A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing

by Jessie Tu

We raise our glasses.

  As we eat, he tells me the city’s magic is lost on him because his parents struggled in their student days here.

  ‘I’m sick of all the love letters to this place. There are more interesting cities in the world.’

  He finishes his bagel in three bites. Leans back and stares at me, his gaze trailing down my body.

  I get up to pee, leaving the bathroom door open.

  He calls out from the couch, ‘Tell me, what was it like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being so famous?’

  I flush the toilet, come out, leaving my hands unwashed.

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes you were.’

  ‘It didn’t feel that way.’

  ‘You were famous.’

  ‘I was a kid.’

  I sit down next to him.

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘I didn’t really notice all that.’

  ‘I thought you’d have loved it,’ he says.

  ‘The attention?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I pick up my glass of red wine and swirl it around, drop my head back for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know. You seem like someone who is shy, but you actually crave attention.’

  I take another sip of wine to stop myself from saying something I might regret. ‘It’s actually hard being so different.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ He laughs, shoving me gently.

  ‘I think when I was younger, I just loved playing, but the love was something I didn’t understand. There used to be so much meaning when I touched my violin. Like, something a bit crazy and magical. When I touched it, I felt my brain fire up with so many different emotions, and it was so overwhelming that the only way to deal with it was to keep playing, even when my shoulders felt like they were being stabbed by knives. I knew I had to keep going, keep performing that role. That privileged role, as my mother kept reminding me. I performed and broke through the pain because the attention from adults gave me fuel, maybe. I always felt loved. And that would be enough to carry me through to the following evening—and so it went for years and years.’

  He reaches over and strokes my forearm. I adjust my posture; he retracts.

  ‘The worst was when I had long flights. Monkey kept me slightly distracted. I couldn’t even be without him for more than a few hours before I started to panic. There was a lot of congestion in my head, I think.’

  ‘Monkey?’

  I jump off the couch to retrieve him from my violin case.

  ‘You’re not serious?’ He smiles, grabbing Monkey from me and squeezing his large head.

  ‘He’s my good luck charm.’

  We continue taking sporadic sips from our wine.

  ‘Nobody tells you that,’ he says after a while.

  What?’

  ‘I’ve never heard it expressed that way before.’

  ‘Brains exploding?’

  ‘Well, no. That it’s, like, painful.’

  ‘That’s because none of your friends were child prodigies.’

  He taps his left eye.

  ‘Look,’ he says, pointing to his eye. ‘It’s pulsing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My left eyelid throbs when I’m around snobs.’

  ‘You know, mothers had their sons castrated in Renaissance Italy to give them a musical career. I feel as though the psychological mutilation I went through was a bit like that.’

  ‘Mutilation? It wasn’t that bad, was it?’

  ‘When I was younger, I saw success, but I couldn’t really touch it. Then I got older and got closer to it, so close I could touch it, but then I began to see the cracks in this idea of success, and I didn’t like it. It’s like the closer I got to it, the less I liked it. The uglier it appeared. And the closer I got to this power, the less appeal it seemed to have. But because so many people were invested in me—I had to keep going. It would have been harder to turn around than it was to simply keep at it. I had such a strong connection to my violin, nothing else mattered. That sort of obsession is not healthy. If I ever have a kid, I hope they’re not a prodigy. It’s like a mental illness.’ I hug my knees at the memory.

  ‘We forgot to drink to the New Year.’

  ‘Oh. 2017.’

  ‘To mental illness.’

  ‘To mental illness.’

  46

  People talk. They express their gratitude of the year finally gone. Cohen dead. Bowie dead. A racist becomes a president. Something happened over in the UK. The world is changing into something nobody recognises.

  We’re invited to a fundraiser at a gallery on the Upper East Side on the first day of the year. We are entrusted to preserve the orchestra’s prestige when we’re offstage, without our instruments. In fact, Tuba tells me this is perhaps of greater importance.

  ‘What’s of greater importance?’ I ask.

