Fake Like Me

by Barbara Bourland

  I would drift off like that, then blink back to discover paint pooling onto the canvas from where I’d paused mid-stroke. My daydreams became impossible to avoid.

  Eventually I stopped working and scoured the studio, looking at every forgotten tool, in the kilns, in every cabinet, but there was nothing: no film canisters, no CDs or DVDs, no USB drives, nothing. I even checked the shoe boxes of terrible drawings again, going through all of them this time instead of just two. All I found in the three remaining boxes were more drawings and two pieces of clothing.

  There was a vintage white dress, an embroidered white sheath with a low neck and fitted drape, wrapped carefully in tissue paper and encased in a plastic bag. It was the kind of thing that Carey would have worn. It looked to be about my size, and I tried it on, wiggling out of my shorts in the middle of the hayloft. It fit almost perfectly, though it was a little tight under the arms and long at the knee. Folded beneath it was a rolled cloth coat, printed with a leopard pattern and lined in peach silk. It slid over the dress like they were made for each other, the hemlines matching exactly.

  The other boxes held more of Maria’s cartoonish, juvenile drawings—some signed Maria Clarke, some signed Maria Frances Clarke—and when I found an unlabeled portrait of Carey, drawn from life, recognizable but still repulsively terrible, it occurred to me that Maria Frances Clarke was probably the MFC who had once carved her initials over the shelf in my closet.

  There were scenes of small-town life, with WAPPINGERS FALLS, Carey’s hometown, written on the back, and a house with CLARKE written on the mailbox. The house was a one-story rathole with vinyl siding and a rusted-out Toyota Camry parked in the driveway. My mother’s house often looked the same way. It made me shiver, the similarity of it all, the repetitive nature of small-town alcoholic poverty. I pawed through them, and after a while had to put them down. The drawings grew worse, revolting, even, with each page, and I boxed them back up. They reminded me of Portfolio Day, the alumni duty where we gathered in a high school gym and examined the work of would-be Academy hopefuls, which I thought of as the saddest day of the year.

  I tried to situate Maria in Carey’s life. Same town, so…Maria was probably a friend of Carey’s from high school, someone to whom Carey wouldn’t have been able to say no.

  I pictured the toddler from the family in the photographs, all grown up, twentyish, maybe, beautiful, arriving at Pine City, maybe nervous, maybe jealous, maybe thrilled. Then I saw her getting dumped, like I did, in the worst house, and working quietly on these awful drawings while Carey realistically reproduced a human corpse like a magician. I pictured Carey helping her pick out this dress for the summer party.

  Someone who made work like this would have found it impossible to talk to any member of Pine City about anything except the weather and traffic. She must have felt so lonely—and unwanted. I pictured her carving her name into the wall before she left, still the outsider, the two of them—Carey and Maria—split at the seams, enough to leave her drawings behind, to fold the dress up in tissue paper so politely that Carey couldn’t bear to look at it. I felt sudden, tremendous pity.

  And—dread.

  I didn’t want to be a Maria.

  I was a Carey.

  No—I was better than Carey. I wasn’t going to give up.

  I took the dress and the jacket, tossed them in my truck, shoved the boxes to the side, and returned to my paintings.

  * * *

  The next night, when I returned to my bungalow for dinner, the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey.” It was Tyler. His voice wavered slightly.

  “Oh. Hi,” I said nervously, curling the cord around my fingers. “What’s up?”

  “I’m—I’m sorry I left so abruptly,” he said right away. “Things got crazy with the install. I had to catch a ride over on somebody’s plane because of some customs bullshit, which meant I had to go to the city earlier, then I had to come back with her, blah blah, anyway, you were working and I didn’t want to disrupt you.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, in a way that I hoped could be described as blithe. I’d been to art fairs overseas, too—back when I had money for hotels and travel, when I had a mailbox where invitations rendered in invisible ink or disguised as prescription pill bottles could be delivered. When I had a passport that wasn’t blank. “I’m working, anyway.”

