and solid and are holding us, and Victoria is my best friend and I love her. Her hair is falling out of its silver clips, and I think it is the first time I have ever seen her dance with a curtain of dark brown alternately hiding and revealing her face. Her eyes are shining, and her mouth is not caught in its usual stage-ready smile, but instead lazy and heart-shaped, so much like it has looked in the morning of all those times I have slept in her bed or she in mine, being and breathing but not touching. And this—this. Her tired satin dress and the step forward and together and back and her falling hair—is this my best chance, my only chance?

  Step forward, step together.

  Our lips meet.

  She is leaning into me, and with the hand that is not holding hers, I touch her side, gently, the way you touch something you weren’t allowed to for a long time. And her lips move against mine. She is kissing me back. She is kissing me back.

  I think I could live here.

  thirteen

  AT SOME UNIDENTIFIED hour of the early morning, there is nothing to do but go home. I was hoping Victoria would sleep in the car on the drive back, but instead she is looking at me sideways from the passenger seat, and not in a way that makes her meaning apparent. She might be thinking, I can’t believe I kissed a girl who paints lemurs. Or she could be thinking, I can’t believe I kissed Mercedes. Or, I can’t believe I only kissed Mercedes once. We should have lain down and made out for hours, and instead I quietly let her go back to painting—God! Or maybe just, I am so tired and weird things are happening and I’m considering telling Mercedes to take me back to my house so that I can sit in my room and listen to Broadway songs until sunrise while trying to sort out everything in my head.

  There are a thousand ways this could go. More. I don’t think we know all the possibilities anymore. They are flying at me from all directions—each streetlight I pass, each pair of taillights, they send new possibilities careening my way, some of them almost too much to let in as I drive from the key to the mainland. I let them in, I breathe them out. They’ll fall on her and cover her and maybe she’ll start to know them, too.

  Firing Squad plays on the stereo. I open the windows, and the car is filled with cool, salty air. We head on toward the Moreno-McBride residence.

  She stands in the dark living room holding the little overnight bag she always brings over, the one that has dedicated pockets for everything and seems to keep her clothes unwrinkled, and she smiles with half her mouth. Sleepy, crooked, unsure. Oh God, I have completely confused her, to the point that she doesn’t even know where we are going to sleep. I lead her to my mother’s room, mostly because that’s still where my toothbrush is, and when I come out of the bathroom she has already made the satin dress disappear, and she is wearing yet another American Ballet Theatre T-shirt and a pair of gray shorts. My head is fuzzy and my eyes burn and my fingers should be paint-stained but they’re clear. We left the door to the studio unlocked and we never did go upstairs to find the music and also I kissed Victoria Caballini.

  Light off. Covers. Dark hair and a disproportionate sketch of a ballerina in my face. I want to catch her in that floaty place between wake and sleep.

  “Vic.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I didn’t plan that, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As though our trip to the Estate tonight transported us to an alternate universe, I sort of want to call up Connor Hagins and ask him what did he do, how did he get this amazing girl. I feel like I know the answer, know the story, but I’ve stuffed it in the back of the mental folder labeled Caballini, Victoria: romantic life of. And besides, to get a girl seems like she was tricked or trapped somewhere along the way. That’s not what I want. I don’t want Victoria to wake up wondering why she kissed me. I want it to be her truth that this place next to me is the warmest place there is.

  I am closer to her. I touch my nose to her hair. She doesn’t move.

  I could see if she wants to kiss me again. I could tell her I think she’s perfect, and ask her is this how it begins, is she going to be my girlfriend now? No—that’s too much. I just want to be in this time with her, to live as long as I can in the same night I danced with her. Okay, I think she’s asleep now, but maybe I can make
up for her unconsciousness by keeping hold of this moment as long as I can. Holding on, holding on.

  I’m awake and she’s still here.

  The sunlight crashing through the windows tells me it’s midmorning already, that, somewhere across town, Angela has been up for hours and is imagining me hungover at Tall Jon’s apartment, that my mother is going to visiting hours at a hospital in San Juan, that Abuela Dolores is asleep in her persistent way.

  Vic turns over and startles herself awake. She stares around at the room, at the light. And then at me. I try to smile. I know that she’s not one to confuse reality with dreams—she knows where we were last night. Surely the music is running through her head the same way it is through mine.

  “Morning,” she says, and rolls onto her back.

  “Morning,” I say. I check my phone—ten thirty a.m., and two generic where are you’s from Angela. “Can you hang around a little longer?”

  “Sure.” She gives me a sleepy smile. “Before I left last night, I told Mom I was going to keep you company today.”

  “We have to pick up Angela soon. I get the feeling she chose her friend’s house over the party only as the lesser of two evils.” I lean on my side. The sun catches me at that angle, hits my eyes and strips my sight for a minute. I’m here, but I’m nowhere. I’m with Vic, but without the prodding hum of the studio, I don’t know how to do anything but long for her. “Hey, Vic.”

  “Yeah?” She looks at me like she’s expecting something, but she’s not sure what. It’s probably like when she’s at a Broadway show and waiting for that one last big revelation before the intermission.

  I am above her, sort of. I can see what it’d be like to lie on top of her and kiss her. I can see it, I can see it. But it’s the fading image of a dream—if you catch it at the right time, you might live in it for a minute more. And if you don’t catch it, it’s just gone.

  “We have to talk about it,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Last night. In the studio.”

  Vic narrows her eyes. “The dance studio?”

  “Come on. No. I mean the Red Mangrove Estate. The place where I’m working with Lilia. I mean the red and white room and everything that happened there.”