He feels plenty of shame, but no desire to salvage their relationship. Distance confirmed his feelings there. The thought of seeing her, of dealing with her, exhausts his already tired mind. As he approaches the side gate leading to the upstairs apartments, Lucien realizes that he doesn’t have his key. He checks the back pocket of his jeans just to be sure.
He takes a deep breath as he turns toward Astral Bodies. At this late afternoon hour, the café is nearly empty, save a few people still working, or pretending to, with ceramic mugs and glass jars of juice lined up beside them. Only Liv looks up. Her cheeks flush before she remembers to smile. She can’t hide that she’s excited to see him, but Lucien sees the hurt he imagined immediately confirmed. It’s unspoken in her reserve.
He approaches her anyway, leans in for a hug, and whispers in her ear while he’s close.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m so sorry, thank you.”
She’s teary when their eyes meet again.
“You don’t have to.”
Lucien nods to say, I do.
“I’m really sorry, too,” she says. “About your grandmother.”
Lucien’s mind plays catch-up, searching for knowledge of something that simply isn’t there. It’s been wiped from him, along with the rest. He feels light-headed, panicky. “My grandmother, because she’s…”
“She—passed,” Liv says, like there might be a better word but she can’t think of it. “I’m so sorry, did they not tell you? You knew. Before. You told me, on the way.”
He braces for the blow that doesn’t come. Strangely, it doesn’t hit like he expects, or at least it doesn’t feel fresh. Should he be crying? Is he? Maybe one can only process grief once. And after that it feels far away. He tries to remember if this is why he used her Mem, and when. Would that make it any better, if she was already gone?
“Right, no, of course. I’m all back up-to-date.”
The words hardly make sense as they leave his mouth; he’s never been a good liar.
Lucien wonders what else has been left out, what other trauma pulled. Liv looks at him curiously, and he wonders what she’s noticing. What he might be showing her without knowing. He feels a bit like an experiment. And he recognizes a familiar feeling of wanting to disappear.
“I stopped by her house while you were gone,” Liv says, and he remembers the way she sometimes just speaks to fill the silence, a most generous act. “To see what they needed. To tell them you were away, at the very least. But it was dark.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I hadn’t realized—is that why…”
She doesn’t finish the thought, but Lucien can’t, either.
“I honestly don’t remember much,” he says, because it sounds more normal than to say he’s been cleared of it completely.
“Did you just get out?”
“Today. Is my apartment—”
“Yes, of course. It’s all the same, as you left it. Tidied up a bit, maybe.”
“I’m sorry, I must’ve missed rent.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
This used to be a joke between them, once he realized she was his landlord. Trading sexual favors and so on. Eviction notices. Though when it came time for the rent he left a check in an envelope at the café when she wasn’t looking. Now this formal, tender exchange is tinged with sadness, and he wonders if she’s thinking the same.
“Do you think you’ll move into your grandmother’s, then?”
Lucien is struck by her assumption that he won’t stay here. Moreover, at how cleanly she says it. As if the conversation he thinks they’re having now was decided long ago.
“I guess, that probably makes sense. So long as it’s even mine.”
“Well, you’re welcome upstairs as long as you need.”
I’m sorry, he wants to say again. To wipe the look from her eyes, but he knows he can’t. He doesn’t entirely know what he’s sorry for.
“By the way, your art dealer kept calling. It seemed urgent. If you speak with her—”
“You talked to Natasha?”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” Liv says. “Just that you were busy. You had gone really deep into your new work. You were taking some time to disconnect, to take it further, I guess.”
She smiles briefly, conspiratorial delight bubbling up and then disappearing as quickly.
“You didn’t have to,” he says. “To lie for me, I mean.”
“It was nothing.”
“Hey,” he says, and Liv leans closer. “Do you think you could let me in upstairs? I seem to have misplaced my key.”
“Sure, but then I have to get back.”
Lucien wants to ask her if they spoke, before the Center, and just what he did to get himself there. What he might’ve done to her, outside of himself. He imagines it cannot be as bad as his mind might make it, lacking evidence beyond the fact of his now proven stupidity.
Still it seems kinder not to ask.
It seems kinder because he knows, standing there with her on the threshold of his apartment, how tempting it is to go in close, to smell her hair, to feel her body against his own. It might calm him, make him feel seen again, even if she never really understood him to begin with. Just the performance of being together tempts him. He is relieved none of this seems like an option; that’s clear from her crossed arms, the way she avoids his eyes. She has gotten over it, and over him. Maybe his using was enough to turn her off forever. The space of time that now doesn’t exist for him was likely filled with worry for her. At best, distraction. Or worse, guilt. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. He understands that she remembers everything he’s been made to forget. That forgetting is a luxury, and also a curse.
“How was it?” she says at last.
He isn’t sure if she’s asking about the Center or the Mem itself, but he can’t remember either. Given that she brought him in, he assumes she means the Center. He hadn’t even considered that she might feel guilty, or unsure of the decision to take him there.