  “Fifty days, right?”

  “Nearly. Nineteen to paint.”

  “Can I bring you anything?”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, maybe Friday night.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll see you when you get back,” I said noncommittally.

  “You sound like you’re in it. Are you done for the day?”

  “No. I was only home for dinner. I have to go back, though.”

  “All right. See you soon. If I’m in the studio, knock, okay?” An invitation. He was trying to close the gap between us.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “See you soon.”

  * * *

  Two nights later, Tyler’s station wagon was parked in his carport. His house was dark. Down the road, narrow lines of light burst through the taped-up edges of his studio windows. My stomach dropped with anticipation. Nervously, I washed my face, carefully brushed my curls out into a big ’70s halo, tied my t-shirt into a knot at my waist—this one had Opus T. Penguin on it—then marched over to Sports and knocked loudly.

  “Two minutes,” he yelled. I leaned up against the wall and bent one heel to it, staring out at the sunset on the water while I waited, and there in those high wooden heels I felt young again. Then, a stab of panic. With a mere seventeen days left to paint, I shouldn’t have left the studio for anything. But I was vibrating with stress—for good reason. I was making progress. The days were long. I need to take care of myself, I told the panic. I need to have some fun.

  I heard the hiss of hot metal colliding with cold water, of steel clattering against concrete, and then the lock turned and Tyler poked his head out of the studio. He wore a heavy waxed apron and thick leather gloves that went up past his elbows.

  “You look like summertime,” he said, raising his face shield, grinning. “Come on in.” He didn’t hug me hello, though for a moment it seemed like we should, but then he lowered his eyes to the ground and turned abruptly.

  The studio was exactly as he’d described it, a gymnasium-turned-brass-foundry, the wooden floor ripped away to leave a concrete surface, mostly covered in metalworking grids, different sizes of autoclaves (small round ovens used to heat metal), and an electroforming bath. There was a walk-in refrigerator, humming away, and several chest freezers. The back wall was lined with an enormous forge; the sides were lined with machines. I could identify a CNC router, a 3-D printer, and a table saw. A row of lockers to the right were all heavily padlocked.

  “Is that where you store all the body parts?” I teased.

  “I’ll never tell.” He winked and pulled his faceplate up and off, the halo of it moving his sweaty hair over and back. “Yes. And in here.” He yanked open the door of the walk-in refrigerator and motioned for me to look inside.

  There were shiny, blood-red torsos, lungs, hearts, kidneys, livers, stomachs, intestines; feet, hands, heads, and legs. At first—they nearly looked like bodies with the skin ripped off—until I reached out and touched one. It was smooth and solid.

  “They’re extra wax positives,” he clarified. “Outside, they’d melt.”

  I picked up a man’s head and held it in my hands. “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s me,” he said, letting his face go slack. “Can’t you see?”

  “It doesn’t look like you at all,” I marveled. Only the shape of his nose was obvious. The rest looked like it belonged to a stranger.

  “I know. It never does,” he said. One of the hands on the top shelf stretched toward me in a handshake, and I realized that it was the hand from the Eliot House library door.

  “These were Carey’s,” I said without
thinking, reaching for it. But it was too high for me to grasp. I glanced around, checking for film canisters. There were only shining red bodies.

  “Uh…yeah,” he said, surprised. “How’d you, uh, know that?”

  “They’re the hands in Max’s house.”

  “Oh—of course. Yes. Only the organs are mine.” He turned abruptly and ushered me back into the studio. I brushed past him. Our shoulders touched, and once again I felt a liquid blush travel from the center of my body to the ends of my fingers and toes.

  “I thought you sold the real organs, covered in metal—not copies.”

  “I do. I still make a mold first. They don’t all survive the process.”

  He moved a propane torch to the side and set his gloves in front of an empty ceramic crucible.

  “Careful. It’s still hot,” he said, gesturing to the crucible.

  “It’s empty,” I noticed. “What did you make?”

