The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  You can tell a lot about a person by the way they react to art in conversation. One doesn’t have to be an expert, or in the art world at all, to be curious. Open. Unafraid. But some people react with such aversion. Defensive before they can be embarrassed.

  “He’s a photographer,” Liv says. “He makes these incredible collages with fractured faces—exploring perspective and race and privilege. I’m sorry, am I embarrassing you? You don’t look well.”

  Liv holds a hand up to Lucien’s face and he takes it in his hand instead, giving her a squeeze. She needs him to be this, for some reason he doesn’t quite see yet. Maybe there’s an ex here, wandering about. Maybe standing right in front of them. Whatever it is, he won’t be taken care of by her, or patronized.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “But I’m actually not sure which work you’re talking about?”

  “Oh,” she says, embarrassed. “The one with lots of faces, or parts of a whole person, sort of pieced together.”

  Lucien contains a laugh. For one of his final projects in art school, he asked everyone in his MFA to take a photo of their favorite body part, which he then cut together to form some master compilation. The truth was, he’d been turned onto Kenneth Josephson’s and David Hockney’s photo collages earlier that year, and he hoped his mash-up would reveal some supremely modern image, crossing ethnicity, age, and gender. What it actually showed was just how homogenous their class was, the collective image looking a lot like this girl named Megan from Wisconsin.

  Lucien wants to say a million things about how that piece doesn’t represent him at all, how it was a momentary trying on of other artists’ styles, but he cannot bring himself to embarrass Liv like that. Instead he stands in silence.

  “What’s it like in photography these days?” Harry says. “Gotta be brutal, eh?”

  “Harry!” Liv says.

  “No, I’m really curious—I think about this often. You know, I collect, so I try to stay informed. It just seems like that market has got to be hard. Everyone thinks they’re a photographer now, with their iPhones and Instagram filters. How do you survive, man?”

  Lucien is used to this question; in fact, he remembers now it’s one of the reasons he avoids cocktail parties with those not in the arts but who like to feel hip. Allies of the arts, which usually means through money not heart.

  “Lucien’s work is incredibly distinct and reworked,” Liv says shamelessly. “It’s nothing like what you could do on some app.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lucien says. “I think there’s an app for everything these days.”

  “Ha, I like this guy.”

  “Honestly, I think it’s great,” Lucien says. “Technology has introduced so many people to photography and made art lovers out of amateurs. I think that’s never a bad thing; and also I don’t have a choice, right? There’s no going back.”

  “But I mean, it’s gotta be frustrating,” says Harry. “To see people think they can do this thing just because—look, you must’ve spent a lot of hours in the darkroom, just to…”

  “Hey, everyone can buy paint and fill in lines they trace on a canvas, right? You don’t see painters out there trying to keep people from art stores. Do you think Rothko sales suffer because you could copy his work and hang it in your home?”

  “I think it’s different with a physical object,” Harry says. “A painting is singular.”

  “Photography can be singular. If an image is manipulated during or after developing, it truly is. And if I were worried about someone taking the same photograph as me, I wouldn’t be much of an artist.”

  “I just have to think, with these cameras today, even our phones.”

  “I don’t work for National Geographic. A better camera doesn’t make a better artist,” Lucien says. “It’s an extension of the eye. A way of seeing. The film and photograph are tactile, like oils and canvas for the painter, or steel and clay for a sculptor. Everything is in play. Calder for example constructed mobiles, but the goal was to paint in shadows, to take painting off of the canvas.”

  “Ah, I love Calder,” says Harry, as he would.

  “Do you like Baldessari?” Lucien feels powerful for the first time in a long time and wants to crush Harry’s misplaced confidence. “If you did you’d know one can be an artist simply by repositioning past works of art to create something new based on their own structure, scale, and context. Photography has always been more than a finger on the shutter.”

  Liv puts her hand on Lucien’s chest and he feels it again, her claim. She is so far from the person who lay beside him in bed that morning. Her grip now makes him want to run. He wants to keep talking, but stops himself. He has never felt the need to show off or put someone in their place quite like this; in fact, the role he just stepped into frightens him.