  We are striding through Central Park towards the gallery, our shoulders hunched beneath heavy coats. I tell him to slow down. The strap on my heel comes undone. I find a bench and sit to readjust it. An old man is reading the New York Post opposite us. Tuba nods at him.

  ‘You kids off to some ball, huh?’ The old man has a low, gruff voice. Throat cancer or asthma, or old age.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Tuba smiles.

  I fix my strap and leap up. I link my arm through Tuba’s and pull him on.

  Tuba continues, ‘What you do offstage and how you chat to the patrons. That’s more important than whatever you do onstage.’

  ‘I know how to do that.’

  ‘But New Yorkers are different. They’re pretty toxic socialisers.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, my parents hated parties, so we never had any ourselves growing up. Plus, we didn’t have a large circle of friends in Sydney. When my mother and I toured, though, she had to pretend to like them.’

  We stop at a set of lights. I look up to read the street sign. Seventy-seventh street. Ten more blocks of this conversation. As we cross the street, I feel Tuba’s soft tread, his modest slouch, like he is embarrassed about his height. His height is what makes him commanding, but he doesn’t want that sort of power. I feel a protectiveness towards him rise in my chest, glancing sideways every now and then to examine his posture, his expression. I catch him adjusting his stride to match my steps, though my legs are half the length of his. Occasionally, he catches me watching him. ‘What?’ he says, exasperated.

  ‘Nothing.’

  There’s a poster at the entrance to the gallery, the word GALA printed in large block capitals. The benefit seeks to raise funds for an African-American dance troupe. The host is the great-niece of Herbert Hoover. Tuba tells me she was rumoured to have been romantically linked to JFK.

  ‘So was every other person who had a cunt in America at that time,’ I say.

  At the end of a narrow corridor, a woman in a caterer’s uniform asks for our coats. We strip off our coats, then another layer, and another. The woman is patient, collecting each piece we offer.

  I pat down my blouse and straighten my pencil skirt. Check my hair in a mirror on the wall, tucking loose strands into my high ponytail.

  ‘You look fine,’ Tuba says. ‘Stop fussing.’

  He brushes his fingers across the back of my hand and hooks his thumb around my pinkie, pulling me behind him. My heels clack on the wooden floorboards. The room is large, the ceiling high. Beside me, Tuba loosens his grip on my finger and puts a hand on the small of my back. He is good at this performance. Proprietorial.

  The crowd is mostly white. A few black women who look like magazine models.

  Waiters circle the room with large silver trays; bowls of olives and glasses of champagne and white wine. Tuba and I each take a glass of pink champagne, sip carefully, waiting for people to make eye contact with us. In the corner by the coat rack, a small food stall has been set up. People mill in front of it. We move in for a closer look. A trio of kids
, no more than ten years old, performing a cooking demonstration on a makeshift stove.

  ‘Who are they?’ Tuba asks a man standing beside him.

  The man attempts a grin. He has a bow tie secured too high up his neck.

  ‘Contestants from Rachael Ray’s show.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kids Cook-Off.’

  We nod.

  ‘It’s a good show,’ says the man.

  ‘I wonder if they’re getting paid,’ Tuba whispers.

  All three kids are boys, all of them like dolls in their little white aprons, glossy mops of pre-teen hair and high-pitched voices. Their doting mothers flutter about and take pictures on their iPhones, carefully arranging the boys’ hair with manicured fingers. This is what it feels like to be in New York. You are part of the show whether you like it or not.

  From our corner of the gallery, we alternate between looking at the backs of people’s heads, kids showing us how to mix cake batter, and the art on the walls. Most of the works have price tags next to them that are beyond anything I will ever be able to afford. Perhaps Val’s parents could.

  I cross the room to find another place to stand for a while, looking occupied. I stare at a painting near the entrance. It’s a picture of a woman crouching on a chair at the edge of a cliff. The painting is the size of my hand. I can’t tell if she’s dancing, having a seizure, or about to end her life. She is dressed in an orange cape, barefoot. I think she wants to fly away. I bend down to read the small tag: $54,550.

