Christodora

by Tim Murphy

  The original idea, street art that looked like something in a dream, was, of course, Char’s—that much is certain, from that very first piece Mateo saw him (well, then, her) doing on the wall in West Adams, back almost ten years ago at Mateo’s lowest point. But Mateo feels confident he’s brought something to the collaboration, to the style they both take the credit for today.

  “Let’s make it less,” he would always say to Char once the two of them started working together in earnest. That was 2013, 2014, those years after Mateo left the halfway house and bunked in that shithole in downtown L.A. and actually learned, for once, how to live a life and not blow it up with needles every few months.

  “Like,” he’d say to Char, “less form, less form, less like we were even there. Let’s make it like you just look at the surface and the first thing you think is something’s wrong, what the fuck is happening to that wall, it’s, like, melting or frying or transforming itself or something.” He loved this kind of stealth approach, it felt so sneaky, and Char, after a moment’s pause, liked it too, and that’s how the two of them bonded. Even as they got more and more attention, they felt like two sneaks, ever so delicately fucking with the existing surface and making people do a double take.

  Now, Char hustles over to Mateo, wiping his hands on a rag. “You ready to do this?” he bellows, a big grin on his face.

  Suddenly, Mateo crests with excitement and happiness. The space is so strange, so different, so—so strangely filled with light! “I’m so fucking ready,” he says, and the two of them bear-hug. “Let’s paint the shit out of the place.”

  Everyone’s turned to watch the two of them embrace, including Ruby Levin.

  “Woo-hoo!” she finally calls. “We’re doing it! Guys, we’re doing it! We’re putting art in the UnderPark!”

  This leads to a big round of applause and more woo-hoos. Soon, Mateo, Char, Ruby, and the assistants are standing in front of the awaiting corner and tracing their fingers over images on their tablets. Two assistants are warming paints on hot plates hooked up to a ­generator—these special paints they’re using have to be heated to a certain warm-but-not-hot temperature in order to molecularly bond with the primer and with the high-tech reflective surface of the park’s inner walls.

  Char asks Mateo, “Do you want to start tracing in B7?” He means the B7 section of the grid they’ve superimposed on their tablet images of the wall.

  “The primer’s dry?” Mateo asks.

  “We tested it this morning. They heat-sealed it last night.”

  “Okay, let’s do it then,” Mateo says. “Let’s set up the scaffolding.”

  And it begins. Once the scaffold is set up, he installs himself up there with a stack of stencils and a charcoal pencil. He sketches in the very first stencil of an abstract leaf pattern he and Char have designed.

  “Nicely done,” Char calls, climbing up the adjoining scaffold. “You gonna work toward me in a spiral pattern?”

  “You like spirals, not me,” he says. “I’m gonna slice down into C6 in a sort of wiggly diagonal.”

  “Ah, a wiggly diagonal!” Char echoes, teasing him. “Very high-concept, Mendes.”

  He blows Char a kiss off the top of his middle finger, turns back to his work. He’s very happy, lost in the patterns, just where he likes to be.

  Sixty minutes later, he climbs down to stretch, pee, have a smoke, grab a bagel from the craft table Creative Production Fund’s set up. Talking to Char and Ruby and some of the interns, he notices a pretty late-twentysomething brunette standing off to the side, smiling his way. He nods in her direction, and once he’s broken off from Char and Ruby to spread some cream cheese on a bagel, the brunette walks up to him.

  “Mateo?” she asks.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Hi. I’m Tanzina Parcero. I’m an arts writer for the Times’s art vertical.”

  “Ah!” Mateo says. “Ah, okay. Well, hi there, Tanzina.” He offers a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “This is super-exciting, isn’t it?” she says, pointing to the wall and the scaffolding.

  “Uh—” he says. “Well, yeah, it is!” He’s a bit mesmerized by her glossy brown hair and massive brown eyes. She’s definitely in that same category of pretty light-brown girl with glossy hair that Dani falls in for him. “We just started this morning and I’m super-excited.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she says. “People are very intrigued about this. Can I talk to you for a little write-up about the project?” She’s already pulling her tablet out of her bag.

