by Anne Whitney
Before I can even think, Fitz walks back into Jack’s office and slams the door behind him, making the glass walls on each side shake. A crowd gathers around the door as we listen to Fitz screaming at his agent, the words muffled by the barrier but the anger all too apparent. I briefly hear several swear words and the phrase ‘How dare you’. The office seems heartily entertained by this display. I can only hold my arms tightly against my front and wait for it all to end, too shaken to respond to questions from nosy gossipers.
“I fucking quit!”
Fitz’s announcement silences the entire crowd, and when he opens the door, with his face reddened, he is greeted by slack-jawed office staff and me.
“We’re leaving,” he says, grabbing my hand and striding out of the building. I struggle to keep up with his marathon-like pace as we join the bustle of the morning pedestrians.
He’s completely furious and I don’t know what to do. I have to jog for my short legs to match his stride, which doesn’t lessen for a good five or six blocks. Eventually he slows down and comes to a complete halt in the center of the pathway, his breathing deep and shaky.
“Well,” he finally says after what felt like an agonizingly long silence. “That’s my career over.”
He tries to make it sound like a joke but his burning red eyes speak louder than his words. I can think of nothing else to say or do but to pull him into a hug, which I do. I don’t care that we’re blocking the path for sullen crowds. None of that matters right now.
“I’m sorry, Fitz,” I say against his chest.
“No, I’m sorry,” he insists. “Nobody should ever talk to you like that. It was disgusting. I don’t want anything to do with a fucking creep like him. I’ll get by without him. I don’t need him for the big show.”
“No, you don’t.”
“He’s just been holding me back. He never got me anyway.”
I don’t know a single thing about this world of Fitz’s but I know that he can do anything he wants to and I should support him in that. I may not understand it, but it’s important to him. That should be enough for me, shouldn’t it?
Am I capable of giving him what he wants?
CHAPTER 17.
Sitting at a paint-splattered table eating cold noodles is not my idea of a great meal. In Viridian's studio, a fifth floor walk up in an old garment factory converted into apartments and art space, the room smells like a mixture of turpentine and old food left in decaying Styrofoam stacked in the corners behind forgotten canvasses and cans of paint.
But compared to the moments of the previous days, a mixture of confusion and pure lustful passion, it's a vacation from the tempest brewing in my head. Mixed with my inherent fear at my plight if my father ever finds me and takes me home, I only want to think about the taste of garlic and fish sauce over the thin pieces of buckwheat.
I'd asked Viridian the night before if I could come to her place to hang out. She'd refused at first, telling me it was too messy, that her roommate would object, that she was busy, but this morning she texted Fitz and said, "Meet me at my studio at noon. No boys allowed."
"I don't know what to say," I say as Viridian slurps her noodles heartily. "He kissed me. Then he kissed me again. And I don't know what to tell him."
"Do you love him?" she asks.
I shrug. "It's been two weeks, if that," I say. "Can you really fall in love with someone that quickly?"
"You can fall in love," Viridian says, "but it might not be the kind of love you need. Or that guy might not be the one you think you're getting."
I wonder what she knows about Fitz that she's not saying, but I know better than to pry. I eat my noodles slowly, letting them twist and turn around my fork. They slip down my throat in a thin coating of slimy soy sauce. Never in my life have I had Japanese food before. Viridian calls it soba, but I call it strange and yummy. The sushi, on the other hand, was disgusting. Raw fish is worse than modern art.
"Fitz is a good guy," Viridian continues, "but you don't know him like I do. He's like an artichoke. The outside is all prickly and nasty and takes you a long time to peel open, and peeling it hurts, but once you get inside it's all delicious and you can make a dip out of it."
Her comment raises my eyebrow.
Viridian frowns.
"Don't fall in love with him," she says after a few more bites of food. "I'll just say that. Fuck him all you want, get right in there, but keep emotion out of it."
"You're not helpful."
"I never said I was good at advice," Viridian says. "I'm good at painting, at shoes, at sewing a dress, but not I'm definitely not good at advice."
I drop my fork and slowly take in my surroundings. The grand tour had lasted all of five seconds. First there was the tiny window, then the paint cabinet, then the easel, a stack of paintings collecting dust, and finally the table with lunch. The room itself is the size of an average bedroom, a tiny thing compared to Fitz's magnificent apartment and work space.
"I make do with it," Viridian says, interrupting my thoughts. "Unlike Fitz, I don't have benefactors and sponsors and museums breaking down my door asking me to strut around in the nude with some message about the human condition. That's not my thing."
Easing off the chair, I stroll over to the stack of dusty portraits and pull the plastic back to reveal the strange portraits underneath. Women with distorted figures in distorted scenes, as if looking at an alien through stained glass, look up at me with gaping eyes. In another, a child carrying a broken child in unnatural shades of violet and green. And in another, children on a swing set in a spinning world of amber and red.
"They're beautiful," I tell Viridian.
"Take one if you want," she says, almost dismissively, as she chucks the remains of our lunch into the growing pile of refuse. "Those are the ones the gallery wouldn't take for the last show. They only gave me two spaces, and neither of them sold. People are not in touch with their morbid sides this year, I think."