  Tuba comes up beside me, narrows his eyes at the painting. ‘How do they work out the price?’

  I tell him I don’t know.

  The answer must be someplace, hanging above our heads. We move on to another painting. The price is again in the five figures.

  ‘I suspect reputation has a lot to do with it,’ he says, taking another glass of champagne from a roaming silver tray. ‘The metric is there. Reputation and style and popularity, and perhaps even background.’

  ‘You mean white?’ I look up at him.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But you agree with me.’

  ‘I didn’t say I agree with you.’

  ‘There’s colour in everything.’

  ‘When I said background, I meant if they went to art school or studied with someone great.’

  ‘There are plenty of artists who didn’t go to art school and became successful.’

  ‘Who?’

  He leans his arm on the wall in front of me and obstructs my view of the room, eyes laughing.

  He knows I won’t be able to answer his question.

  ‘My friend in Sydney went to art school and she’s really good. But she’s not making a lot of money. She thinks it’s because she’s Asian.’

  ‘Do you have to racialise everything?’

  ‘Of course you’d say that. You’re white.’

  ‘Anyway, my point is Monet, Matisse, Gauguin, van Gogh, they all studied art. Their paintings cost more because they went to school for it. They were disciplined.’

  ‘They were old white misogynists and paedophiles.’

  ‘They weren’t always old.’

  ‘Yeah, but their credibility and status grew with age.’

  ‘So did Georgia O’Keeffe’s.’

  ‘How do you know so much about art?’

  ‘My mother teaches art history.’

  ‘Well, this conversation was entirely uncalled for. You entered it knowing I’d lose.’

  We continue on around the gallery and pass a row of tables displaying bottles of wine and hampers with hair products, spa vouchers, gym memberships, less expensive paintings from local artists and cigars from Colombia. There is an auction at the end of the evening where the items will be sold off.

  We eat food made by the TV kids. We go back for seconds and thirds.

  Finally, late in the evening, the dancers emerge. Their silk slips glimmer like pearls in morning light. Music plays through the speakers, an inoffensive blend of slow jazz and pepped-up Afro-Cuban, and the dancers move around us, their limbs slender, perfectly proportioned.

  It feels like we’re on the streets, or at a festival. Tuba leans over and attempts to whisper profound and intelligent things into my ear, though they’re really only comments about the dancers’ bodies, how beautiful they are. I am not convinced a beautiful body warrants such ardent admiration.

  When the dancers have finished, the host makes a speech and then, a few minutes before midnight, the auction takes place.

  Afterwards, the host circulates. She introduces us to her grandson, who is twenty-seven years old and a banker. He is handsome, though vertically challenged, with dark eyes and a smile that looks like it’s been taken from a Tommy Hilfiger ad circa 1995. He has a sensible name, Joel, and is affectionate with his grandmother, who calls him Joely.

  ‘A banker?’

  ‘You sound surprised,’ the young man replies.

  ‘I thought everyone under thirty in New York City was some sort of struggling artist.’ Tuba pinches my arm.

  Joel laughs. ‘I’m also in a band but that’s just a weekend thing.’

  He uses his hands when he talks and laughs at his own jokes. It must be a New York brand of humour. I don’t understand it, but laugh along anyway, because it seems like the right thing to do.

  ‘There’s a party in Brooklyn tonight,’ Joel says. ‘My friend Alex Wilson is launching his album. Why don’t you guys come?’

  Tuba and I exchange looks. He glances at his watch.

  ‘You guys go ahead. I’m going to call it a night.’

  I put a hand on his arm. ‘Are you sure?’

  He smiles and yawns. ‘Of course. I’ll see you later.’

  As Joel starts to tell me about his friend’s music, Tuba recedes into the gathering crowd near the coat stands.

  I hang around and wait for Joel to finish his farewells. We stop at a liquor store for a tray of beer and a pack of Natural American Spirit. The man behind the counter asks for ID.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever stop being carded,’ Joel says.