  Harry looks just as energized as Lucien, like all he really wanted was exactly this. A heated exchange. “I told you,” he says, “I’m no art person. I just know what I like.”

  “Lucien’s mother was Isabel Bennett,” Liv blurts out, as if under the pretense of excusing his attitude, but suddenly Lucien gets it. The parading, the awkward insertions. He imagines his face looking back at her, hollowed. Was. Isn’t she still his mother, even if she’s gone?

  “Huh, nice,” Harry says, pushing his chin out a little.

  Was it worth it, for that? Lucien’s mother used for a fucking chin-push. A check mark next to his name. Any comfort he felt with Liv earlier turns rotten inside him.

  “I’m gonna get some air,” he says to no one in particular, and catches Liv shrugging at Harry as he pushes past them to the door.

  Which side of Liv is the real one, he wonders. At some point, does it even matter? Outside, the same actress Lucien recognized earlier is smoking alone beside a sky-high cactus. She stands turned away from the party, and her knee-high suede boots and short crochet dress look silly away from the crowd.

  Her hand trembles as she takes a long pull, eyes closed, then holds the smoke. When she opens her eyes and sees Lucien, she shakes her head and apologizes, revealing an Australian accent. She extends her thin arm with the hand-rolled joint in hand.

  “Thanks,” he says, then inhales. “Lucien.”

  “Ruby.”

  “Party not your speed?” he asks, letting out as little breath as possible.

  Ruby tilts her head, poised to answer, but glances past him. Or maybe those are just her eyes, distant-looking. Then hands squeeze Lucien’s shoulders from behind. He coughs, startled, and passes back the joint as he turns.

  “I’m such an idiot,” Liv says. “I completely forgot I was supposed to go to this thing with Sophie tonight back on the other side of town. Thank god for calendar alerts, right? Our friend is hosting a sound bath. Do you know the band Envoys? Anyway, he’s taking a break from touring to do these transcendental music experiences.”

  “I love that band,” says Ruby. “Envoys.”

  Liv ignores her. She slides her hands farther down Lucien’s chest, letting her head dangle over his shoulder. Something she’s never done before. Lucien looks at Ruby apologetically. She smiles back.

  “What time are you supposed to meet?” Lucien asks.

  Ruby extends the joint in Liv’s direction, but Liv shakes her head. Lucien peels off one of Liv’s hands from his shoulder and leans in to take another hit. The smoke dulls something he is feeling. The earthy musk calms him. He finally feels like staying.

  “Forget it, I’ll barely make it with the traffic leaving the beach, plus I have to go up to Echo Park first to drop you,” Liv says. “Maybe I should wait until traffic calms down and be a little late. Sophie’s always late.”

  The idea of traffic dictating plans or how to live is something Lucien cannot get used to. Talking extensively about traffic is even worse, and he resents it for interrupting his buzz.

  “I’ll just find a ride to mine from wherever you’re going.”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Liv says, leaning into him. “Thanks, ba
be.”

  Ruby looks away.

  Liv has never called him babe; here she is, trying it on for size. Again Lucien finds himself doing the things he knows Liv wants and then resenting how happy they make her. He wants to insist that really it’s nothing, he just doesn’t want her going out of her way for him. Downtown is clearly on his way home. And what’s the alternative, staying at this party on the Westside alone?

  “Okay, well let’s just go in and say our goodbyes, then.”

  “You go,” he says, waving a hand; he smells like smoke. “I’ll wait here.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Within moments Liv is hugging everyone in the kitchen, playfully slapping their shoulders when they obviously start talking about him, even gesturing toward the glass. Liv looks ecstatic and it makes Lucien feel—nothing. Even annoyance would feel better than nothing. Whatever, he thinks as his mind follows the smoke up into the air.