I glance back at her, adorned in tight black pants and a red see-through blouse with a bowler low over her face. She smiles as she works, but the smile seems off in space - an object of formality versus reality.
"I don't want to take something from you if I can't pay you back," I say.
Viridian waves her hand. "Don't worry about it," she tells me. "You'll pay me back someday, I know it. Just pick something out and when you get your own place you can put it on the wall in the closet with all the pictures of kittens and puppies or whatever people like you collect."
The smile sticks like glue as she clamors back into her chair and looks at me as if nothing is wrong. My look of wariness should be a dead giveaway that I find things to be off, but she continues to ignore it. I turn back to the stack and grab the first off the top - a crude pink girl carrying what seems to be a machine gun while frolicking through a field of black flowers.
"Good choice," Viridian says.
"How much do you make on the paintings?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I'm not a superstar or anything like that, but I make money. I pay my rent, I have enough for going out and having fun, I don't have to work some crummy ass job like waiting tables. No offense or anything."
"None taken." I set the chosen painting by the door and walk back to the table. "I know we're new friends and all, but if there's something wrong, you should tell someone. I can see it in your eyes that something's off about you today. You're ashamed or something."
My accusation offends her. Her nose turns up in disgust and she rolls her eyes. "I invite you over for lunch and it's like a witch hunt or something."
"Viridian," I say.
She pulls her hat off her head and drops it to the table top, leaving a frizzy mess in its wake. Smoothing it down with her dark hands, Viridian seems visibly shaken by my questioning, for reasons I can't quite fathom. I reach across the table toward her, grabbing her palm and stilling it only to feel her heart sending blood racing at a fever pitch through her veins.
"What's wrong?"
"It's nothing," she murmurs. "I'm just anxious today. It happens when you have anxiety issues, trust me. Everything sets you off."
"I'd be the first to tell you that," I say, "but this isn't just some general anxiety."
She looks up into my eyes and shrinks back like a scorned puppy. Tears well in the corners of her dark eyes, beginning to mess up her eyeliner and turn the black kohl into smeared streaks the instant a tear breaches the dam of her eyelid and falls over the smooth pores of her cheek.
"Fitz is my best friend and I love him to pieces, but I can never understand why he gets the praise and the fortune when I'm dead broke," she murmurs. "I try and pretend like I'm this steely bitch who likes to party and drink and do whatever I want, but let's face it. He prances around like a plucked chicken with a big dick and I sit here and work for weeks on a painting and waste my life on trying to contribute something that will last for hundreds of years only to realize, 'Oh, wait Viridian, people think you have no talent and that you should go back to Miami and live with your parents and get married to some asshole named Antonio who wants to knock you up because that's what good Cubans do to their wives to make them happy and fulfilled in life'."
Viridian says the last sentence in one breath, leaving her panting afterward. Immediately, she relaxes as the weight of her confession is released. In fact, she lets out a tiny snort of derision.
It takes me a few moments to process everything she's said, given that I've never truly known more about her than the basics - her name is Viridian, she's an artist, and she's best friends with Fitz. Looking at the table top and our hands clasped on top of it, I assemble the pieces before she interrupts me.
"Please don't tell Fitz I said this to you," she implores me. "If there is one thing I don't want to be in life, it's being a woman who takes handouts from her best friend and having no ability to pay him back. Like ever. Because I'll be real with you - I'm never going to break even. Like ever."
"Don't say that," I tell her, stiff and serious. "And you don't have to ask him for money, I'm not saying that. You just can't live like this and spend your life worrying and being afraid of the next day. I'm an expert at that and it's not fun."
“I’ll get by,” she insists, although I don’t believe her for a second. I wonder if she even believes what she says. “If it gets any worse, I can always get a part-time job to help with things. But I don’t want to give up on this, not when I’ve spent so long on it.”
I nod. While I’ve never really had dreams or ambitions - what was the point when I knew they would never come to fruition? - I was all too familiar with anxiety and feeling like a failure.
“V,” I say. “Please promise you’ll talk to me if things get tough. You shouldn’t be alone in this.”
The beginnings of a smile form on her face, always a good sign. She picks up her bowler hat and places it on my head.
“It suits you. Tell Derek to pick you up some hats from his next wardrobe raid.”
“Viridian,” I say with a warning tone. “Please.”
With a sigh, she nods.
“Fine. I promise. But you have to do the same for me. If I must enter into therapy sessions with you, I’d rather they be mutually beneficial.”
“Okay.”
“And sweetie?”
“Yes?”
“He is a good man, I mean it. Just... Don’t get in over your head.”
CHAPTER 18.
“Fuck!”
I return from work to hear Fitz’s cursing echo through the apartment. When I left this morning, he told me he was going to sort out his artistic affairs and become his own manager, since clearly nobody else got what he did, but his swearing doesn’t fill me with much confidence.
“You okay in there?” I call out, tossing my back and jacket onto the couch. I have allotted the square space from the couch to the other end of the carpet as my makeshift bedroom until I have the money to find a place of my own. Tips have been more plentiful since my makeover, but I’m still a long way off my target.