  “Uhh—” he says uncertainly.

  Ruby’s hustling over. “Hi there, Tanzina!” she says brightly.

  “Hi, Ruby!” The two share a little hug. Tanzina asks, “You don’t mind if I get a little something from Mateo for a post for the vertical, do you?”

  “Umm,” Ruby says slowly. “It’s really up to Mateo and Char if they want to talk about the project at this point. They literally just started this morning.”

  “Char!” Mateo calls. Char turns away from the scaffolding, hustles over. “Do we want to talk to Tanzina? She’s a writer for the Times art vertical.”

  Mateo catches a little sparkle in Char’s eyes; he figures Char’s as attracted to Tanzina as he is. Char shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Thanks for coming down.”

  “Okay, great,” Tanzina says, tapping the “record” button on her tablet screen. “Okay, wow, guys. So, here we are, day one. So what is the process going to be?”

  “Uhh—” Mateo and Char say, nearly in unison. Then Char picks up: “Well, I think the general idea is, you see, there will be a, um, a copse of baby silver maple trees in that corner. So, um, our idea is we are going to do a kind of wall of, like, well, I like to call them space leaves—”

  Tanzina laughs, delighted. “Space leaves?”

  “Yeah,” Char says, laughing. “Like, leaves that if you found trees on Mars or Neptune or something, they’d have these kind of leaves. Like, you’d recognize them as leaves, but there’d be something weird, like, mutant, about them. A little creepy, maybe, even.”

  “Char’s not totally from the planet Earth,” Mateo jokes. “He’s part Vulcan.”

  It goes on like this for a while, Mateo and Char enjoying this banter and describing the process. Then, without changing a note, Tanzina asks, “Okay, cool. And, Mateo, are you going to the opening of your father’s show at Blum-36 a week from Friday?”

  Mateo, Char, and Ruby all do a start. “Huh?” Mateo finally says. “My father?” He starts getting a crummy betrayed feeling that all Tanzina’s questions about their project were just a ramp-up to this.

  “Well, yes, your father Jared Traum’s new show at Blum-36 a week from Friday,” Tanzina repeats. Mateo can see a certain something harden around those big brown eyes of hers, as much as she’s still smiling. He supposes it was foolish of him, or naive or wishful thinking, to imagine that nobody was going to bring up this connection at some point.

  “I mean,” Mateo says, “he’s not really my father.”

  “He’s your adoptive father, right?” Tanzina asks.

  “I think Mateo and Char want to keep the focus on this project,” Ruby says firmly. “I mean, they just started this morning.”

  “We got a shitload of work to do,” adds Char. It’s clear they’re both backing up behind Mateo now, protective.

  “No, no,” Mateo says, flustered. “I mean, it’s okay.” He turns to Tanzina, whose eyes are intense, gleeful that he’s engaging her on this, as she holds her tablet toward him. “I mean, yes, he’s my adoptive father. But we’re not really in touch. I’ve been living in L.A. the past ten years or so and—I mean, I was a wild child growing up here. Ten, fifteen years ago, I mean, the Lower East Side isn’t what it is today, I mean, it was rougher. Like, not as rough as, like, the eighties or whatever, but, uh, way more drugs, and . . .”

&nbs
p; He loses his train of thought, then regains it. “I mean, I think they needed a break from me. My adoptive parents. I really put them through it.”

  “Mmm,” says Tanzina, as though she’s gravely absorbing his words. “Well, you think you’ll see your adoptive mom while you’re here? She still lives here, right?” She’s holding that damn tablet toward him.

  “This feels like it’s getting far too personal,” Ruby says. This time Mateo can hear the indignation breaking through her usually flawlessly bright and diplomatic demeanor. “I thought you said you were just writing a post about the project getting under way.”

  Tanzina widens her eyes, all innocent. “This is part of the story!” she says. “A New York art family.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Mateo says, before he can stop himself. “That is so not the story.”

