Letter to K. About Being Just a Regular Guy and the Psychology of That

I know I have an offputting and sometimes conversation-killing tendency to fall silent when someone says something particularly thought provoking. I start thinking about what was just said--and, I guess, about how to respond most laudably--and my thoughts get complicated and I usually end up somewhere in uncertainty and ambivalence and I just don't say anything. This is what I did that night on your porch in Baltimore when we were smoking pipes and drinking rye and mostly talking about something else. So, this letter is me trying to make my uncertain and messy thoughts coherent and to actually respond to what you said.

Which was, more or less: "I am just a regular guy." Which startled me a bit. In my world, your extraordinariness is something crucial. It drew me into your orbit 22 years ago, and, though love holds me there, your extraordinariness is a real and potent and exciting thing. So my habit of equivocation, in which my mind sees it both ways and is almost always stretched between two poles, right away began its dissonant feedback thing. On one side of its aisle it shrieked, not a little desperately, "No, you are not regular. You are extraordinary, and regular is the enemy that is always trying to wrestle us to the ground." But on the other side of its aisle, my mind said "Well, in certain ways you are extraordinary, but I think I know what you mean when you say you're just a regular guy: maybe being regular is simply our baseline state and when we are extraordinary we're just reaching up out of our regular mode, usually in practiced, reliable ways. We've concentrated on certain narrow ways to be remarkable, and we can rely on those ways to attract attention and admiration, etc." So, I sat there half drunk and chilled and thought, "Ok, I guess I sort of understand why K. is insisting that he's just a regular guy, despite his obvious extraordinary wit and inventiveness and psychological insight, etc."

But then, as I sobered up in the shower later, and lay awake in bed for an hour, I remembered where I had recently heard another extraordinary person claim, almost vehemently, that he was just a regular guy. In that really unsatisfying [and probably fundamentally flawed] movie "The End of the Tour," they have David Foster Wallace insist, several times, that he is just a regular guy. The David Lipsky character--a sort of angry, hurt Woody Allen with the bloodsucking drive and instincts of a mosquito--keeps scoffing at this. Lipsky insists that DFW is being coy at best, and certainly disingenuous, and probably dishonest. Lipsky, with beautifully-acted bitterness, holds up Infinite Jest as proof that DFW is extraordinary, the greatest writer of his generation. We see, in one of the few good scenes in the movie, that Lipsky very much wants to be a great writer, and that he has a high opinion of himself, and that it galls him terribly that DFW is much, much greater than Lipsky will ever be, and that he, DFW, has pretty much buried himself in a drab little house and a drab little job in Indiana, and that his life looks totally mundane and lowbrow and unremarkable. The Lipsky character keeps trying to get the DFW character to admit that he is a genius. But he wont.

It occurred to me as I walked home from the theater, like six months ago, that Lipsky had missed the tragic central point of IJ, and that DFW's impatience with Lipsky stemmed largely from Lipsky's blindness to the psychology of addiction. Without unpacking IJ much here, in this letter, I just want to summarize my reading of the whole addiction and 12-step theme in IJ: I think that DFW showed Don Gately and Hal Incandenza in psychological contrast: Gately keeps checking his ego at the door of his recovery. He sees the Crocodiles as prevailing against their addictions inasmuch as they keep the specialness of their individual stories at bay. Gately, the future Crocodile [we hope], has to continually reassert his own human universality against his specialness. He is maybe greatly aided in this by his background as a neglected kid who has never been told he's extraordinary. His recovery depends on his ordinariness. As long as he's a regular guy he stands a chance. And when he is forced to do something heroic, when he protects the residents of Ennet House from the bad Quebecquers, he ends up in extremis.

Hal Incandenza, on the other hand, is pretty much crippled by his specialness. Where Gately was neglected and never thought himself special, Hal was raised by an overweening mother who fed him "mnemonic steroids" and--simplifying here-- made it pretty much clear to young Hal that she would love him inasmuch as he accomplished extraordinary things. He was raised to use extraordinariness to win his mother's love. So, when Hal is forced to quit taking drugs, he faces not just withdrawal, but existential crisis: his ego is tied to the high, or something like that. His extraordinariness, which is what makes him worthy of love, is tied tight to his drugs. Without the drugs he may cease to be special. So Hal is facing something Gately isn't: in quitting drugs he may fall apart. He may no longer be able to maintain his incandescent specialness. He may end up being merely regular.

So I was lying there in bed in Baltimore, listening to the gunshots and sirens down the hill, thinking more clearly than when we were out on the porch half drunk, and I thought maybe I knew what you meant when you told me you consider yourself to be an ordinary guy. I think you know that you have gifts. You shine in certain K.-like ways, and you know you do. Your wit, your verbal inventiveness and agility; your special intimacy with the whole American high-low thing; your strange and super-charismatic way of unenjambing lines in a song so that they scan two or more ways, one funny, one poignant, and so on. Plus, if I may Lipsky for a moment, you have all this other extraordinary stuff: powerful charisma, physical grace, aliveness-to-senses, and, weirdly, even a kind of patience-in-impatience [which gives me hope for my own middle age], etc. I think you know this about yourself, though you don't much talk about being special. I may be totally making this up, but I guess you were raised at least a little like Hal, not so much like Gately. At some point, I hazard, you swallowed the idea that you would get love --or maybe just more love-- if you shone.

For my part, I believe my own childhood was way over on the Hal side. There was neglect, for sure, but it was nothing like how Gately was neglected. I grew up with the idea that I was extraordinary, and that I would get more and better love if I shone. I'm totally still plagued by this, of course. Thank Gawd I seem to have very little propensity for addiction. But I am psychologically crippled in other ways. I see it. I'm sure there's lots I don't see. I know it largely governs the way I live, and that it has manifested most powerfully in my relationship to my work, which is like a shitshow marriage, which is mostly what we were talking about that night. As always, thank you for being so patient with that fucked up shit that I replay endlessly.

Which brings me to intelligence and what I think it is. We, in this culture [maybe not in the world of progressive education, but you guys are special], tend to see intelligence as bandwidth. When we say that Albert Einstein was smart and George W. Bush was stupid, what we mostly seem to mean is that Einstein had fatter, faster wiring and Bush had feeble, sluggish wiring. Given the bell curve, I'm sure there's a real, natural range in humans' processing capacity. And of course there's the effects of trauma, physical and emotional. But a more interesting --and hopeful-- concept of intelligence favors drive over wiring. No proof here, but it seems to me that some people are "smarter" than others because they work at it harder. But I think it's pretty rare that a person sets out in a disciplined and systematic way to become smarter. I think most people we think of as smart became that way because they feel driven to it. And maybe the most widespread source of that kind of drive is what April Incandenza gave to young Hal: the sense that he had to accomplish something to earn her love.

I don't see any reason to believe that the most accomplished people are really all that better-wired than the rest of us. But they do seem to be more driven, narcissistic, and neurotic. Where does that come from? Probably from a middle-class parenting culture that attaches love to accomplishment. Tiger Moms. Lecturing dads. Hectoring grown-ups pushing kids and withholding affection or approval when kids are lazy.

I think it's probably true that all healthy kids enter the world with roughly the same mental capacity, roughly the same wiring. Some get a little better equipment, others a little weaker, but almost all of us are born with more or less equally capable brains. At that point, some brains are probably starved for stimulation, such as when a single mom has to be away working at Burger King all day, and other brains are well fed, sent to the best schools and lessons. Some kids, lots of them middle-class with college-educated parents, immediately start learning that their worth, their lovability, is a function of their achievement, and they learn that certain things they do make their parents smile and hug and coo and celebrate. So the kids focus on those things. And, lo, they become more and more proficient, and they earn more and more attention and approval, and the feedback loop propels them into college, and a career, and a specialty, and they become known as smart. So, in this model, accomplished is lovable is smart, and the whole package is a strongly-reinforced delusion.

The self-narration of smart is "I am special," but smart people did not start special, and I have heard very little said about what appears to be a plain fact: if you spend 15 years working hard at becoming a heart surgeon, you will be a heart surgeon, and people will say of you "That guy is smart. He is a heart surgeon." Any regular human intelligence, focused long and sharply enough, leads to the kind of accomplishment that is seen as smart, even if only a few people know what it is you do.

Thinking this way, it seems to me that insisting on being a regular guy isn't just good, healthy American populism. It's also an acknowledgment of privilege, a humility about accomplishment and how unextraordinary it is to become really good at something when you spend years working on it, and a refusal to race in the lemming-rush of specialness, which does not, after all, land us in Mom's Lap of Love, but just down there at the bottom of the cliff. I'm being sloppy and silly here, but really: being the smartest guy in the room, the most special, does not come with love. Even the respect is often grudging. And, furthermore, feeling special can exempt us, in our own minds, from being decent, loving, present, and even happy.

The tragedy of Hal mirrors the possible redemption of Gately. Hal's specialness exempts him from the real work. It makes his difficulties feel personal, and it makes his accomplishments feel existential. Hal exists, in his own mind, only inasmuch as he maintains his specialness. The pressure is on Hal to keep deserving love. Poor, neglected Gately, on the other hand, the regular guy, has a chance. He doesn't feel special, so he is free to admit he's a fuck up. He can really own that. From there, he can look up. The sea was way out. A good read of IJ, in light of DFW's history with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, and in retrospect now that we know he killed himself, is that he saw himself as Hal, but he knew that beating both the depression and the addiction depended on becoming Gately. Alcoholics Anonymous holds, at its very heart, the apparently-paradoxical principle that recovery requires the burial of specialness. There can be no special exemptions in our recovery because we have to recover as humans. We can't recover as special cases deserving of special recognition and special status. Humility, I guess, is the only way. In this model, it is the ego that is depressed and addicted, not the subsumed infant of pure potential, not the regular guy.

Now, of course I am not saying that this is what you meant. I'm just suggesting that I found a happy congruence in what you said and what DFW said. In my mind, at least, you both uttered occult wisdom. Maybe you meant something else, but let me point out that you said something super-wise even if you meant something else, and that I must be super-special for recognizing that. After all, this little essay is a performance, and I want you to think highly of me, because I respect you because you are extraordinary. But not exempt.

The Fall

From where I sat I could hear only the sibilants and fricatives, the blown leaves of their conversation. A bit of voice like a glimpse of leg. Mostly those rustling esses and rattling tees. The limb gets pretty hard. I worried they'd see my feet dangling there over the patio, but it was dark.