  ‘You look very young.’

  ‘That always helps on the dating scene.’

  ‘Yeah? How’s that going?’

  He grins, a shy teenager. ‘Nothing serious.’

  On the train he asks me about my music, whether I’d ever be interested in branching out into other genres. ‘Hip hop? House or FemDom?’

  I shake my head, rock against the metal pole. ‘I’m a classical violinist. I think that’s enough.’

  ‘But that’s like a writer saying they’ll only ever write in one genre.’

  ‘Most writers do only write in one genre.’

  The carriage is crowded, filled with New Yorkers going about their nocturnal adventures.

  ‘Anyway, what’s FemDom?’ I ask.

  ‘All-female bands. Feminine dominant.’

  ‘Do they sound different from all-male bands?’

  ‘They sound angry.’

  ‘Boy bands can be angry.’

  He considers this for a moment, then says, ‘It’s a different sort of anger.’

  He looks ahead while talking.

  I feel a new kind of invisibility.

  New York City. The centre of the world. Bushwick. The centre of the world of cool. The mecca. A bracelet of girls at the foot of an apartment block. They are smoking, they are cool. They are wearing large coats with frilled edges, and they wear too much eye make-up. They have flannel shirts tied around their waists, and they have wild, uncombed hair tamed into order by paisley-patterned headbands. They are white, they are flawless. They know they are flawless.

  When they see Joel, they open their arms to him, no smiles. Joel introduces me and they shake my hand like good middle-class girls. They have names like Scout and Jazz and Mieka and Whitney. Another girl emerges from the building. She has a big nose, sweet-looking in the way Britney Spears looked sweet in ‘Baby One More Time’. She is also wearing an excess of eye make-up. B
ehind her, a tall boy with blond hair appears. He is clean-shaven, attractive, but not too much so; attractive in the way the boy from Juno is attractive.

  I assume they are lovers. The girl kisses Joel on the lips. This must be the way New Yorkers greet each other now. The tall boy stares at me while I explain to the group what I am doing in the city. I feel his gaze like a piercing flash of light. I can’t turn away. I want to turn away.

  ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘A violinist.’

  ‘Ever met one before?’

  ‘You’re the first.’

  They finish their cigarettes. Decide it’s getting cold. We go upstairs to the party.

  Two flights high. Inside, it is loud and congested, people talking and drinking and laughing and vaping. The band have already played their set.

  Joel brings me a bottle of beer and apologises. ‘We came too late, but they have a CD on sale and a cassette.’

  ‘A cassette?’ I take a swig of beer. ‘Who has a cassette player?’

  ‘I have two Walkmans.’

  He is pulled away by a girl, sleeve of tattoos on each arm. I look around, trying to engage with my surroundings. The walls are covered in giant Rothko-esque paintings, squares of deep purple and blue; I want to crawl through them then settle there, invisible, turn around to face the party, watch without being watched.

  I find a corner in the kitchen to repose. After a few minutes, two girls join me, and we are deep in conversation on identity politics in art and music.

  One of them is Haitian French, the other Iraqi Welsh. They are both performance artists working as cleaners to save up for grad school. We are all a mix of nations and histories and pre-invented social mysteries.

  Eventually, one of the girls cups her hands around her mouth and shouts a name then walks off into the abyss. The remaining girl and I labour through a few more questions and answers. She seems older and more comfortable in her skin. A gush of cool wind rushes through the open window and ruffles her collared shirt. ‘Jesus.’ She walks off towards the window, perhaps to close it. She doesn’t come back.

  I finish my third beer and pour myself a cup of red wine, the size of a juice box; nobody is drinking from glasses. I feel my body loosen, my head lighter. The tall boy from downstairs comes over, offering shots.

  ‘Thanks.’

  As he pours, I stare at his face because it’s so symmetrical and pleasurable to look at. He tells me he is an actor, currently making money as a set-hand.