  Tanzina’s lovely eyes dance with drunken delight at his small explosion. Oh God, now he’s fucked. “I mean,” Mateo says, “the story is—that we have a shitload of work to do. So I’m gonna eat my bagel and get back to work. Take care.”

  He simply walks away, back toward the craft table. When he reaches for the knife to scoop out some cream cheese and put it on half of a poppyseed bagel, his hand is shaking.

  A hand lands on his shoulder. It’s Char. “Hey,” he says. “Brush your shoulders off, bro. That was sick stupid.”

  “I guess I’ve been fucking naive,” Mateo says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ruby giving Tanzina a polite but firm talking-to, Tanzina holding her tablet at her side, as Ruby’s obviously taken her off the record.

  “I guess I really should’ve been ready with something a little smarter than that,” he says. “‘I wish Jared Traum the best, I really respect his work,’ and all that kind of stuff.”

  “Fuck it,” says Char. “You don’t have to be ready with anything. You’re here to make a piece.”

  “I’m fucking terrified of making contact with them, Char,” he says. “I haven’t talked to them in, like, ten years.”

  “Dude, you don’t have to deal with that now,” Char says. “You’re here to make work.”

  Mateo watches Tanzina bop away, putting her tablet back into her bag, ready to go back to the office and package up her piece of bounty.

  “What a pretty little sneak, huh?” he says to Char, nodding with his chin toward Tanzina.

  “Why the fuck’d you think I came over?” Char asks. “I wasn’t gonna let you have all of that!”

  Mateo and Char crack up a little. Ruby walks over to join them, frowning.

  “I am sorry about that,” she says. “I didn’t see that coming. I was caught off guard because usually she’s a very work-focused writer.”

  “I was naive,” Mateo says.

  “No, no,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not your job, it’s mine. Do you want me to keep them away from now on?”

  “I mean . . .” Mateo starts, then gives up, exasperated. “I mean, whatever,” he says. “I don’t have anything to hide. The situation is what it is.”

  Everyone just stands there for a minute. “I just want you guys to be able to enjoy the project,” Ruby says. “It’s special.”

  Over the next few days, they do, in fact, manage to enjoy the project. Char starts adding color even before Mateo’s finished stenciling. He begins to be able to visualize how the wall is going to explode like delicate fireworks behind the silver maples. He’s feeling good, he’s having good dinners in Brooklyn and Queens every night with Dani and Char and, eventually, some cute redheaded jewelry-maker girl named Becky whom Char starts bringing around. He’s managing to make a few AA or NA meetings here and there, he’s holding it together.

  Then on Thursday morning, he and Dani wake up to pounding rain against the infinity windows of their rental. Mateo calls Char.

  “Has Ruby called you yet?” Char asks.

  “No, why?”

  “Shit, man.” Char half laughs, so exasperated. “Rain is fucking leaking into our corner at the site.”

  “Fuck, what?”

  “Fuck yes, man! Fucking leaking into the project.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Mateo exclaims. Dani looks up at him from the bed, alarmed. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen. There was all that high-tech sealant.”

  “Yeah, so they thought it wasn’t supposed to happen, either, but—”

  “But—”

  “So let’s get down there, we’re gonna patch it up.”

  He throws on some clothes, grabs an umbrella, hails a cab, and still arrives at the site half drenched, the rain is coming down so hard. Char and Ruby and two of the guys from the UnderPark Foundation office are directing a bunch of interns and technicians, covering the existing work on the project with clear tarp and sealing it up a hundred times over with industrial duct tape.

  “Where’s the leak coming from?” Mateo asks the UnderPark guys.

  “We’ve got the contractor and the architects down here all day today,” one of them, James, says. “Do not worry, we are going to remediate and you guys will be back to work as soon as the rain stops. So I say go home and take a breather while we remediate.”