This is good, I’m sure he said. He made a stabbing motion with his knife at the steaming contents of his plate.

So glad you like it! The way she spoke she could only be smiling: her voice high in the throat, slightly fluting, bright. Her face was in shadow but I could hear she was smiling. Recently, the advertising they play over the sound system in the grocery store features intensely-smiling female voices. The voice actors sound like they have great teeth, American grins. They sound like they are exquisitely happy about fat-free yogurt or what have you.

I wished I had put on a sweater.

He said appreciative things about the food, which smelled very good. His body performed the sanctioned poses: heroic positions of the torso, shoulders, and arms; ostensibly languorous attitudes of the legs, hips, and abdominal trunk that actually require considerable flexing; constant adjustments of the angle of the head relative to the position of hers, always mindful of the most flattering angle of the light streaming across the table from the kitchen behind them. My theory is that we learn this from the media, and it is an aspect of fashion. The self-consciousness of his performance of the current manhood subverted his intended projection of virility, IMHO.

Her movements were also highly practiced, pretty and delicate, graceful and equivocally coy, and, though the wind picked up a little and hissed through the tree and I couldn’t hear much of what she said, I could hear, distinctly, that her voice was pitched high and that it rose at the end of each sentence almost like a question, but not exactly. Every sentence rolled onto its back. This is a form of deference, or perhaps submission, and therefore potentially dominant, and I have theories about this, that there is a sociobiological basis for this kind of feminine behavior. It is a way that women make themselves available to men. It is a method of flattery and, therefore, control. I am tempted to say it is a way of lying, or, perhaps, a form of honesty. This will require more thought.

The voice actor who reads the tortilla ads uses the hard r’s and soft d’s of Spanish. Her vowels are unitary and precise, very unlike the broad diphthongs of American English. She sounds very nearly overwhelmed by the pleasure of urging us to buy the tortillas. Euphoric, or giddy. I predict that these women, these voice actors, will soon figure out a way to suggest, just to the limit of decency, that they are actually enjoying a barely-contained orgasm brought on by the product they’re selling. I’ll have what she’s having, they want us to think. Oh, so that’s her secret! And it’s on sale today! Commerce depends on the cynical re-purposing of sex, of course.

After some time, he pushed his plate away. They stayed on the patio, drinking beer and leaning into each other with the unmistakable movements of what I will call new love, which is lust. Each movement profoundly gendered: her graceful arms, elbows in tight, wrists exposed, hands birdlike; his arms possessive, his chest forward and massive.

He said something sly and turned his head to watch her eyes. She laughed rather abruptly and her shoulders rose and she placed her hands on his bicep. She threw her head back to laugh, and placed one balletic hand on her upper chest, as though she couldn’t get a deep breath because what he said what so amusing. He leaned back in his chair and straightened his legs out in front of him and hooked a thumb in his pocket so that his hand framed his package. All these movements had the canned flavor of recitation. My theory is that the highest-status young people practice these gendered movements in the mirror. They must consume media with a voracious attention to gender display, desperate to learn how to present themselves for mating.

I have heard very few male voice actors reading ads in the grocery store. Men do many of the in-store announcements, but the ads the male voice actors read are mostly for meat and barbecue products. Also, men read the ads for the gas-discount rewards program. These are prescribed male roles. The male voices are enthusiastic, but, whereas the women’s voices verge on rapture, the male voices verge on command. Pert girls sell salad greens. Kindly but authoritative fathers sell charcoal and beef.

She played with her hair. She spoke and the wind rose at that moment so that I was able, again, to entertain the idea that the breeze emanated from her mouth, that she made the leaves rustle and the branches rattle. I saw her teeth backlit white against the kitchen window.

That's all. They went inside after a while, and watched TV. He put his arm on the back of the couch behind her. She retracted her hands inside the cuffs of her sweater, hunched her shoulders, tucked her feet, and made herself small. And I slipped down out of the tree and walked back here to my warm, bright little apartment suspecting that I had witnessed what I need to know, that it would require some thought and parsing, but that the leaves would eventually blow off the tree and leave the trunk bare and plain, and there’d be nowhere to hide.

Elena Ferrante is Cormac McCarthy!

"...diffuse at first and then growing ever denser..."

“…I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one’s power. It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes… The entire structure of language, the syntactical arrangement of parts of speech, punctuation, conjunctions, and finally even the nouns denoting ordinary objects were all enveloped in impenetrable fog… Especially in the evening twilight, which had always been my favorite time of day, I was overcome by a sense of anxiety, diffuse at first and then growing ever denser, through which the lovely spectacle of fading colors turned to a malevolent and lightless pallor, my heart felt constricted in my chest to a quarter of its natural size, until at last there remained only one idea in my head: I must go… and throw myself over the banisters into the dark depths of the stairwell. It was impossible for me to go and see any of my friends, who were not numerous in any case, or mix with other people in any normal way. The mere idea of listening to anyone brought on a wave of revulsion, while the thought of talking myself, said Austerlitz, was perhaps worse still, and as this state of affairs continued I came to realize how isolated I was and always have been…I was as ill at ease among artists and intellectuals as in bourgeois life, and it was a very long time since I had felt able to make personal friendships. No sooner did I become acquainted with someone than I feared I had come too close, no sooner did someone turn toward me than I began to retreat. In the end I was linked to people only by certain forms of courtesy which I took to extremes and which I know today… I observed not so much for the sake of their recipients as because they allowed me to ignore the fact that my life has always, for as far back as I can remember, been clouded by an unrelieved despair… I began my nocturnal wanderings… to escape the insomnia which increasingly tormented me.”

̶ W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, pp. 123-126

My Dog Is a Racist

My dog, a small, rather cute all-black mutt I rescued from a teenaged couple who neglected her badly, is generally sweet, but she is a racist. She hates black men. Everyone asks, "Did a black man ever beat her?" and I always answer "No, I doubt it. I think it's just because she's not used to dark skin."

I walked her through the park the other day. About twenty young men were playing soccer on their lunch break. Nineteen of the men were Caucasian or pale, and one was black. My dog ran into the middle of the game to confront the lone black man. She headed him off and stood barking at him. He looked at her, incredulous, spread his arms, and said "Take a look in the mirror, Sister."

Hans and Grete

Late in the summer Johannes and Margarete drove north out of the city, an hour before sunrise to avoid the worst of the traffic. The early morning was chill and damp, and they left the top up. Margarete drove, as always. Johannes sat back and scrolled through the music options on his phone, but after some time he sighed and put it away and they drove on in silence, every so often gossiping a little about friends and old lovers. He sipped coffee. She had chai. They kvetched about their co-workers. Her new assistant was competent but socially clueless and dressed a little slutty. The new associate in his firm was cute and fun, but lazy and too young, a disappointment. She had never heard him describe a potential partner as too young. Finally accepting middle age? she asked, smiling. Fuck you, he said, with a dramatic pout, then squeezed her shoulder. They drove out beyond the suburbs to where the country opened into farmland. As the sun rose over the hills the dew vanished from the fields and the air became balmy.

They stopped at a dingy clapboard service station. Johannes wrapped a blue paper towel around the grip of the pump nozzle and filled the tank, standing well back from the stinking hose, like a matador dodging the bull, Margarete thought. She touched up her makeup in the visor mirror and took a selfie of them in front of the grimy gas pump with its illiterate hand-written admonitory notes, and he posed with his smirk, the one she knew meant See what I have to tolerate? The sky was flawless. Margarete put the top down, put on her sunglasses, and tied her scarf over her hair and under her chin. A new Hermès Tyger Johannes hadn’t seen. He felt a moment of jealousy that she had gone shopping without him. He pushed a stray strand of her glossy black hair up under the scarf. He put a dab of sunscreen on her upturned palm and they did their faces.

They left the highway and drove up into the mountains and lakes. The maples and beeches gradually gave way to hemlock and pine. The valley narrowed, and each village was shabbier, smaller, and more remote than the last. The clean air brought them the smells of pine, then hay, then the barnyards of dairies. In the early afternoon they stopped by a pretty lake and, while Margarete vinyasa-ed through a few asanas on the narrow beach, Johannes spread out the car blanket on a soft patch of fallen pine needles and set out the lunch he had prepared. On his grandmother’s Reichenbach china he placed slices of frittata and a simple salad of late-summer greens, lightly dressed with vinaigrette. On a small wooden board he had found in an antique store he laid out, just so, a sliced rustic loaf and a bowl of burrata and bitter green olive oil. He poured them each a half-glass of chilled Sancerre. It’s a little too cold, love, he said. It’s delightful, she said, and smiled over her glass at him, and they sipped.

They checked the map. They had poor reception this far into the hills. Late in the afternoon they turned onto a narrower, rougher road over which the trees arched almost low enough to touch. The road dropped into a valley. Fallen stone walls quartered the second-growth forest. He asked, How old do you suppose these trees are? At least a hundred years, I should think, she said. They can’t have farmed this valley since the Civil War.

After a while, the road did not look familiar. He remembered it opening suddenly into broad pastures with a magnificent view across the lakes far below, but the road wound through the crowding trees far longer than he thought it would. He re-read the instructions. They were out of cell range. They stopped and debated. They put the top up and put on sweaters. They laughed when they saw each other’s new sweaters, both in the same shade of primrose yellow. They had seen the same photo-spread in a magazine. They had been best friends for years now. Over twenty years, as a matter of fact. They’d met when she was freshly separated from her then-husband, a partner in the firm Johannes used to work for. They were the same age, and enjoyed the same things: beautiful clothes, fitness, fine meals, posh hotels, weekends in the country. They even had similar taste in men, though they didn’t let their partners keep them apart. They passed as a couple.

It was dark well before sunset. The trees were like a tunnel. They drove on under barely a glimpse of sky. Right before sunset the trees opened and they felt a moment of elation, but it was not the pasture he remembered. Instead, they found themselves crossing a gorge. What at first they had thought was a field was, in fact, the tops of the dark spruces that rose out of the gorge to just the level of the road. As far as they could see to the west the trees rose in swells to the far horizon. On the far side of the gorge the road was so badly washed out that they barely managed to get the car through. God damn it, Johannes muttered. Under the dome light they huddled around the map, but they could not account for the length of their drive in the woods. Hansy, love, the road has got to go somewhere, she said. He just sulked and waved her onward. They drove on into the night. They couldn’t see anything beyond the white light of the headlights.