  He looks to the actress again, hoping for one last hit, but she is reclined on a deck chair, passed out. In her open hand and across her thigh is the shimmer off a mermaid, and Lucien thinks how good this weed must be.

  * * *

  The sound bath is being held in an art deco office building on what might otherwise be a deserted block downtown. There’s a small encampment directly across the street, and two young men with sharp cheekbones pace back and forth at the intersection, shouting at everyone passing by. Car horns blare until, one by one, each driver sees the cause of their holdup.

  A steady stream of people hurry past. These people all look exactly as Lucien would have imagined, trying to be so different that they end up the same. Perfectly curated bohemians who all arrive separately in their own cars and fade into one discerning yet completely indistinguishable pack. Los Angeles, a city of extras.

  Lucien stops, letting people pass them.

  “Are you okay?” Liv asks.

  “It’s like everyone has been perfectly cast,” he says, amused. Or maybe he’s just high. “Have you ever noticed that? I keep noticing that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno, look around—everyone looks… exactly right.”

  He laughs. Liv laughs, too.

  “Isn’t it great?”

  Before he can respond, Liv pushes ahead, taking his hand.

  The building’s exterior hints at grandeur from another era in the soaring details of its higher stories, while its current ground-level storefront announces a closeout sale on bright boxy signs. Once through the revolving door, they stop beside the bronze-detailed elevator, and Liv clutches her phone again. Lucien wants to tell her that watching the screen won’t make Sophie text any sooner, especially if she’s driving. Though he’s also grateful for the break in her attention, and the chance to admire the space even as everyone else rushes through.

  What aspiration, he thinks, to cover ceilings with ornately carved tin; to suspend chandeliers of thinly carved marble and gold; to expect people to look up. Such high hopes the architects of the 1920s had for us. Not just for Los Angeles, but for humanity, and yes, he is definitely still a bit high. But those architects probably assumed people would appreciate such craftsmanship in the future, instead of being drawn to the square plastic shapes of our phones and computers, kitchens and lives. Instead of “smart” buildings, soon capable of outthinking us. How could they have foreseen the desire to become passive in our own lives? Or the shift from showcasing skill not in ornate details but in lack thereof. He thinks back to the coffee shop they stopped in on their way to the Westside, which looked like an Apple Store with its light, stripped-down appearance and hidden appliances. How unremarkable our lives now might look to the designers of the past, all glass and transparency, design slowly becoming valued for being invisible, less decorated than optimized. He remembers the nooks in their house in Prospect Heights, the details that made it home, and entirely unfashionable. He hopes they still remain, but maybe not. Even their old stove there had charm, its colorful orange enamel.

  “Still nothing!” says Liv, waving her phone. “How the hell do you just not respond?”

  Lucien looks past her to the golden olive branches carved in the elevator door. He follows the curved lines of the Grecian man with his sword thrust into a coiling snake. Everyone sounds exactly the same, their mouths moving all at once, as they fill the elevator car. No doubt this massive building would be empty if not for the ironic choice of their weekend sound bath. Though the floor directory on the wall reads like a tally of emerging fashion brands, maybe they found these studio and storage spaces because no one else wants them.

  Lucien’s mother lamented how Los Angeles is full of architectural treasures, but many are either buried underground in a Metro no one takes, or forgotten in similarly neglected downtown buildings. The rest, hidden in the exclusivity of wealth, are set in the hills. Treasured for being kept private. The city’s relationship to architecture was like an inside joke, with some of the finest restaurants tucked into concrete strip malls, between ubiquitous donut shops and smoke stores. Or in brand-new, soulless shopping malls. Even the more instructive storefronts become misleading, in this city where you might find a five-star French-Filipino restaurant in the converted A-frame of an abandoned pancake house. Layers upon layers of kitsch and self-reflection, all of which seem to be lost on much of the population. Perhaps a city so accustomed to sets, to facades, his mother would say, is simply indifferent to depth.

  With each elevator car that fills and rises, Liv looks increasingly distraught. She is clearly tallying the remaining mat spots upstairs, fewer and fewer, and he cannot watch any longer. He doesn’t want to be here for whatever confrontation might come when her friend does arrive.