  He pointed to a long sand mold, running the whole back of the table where molten aluminum shimmered like mercury in a long, skinny line, five or six feet of it. I peered at it but didn’t understand.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a brush. Well, it’s a brush-holder, like a cigarette holder. When I was in Vilnius, we visited a studio outside of town where they were painting the sets for an opera at Bregenz. They stood above the fabric and used these long sticks with brushes on the end. I don’t know if you’ll use it, but I wanted to make it. It’s a rod, essentially. Lightweight. And I put your name on the end.”

  “Thank—thank you.” I stammered. “That—that’s incredibly kind of you.”

  He leaned, pointing at the end of it, grazing the edge of my arm.

  “It’s on the bottom side of the mold. It should be okay to take out tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” I said, one more time. He glanced at me over his shoulder, and I smiled, wondering, in the back of my mind, if he had done this for Carey.

  “It’s nothing. I like to make stuff,” he said with a shrug. Nervously, he cleared a stack of metal scraps from a chair and gestured for me to sit. I looked down at it and frowned, then hopped up onto a clear spot on the opposite workbench. Sitting like this I was tall, almost even with him.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “Work,” I replied. “Only work.”

  “I felt badly, leaving you.” He looked at me—and I looked back. The air grew thick between us, humid and dense in the way that a car window fogs up if you sit and talk for too long after killing the engine.

  “You missed me,” I tried to joke, my words tripping over each other again.

  “I missed you,” he admitted after a moment.

  The drop of sweat rolled down the side of his temple, down his jaw, and without planning it—I reached for it. When my fingertip hit his jaw, he held still against my hand.

  He wanted to touch me, and I wanted the same—I wanted to give him something of myself—and so neither of us looked away or broke the spell, and then—we kissed—I kissed him—he kissed me back—that round pout of his mouth landing on mine. I pulled him to me, collapsed into him, felt my body wrap inevitably around his, and I didn’t wonder for a single second whether or not it was a good idea, because we were really kissing, kissing, the endless kind of kissing. Long, searching kisses, kisses that exist as an end unto themselves, kisses that are as alive and as intimate as anything else you could do with two bodies, kisses that are as real a conversation as the first time you stay up all night talking.

  He ran his hand up my bare leg, all the way to the ragged hem of my shorts. Then he flattened his palm, wrapped his fingers around me, and squeezed. His nails left half-moon dents in the fat of my thigh, white bites haloed in red that bloomed and faded.

  I never wanted that feeling to end—not then and not ever.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Someone honked. Once, twice, I don’t know how many times. Soon they were laying into the horn, and the sound separated us. Tyler wrenched open the studio door. I remained on the bench, out of sight of whoever was behind the wheel.

  “Shark. I’m in the middle of something,” he snapped.

  “SO AM I!” she snapped back, insistent. “You promised!”

  “Oh. Right. Five minutes,” he said, tilting his head, raising one hand in apology. “I’ll see you in the studio.” He shut the door and returned to my embrace, his mouth back on mine. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I promised Marlin I’d help her tonight. We have to fix her monotype machine.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, palm flying to my chin. I could tell it was turning red and raw already. “We should probably take a break. I don’t have a callus for you,” I said, tracing the edges of his stubble.

  “Don’t worry.” He laughed, pushing his cheek against mine, burying his face in my neck. “You’ll grow one.” He put a finger on my chin. I opened my mouth and bit it.

  “You’re going to ruin me,” he said, and then we were wrapped up again, for thirty long seconds, before he extricated himself.

  “Ahem,” he said, taking both my hands and helping me down from the bench. “To be continued.”

  “I need my shirt.” It had flown somewhere, but in the piles of metal and debris it was totally camouflaged. Tyler found it snagged on the edge of the table saw, a ragged hole cut into the shoulder. I pulled it on, inside out like he always did, and he grabbed my hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

  * * *

  Marlin stood over an ancient monotype machine, greasy rods and screws in hand. The heaviest parts lay on the floor, alongside wooden trays of type and neat piles of grommets and bolts.