Late, well after they would have finished supper, they came to a fork in the road. To the right the dirt road continued. To the left, a narrow lane dropped into the dark. The lane was little more than two ruts between which tall fireweed and thistles stood, as though no car had passed that way all summer. She followed the road to the right, until Johannes suddenly gripped her knee. As the headlights swung around the bend, they had illuminated a freshly-painted sign nailed to a tree. She stopped, almost skidding, and backed to the sign. Gingerbread Cottage, it read, in colorful, hand-painted, looping script, and an arrow pointed down the lane to the left. I am not driving down that, she said. Grete, dear, he said, we can’t just drive all night. We should just stop and ask for directions. Or maybe it’s a passable B and B. She sighed and rolled her eyes. But she turned down the lane.

The weeds scraped the bottom of the low car, but the ruts were smooth. Shortly, the trees quit, and the sky opened above them. They couldn’t see over the old stone walls, but they had the impression of driving between open pastures. Their hearts lightened. They passed massive old sugar maples every so often along the lane, but they saw no sign of a house. The lane went back into the trees and climbed steeply for a while, and the ruts became rocky and rough. Finally, off through the ancient trees, they saw a light, yellow and inviting. They came to a weathered gate in the stone fence. They could not see a driveway, so they parked the car and got out into the chill night. Insects whirred in the dark, but there was no other sound. Johannes looked in the glovebox for the flashlight Grete kept there, but it wasn’t there. They put on jackets and used their phones to light the way to the gate. They pushed through and found themselves on a narrow and deeply-worn path, banked with moss, that meandered off through the trees toward the light. They walked for some time, but the light did not come into clear view. They came to a huge log that had been hewn to form a narrow bridge above a deep little stream. They walked on into the trees. God damn it, Hans said. This is just ridiculous. How far from the road can a person live?

Shush, hun, she said. But then she said, I vote we turn back and sleep in the car. Grete, dear, he said, I’m so sorry. Shush, she said.

But just as they turned to go back to the car a wonderful aroma came to them through the forest. He discerned roasting lamb. She smelled caramelized sugar. Their senses became very alert. Apple wood, he said. She said, Cider vinegar. They turned toward the yellow light and continued on their way, now eager, stumbling now and then, in their fine shoes, on the mossy roots of trees, but heedless of the discomfort. He took her hand to step over a thick root. They stepped between closely-spaced trees onto a flat stone, like a mossy threshold. They smelled roses and lavender, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace, dill and fennel. Ahead of them a pair of narrow sash windows glowed warmly in the night, faintly illuminating the tops of riotously-competing perennial flowers and herbs, through which the path led directly to the front door.

They looked at each other in the candle-glow of the windows and laughed out loud, delight broad on their smooth faces. Like a couple, they strode to the front door hand in hand.

As they approached the door they saw into the house. A long, low room spanned by massive timber beams, from which dozens of tarnished copper pots, of all shapes and sizes, hung from hooks. And, like an inverted winter garden, whole bushes of dried herbs hung above a long butcher-block island. A hulking masonry stove took up most of one wall. In it a hardwood fire raged on one side, and banked coals were raked to the other. A slate sink overflowed with dirty dishes and pots. At the far end of the room there was a long, black, roughly-hewn trestle table surrounded by maybe twenty mismatched chairs. One end of the table was draped with a snowy linen, on which three elaborate place-settings of bone china, polished silver, and crystal gleamed in the glow of a dozen tapers. Perhaps a hundred candles lit the room, from polished sconces and candlesticks of iron and silver, from hurricane lanterns and crystal vases, from a huge menorah and a long trough-like platter of maybe Asian design, and from where someone had simply stuck them in puddles of wax here and there, wherever there was space. On the stove several pots steamed. The complex smells of cooking reached them at the door, where the smoke from an immense chimney flowed down the steep slate roof and into the fecund garden.

Grete reached for the door. It swung inward before she touched the knocker. Warmth and rich aromas and golden light flowed out the door like a rug unfurled. In the sudden glow stood a tiny woman. Her great mane of curly grey hair fell below her waist. Her broad, creased face looked up at them, and she smiled deeply. She stood no taller than a child, a foot shorter than willowy Grete. Her body was compact and strong. Her muscular legs and body and her very large round breasts were clearly backlit through an unseasonal light linen dress. The woman smiled up at them for a moment, sighed with what must have been deep contentment, and stood aside, indication with a dramatic flourish of her thick, bare arm that they should enter.

We’re so sorry to intrude, Hans began, but the woman interrupted. Please, please. Come in. Just throw your jackets and stuff on the chair there. Please, make yourselves at home.

Grete extended her hand. Margarete, she said. Pleased to meet you, said the little woman. Do you go by Grete? Startled, Grete replied, Yes, I do. My friends call me Grete. Then I will call you Grete, said the woman. If that’s ok. Certainly, Grete said, though she had not allowed this familiarity with any stranger since she was a child.

Hans did not like to shake hands. As he stood behind Grete and helped her out of her jacket, he nodded to the woman and said, Thank you so much for having us in. I’m Johannes. But Please. Call me Hans. The woman rocked up on her toes and back on here heels, a surprisingly childlike movement. She clasped her hands in front of her in delight. Come in the kitchen, she said. Supper is almost ready.

Wondering, Hans and Grete followed as the woman almost jogged into the kitchen, spinning on her bare heels to make sure they were following. She went to the stove and stirred an enormous soup pot, standing up on her toes to reach over the rim, which was well above her head. She stuck a finger into each of several saucepans and tasted each. Without looking, she reached up and plucked a leaf of a dried herb and rubbed it into a saucepan. She reached into the stove and, with her bare hands, grabbed a thick brand and moved it under the saucepan, and flames leapt up and shone through her dress, outlining her figure. In glimpses as she worked, Hans saw her face, smooth and youthful in the lights reflected off the copper pots. He seemed to have misjudged her age.

Hans opened his mouth to speak, but the woman spun toward them and produced, as though from nowhere, a plate of hand-formed crackers and preserved fruit and glistening fresh cheese. She pushed it to them across the scarred wood of the island, and when they raised their eyes from it she had placed before them slender glasses of effervescent wine. She held up one of her own, smiling at them. Her whole face furrowed when she smiled, and deep lines radiated like beams from her eyes. They picked up their flutes, and they reached over the island and the crystal rang. The ringing seemed to deepen and reverberate through the room, rising above the roar of the fire and the bubbling of the pots. A huge cat stretched out from under the island and put a paw on Hans’ shoe and looked up at him with yellow eyes. To friendship, the woman said, with laughter in her voice. Cheers, said Hans and Grete in unison, and they drank.

The wine filled the room with the rich smell of yeast, or of toasted bread, and with a memory of fall orchards, and with the musk of grapes and the warmth of wool. Hans and Grete found themselves sitting at the end of the table facing the woman as she worked in the kitchen. She moved very quickly, with a fluidity and certainty that reminded Hans of the great pianists, and Grete of ballet, which she hadn’t danced in so many years. The long room glowed, and each candle stood straight and did not waver, and the plumes of heat they produced climbed without agitation to the coffered ceiling. The heat of the room grew and enveloped them, but did not become oppressive. The cat climbed onto Hans’ lap. You don’t like cats! Grete said, and the three of them laughed.

Hans gazed at Grete as he never had except when he thought she didn’t know he was looking. He admired the shape of her, her slender shoulders and upright bearing, the tautness of the skin across her forehead and around her eyes, the stylish cut of her shining black hair. She looked tired but radiant. She looked well-tended, he thought. Well-preserved, youthful and fit and polished. He knew how much work and attention it took her to look so fresh.

Hans fell into a reverie, and he thought of the long day driving, and he tried for a moment to reconstruct in his mind the route they had driven, but as he drank a warm convexity of good will rose in him, and the worry and irritation of the day stopped clamoring and grew faint. He looked up and studied the sturdy shape of the woman in her thin dress. He saw that the pots and dishes that had been piled in the sink were now in the drainboard, shining in the candle-light. He had not noticed her washing. He stood and said, I’m just sitting here enjoying this marvelous champagne and not lifting a finger. The woman spoke over her shoulder, Please. Sit. Everything is taken care of. A fragrance reached his nose, earthen, herbal, grassy. He looked down to find a small bowl of creamy soup in front of him, and a plate of toast, still smoking from the stove. A thick, lumpen bottle stood before them, and their white-wine glasses were filled with an almost amber wine. They raised their glasses to each other, and the woman was suddenly there. To our hostess, Hans said, and Grete spoke a heartfelt Amen. Hans could not remember such warmth in his best friend’s voice.

Grete had not eaten rich food in years, but she felt something like lust when she smelled the soup. She ate it quickly, for once unconcerned with delicacy or manners. The wine was tart and acidic, the soup was thick and creamy, and the two complemented each other in strange and subtle ways, so that Hans and Grete both leaned forward and greedily spooned the soup into their mouths with their right hands and sipped, and then gulped, the wine with their left hands. Soon, they scraped their bowls clean with scraps of toast and finished the wine.

As they looked up, the woman pulled out the third chair and sat to Hans’ right, across from Grete. She poured a ruby wine into their Burgundy glasses. In front of each of them was a plate of sliced roasted meat arrayed on a fragrant purée blanche. The woman passed a saucier and ladle. They raised their glasses to the candles. Spectacular, said Grete. Lovely, said Hans. A pleasure, said the woman, and they drank, at first sipping, and then in gulps between mouthfuls of meat. The sauce informs the wine, if it’s not foolish to say it that way, said Grete. Indeed, said Hans. A perfect pairing. The meat was pink in the middle, the same hue as the wine. The outer edges of the meat were almost as dark as the cat that purred on Hans’ lap. As they ate in reverent silence, the purée released the steam of potatoes and onions, celery root and parsnip, white pepper and the sweetest butter. When Hans set down his fork, his plate clean, the woman reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. He realized that he was holding Grete’s hand, too.