  Remediate. Mateo, Char, Ruby, and a few of the interns laugh about the word twenty minutes later when, all still damp, they’re sitting in a nearby restaurant, some cute Israeli place with whitewashed clapboard walls, having coffee and shakshuka. After that, at a loss for what else to do amid the downpour, Mateo goes back to his chic infinity-windowed sublet and takes a hot shower. Poor Dani’s out in this devil rain on a design job, sourcing carpets, so he’s got the place to himself. He flops down with his tablet, cranks up some Odd Future for old time’s sake, answers e-mails. But after a while, the loneliness and the rain shattering over the Lower East Side start creeping into his bones. These are always the most dangerous moments: when the noise of the present clears and he finds himself alone, unoccupied, staring into the abyss of the past with all its broken objects and shameful acts.

  And then he tries something that’s never occurred to him to try before: instead of typing “Ysabel Mendes” and “AIDS” into his tablet, which has never yielded anything the past many times he’s done it—­usually late at night, when he sometimes slips into just such a wormhole of the past as the one he’s in now—he types “Isabel Mendes” and “AIDS,” just to see. Thoughts of her come rushing back to him sometimes, in rare, lonely, unguarded moments like this. He left that photo of her behind at the Christodora, tucked inside his boyhood bed, and often he thought he’d like to have it back, which would require communication he couldn’t bring himself to initiate. But still, he spent so much time looking at it growing up, he doesn’t need to fetch it. His brain just calls it up. The leather jacket, the denim mini, the moussed-up head cocked to one side, the elbow propped up on that gay moreno’s shoulder, the sassy smirk on her face.

  And there it is. Oh God. He catches his breath. There’s a link to a site called “AIDS Warriors Speak” and a bit of text underneath it, which reads: “ . . . and a year later, also died, a woman named Isabel Mendes, who played a very big role in . . .”

  Mateo looks out at the sheet of rain. He clicks the link. It’s from the transcript of a video interview from 2004, also posted, with a guy named Karl Cheling, who looks like a lefty radical version of Charlton Heston’s Moses, with a prominent forehead and a white beard and ponytail. So he clicks on the video and sits through several minutes of this Karl Cheling talking about all this old shit, about the AIDS days in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the various surprise demonstrations and takeovers he and his buddies pulled on city hall and the Department of Health and Human Services in D.C. and various other bureaucratic places. And Mateo looks up and thinks for a moment how crazy it is that there is no more AIDS anymore—well, he knows, he’s read, that there are still people in Africa who haven’t gotten the cure therapy yet, but even
there it’s being done, and some expert he read said that it would be eradicated off the globe by 2030, just like polio was. The disease that killed his mother, Mateo thinks. Wiped out.

  He looks back at his tablet. The interviewer behind the camera, a woman whose voice has a thick, old-fashioned New York accent like his bubbe had, says, “And you’re obviously talking about a lot of activists who died before the emergence of Internet archives in, say, the late 1990s, so there’s very little record of them, correct?”

  “Yes, correct,” says the white-ponytailed guy. He reels off a long list of people and things they did. “Particularly women and people of color,” he says, “they’ve not been archived as properly and made into heroes in documentaries and such. There were some especially amazing women. There was a black woman named Katrina Haslip who played a very big role in getting the federal definition of AIDS expanded to include more symptoms held by women, then she died very shortly thereafter in 1992. And a year later, also died, a woman named Ysabel Mendes, who played a very big role in working with Katrina. She was on the Latino committee, putting a lot of the literature into Spanish translation. And she worked very closely alongside a very, very smart treatment activist named Hector Villanueva who is still alive and actually very active with ShelterHelps—very much a part of the ShelterHelps family and a link from the past to the present. Katrina and, uh, Ysabel were very vocal, fierce activists at a time when it was still widely considered that women were not as susceptible to AIDS, when they were undercounted and under-included in research, and routine testing for them was still rare and not widely urged.”

  “And what were the primary goals, the agenda, going into 1993, ’94?” the interviewer asked.

  Mateo listens through the rest of the interview, but Ysabel Mendes isn’t mentioned again. Then, for the umpteenth time, he searches “Hector Villanueva” and “AIDS” and “drugs,” and all the usual old links and stories come up.