“It’s kind of hard to talk about,” he says. “It was very—limited. Does that make sense?”
“Damn it, Lucien,” Liv says. She looks newly enraged, betrayed. “I stopped by, to drop off your phone. I saw you.”
“You did?”
“That’s it?” she says. “Break my heart, but at least do it to my face.”
“I’m sorry, honestly I don’t remember,” Lucien starts without any idea how to finish. “I don’t remember anything, really. I know that’s not what you deserve, that I owe you—”
“The truth? Forget it. I hope you’re very happy,” she says. And then, softening, “I hope you’re better.”
Lucien is ashamed of whatever Liv witnessed that he cannot remember. Of what he may have done in this very spot, what Liv still sees in this space even as he faces her, unaware. Had he said something when she saw him at the Center? But what? He would not have been unkind. At least, he believes that. How strange, to have faith in what you cannot remember; to have no choice but to trust some consistency of self.
“Liv, thank you,” he tries again. “I know it probably means very little, but really. Thank you. I don’t take it lightly that you got me to a place that got me out of the total shit mess I made. Or what I probably put you through. I’m sorry I don’t remember it enough to—look, I wish you were the one who couldn’t remember and I did instead. I deserve to live with that.”
“I’ll see you, Lucien.”
Liv forces a smile and leaves without another word. Lucien wants to follow her, to make her forgive him, to make her happy again. He remembers her being so positive that it was frustrating. But now it’s not his place.
He walks to his bed and flops down face-first, letting the smell of his sheets—a bit musty now—fill his chest. His things spark pieces of him. He picks up the camera. He’s missed it. The way it fits in his hand, the way it feels to look through it. The way everything feels safer, and truer, behind the lens. Even what you don’t want to
see is often valuable once detached, with a little distance. Was that something he had read, or heard?
Painting and sculpture are so often bound by beauty, even if only by projection, but photography doesn’t have to be beautiful. People already seek out beauty; they are trained to see it. They turn away from the awkward, the subtle. So much is lost in plain sight. It’s oppressive, this idea of beauty all around us. Everyone captures it on their phones, with apps that make anything look perfected. But what is that saying? Maybe beauty is a trap. No more intimate than a postcard, it doesn’t engage what’s behind the camera, or what happens moments after.
Better still, who decides what’s beautiful anyway? Lucien likes capturing that which was ugly any other moment, that which contradicted. To find dignity in the obscene. To show what one might miss when they look away.
The camera still fits his hand just right, but the hard shell looks weathered. He holds it up to his eye, surveying his apartment. Mostly what he wonders is how many boxes it might take to pack it all up again.
He turns around, letting the viewfinder scroll across his emptiness, white walls and wooden floor, a few scattered clothes, until the frame fills with color. Long stretches of thick paint. Movement. The de Kooning. There it sits, just as he left it. He wouldn’t mind crying, not now, not after everything. But no tears come. He lowers the camera and fixes his eyes on it, letting the vibrant colors blur in his stare. Still no tears. Then as his focus softens, he sees something he had entirely missed. In what had appeared only a frantic mess of thick strokes, Lucien now sees an order. The coral sweep that had been so pleasantly distracting, its surrounding beige an unexpected foil, now feels pointed and intentional. Not diversion but a directive. And when Lucien crawls forward to get a better look, he notices the signature in the lower right corner for the first time.
E. de K.
All this time he assumed the “de Kooning” his mother admired so deeply was Willem’s, but this one, this masterpiece, was by Elaine.
Another brilliant, if overlooked, artist. Willem’s wife.
A wash of tenderness ripples through him, and he feels his mother for the first time in a long time. He understands now why she loved it so much. Why she had given it to her mother. He resents his own assumption. He will have the painting properly framed to protect it, he thinks, though he has no idea where to do such a thing. He doesn’t even want to know what damage may have already been done transporting it here, or from the dust it must have accumulated since his grandmother stopped taking care of herself, let alone her things. Though all that might add something to its story—pulled from obscurity, almost lost. That always seems to help in the auctions, the diamond-in-the-rough factor. No, he would have trouble ever parting with it. The unexpected combination of colors, the hidden movement. His mother would be proud. He had in fact saved a little piece of her story, undoubtedly something she treasured, which his grandmother could keep no longer.
Lucien still misses her in waves. It feels cruel to hold his grandmother’s death so lightly while still crushed under the weight of his mother’s. But Florence had become so inaccessible, so cut off, that there’s peace in imagining her returned to herself, maybe with his mother. He likes the thought of that. Even if his mother had been an adamant naturalist. Pleased to rejoin the soil that feeds the trees that shade the animals that make the world. He gets to imagine her wherever he wants; that is the only gift left to the living.
He walks over to the sink for a glass of water. When he turns the tap, a small cloud of charred paper puffs into the air, then falls back down wet.
Chapter 30 TODAY
January. A new year. Fireworks scatter the sky, doubled as they reflect across the ocean. All night Sophie’s sliver of a window lights up in different colors, pink, yellow, blue, though she cannot even hear the booms.