Grete noticed with a start that she had not been thinking. She imagined herself in an embrace. The warmth of the room extended deep into her and released her from her obligation to sit straight. She looked around the room. Everything glowed in the candlelight. For the first time she saw shelf upon shelf of dark-bound books ranked along the wall behind the table. She was a great lover of books; how could she have missed these hand-bound volumes, perhaps a thousand of them, their embossed titles reflecting richly the light of the hundred candles? She felt a tear move down her cheek. She became aware of the dry warmth of Hans’ hand enveloping hers. She looked at him, so handsome and perfectly groomed, so burnished and well-muscled. Their eyes met, and Hans looked at her, or into her, with a soulfulness she had never seen before in all the years they had been best friends.

The warmth of the room grew. As one, they pushed their chairs back from the table and pulled their sweaters over their heads. Hans took them into the front room. When he turned back he saw that several cats were curled on the other chairs. Their tails hung and twitched. He looked at Grete, who always had such perfect posture. She was leaning back in her chair, and had one cashmere-stockinged foot under her. When he looked to the other end of the room, to the kitchen, he saw that the woman was standing in front of the stove, with a hip rocked out and her hand on her hip holding a long spoon, like a girl posing as a housewife. She was looking at him, directly in his eyes, smiling. He could not hold her gaze, but blew her a drunken kiss of gratitude and returned to the table, dimly aware that he was staggering.

The woman opened another misshapen, unmarked bottle. The cork looked like a ragged hank of oak-bark dipped in beeswax. This wine was very dark, almost black. Malbec? he asked. Oh, no, the woman said, almost laughing. Nothing so exotic. I don’t know what they call these grapes. Just the black ones that grow well here. You made this wine? Hans asked. Yes, she said. Years and years ago.

They sat without food for some time, sated, in silence. The wine was pungent, dark and earthy. It seemed to all three of them that their earliest childhoods unspooled from the wine. As it opened in the air, the wine revealed deeper and deeper complexities, layer upon layer of encoded memory. Hans thought of his mother, alone now in the city. He thought of her much younger, cleaning his face with a washcloth, the smell of her close around him. For a moment he thought he saw the face of his father, whom he could not remember. Grete thought of the summer place on the Cape, when she was a girl. A long-dormant image arose in her of a local boy, shirtless, tilling the family vegetable garden on the first warm day of spring. She closed her eyes and felt next to her the warm presence of her horse Ezra, the tall warmblood given to her by her father for her sixteenth birthday. She smelled the leather of the tack and the musk of the arena. The little woman’s thoughts drifted deep into the forest, into the glade of elephantine beeches, where she had been most content as a girl, daydreaming alone on the moldering leaves.

Hans and Grete sat back from the table, drifting in and out of formless thoughts. The sounds from the woman’s work in the kitchen barely reached them, as though they were under deep, warm water. Time passed unmarked. They revived to the smell of hot butter and burned sugar as the woman placed before them a smoking tarte Tatin. She cut it with a knife of black steel, and the caramelized sugar cracked, and the brown syrup of pears spread across their plates. She spooned sweet cream over their portions. They found small glasses of a honey-hued wine in front of them. It was sweet and acidic and right.

In the morning Grete awoke to the crowing of roosters and the clanging of steel pails outside the window. The sun came in low and pink. She was in a low, plain room of timber and plaster. The wall she could see from where she lay on her side was covered with books, from the floor to the ceiling, many hundreds of them. She stretched and felt her naked skin against flannel. Her exposed arm was cold in the air from the open window. She pulled it under the sheet and brushed against warmth. She turned over and, after a moment of incomprehension, was horrified to find Hans in bed next to her, his evenly-tanned and muscular shoulder bare, his broad back to her. She looked around for her clothes. She found them within reach, neatly folded on a Morris chair by her side of the bed. As quickly as she could without waking Hans, she dressed under the covers. She glimpsed him there naked beside her. She slipped out of bed and out into a hall. She opened doors looking for a bathroom, but found only pantries, several of them, full to the beams with food. Ranked jars of brightly-colored vegetables and fruits, sacks of flour, bins and barrels, hams and sausages hanging, mesh bags of dried mushrooms, many hundreds of bottles of wine, great carboys of cider, bins of apples and pears, piles of root vegetables.

With trepidation and shame, she stepped into the kitchen. The woman, her cheeks bright and red from the chill morning, wearing the same dress and tall muddy boots, smiled up at her and handed her a mug of coffee. Grete hadn’t had coffee in years, but the smell of it comforted her immediately. She accepted it gratefully and drank it standing by the window looking out over mist-shrouded pastures, small barns, fenced yards where goats chewed and horses stood alert and chickens scratched. The forest stood all around this idyll like a black wall.

Some time later Hans came out, looking more disheveled than Grete had ever seen him. He smiled at her. How did you sleep? he asked. She felt herself blush. What’s wrong? he asked. She stammered something he couldn’t hear. He looked concerned. I don’t even remember going to bed, he said, and laughed abruptly. Quite a night. She set down her coffee and covered her face with her hands and turned away from him. Grete, love. What’s wrong? I am so embarrassed, she said. Why? Because of all the drinking? You didn’t do anything silly, he said. No, not the drinking. Not the drinking per se. Just waking up like that. Like what? What happened? he asked. The woman bustled back in, bringing the chill with her, hauling a pail of eggs in one hand, and a pail of frothy milk in the other. She set them down and poured Hans a mug of coffee.

As she strode out the mudroom door, the woman spoke over her shoulder, rather brusquely, Let’s get this day rolling, my friends. She grabbed a stack of baskets and headed out to the garden. They finished their coffee standing, then followed her out. She was bent at the waist picking greenbeans. Her hands moved very quickly. We’d better change out of these travelling clothes, Hans said, as lightly as he could. She waved them off, frankly irritated. Hans went across the garden, between the twinned great beech trees, and jogged up the path. It twisted more than he remembered. It forked here and there, so that twice he had to backtrack. After some minutes he arrived at the car. He got their overnight bags and went back to the cottage as quickly as he could. They looked again for a bathroom, but found only the pantries and the one bedroom. Where the hell is she keeping the bathroom? Grete asked. Well, where did you go this morning? He asked. I didn’t find one. And where did you sleep? There’s only this one bedroom, where I slept, he said. Hans? she said. What, ma chère? I slept with you, she said. What? I slept with you, in the one bedroom. Here.

They took their turns brushing their teeth and washing their faces in the kitchen sink, and trying to straighten their hair without a mirror. They changed into walking clothes and went out to help in the garden. They picked beans and tomatoes and dug carrots and other roots neither of them could name. When they delivered the heaping baskets to the kitchen, the woman had bread and fresh cheese and fruits and a salad on the table. They ate in silence. As soon as they were done, the woman showed them to the berry patch, and for an hour they picked raspberries. Their hands were raw and their forearms were scratched. In the kitchen, they washed the berries and the woman cooked them in a copper kettle, adding sugar by the handful. They helped ineptly. When they were slow setting up the Mason jars and pressure cooker, the woman was visibly peeved, but they focused on the work and did it as quickly as they could. In the middle of the afternoon, out in the orchard picking up fallen green apples for the pigs, Hans said, I think we’ve paid for the meal by now, don’t you? Grete said, Let’s make a polite departure. Let’s find her something in the trunk for a thank-you present, and ask how to get ourselves un-lost, and get out of here well before dark.

But when they found her by the chicken coop, the woman handed Grete a digging fork and asked her, or told her, to turn the compost pile. She beckoned Hans to follow her and led him inside. He looked back over his shoulder apologetically, and Grete shook her head in disbelief. Once inside, the woman handed Hans a bottle of cider and told him to sit. He sat in a big padded chair and the woman said, You can rest now. Grete and I will finish up and then start supper. He felt guilty and confused, but he sat in the chair and drank the cider. Soon, he fell asleep and dozed the rest of the afternoon, nodding in the chair.

Blisters formed on Grete’s hands, and her back ached. Years of Yoga and Pilates had not prepared her for this hard work, but, once she found a sustainable rhythm, she fell into a kind of trance. She stood up on the fork to push it into the redolent, raw kitchen scraps and manure, then stood down and pulled the handle of the fork back to her, then twisted the handle to turn over the clod. She found the exertion pleasant, and watched the sun move up the wall of trees until the woman appeared by her, nodded approvingly, and said, Time to make supper. They went into the house.

While Hans napped on the chair, Grete cleaned a big pile of mushrooms the woman had apparently just brought in from the forest. She worked quickly, sitting on a stool at the butcher-block island. The smell of earth and leaf-mold filled the kitchen. The woman sorted the growing pile of clean mushrooms. Fat gray ones in one pile; big, graceful yellow ones in another; small, very delicate bluish ones and pink ones with furled edges. When Grete finished cleaning the mushrooms, the woman handed her a hand-blown glass of brown liquor. She smelled it. Calvados? Jack, the woman said. Pear jack. It was smooth and intense and pleasantly hot. The late afternoon took on a kind of golden unreality. She lost track of how many glasses of jack she sipped. She moved fluently, almost automatically, as though she had some deep program in her guiding her movements. She chopped squash and eggplants, blanched peas, butterflied a chicken, and cored tomatoes as though she had done it many times, though she had always avoided cooking. She had been eating out for many years. 

The sun went down. They drank a bottle of red wine. Hans started awake from his long nap just as the woman finished assembling a salad of frisée, fresh goat cheese, rabbit sausages, candied walnuts, and currants. The woman guided her to the table with her hand on the small of her back. They drank a sharp, mineral white wine, nearly colorless, with the salad. They drank a heavier golden wine with the roast chicken and mushrooms. After sitting in the warm light of the candles for a while, the woman moved a plate of cheeses in front of them. It had been there all along, but they hadn’t seen it. They drank the same ink-black wine they’d had the night before.

In the morning, Grete awoke to the crowing of roosters and the clanging of the steel pails. She opened her eyes to the simple room, with its shelves of books. She quieted her breathing and focused her senses on the presence behind her. She could feel his heat radiating across the space between them under the blankets. His breathing was soft and even. She felt the flannel sheets against her naked skin. She felt three days’ stubble on her legs snag the sheets as she moved cautiously and dressed herself in the half-dark. She searched her memory for folding her clothes, but the night was foggy. She could remember the hours of work in the kitchen and each course of the meal, but the later hours of the long evening were out of focus, remote, muddled, no doubt, by the alcohol. She could retrieve no memory at all of getting up from the table, getting ready for bed, getting in bed, or of Hans doing any of these things either. Certainly, she thought, No matter how drunk I was, I would never undress with Hansy in the room, and I can’t imagine that he would undress with me around.

