This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  “Aoki and I were out of touch until this month.”

  “So last night was a reunion? A shame. Had we known we could have used you as a talking point for the event: Aoki and Jeremy reunited. It would have caused quite a stir. We could have pitched a feature to ArtForum.”

  He could envision this feature; a whole photo spread of the two of them, sitting in her studio covered with paint, tangled in sheets in her hotel room, all very Nan Goldin …. A visceral memory—Aoki’s cool, smooth thigh under his palm—flash-flooded his mind, momentarily drowning out any other thought, and he flushed, as if riding a fever. A silent minion appeared at Jeremy’s side, refilling his mug with tea. He glanced impatiently at his watch, wanting to get this transaction over quickly so he could just move on to the next step.

  “So, how much do you think you could give me for it?”

  Louisa removed the bifocals and tucked them back in her pocket. “Normally we’d do something like this on a consignment basis,” she said.

  He did not have that kind of time. He did not have any time at all. “I’m hoping to make a cash deal.”

  Louisa turned to stare at the painting again. “It’s too bad. Six months ago I could have asked seven figures for this, but with the art market the way it is now, the best I’ll be able to do for you is low-to-mid six.”

  He drained the second cup of tea, surprisingly calm in the face of such unreal figures. He was fairly sure he was being low-balled. According to Aoki, Louisa had sold out the entire show at the opening party; the gallery couldn’t keep up with the demand. “Can you be more precise?”

  The minions disappeared quietly into the depths of the gallery, leaving him and Louisa alone to talk business. Louisa walked around the back of a tall white counter toward her desk. Jeremy followed and sat down in a molded plywood chair across from her. From here, he could see into the main room of the gallery, pristinely restored from the party Wednesday night. In the stark light of day, without the distracting crowds, Aoki’s paintings looked even more monumental. I have the upper hand, he realized. The painting is a museum piece.

  Louisa flipped through papers on her desk, and then typed something into her laptop, frowning at the result. “More tea?” she asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  She punched some numbers into a calculator with the tip of a pen and nodded. “OK. I can offer you three-eighty.”

  The only time that Jeremy had come up against a similar figure in his life was when he’d taken out a mortgage three years before; but this was cash money, not an illusory figure that passed from bank to bank. Something fluttered disturbingly in his chest, like the first tremor of an incipient heart attack. “You can do better,” he said.

  Louisa raised her eyebrows. “Can I? That’s news to me.”

  Jeremy took a deep breath and plunged forward, resisting every impulse to just give in without a fight. It’s the least you can do for Claudia, he reminded himself. “You have paintings on the wall in the other room that you’re selling for far more than this. And you said yourself, this is better than anything else in your show. It will complete the retrospective. And I know you have collectors crawling all over your gallery right now, dying for an Aoki original; you’ll sell it in a hot minute.”

  Louisa smiled. A web of tight wrinkles crept out across her face, less mirthful than annoyed. “Tell me what you were hoping for,” she said.

  The edge of the Danish modern chair sliced into his vertebrae, and he shifted back and forth in his seat, wondering whether the uncomfortable chair was a negotiating tactic on Louisa’s part. His clothes were still damp from the rain, his jeans had pasted themselves to his shins, and his feet, encased in soggy sneakers, were freezing. “Six,” he said. “Six hundred thousand.”

  Louisa laughed. “You’re insane. The gallery needs to make a profit too.”

  “Six,” he repeated, more firmly this time.

  Louisa was silent for a long time. She leaned forward, waggling the pen between her fingers. “I can do five-seventy-five, and that’s it.”

  Jeremy smiled. “Could you wire it directly into my bank account?”

  “It’s a deal.” She offered her hand across the desk. He grasped it, feeling Louisa’s papery skin in his own firm grip. “I’ll have one of my assistants draw up the paperwork right away.”

  Jeremy stood up, still amazed by himself. He turned to look at Beautiful Boy leaning against the wall, no longer his, and waited to tear up, to feel some kind of grand remorse; but for the first time in five years it held no allure for him at all. It was just a painting. Instead, he felt freed, as if the painting had somehow hypnotized him, held him in thrall for the better part of his adult life, and he had only now managed to break its spell.

  “One more thing.” He turned back to Louisa. “Do you think one of your assistants could return the rental truck for me?”

  For Jeremy’s thirty-second birthday, two years before, his bandmates had taken him skydiving. It was one of those perfect mornings—the van drive out to Palm Springs, beers before noon, vistas across the sun-bleached San Jacinto Mountains—but when it came time to actually jump, he froze completely. He stood motionless in the open doorway of the rattling airplane, staring down at the desert plains from 14,000 feet in the air. Behind him, the instructor was awaiting his cue, and his friends were screaming into the wind—“Jump!” “Do it, you pussy!”—but all Jeremy could focus on was the patchwork of dirt and sand below and his own brains splattered across them like a Jackson Pollock painting. And then, finally, he felt Daniel’s hand on his shoulder, heard his voice tearing across his ear—“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, Jeremy, we won’t be upset”—and he closed his eyes and signaled and then somersaulted sideways out of the plane toward certain doom.