  “I think I’m breaking it,” she said, frowning.

  “We’ll fix it,” Tyler assured her. “We always fix it. We always fix everything.”

  “I think…that one,” I said, pulling a short rod from her hand, “goes here.” I slid it into a narrow hole and screwed it into place.

  We spent the next hour passing pieces back and forth, trying to reassemble the mechanisms that would hold its heavy weight, swearing and laughing at our constant failures until everything was where it was supposed to be. When we were finished, Marlin arranged a series of letters into a block, poured liquid gold into a sponge, and smeared the surface. Then she inserted a heavy black card stock and pulled the lever.

  The machine pumped and pressed, forcing the letters into the paper. In carefully spaced sections, it printed TYLER SAVAGE, MARLIN MAYFIELD, JES WINSOME, JACK WELLS, CAREY LOGAN, TOM HEALY, ANELE MUIR, KERRY BEE, JEANNE PETIT, LENA ADDARIO, RACHAEL KRIEGER, MAX DE LACY, and DAVID BIRD.

  She took the paper and sliced it on a cutter, the long knife raising and lowering, raising and lowering, until there were thirteen cards with a name on one side, the other blank. She folded them into place cards.

  “There,” she said, stacking them into a V-shaped mountain. “For tomorrow.”

  When she folded the one with Carey’s name, Tyler plucked it from her hands.

  “You printed the wrong name.” His voice was low—affectless.

  Marlin turned a peculiar shade of gray.

  The paper turned over in his hands. It was so quiet that you could hear the rasp of his fingers across the fibers of it as he smeared the ink with his thumb. Then he set the paper carefully on the table and looked at Marlin like she had deliberately broken something precious: hurt, anger, betrayal.

  “Oh—” she replied unsteadily, soggy with guilt. “I—old habits.” She took the place card from the table and threw it in the trash. “I’m sorry. I’ll make a fresh one.” She turned to the machine and I could see that she was about to cry.

  Tyler turned on his heels and walked to the door.

  “I’m beat,” he said, in that same low voice. “See you tomorrow.”

  And with that, he left Marlin and me alone with each other in the studio.

  * * *

  Marlin’s shoulders trembled and t
witched as she arranged the letters for my name. I poured the gold on the sponge and handed it to her, along with a fresh piece of black card stock.

  “Thank you,” she said, falling to a whisper. “I keep forgetting she’s not here.”

  “That’s probably…normal.”

  “I want to,” she said delicately. “I—I can’t.” A tear rolled over her freckles and plopped on the machine. I nearly reached out and hugged her. She breathed in, sucking the air to the bottom of her chest, and pulled the lever—and in doing so, pulled herself back together. Then she wiped her hands against her white overalls, cut and stamped my place card, and stacked it atop the others. “There,” she said. “Count these done.”

  “What are they for?” I asked.

  “Oh. It’s the summer dinner tomorrow,” she said. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone’s coming,” she said, eyes angling downward, becoming commas. “It was supposed to be fun this time. I’m completely messing it up. Carey used to take care of everything. We did what we were told.”

  “It’ll still be fun,” I said, trying to console her.

  “It’s never been fun,” she muttered. “Why start now?”

  “What do you mean?” I pressed.

  “Sometimes I don’t think we even like each other anymore,” she said, stacking paper restlessly, moving it across the room for no reason. “He’s still so angry about it all,” she finished desperately, the sound coming out in a pressured rush, like she was a bellows—and then she clapped her hands over her mouth. From the look on her face, she wanted to claw the words out of the air and take them back.

  “That’s okay,” I tried. “People can be angry. He’s allowed to be angry.” I looked up at her freckled face.

  She sniffled and squeezed my arm. “I know,” she said. “Thank you.” She wiped her eyes and laughed at herself. “I’m such a mess,” she said. “You must think I’m such a mess.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said to her. “I think you’re all still recovering from a tragedy.”