She drank her coffee standing. She went out to the barn to explain that they had to leave, but somehow found herself sitting and learning how to milk the cow, and then the goats. The woman disappeared, and presently Grete heard the sound of wood being chopped and stacked, and the woman returned and the chopping continued. It was after noon before she saw Hans. They ate in near silence. Grete drank coffee. The woman handed Hans a bottle of cider. He sat and drank it and soon fell asleep.

Hours again that afternoon and into the evening Grete and the woman worked in the kitchen, and for hours the three ate and drank until the golden light and the warmth of the stove and the ecstatic glow of the wine drew a scrim over their thoughts and they slept.

Once, passing each other at the twinned beeches, they planned to leave. They went down the path, figured out the forking way to the car, closed the gate behind them, and found that a large tree had fallen across the road. Hans spent hours chopping it with an axe, but made little progress. He had no aptitude for labor. His hands were blistered and bruised. In the afternoon he quit, had a bottle of cider, and napped til supper.

One morning Hans woke before Grete. He turned and found her there by him. He studied her in the half-light. She looked old. The skin of her neck had loosened since her facelift. Her hair was coming in white at the part, and looked dry and, frankly, unfashionable. He felt his face, now covered in a thick beard. He looked at his hands. He had always had weekly manicures, and he moisturized twice a day, but his nails were torn and bitten, he had yellow calluses, his knuckles were barked and raw, and his skin was dry and coarse. He held up his arms. The backs of his hands were dark brown, but from the wrist up he was pale. He lifted the cover and looked down at himself. He had never liked to sleep naked. He looked white and shrunken and old. A new, thick layer of fat surrounded his waist, and he could feel it thickening around his back. His chest and back were covered with the beginning of a thick mat of grey hair. He had gotten waxed right before the trip  ̶  you never know when you’re going to meet someone, he had said to Grete over lunch salads  ̶   but the hair had come back like a shameful memory.

He got out of bed silently and dressed. The woman met him in the kitchen. This time, instead of handing him a mug of coffee as she had every morning since they’d arrived, she stood in front of the stove and looked at him. The early light came through the window, and he could see, plainly, the shape of her in the thin dress. He knew that shape by now. She stepped to him and looked up. She looked very old for a moment. Then the light changed and she looked young, but weathered or tired. Her hair may have been grey or silver or just very light blond, he was never certain. She took both of his hands and looked into his eyes, first one eye, then the other. She put one hand on the front of his pants, but he was unmoved. She unbuttoned her dress and dropped it. Her body was strong, very muscular and very womanly, like an ancient Venus, he thought. Not a body for chic clothes or boardrooms or photographs. A body for work and sex and children. She put her hand back on him, but of course he did not respond as she expected. She put his hand on her and held it there while she searched his face. Then she looked away, picked up her dress, rebuttoned it, and went back to the stove. She wiped her eyes with the inside of her wrist and stirred the pot of milk.

Hans got the axe, and he worked on the fallen tree for hours. Blisters formed, then bled, but he kept at it. Gradually, he learned to alternate the angle of his axe-strokes, so that each swing produced a fat chip of the green wood and the bit didn’t get stuck as it so frustratingly had at first. He chopped a length out of the trunk just wide enough to get the car through. He turned the car in the narrow road and inched through the gap he’d cut. He went back to the house for Grete. He found her shucking corn. Her hands were chapped and cracked, and her nails were short and showed yellow through the little polish that remained. Purplish bags sagged under her eyes, and the white roots that had grown into her dyed-black hair reminded him of a skunk. The skin of her cheeks and neck, without makeup, was blotchy, slack, and papery.

She looked at him. His hair had come in gray and gray hair was matted on his nape, throat, and face. Gray hair sprouted from his ears. His clothes were dirty and untidy. He was visibly fat around the middle. He carried himself slightly stooped, and capillaries had burst in his nose and under his bloodshot eyes.

They left the woman standing there tending the wood in the stove. She didn’t even look at them when they said thank you. They walked out to the car and drove back to the city in silence. She looked to the road ahead, and he watched the country scroll by outside his window. First the long tunnel of the forest, then the broadening valley, then the farms and villages, each more prosperous than the last. Then the freeway, then the suburbs, then the looming of the city, its welcome bustle and distractions, then the familiar front door of his building. She looked back to see that he had his bags, then merged into traffic, anonymous and alone.

The Sentence

Let’s say the author sets aside every Sunday, (he calls it the Sabbath, maybe a holdover from the time of certainty he uneasily enjoyed in his youth), to write, and it seems to work, this writing Sabbath, because his shit job, in retail or construction or in a restaurant, always leaves him too tired and dispirited to write at all from Monday through Friday, and then Friday nights he drinks with his buddies, and Saturday mornings are, therefore, pretty much recovery time, and, besides, he has to save his Saturdays for laundry and grocery shopping and unwinding and all that, so the Sunday writing schedule works pretty well for him, except that most Sundays he procrastinates til noon, and, when he finally picks up his pen and notebook and settles into his chair in his tiny apartment, he usually has the same old ideas over and over again, the same two stories he recycles endlessly, into which he plugs settings and characters and which he (sometimes entertainingly) disguises in a variety of styles, though he has but two themes in his life, two psychological or emotional impasses or what we can call stations, like radio stations that broadcast the same familiar bullshit day and night, between which he can choose but beyond which, on the AM dial of his mind, all else is late-night static, so, unless he has some kind of breakthrough, which he has stopped expecting, though for years it felt as though he was always on the cusp of one, he can tune into only these two stations: the station on which, through the velvet hiss of an old vinyl LP, he can always hear the song, a sort of old-timey round, an endless loop, in which the protagonist wanders deep into some unknown territory, (a wilderness; a forest; an abandoned building; an unnumbered and uninhabited floor in a busy building, inaccessible by the main stairs or elevator and somehow, mysteriously and portentously, unknown to the janitor and the landlord; that kind of thing), and makes of the place a beautiful, orderly, but lonely home in which he finds a provisional contentment that he will never be permitted to share with anyone, ever; and the other station, on which one character, usually a man, lives in mute capitulation after some undescribed tragedies that happened not too far in his past  ̶  the kind of tragedies we all endure, the most mundane kind, not the made-for-TV kind  ̶  have left him listless, dull, without passion, defeated, and his life, as the author tells it over and over, is just a repetitive act of mindless perseverance, and the character becomes so disaffected, or alienated, that the world around him (the closed world the author permits him to inhabit, and the only world the reader can see within the narrow aperture of the story) stops making sense and begins to take on a dreamlike unreality, as though underwater or in a nameless gray purgatory in which others are always just disappearing around a corner, just glimpsed at the edge of the frame, (or just out of earshot, or too self-involved, or speaking some language, of which he can’t understand a word, from the far eastern edge of a dingy socialist Europe), and strange things happen, and the author, and the protagonist, do not know why these things happen, and don’t even remember to wonder why, and strange artifacts appear, (which feel somehow like the obscure symbols of an alien allegory, heavy with the penumbra of significance, or immanence, but inscrutable, utterly out of reach), and the protagonist finds himself (or, rarely, herself) participating ineluctably in inexplicable happenings involving bizarre and vast machines (a cast-iron dirigible venting coalsmoke, a submarine commuter train with the flukes of a whale, a sewing machine the size of an apartment building, a footbridge floating out to sea, etc.) and reticent people (a woman wearing a veil sewn from the throatskins of pelicans, a campesino who expostulates preposterous philosophies, an ex-wife whose attorney waterboards the protagonist  ̶  or is it the author?  ̶  to force him to complete some recondite paperwork), and the author asks himself why he has these two particular preset stations to tune into, and if it’s just a phase he’s going through, and whether there is any escape, and, as he writes, as the sun lowers red this Sabbath evening, as his allotted time winds down before he returns to five more days of his shit job, he wonders if it really is enough to just do the work, to put one word after another, or, if an author has to “tap into” something vital and say something true (which is what he thinks he had better do, or why bother?), should he just quit now, or should he trust that he can someday do this right if he keeps plugging away at it?, and he is buoyed by a memory, he remembers that feeling of the deep congruence, let’s agree to call it, that can, what?, bloom?, between content and form, a congruence that feels very, very good, or right (is he remembering this accurately, after all this time?), that keeps him doing this strenuous (and maybe insane) thing every Sunday (but let’s be honest: it is not just the feeling of “deep congruence” that keeps him going; it is also the possibly-puerile fantasy that this will be read, and admired by admired people, and will sit on a long shelf of great books, and, one day, maybe, some other writer whose fire has almost gone out but who perseveres and does the work will take it down and open it and re-read it and use it as a kind of kindling, trusting anew that his  ̶  or her  ̶  oldest, driest, dullest, saddest, stupidest stories  ̶  the ones his shrink and his friends and family are sick of hearing  ̶  will smolder and catch and flare into something bright) with some kind of dogged hope, for what, exactly, he is not sure.

The Secret Divorce

Every morning the young man stowed his backpack in the locker and crossed the ink-black river to the train station. The predawn city was almost silent in cold and heavy fog and he found that, as he crossed the footbridge, the labyrinth of the Old Town disappeared in the gray shroud behind him before the orderly New Town emerged ahead of him, so that in the middle of the bridge he could imagine it was endless, that it came from nowhere and led nowhere, and that it didn’t matter which direction he walked.

Every morning he bought coffee and sat facing the platform and waited for her. He waited all the gray mornings and into the afternoons. He missed her, but the cold and the fog, which hardly lifted, seemed to dull all his senses, and his longing was muted, not urgent. She seemed remote. In any event, he waited.

The trains eased out of the fog, sluicing water, their groaning attenuated and dull, and returned into the submarine gray as though going out of focus. The passengers drifted, silent.

One day a full train arrived, and, after the dark-coated passengers dispersed, one man remained. At first he stood by the doors and peered out into the rain. Then he paced and checked his phone. Then he settled into a bench to wait. Finally, he slept with one hand on his suitcase.

When the young man returned the next morning the man was still there. They avoided each other in the echoing hall. The next day, too, the man waited. Every so often, he went to the curb and looked out into the gray. His hair became oily and his shirt wrinkled.

One morning the young man bought two coffees and approached the man and gave him one. The man smiled and said something in the local language. They raised their cups to each other in the universal gesture of thanks and conviviality.