It is, finally, a date.
And soon after, a beginning.
* * *
Sophie leaves the Center with a handful of pills, just enough to get her through the first week on her own. Her first night in her apartment, she takes a pill before bed and wakes up feeling remarkably normal in the morning. Whatever “normal” means now. She half expects to get dressed for rehearsal or drive to her shift at Chateau Marmont. But then she sees the pill bottle, the discharge paper folded beside it. She notices her house plants, brown and wilted, across the room.
Sophie gathers the mail that has piled up and starts to make her way through the endless catalogs and bills and credit card offers. For the first time in available memory, she has absolutely nothing to do. And for the moment, she relishes the total lack of structure. No control. She sits on the floor, resting her back against the metal bed frame. She has never felt this untethered, and it is not as bad as she feared. She has barely enough in her bank account to cover rent, and if any surprises come up, she will have to move. Home to Minneapolis, maybe. There is some relief in facing that potential defeat.
Hidden among the other envelopes with their plastic address windows is a single folded piece of paper. Thick, fancy stationery. Chateau room stationery.
Sophie,
Haven’t seen you around. Checking to see that you’re good. That we’re good. No hard feelings.
—RD
Is he serious? Of course Ray Delaney thinks this is about him. And on Chateau fucking stationery? Sophie crumples it and gets up to run a bath.
As the water fills the tub, Sophie holds her hand under the tap. She has no shower gel, but squeezes some shampoo into the water, just enough for it to bubble. She missed the smell of her things—the sweet almond of her shampoo, the fresh scent of detergent on her towels. She looks at herself in the vanity mirror, checking her now untamed eyebrows. She went so long without seeing herself that she almost forgot. Her finger rests on the scar that now interrupts one brow, just past the arch. The thin line—skin, also hers—is smooth, but different. Glossy. Fixed. She looks into her own eyes, for the first time in months.
How does Ray Delaney know where she lives?
She scans her memory for some trace of their last interaction, but all she comes up with are the many that end like before. Him disgusting, her disgusted, but with no conflict for him to check up on. Nothing he ever seemed to notice, anyway. Ray Delaney was too busy pushing Mem on the young starlets of this city to ever apologize for his behavior.
How does he know where she lives?
Her hands tremble. And as simple or as complicated as that, she knows. She is certain.
The body remembers.
She turns off the water and sits on the tile floor. Sophie had been wrung out over and over, a hostage in her own mind, terrorized in her skin, and for what? Because she had rejected him? Because he couldn’t reach her, have her, control her?
Who would believe her? She can hardly breathe. She grabs the pill bottle. Anything to calm her down. To reset her. She shakes out a single pill. They said this might happen. Too much too soon.
Everything she worked for, taken by this man. Her life had value, purpose. And he had the audacity to think a note, slipped under her door, would be enough? As if this passing thought carried enough weight to undo its wrong. He didn’t even apologize, but why would he, in writing? He has no idea the pain he caused her. The torment she survived.
All those times Sophie swallowed her words around him, covered her disgust with a smile, and for what? She has no job waiting at the Chateau Marmont, she has no lead in La Sylphide. How many lives has he casually ruined? He should feel the pain she felt.
Now she has no reason not to—to what?
To make him see.
She clutches the bottle. These pills are clean. Finally they show no trace of the consciousness he put inside her. The poison. Hers will not show him the curse he let into her blood. But there is another kind of punishment. The pills contain her recent memories, rehearsals and waiting tables; she had purposely asked for those reminders of a time when she felt direction; when she felt cohesive and with a singular dream. In thos
e same pills, Ray Delaney would have to catch a glimpse of himself in the other waiters’ shared aversion, their utter loathing. In how they banded together, rolling their eyes when he flagged her down. The revulsion when he touched her hand. The way he made Sophie feel unsafe in her own skin. He would feel her disgust, his own.
She looks at the pill still in her palm. A pill to make him understand.
Finally he would suffer at his own hand. Reconcile the man who he is so proudly, unabashedly, with the one she knows. Whose very gaze is like a curse. One moment behind her eyes would be enough to make him see. But she will give him more.
She rotates the tiny orb between her fingers, shining neon green into orange, then yellow and purple, and green again. How beautiful, she thinks, the way everything comes back around.
* * *
Sophie pulls into the staff parking area behind the Chateau Marmont. She waves to the attendant and smiles, just as she used to. He nods and lifts his hand to his brow, just as he used to. The buzz inside the lobby is unchanged; everything appears to be exactly the same without her. Conversations scatter the chic, worn furniture and overlapping vintage rugs. Ankles are tucked upon velvet settees, tea service trays rest on rattan ottomans. Copper mugs and martini glasses glimmer in the candlelight.
Sophie feels calm, purposeful. She walks past the hostess toward the twinkling courtyard. She is almost invisible, no one questioning her. No one acknowledging her. Everyone must assume she is in for work, though not yet in uniform. For how concerned Sophie had been over what her coworkers thought of her, no one seems to notice that she’s been gone.
The Shimmering State Page 30