  Except, of course, that he didn’t die. He opened his eyes to see the ground racing up to meet him and at first it felt as if his body had separated entirely from his soul, a sensation of unadulterated terror but also of complete release: He had relinquished himself to gravity and there was nothing left to be done but accept his fate. And then the parachute exploded out of the pack and jerked him upright, transforming his violent descent into an idyllic drift; everything suddenly reconnected and was clear, as if the meaning of the word life really made sense for the first time. He laughed hysterically the rest of the way down, thrilled to be alive and to be safe, and it didn’t even bother him when he landed with his knee in a cactus that required a trip to the emergency room to remove the spines.

  This felt like that: a sweet, free, pure sensation of complete release. He’d sold Beautiful Boy, jumped from that plane, and now everything was going to be OK. Having unburdened himself of the painting, it would be easy to relieve himself of everything else. He was doing something radical, dangerous, intoxicating, possibly lethal—and he mostly felt elated. As he raced home in his convertible, belatedly retrieved from the gallery valet, the rain thundered across the retractable canvas roof, drowning out the radio. The city flew past as a smear of car dealerships and corporate high-rises and condominiums with views of the freeway, as he crossed town twenty miles over the speed limit.

  The part that Jeremy had not thought through, however (if he could be said to have really thought through anything at all) was how he would tell Claudia. Nor, for that matter, had he decided what he would tell her. The optimist in him—that portion of him that felt like it was floating six inches off the ground—thought she might empathize. Sure, things had been magical there, for a while—they had been really lucky to have the time they’d had—but even Claudia had to know that things weren’t great these days; she clearly wasn’t any happier than he was. He couldn’t live here anymore, trapped with a woman who could so easily sell out her principles, when there was a whole free world out there just waiting for him to explore. And clearly Claudia couldn’t live with his choices either. They were incompatible. It just hadn’t worked out, and that was that.

  Maybe Claudia would even be appreciativ
e—especially with the money he was about to give her. He would be saving her from having to direct that awful script—assuming she even understood that it was awful. So really, he was setting them both free.

  He kept one eye on the dashboard clock, thinking that maybe if he made it home before Claudia returned from work, he could just leave her a letter explaining the situation. Expressing himself articulately had never been his strong suit, not without the protective insulation of a microphone and a stage and a set of composed lyrics; it would be easier to be concise and definitive if he didn’t have to look Claudia in the face and see, reflected back at him, everything that he didn’t have in him to actually say.

  He swung up the hill toward the house at two, a good two hours before Claudia usually made it home from work: Plenty of time to pack and scribble a note. He was roughly composing the letter in his mind—Claudia, I’m going away for a while. You’re amazing and I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you, but I think we have different priorities these days—when he swung into the driveway and realized, too late, that a car was already parked there: Claudia’s Jetta, glistening in the rain. He glanced at the dashboard clock again, wondering whether his eyes had played a cruel trick on him, but no, it was only two.

  And it wasn’t until he had already turned off the ignition and was sitting there immobile in the front seat of his car, trying to suppress a full-tilt panic attack, that he had an even more horrifying realization: The rental car belonging to Ruth and Barry was parked just across the street.

  “Shit,” he said, to no one in particular.

  It was still possible to turn the car around, reverse his journey back down the hill, and pretend he had never been there, but the only person he would be kidding was himself. The occupants of the house would have seen his car pull in; even if they hadn’t, they would have at least heard it. Thus far, he had managed to convince himself that he wasn’t doing anything problematic but was merely taking the appropriate path toward securing his own future. But fleeing from his in-laws? That was irrefutably spineless.

  The rain had turned to hail. It pinged off the hood of his car, knocked insistently against the windshield, slashed at his tires. Jeremy took a long, rattling breath and got out. He splashed his way toward the front door with his hands in front of his face, fending off the pellets of ice, and let himself in his house for the last time.

  Claudia sat on the couch in the living room, staring at the spot on the wall where Beautiful Boy had recently hung. Jeremy stopped a careful ten feet away, watching her consider the void. Hail fell off his clothes onto the hardwood floor and melted there, in tiny puddles. He could hear the sound of a power drill in the other room, grinding away at drywall; the low murmur of Ruth and Barry, benignly arguing about something inconsequential. The house was overheated, and the sliding glass doors to the deck had clouded with condensation.

  Claudia refused to look at him. Somehow that didn’t make this any easier, after all.

  “You’re leaving,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It should have been a relief that she already knew, but instead those two words felt like cactus needles penetrating his skin, and he remembered suddenly how painful that trip to the emergency room had actually been.

  “Yes,” he said. It was harder to maintain his equilibrium than he’d anticipated.

  She kept gazing at the ominous square on the wall where the paint hadn’t yet faded. “Did you fuck her?”

  “No,” he said, relieved that this was technically true.

  “But you’re leaving me for her.”

  “No!” he said. Again, technically true, and certainly less cruel than admitting the alternative. Anyway, he wasn’t leaving specifically for Aoki; he was leaving for a new and improved life, one that just happened to include her. “I mean, she’s going to be where I’m going, but I’m not going for her.”