The last train from the west arrived, and she was not on it. The young man went to the waiting traveler and said, You should come with me. I have a room and supper. The man did not understand the words, but he stood and followed the young man out into the night.

They stopped mid-bridge, between the diffuse blue lights of the New Town and the lights of the Old Town, dim and candle-yellow. Off in the fog and dark, at either end of the bridge, they heard raised voices and the scrape of iron on iron, the clank of heavy chains, and the creak of timber. The bridge drifted free of the embankments, shedding ice. The fog-blurred lights slowly spun and fell away behind them as they floated downriver. Very late, they came to where the harbor widened and the air smelled of brine and diesel. In the deep below them a vast pod of trains groaned out to sea, their hydraulic flukes thrusting, their windows glowing yellow, their passengers breathing ink.

Quarantine

This work is like laying bricks, Phil thought. He sighed. Saved the document. Flipped to the next file on his desk. The Complaint on behalf of the furniture rental company and the Demand Letter seeking unpaid rent on twenty cubicles and desk chairs. He opened the Complaint template in Word, and found that Carey, his paralegal and receptionist, had already filled out the cover page. Plaintiff, Defendant, Judge and Court, dates. He worked steadily, his mind elsewhere. The billing software recorded 0.9 hours. One more brick in the wall.

At five sharp he heard Carey deadbolt the front door and turn the sign from open to closed. She started humming. She came down the hall and stood in his office door, stretching and yawning. She kicked her heels off, put her hands on her broad hips and leaned back. Her clothes stretched against her. It’s that time, she said. She went back to the bathroom.

He turned off the computer and shut the door. He took off his slacks and pressed shirt, and hung them up. He put on shorts and a t-shirt and went out barefoot. She waited at the stairway door in her bathrobe and flipflops. He unlocked the door and they climbed to the attic. The round gable window let in the street sounds, the breathing of cars, the growing volume of laughing customers gathering in front of the bar across the street. He put on a coverall and disposable gloves and stepped into brightly-stained slippers.

Let’s continue same as yesterday, if you would, he said. She studied the canvas, then went to the bed. He looked away, as always. When she said ready, he turned toward her. She lay almost right. He compared her position to yesterday’s underpainting. He went to the bed. Bend your lower knee a little more. Good. I’m going to fix your hair. He moved a thick wing of her hair into the sun. It shifted from almost black to amber. He rearranged the folds of the sheet around her foot. He made several small adjustments to the scene to make it conform to the underpainting.

He started hesitantly. It was always like this. All day laying bricks, and then the freedom of the brush, its lubricated movements in the slick oil paint. He warmed to the work, and then he painted with great speed and fluidity. This was for him the best time. His mind did not stray.

The sounds of the street also warmed to the after-work freedom. Bar customers smoked on the sidewalk below, much louder and happier now that they’d had a drink. The color of the sunlight warmed, from white through yellow, now verging on orange. Her skin turned almost amber as the sun fell, and he found the color for her sunlit profile, a mix of burnt sienna, lead white, cadmium yellow, and, strangely, a very small amount of pthalo blue. The sunlit horizon line of her thigh and hip and the fold of her side were a non-color, neither brown nor pink, as prejudice insisted, but a warm and clayey gold that verged on green. He never tired of this moment, when he landed by intuition on precisely the color that moved the painting from flat and merely accurate, to spacious and vibrant. He worked at an almost frantic pace while the light was right. As it got too orange he worked on the bedding, trying to see the true colors of her shadow on the folds of the white sheet. He worked until seven, the allotted two hours.

He rolled his paint table away so she could get her robe on. He stretched plastic wrap over the palette and put his brushes away, and wiped the knife clean. He bagged the dirty paper towels and latex gloves and went downstairs. She came down behind him and locked the stairway door. They dressed, she in the bathroom, he in his office. They offed the lights, set the alarm, and went out together onto the hot sidewalk. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do, she said. She went her way, and he drove home.

His wife had supper ready. The kids were finishing their homework. He felt a moment of pleasure in this order, and then a moment of guilt. This order depended on his income as an attorney and on his wife’s willingness to submit to a role she could very easily transcend. He watched her in the kitchen for a moment. So competent, so organized. So overqualified for this repetitive domestic work. They had met in law school. He was the better student, disciplined and meticulous, but she had the gifts of a TV-drama litigator: articulate, capable of chess-game strategizing, and committed. He always felt unimaginative and stolid around her, and he liked it. And he felt that she had made the greater sacrifice, being a housewife. He thought of himself as a hardworking drone returning every night to this orderly hive and the queen bee. Her willingness to be the housewife flattered him and sometimes filled him with gratitude  ̶  he had never expected to live so well, or to be so adored  ̶  but he felt uneasy, too. How long would she tolerate the boredom? What hobbies would she take up to make her life interesting? What concessions would she demand of him in exchange for her dutiful forbearance?

He changed out of his office clothes and went down to supper. A protein, a starch, and a vegetable. He asked about her day. She made of it an adventure: the errands, the volunteer hour at the kids’ school library, getting the oil changed. She asked about his day, about specific cases, though she couldn’t be interested. His work was all procedural, the most mundane practice, none of the high-stakes courtroom drama that animated her. He asked the kids about their friends and their classes. They said pretty much what they always said, evasive and cagey. He didn’t really listen. After supper he did the dishes and tidied the kitchen. They watched the news, then went to bed, early as usual.

Next day was Friday. He spent half the morning on the phone planning a retreat for members of the Bar. He worked through a discrepancy in his billing with a client. He agreed to a partnership with a big firm on a high-profile pro bono case. Carey bustled in and out, as always fast, energetic, and competent. Her clothes tended toward a dramatic, artsy formality Monday through Thursday, but today she wore jeans over heels, and a loose blouse that showed the top of her elaborate tattoos. He didn’t mind her casual Fridays, but he wore his slacks and pressed shirt as always. Late in the morning he heard the landscaper start work next door. This reminded him that he needed to hire a new landscaper for his building. To the sounds of oiled hedge-shears, he completed his current document. He went outside to talk with the man.

At first, the man did not look up when Phil spoke, then, startled, he set down the tool and removed his hat and held it in both hands at his waist, a strangely formal and submissive gesture. The landscaper was tall and athletic, symmetrical, though stooped in the shoulders. His skin was almost black, a dark coffee brown, white with sweat salt around his neck. Phil had noticed him, but, now that the landscaper had removed his hat and they faced each other he could see that he was many years older than Phil had thought. Sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking to hire a landscaper for my building here, so maybe you could come knock when you’re off work and we’ll talk about it?

The man smiled and shook his head. I’m no speak English, he said. Spanish.

Phil took a moment to adjust. He had spoken Spanish fluently as a young man, when he was a missionary in Guatemala, and later on church charity trips he helped organize. His Spanish wasn’t what it used to be, but the man seemed delighted by his effort. He repeated his request and the man said, in an unfamiliar and almost opaque accent, that he would drop in as soon as he finished.

Phil worked for a while, then the front door chimed open. He heard Carey shift to Spanish. She and the man talked and laughed for a minute, then Phil went to the reception area and asked the man to sit. He refused, indicating his dirty pants. It seemed an important matter of deference that he remain standing, hat in hands, so Phil remained standing, too. The man’s name was Gonzalo, he was from Veracruz. He admitted with some reluctance that he was in the United States illegally. Phil asked him if he would take care of the planting in front of the office once a week, and Gonzalo said yes, of course. Phil had a hard time with his accent, nothing like Carey’s Spanglish or the slow and gentle accents he’d learned in Guatemala, but they communicated well. All three went out to the sidewalk. Phil showed Gonzalo the neat row of squared boxwood and the pine-bark mulch that accumulated trash and needed raking. He showed him the locker where he kept the hose and fertilizer. Carey showed him the big clay urns of flowers she had planted, and the tree-wells full of herbs that barely survived the foot-traffic and the dogs. Gonzalo quoted a price, they shook on it, and he put his hat back on and left on a bicycle heavy with tools.

Carey left at five. She did not model Fridays. From the hall, he watched her step to the curb, look both ways, then jog across the street to the bar, where a crowd waited to get in. She joined a group her age, hugging and laughing. The shape of her across the street reminded him that she was not his, that she was an employee. The way she stood so straight in her sleek heels and the shape of her body in her clothes seemed too much to share, but he brought himself out of reverie and changed into his coverall and went upstairs to paint.

Under the rafters, the studio was hot in the afternoon sun, and the air was thick with Turpenol and damar, linseed oil and Liquin. He opened the window and the door to the fire escape and turned on the fan. The painting of her, nearly finished, stood on the easel in the middle of the room. He took it down and leaned it against a stack of fifty others. Paintings leaned all along one long wall, maybe two hundred of them, a few years’ work. Most were about two by three feet, many were smaller than a sheet of legal paper, and a few were very large, four by eight feet. He had three series of paintings: the ones of Carey that he did Monday through Thursday after office hours; a series of still-lifes he did when she wasn’t working, Friday and some weekends, all of them set up right here, in this attic studio by the circular gable window; and a few landscapes he did when he traveled, mostly alone. His wife had seen only the landscapes. She supported his hobby. She encouraged him to paint, to unwind, and to develop his talent. One of his small landscapes hung above her desk at home, and several decorated the guest rooms in their cabin, but, as far as she knew, his painting was to him what literary fiction was to her: an enriching, edifying hobby. She said that his landscapes were quite good, and he admired her love of books that he found dreary and difficult.

He placed the most recent still-life on the easel, took the plastic off the paints, prepared the brushes, and looked hard at the set-up by the window. He didn’t really care what was in the still-lifes, as long as there was color and light. He had draped a cloth over a stool and placed a Mason jar half-full of water on top, by an orange. In almost all these paintings the sun angled down from the left, because he usually painted in the late afternoon. In a few minutes he was up to speed. He painted the reflection of the sky in the surface of the water. He looked closely and saw the stippled light through the street trees as a pattern around the rim of the glass. The orange reflected its color onto the white cloth and in the glass. As he worked, the sun lowered, and the lights of the bar came on, bold text in blinking bulbs against an orange wall. The light of the scene changed abruptly, and he moved quickly to adjust. He painted the points of light and their warped, displaced inversions in the glass and water. At six-thirty he called home and lied to his wife, I’m running behind at work, I’ll be a little late. On a Friday? Yes, sorry, I won’t be long. Can I drive your dinner down? No, love, but thank you. I just need another hour. I’m sorry.