  “Hey, I’m gonna call a Drivr.”

  “What? Are you sure? You could stay for the sound bath, or at least to meet Leif!”

  “Another time, I’m suddenly feeling a bit nauseous,” he lies. “I probably shouldn’t be out, in case it’s something.”

  “Really? Well then, I can drive you back, I—”

  “No, you should stay. I’m sure it’s just from all the time in the car today. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, well—I left some magnesium and a collagen probiotic in your kitchen. You should take them! They work wonders.”

  She kisses him on the forehead and squeezes his hand. Then looks back to her phone. Lucien cannot imagine when she could have left those, or whether they were for him or for her, the equivalent of a toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, but he tries not to let his mind go there. Not while he’s standing beside her, about to get away.

  Chapter 19 BEFORE

  Sophie’s alarm filters in slowly. Its relentless ringing is a pinhole of light piercing her consciousness. She must have finally fallen back asleep. She feels her body against the mattress, the comforter against her cheek. Her right arm tingles underneath her. She rolls onto her back and is relieved to see daylight through the blinds. For a moment, she wonders if it was just a dream. Then underneath the covers she sees the same jeans and sweater, stained with turmeric.

  The consciousness returns like a shudder. Even in the quiet of her apartment, she is not alone. She turns away, but feels a stranger inside her. This doesn’t feel like a drug, not like a substance, lingering, but rather something implanted. How much of whatever Ray Delaney slipped her could still be in her system? How long has she slept?

  Sophie hardly remembers getting home. She remembers only a blur—Ray Delaney’s smug expression as she bent to the floor. She is relieved to be still wearing her clothing; and yet, he still could have—why else would Ray Delaney have slipped her Mem? What pleasure did it bring him? She doesn’t know what to feel, or what she might feel now if he had—done what is unspeakable even in her own mind. So many ways of not saying the same thing. Had his way with her? Taken advantage of her? He had done that either way. No, say it. Rape.

  The word sends a fresh panic through her body, fear of the thing she cannot remember. Now done, would it change
anything, to know? What truth lingers in her body? Shouldn’t the body remember? But even her own feels newly strange.

  Her phone lights up on the bedside table. Notifications fill its screen. Just now, a missed call from Liv, along with texts from Jonathan, and then Willow. Oh god, did she miss work? How could she have slept for days? Where has she been? She closes her eyes and presses a hand to her forehead as another image—no, full sensation—runs through her. A body bloody and limp, distorted in her arms. Satisfaction mixed with horror.

  That I would spill the beauty from them all.

  Now she remembers drinking the remaining half bottle of wine from the refrigerator, and then all the mini bottles of liquor she keeps like souvenirs in case she has company. She hoped the alcohol might quiet the voice and its haunting visions enough for her to sleep, but all it seemed to do was relax her own inhibitions, bringing the stranger on stronger, until she found herself once more frozen, fading, falling.

  When Sophie stands, rocks inside her head, she thinks she might vomit. She stumbles toward the bathroom. Then she remembers the pain pills. After the alcohol, she had blindly shaken bottles in her medicine cabinet, one hand to her head, coaxing this stranger’s memories down with the coolness of a wet washcloth while she looked for anything to interrupt this seeming possession. Finding only supplements and vitamins and generic ibuprofen, she shook for the bottle she knew was there. The one stuffed full of large, unwieldy pills.

  She was prescribed them when she broke a toe last year. Stress fracture. She had to keep dancing with it taped up, yet she never took a single pill. She kept them anyway, as if she knew; as if somewhere this present was already in her future, even then. The only time she took them before was in high school after having her wisdom teeth removed, and they made her too nauseous to even sit up. She hates the stuff. But not just for how they make her feel. She hates them for what they’ve done to her family. Her baby brother whose social anxiety had fallen in love at the first taste, who had been prescribed them for reasons not unlike her own. Pain, short-term now long-lived.