Fitz storms out of his bedroom, shirtless and clutching his hair tightly.
Of course he’s shirtless, because that won’t make it any harder for the pair of us to have a real conversation without any distractions. Thanks a lot, brain.
“Fuck!” He repeats, slumping onto the couch next to my things. I wonder whether I should just leave him be or talk to him, but settle for the latter. If I am to be his girlfriend - although we still haven’t confirmed that to be the case - then I should do more stuff like this. I join him on the couch and rub his back as he slouches forward, his head in his hands.
“You okay?” I ask, knowing it’s a stupid question.
“My grant was cut.”
“What?”
“My funding. It was supposed to continue for another 3 years, but all of a sudden, the people in charge have decided to stop it. No warnings, no nothing, just a shitty little apology. Well thanks a lot, you assholes!”
“Oh,” I say, not wanting to repeat any more apologies. I continue to rub his back, not knowing if it’s doing any good.
“This is all Jack’s fault,” Fitz continues. “What a total coincidence that a day after I leave his incompetent little agency, my funding goes bye-bye. God, he’s so threatened. It’s pathetic. If he can’t have me on his little display shelf then nobody can!”
I stay silent, suddenly feeling very guilty. Of course, it isn’t my fault that Jack Sandel’s an arrogant little pervert, but I know Fitz doesn’t make a whole lot of money from what he does, and his funding must have been crucial. I doubt he’s at risk of going broke since he doesn’t pay rent, but I still worry. After all, I don’t have anywhere else to go, myself.
“Is there anywhere else you can get funding?” I ask. Fitz sits up and stares at the coffee table.
“It’s pretty much impossible to find someone who will throw money at an artist who can’t give them a nice little piece they can hang permanently in the Museum of Modern Art. Investors like their art to offer some promise of profit. Sellouts. That’s not how art is supposed to work! You’re supposed to do it because it’s art.”
“Do you have anywhere else you could go to for funding?”
“Oh, I’ve got somewhere,” he snorts. “And I hate that I’m even considering it.”
“What is it?”
“My dad.”
“Ah.”
“Pretty much.”
I still know so little about Fitz’s parents, other than their extreme wealth and Fitzroy III being husband number two or something for Fitz and Derek’s mom. I know that they own Fitz’s apartment and that his relationship with his mother is frosty at best, but other than that, I have kept my nose out of his business. Once again, I realize just how little I know about Fitz, and how I feel about him.
“Will your dad help you out?” I asked.
He shrugs. “Maybe. I’d get the lecture to end all lectures about what an embarrassment I am to the great Cottrell-Iver name, unlike the esteemed Victoria.”
“Who’s Victoria?”
“My sister. She’s going to Harvard in the fall, just like my dad.”
“You have a sister?” I ask, a little shocked.
“We’re not close. She’s probably more embarrassed by what I do than my mom is. Doesn’t want to spoil her nice suit-wearing future as an accountant or lawyer or some crap like that.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.” I can’t get over not knowing this for some reason. How do you forget to mention that you have another sibling? I’ve never asked for Fitz to reveal his deepest, darkest secrets to me - how could I ask that when I’m practically drowning in my own untold confessions? - but I begin to wonder if I know anything about him at all.
“She’s mom’s favorite,” Fitz groans. “Then Derek, and then me.”
“Any other siblings hidden away?”
“Nope, that’s it. Three husbands, four children.”
“Four?”
“Okay, there is ano
ther one, but Martin and I don’t talk much, either, outside of Christmases and birthdays. He lives with mom and number three in Chicago. Spoiled brat of the highest order, but then again, if you knew you were going to be inheriting a title and all that cash, you wouldn’t have a chance.”
“Do you and your mom get on well?” I ask. I already know the answer, but want some honesty from Fitz right now. I don’t understand how he can be so casual about all this.
“Not really. Dad got full custody of us, so she took her “Don’t talk about me cheating on you” checks from my dad and moved onto another model. God, an artist with mommy issues. What a cliché.”
Sitting next to Fitz in his huge apartment, I think back to Viridian and the cheap claustrophobic dive she calls home. Fitz must understand how good he has it compared to so many others. Not just artists either, but regular people packed into the crumbling buildings and pillars of metal and glass that pierce the skies of New York. While he may not get on well with them, Fitz’s parents clearly care enough about him to give him this beautiful place to live free of charge, something he has no problem with taking advantage of. He’s no starving artist.
Does he even know about Viridian’s home?
“Marina.”
Fitz lies back and his forehead meets mine. His hands run through my hair and down my neck. I place a gentle peck on his lips.
“Yes?” I whisper.
“I want to show you my piece for the big show. But I’ll need your help, okay?”
Hesitantly, I pull back and nod slowly. He knows that his work is baffling to me and that I have little to no understanding of it, but if he wants me to assist him then how can I refuse? My better instincts continue to be beaten down by my overwhelming lust. I need to be ready soon, otherwise I’ll never get these feelings out of my system and I’ll never function like a normal human being again.
He leads me to his bedroom, completely bare except for a large bed, built-in wardrobes and a desk covered in books and a laptop. The floor space could house Viridian’s studio and still leave some room for storage.