He worked til eight, pushing hard. He would have to leave it unfinished. He felt exhilarated and purposeful. He wanted to stay. The painting would be a good one.

He latched the window and the fire-escape door and draped his coverall across a chair. He threw his used gloves in the trashcan, shut off the lights and went down, locking the door behind him.

At home he found his supper under foil. The kitchen shone spotless under the halogen lights of the stove hood. He heard the TV upstairs, manic laughter in the otherwise silent house. As he walked by the stove he felt heat and found that she had left a burner on low. He shut it off and went upstairs. He leaned into the kids’ rooms and said hi. They glanced up from their cell phones and acknowledged him. He went in to his wife and kissed her. She shut off the TV and they talked for a while about plans for the weekend. He thought of the good painting he had left, and longed to get back to it, but he feigned enthusiasm, and they decided to go to the cabin, to get the kids out of cell-range and into the fresh air of summer.

The still-life turned out very well. He wanted to do another, similarly backlit by the blinking lights of the bar, but sunset was getting later, and his wife had been silently resentful of his late Friday night at the office. He focused on the sessions with Carey. He proposed starting earlier so he could get three hours of painting time every day. She resisted, saying that two hours was already a long time to hold still for him. He offered her a raise, and she agreed. He worried that someone would notice the sign turned to closed at four, but he couldn’t have someone walking in while he was in the attic in his coverall. So, for three hours four times a week he painted Carey. He worked out a palette of colors for her skin and the bedding in the slanting solstice light. The paintings became more fluent, and he finished two, sometimes three per week. He posed her with her back to him, and several paintings that June showed her in subtly different poses, though the props changed from day to day: in one, her amber hair is piled on a red silk pillow, and the sunlight makes a faint halo of diffuse red on the bare rafters above her head. In another he piled an armload of books next to her on the bed, and she lies with one arm flung up over her head and her hair drapes across the pillow, as though she had succumbed to too much reading.

As she came to trust him more, he turned her every which way. On her back the sun lit the tattoos across her belly and between her breasts and he struggled to render the fine, intricate lines of the tattoos with the same attention he brought to the almost featureless expanse of her skin. He rarely touched her. He maintained the professional detachment he had promised, though sometimes he was sick with desire.

The days in the office required all of his discipline and endurance. His mind recoiled from his work. He had to force himself to pay attention to the demanding documents. He made an embarrassing mistake on a court filing, and had to issue a correction at the indignant demands of opposing counsel. He did what he could to bill six hours a day, but some days he was so distracted he couldn’t, in good conscience, bill more than half that. His income dropped. He dreaded the empty evenings between the time Carey left on Thursday and their next session the following Monday.

One Saturday, he cancelled plans with his family to go in to work. He forced himself to bill ten hours that day. It relieved his guilt and anxiety. It brought his billables for the month just high enough that his wife was unlikely to question him.

Quietly, citing conflicting demands on his time, he quit his position with the Bar, and he delegated more of his church responsibilities to others. He painted as much as he could.

Gonzalo showed up every Monday. He did a good job. He cleaned up from weekend traffic, the beercans and cigarette butts thrown in the boxwoods. He watered and pruned and raked. Phil liked to go out and practice his Spanish with Gonzalo. He liked the handsome, charismatic man, and Gonzalo relaxed a little around him. Gonzalo was a raconteur and had a way of speaking that drew Phil to him. A tendency to use pungent and suggestive words. A straight-faced delivery and an abrupt smile. Phil loved to hear his endless breezy anecdotes, his swerving commentary, his ribald punchlines, his worldliness that made light of weariness and hardship.

Carey always had a joke ready for Gonzalo. Back in his office, Phil would hear her go out the front door and start talking in rapidfire Spanish, punctuated by Gonzalo’s baritone acknowledgements, sí, pues sí, sí, sí. Then Gonzalo’s loud, wheezing, whooping laugh would burst out as she got to the punchline. Phil couldn’t quite follow what she was saying. He tried to not feel hurt that she had no jokes for him, but, he reminded himself, She is only my employee, nothing more. She answers the phone and e-mails, she does paralegal, she sits by the door, and she lies in the bed with her clayey-golden skin. That is what I pay her to do. I cannot expect her to like me.

He finished several smaller paintings, of her face and shoulders as she looked, sidelit, out the attic window. The light passed through her eyes and it took him several tries before he found a way to suggest that translucence with a few loose brushstrokes. These painting seemed alive, heightened, vibrant in a way that made the rest of his life feel flat and bland. He thought about the paintings all the time. He hadn’t felt so intoxicated since he was a child.

Then he worked on some very large paintings, whole sheets of gessoed plywood he’d barely been able to get up the fire-escape, of Carey stretched on her back, her arms reaching above her head. The shadows of her ribs and hips intensified her exposure and the paintings were almost upsetting, at least discomfiting, as though they showed something forbidden. She did not look vulnerable, but fearless, or impassive, like a resting lion.

One Friday at five she came to his office door and yawned and stretched and asked him, in Spanish, if he had plans for the weekend. He said yardwork, maybe go to the cabin with the kids, an obligation at church. She told him she was going to take a cooking class and go to a movie and hopefully get drunk. He felt so grateful that she spoke to him in Spanish and that she stood there in his doorway laughing when she had already clocked out. She said, Do you have a few minutes I can say something to you? With trepidation, he indicated the chair, and she sat and crossed her legs and let a yellow heeled pump hang off her foot.

She said, now in English, Maybe this is something you want me to shut up and not say it? But, you know, these paintings are very good. Especially the ones with me in them! She laughed, without self-deprecation.

Thank you, he said.

You need to show them.

No, you know I can’t do that. It’s just a hobby.

No way, Mister Phil, these are not hobby paintings. These painting are really fucking good, excuse my rude mouth.

Thank you, Carey.

Look, you got, what, like a hundred paintings up there just leaning on the wall getting dusty and…

Probably almost three hundred by now.

You see? Three hundred! What are you doing all these paintings for if nobody sees them but me? At first, I figured you just wanted to see me naked and I didn’t mind too much and you pay me really good, so I said yes. I thought maybe, you know, you would get some idea and try something, but no, you are so nice and considerate sometimes I think you’re gay. She laughed. I’m sorry. Was that bad to say?

No, Carey. I’m not gay. I just want a model. You’re a great model. I don’t want to ruin that by, uh, inappropriate behavior. By disrespecting you.

I appreciate that. You always seem like a safe man, like I can trust you. It’s okay. I like having the work, and I’m more comfortable with it now than I was. It’s much easier than legal work. She laughed again.

He smiled. Carey, thank you for being so great about this.

Yeah, of course. But so, let’s talk about these paintings. You have to show them. Seriously. When I used to model and in art school I’ve seen lots of paintings, and yours are so good. You have a gift, bro. I’m serious.

That weekend at the cabin he thought about what she’d said. He wondered how the paintings would look in a gallery. The thought kept coming to him, though he kept dismissing it. There’s no way, he thought. These paintings belong to another life. A secret, quarantined life that I love even more than my home life, much more than my career. I can’t jeopardize that. He sat on the porch looking across the meadow to where his kids played in the stream. It’s not exactly that I love my secret life more than my home life, he thought. What I mean is that my secret life makes my home life make sense. Or makes it worth it. I love this life, but it is not everything all the time. It’s nearly perfect, but it’s also very boring, no matter how much I love my kids and my wife. He got up and went into the cabin. His wife lay on the couch reading a thick book. Even in her old hiking pants and flannel shirt she looked put-together and pretty. Her hair on the pillow kept its shape. She wore light lipstick and her pedicure looked fresh as always.

He took a shower and thought of Carey. He heard her encouragement over and over. With patience and discipline he stated his case to himself, as though his most prudent self were offering objective legal counsel to his most reckless self. It said: the paintings must never come to light. They belong to your id. They show appetites that must remain caged. They show a side of you that is incompatible with your professional reputation, and that could destroy your marriage and family, and jeopardize your position in the church and the community. He said to himself, If you had any sense you would destroy the paintings, start over, put this childish phase behind you. You would send Carey away with a generous bonus and hire a kid out of law school. He made a contract with himself. In his journal, which he knew his wife sometimes read, he wrote Choose the right, let the consequence follow! And, on another page, he drew a line from memory of the horizon of Carey’s thigh, hip, and side as she had lain in the sun. The line was abstract, uninterpretable to anyone else, a secret in plain sight, a challenge to the order he relied on, but, he knew, timid and without commitment or real danger.

Lying awake that night he chided himself for his timidity. That abstract line, along with a few anodyne landscapes in his cabin, was all his family knew of the passion that moved him most. The regularity of his wife’s breathing and the endless white-noise of the stream pressed down on him.

On Monday he was working on end-of-month accounting when he heard Carey go out the front door and greet Gonzalo in Spanish. He let them talk for a minute. Gonzalo laughed and laughed about something Carey said. Then Phil got up and went out and greeted Gonzalo, asked him to come in to his office when his work was done.

Gonzalo came in, hat in hands, and stood facing the desk. Phil closed the door and asked Gonzalo to sit. He hesitated, but sat on the edge of the chair with his hat on his lap, looking worried.

I have a proposal for you, said Phil, in Spanish.

I hope you are happy with my work?

Yes, very happy. Please, there’s nothing to worry about. I have an idea, but first I need you to promise that what we say in this room is absolutely private, just between you and me.

Yes, of course. I promise. Not one word.

Gonzalo, this will sound perhaps a little crazy. I am an attorney. I have important and conservative clients. I have a place in this community, and I have leadership responsibilities in the legal profession and in my church. Furthermore, I have a family I adore.

Yes, sir. I understand. But what is the crazy part? Gonzalo smiled broadly. His handsome face changed from stern and humble, to jovial and charismatic and knowing. Phil thought he saw a secret life in Gonzalo, too. Maybe he is one of those people who come to America to do menial work because it pays better than professional work in Mexico, he thought. Maybe this man, who appears to be just a simple laborer, is sophisticated. Who knows what lies behind a poor, black, foreign face?

He told Gonzalo about his painting. He explained that the paintings contained images, of Carey, that would shock and offend his family, his colleagues, his clients, and the members of his church. 

Gonzalo nodded soberly and said, I understand, sir. A gentleman’s private matters must remain private, and must be handled with the utmost consideration.