  Claudia finally turned to meet his gaze. There was something new, something hard in her face that stopped Jeremy cold. Her eyes were raw and feline, drowning in an angry expanse of hot skin. He took an unbalanced step backward. The drill in the other room whined on and off, on and off. Hail clattered against the windows, threatening to break through. “Cut the bullshit,” she said. “You owe me more than that.”

  He looked at her, trying to figure a way out of this that wouldn’t involve her hating him for the rest of his life. “I just need some time off. The last few months have been …. Look, you’re incredible, and I don’t want you to think ….” He kept getting tangled in his own words and finally just gave up. You’re leaving. It doesn’t matter what she thinks of you, he realized. He was tired of worrying about how people perceived him.

  “Look,” he said, more firmly. “For too long I’ve been living my life for everyone else around me. Now I’ve got to go live it for myself for a while.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Living your life for everyone else around you? You made all your own choices. You’re delusional.”

  He flinched. “This will be better for both of us. But I’m sorry if that hurts you.”

  “I’m sure you’re sorry,” Claudia said. “But that doesn’t make it any less of a horrible juvenile cliché.”

  “I’m a bad guy,” he admitted, and it felt good to finally settle into this fact, almost like he’d been given a hall pass.

  “You’re not a bad guy. More like … a coward. You just gave up when it turned out everything wasn’t as easy as you wanted it to be.”

  “If that’s what you need to think, go ahead,” he said, feeling magnanimous. Almost done, he thought. Just pack and go.

  She didn’t seem to appreciate this. Instead, she picked up a couch cushion and hugged it to her chest. “So are you going to tell me where the painting went?”

  The power drill ground to a halt in the other room. In its absence, the house was watchfully quiet; even the hail had subsided into a hush, as if listening in on their conversation. Jeremy lowered his voice so that Ruth and Barry wouldn’t hear. “I sold it.”

  Claudia began to laugh, a low-keening cackle. “Of course you did. You don’t need it now that you have the real thing.” She palpated the pillow under her palms, manhandling an invisible cat. “Financing your fancy new life with Aoki? You’ll be living high on the hog, now.”

  “No! It’s for you.” he said, hoping this news might somehow steer the conversation in a more promising direction. “I sold it so you could pay off the house. You’ll be free and clear. No more financial worries. You can do whatever you want.”

  Claudia flung the cushion at the empty space on the wall. It hit the plaster and thumped to the floor ineffectually. Jeremy stepped back, surprised. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said.

  He found himself offended by her lack of gratitude. “Isn’t that what you said you wanted?”

  Claudia shook her head. “God, you’re stupid.”

  He thought about defending himself, but objectively he knew this was his moment to accept blame. He was abandoning his wife. And yet he didn’t feel nearly as guilty as he knew he should. He wished he could split himself in two, be both Jeremys at once and somehow satisfy everyone. “I won’t be gone forever,” he said, keeping his voice low.

  “Right.” Claudia shrugged. “Do what you think you have to do. But you’re going to regret it.”

  Jeremy couldn’t think of anything else to say. He looked at his clothes lying in heaps across the living room floor and thought that he should start to pack, but found that his feet were rooted fixedly in place. Steam rose off his T-shirt as it dried. A thick burr scraped at the back of Jeremy’s throat; he couldn’t clear it no matter how many times he swallowed. Unexpectedly, he felt like crying; as if she were the one who was leaving him, instead of the other way around. “Don’t be like this, Claude.”

  She flapped a hand at him, waving him away. “Why don’t you just go, Jeremy. Please?”

  “Go where?” Ruth stood in the doorway, her hair white with plaster dust. The three kittens tumbled on h
er sweatshirt, giddily oblivious. “Where are you going, Jeremy?”

  Jeremy looked away, out the sliding glass door, hoping that someone else might answer this question so he wouldn’t have to. Condensation dripped down the inside of the glass. He watched a drop gather, swell, and dart erratically down toward the casement, leaving a clear snail trail in its wake. Another one gathered in its place. No one said anything for him.

  “Nowhere special,” he said, finally.

  “Oh.” Ruth ran her fingers through her hair, sending a shower of dust dandruff over the frolicking kittens. “Well, do you want some microwave popcorn then? Your father and I were feelish snackish.”

  “He’s running off with another woman, Mother,” Claudia said. “He doesn’t want any popcorn.”

  “That’s not funny, sweetie.” Smiling starchily, Ruth turned to scrutinize Jeremy, and then Claudia, and then Jeremy again, her face collapsing further with each swivel. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

  And then Barry was in the room too, still holding the power drill. “I think we need to pick up a new power pack if anyone wants to make another run to Home Depot with me,” Barry began, and then stopped, as it dawned on him that something was amiss. “What’s going on in here?” he demanded.

  Six eyes fixed on Jeremy, waiting for him to begin his performance. He realized that he was standing on stage; the smallest yet most important stage of all. For the first time in his life, this was not a pleasant feeling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I’m just going to go now.”