Yes. Exactly.

You can count on my discretion, sir.

Thank you, Gonzalo. Please call me Phil.

Phil made his proposal. I want you to consider an offer. I have reason to believe that my paintings are actually good. I’m surprised. It started as something I enjoyed, way back in high school. I took a couple of classes in college, and my paintings were good, but I felt obligated to pursue a profession. Painting seemed irresponsible. My wife and I got married when we were in law school. We had two children, and I have felt obligated to work hard as an attorney, and to be a pillar in the community. But I started painting again, to unwind, because I enjoy it. Like a hobby. But it’s taken over. Now I paint whenever I get a chance. I work as few office hours as I can, and I paint almost every day. And  ̶  I hope this isn’t arrogant  ̶  I think my paintings are very good. I never expected this.

And, please, how can I help in this private matter or your secret paintings?

Gonzalo, I want you to be the painter.

The man’s face slackened. He looked Phil over for a long moment. I’m sorry, sir, Mister Phil, I don’t understand.

I want these paintings to go public. I want to see if they’re really good, or if I’m just delusional. My idea, my proposal, is that you pose as the artist. We take the paintings to galleries, and you tell them that you painted them, and then, hopefully, we sell some, and I give you half the money.

Gonzalo finally sat back. He set his hat aside and looked at Phil directly. He sat quiet while Phil waited for a reply.

Why are you asking me this? I am just the gardener. You don’t know anything about me. I am not even in this country legally. What do I know about art? I have never even been in a gallery. How can you trust me with your scandal?

I’m asking you because you’re a gardener. Because I have everything to lose and you have everything to gain.

Gonzalo’s face hardened. What am I going to gain? Attention that gets me sent back to Mexico still owing the coyote?

Money. Easy money. To them, you will be the landscape laborer who went home every night to paint. The unlikely genius, let’s say. Not someone they expect. A great story. You can pocket some money, maybe find some allies.

These painting, then, are works of genius?

Well. They are very good.

I imagine there are several very good painters in this city, but they go unnoticed because the artists are not poor Mexican negros?

Please, Gonzalo. That’s not what I meant. I mean, I can’t let it be known that I am the artist. It would destroy my life.

One thing is true about what you’re saying, said Gonzalo. I have not much to lose. Maybe they take my bike and tools. Maybe my filthy old hat. Maybe this roll of cash. But I have no family here, no profession, no church, no real community. So, yes, if I become the artist, if I lend my face and name to your paintings, and the people are offended or even appalled, and I sell some of the paintings to the kind of people who delight in the outrageous, who love to show their liberality and worldliness by owning obscene paintings made by a poor Mexican negro, then the worst that will happen is that I will be deported and that I will return to unemployment in Mexico with a bank account.

Gonzalo, please. I understand that this proposal is not without risk for you. But I promise you that I will protect you, vouch for you, be your sponsor. I am very well connected. I speak Spanish. If the worst happens, I will bring you back to the United States. I will pay your expenses and advocate for you. You have my word.

Gonzalo sat for a while. He sucked on his lips and stared into the corner of the room. He ran the brim of his hat through his huge and calloused hands. Then he stood up. His deference fell off him like a cloak. He stood tall and straight and looked down at Phil as he sat behind his desk. Okay, then, Mister Phil. Show me my paintings. He held his hand out toward the closed office door, palm up, as though to say, After you.

Phil stood. He went out the door, down the hall, and to the stairway door. He unlocked it and they went up.

The attic was close and hot. At the top of the stairs Gonzalo turned toward the room. The latest painting stood on the easel, eight feet long. On it, in the loose, hurried, dripping brushstrokes of Phil’s first sketch, Carey lay sprawled on her back, her head off the end of the bed, her throat exposed, her hand between her legs, her tattoos like text on her glowing skin, in an ellipse of white sunlight. Gonzalo turned away for a moment, then turned back. He studied the painting. He stepped to the paintings that leaned against the wall, most of them finished. He held up one of the smaller paintings, of Carey’s face by the window. He turned and faced Phil.

So what I am going to do is take some of these to a gallery  ̶  I hope wearing a better shirt, but I mustn’t look too good  ̶  and tell them that I want to sell some paintings. Correct?

Yes, basically. I will help with the details and contacts. There’s a lot we need to figure out. But, yes, these paintings will be, publicly, your work.

He looked back at the big underpainting. How much does a painting like this sell for? When it’s finished.

That’s a very big one, obviously. Hard to sell. Most people do not have wall space for one that big.

Most people, Mister Phil, do not have any space at all for a painting of a very voluptuous naked girl doing such a private thing as this.

You might be surprised. That one will be maybe $12,000. Half that goes to the gallery and we split the other half. So $3,000 for you. If the paintings sell well, or if we get picked up by a gallery in a larger city, the prices will increase. Double or triple, I think. But I don’t expect the big ones to sell often. They hang in the galleries and people, certain people, educated liberals who went to graduate school in the big city, young couples with lots of money and an image to cultivate, will see the big ones, like them, and then buy a small one to take home.

Maybe these paintings of the mountains and countryside sell quickly. And these ones that do not have beautiful Carey in them.

Yes. I expect so. People want the art without the danger.

They stood for a long minute. The roof ticked in the heat. Gonzalo stood over the bed, looking at the rumpled sheets. He turned back to Phil. Yes, he said. I am the artist.

*

Phil called galleries, told them that he was doing a favor for an acquaintance who could not speak English, made appointments. He selected a landscape and a still-life and three paintings of Carey, all small and portable. Phil took pictures of several of the larger paintings where they leaned in the attic, with Gonzalo standing to the side in Phil’s paint-flecked coverall.

Phil coached Gonzalo. Rely on your smile, he said. Tell them stories. Get them laughing. Just do what you do. You’re a very likable person and people want to believe. You don’t need to know the gallery business. In fact, not knowing how it works will help you. They will know that you’re an outsider  ̶  here he had to search for a word in Spanish, trying extranjero, then marginero, then fuereño  ̶  a person who is not the scrubbed product of a university art program. Gonzalo looked amused, but he was game.

For the first gallery pitch, Phil wore a nice shirt and khakis. He posed as a do-gooder, eager to help his Spanish-speaking friend get his nice paintings into the galleries. Gonzalo showed up in old but carefully-pressed slacks and shirt, and a new, cream-colored fedora, looking rather too prosperous, Phil thought. The woman who met them at the door wore almost exactly what Phil had expected: a simple black dress and a vaguely ethnic scarf. Tall, thin, and severe. She was courteous but cool, and glanced at her phone as she ushered them into the big white room. Gonzalo spoke right away.

Phil translated: He says he thinks the light in here is perhaps overly dependent on the sun. He worries that when you cover the windows the light will be too dim for his work.

Cover the windows?

He says that his work must not be visible from the sidewalk, from public view.

Maybe I should see the work before we discuss lighting? Phil thought he heard contempt in her voice, but she offered Gonzalo a bright smile, then guided him further into the gallery with a light touch on his arm.

Phil set the paper-wrapped bundle of paintings on the reception counter and untied the string. They had agreed on the order of the paintings. A gentle introduction. The top painting was a landscape, mountains with snow in the background, a fat orange cloud above, and tiered billboards marching down a length of freeway in the foreground. Nature and junky development together, the manmade stuff bright and plasticky against nature, aloof and menacing.

The gallerist stood back from it, then moved close and put on reading glasses. Very proficient, she said. This is oil?

Yes, they’re all oil, Phil said.

Next he presented the still-life. He rested it on its bottom edge on the counter and tilted it back to catch the overhead halogen light. One of the Mason jar paintings, this one with several lemons. The glass and water caught the light coming through the window, and the lemons burned with primary yellow. The gallerist looked and looked. Moved back and forward. Looked across the face of the paint.

Very, very well done, she said. The colors are lovely, the sense of space, the quality of light. I think this one is very compatible with our mission as a gallery.

Phil translated to Gonzalo. Gonzalo laughed abruptly, and said: wait til she sees these next ones.

Phil turned to her and said: he thinks this painting appeals to you because it is decorative and the work you show looks painted for living rooms.

The gallerist reddened. I believe we carry the finest local work in the city, she said. This is all fine art. This is not a decorative arts gallery.

He means no offense, I’m sure, said Phil. It’s just that, you see, he paints very few landscapes and still-lifes. They are the paintings he does when he doesn’t have a model. He works mainly in figure painting. We have a few of his smaller figure paintings here. Gonzalo stood back and asked Phil to hold up the first of the paintings of Carey. Gonzalo put his hat down. He looked at the gallerist. He stepped to her and took her elbows and moved her back several feet. Aquí te paras, flaca, he said.

He wants you to stand back there.

He made that clear enough, she said, then laughed abruptly, a single barking, awkward laugh. She stood with her arms folded, rubbing her elbows.

Gonzalo tilted the top painting rather roughly, imperiously, then took it from Phil and held it up in front of his chest. His dark face scowled above the luminous sunlit profile of Carey. The skin of her face was brown and done in a fast impasto, but the skin of her breasts was pale, painted in a few circular strokes of very dilute paint, almost white. The street outside the window was painted in more detail than anything inside the window, and the sun shone through the white of her eye.

The gallerist hugged her arms tightly to herself and her shoulders rose. She glanced at Gonzalo, then looked at Phil, as though about to speak, then back at the painting. Phil had never seen one of the Carey paintings in such white light. It looked frank, almost aggressive, as though a stripped person stood before them. Phil noticed for the first time that he had painted a faint shadow along Carey’s jaw that made her look determined, or angry. The picture showed something unfulfilled in Carey. Her gaze out the window did not look at all wistful, as Phil had imagined while he painted, but defiant, as though the world outside the window owed something to this naked girl, and that she would take it.

The gallerist stammered. It’s, well, stunning. Very, very good. Yes. Where did you go to school, mister, uh, Gonzalo?

He is self-taught.

Really? In Mexico?

Recently. Just over the last couple of years.

Extraordinary. I should say right up front that we can’t show nudity toward the street, just a few pieces facing the back wall, I’m afraid. We’re in the provinces, for sure. She laughed again.

This is why Gonzalo expressed his concern about the windows.

Well, I understand, believe me, but I can’t paper over the windows. I represent several other artists.

Phil spoke with Gonzalo for a minute. Gonzalo looked irritated and walked off to a corner to look at a landscape featuring fall foliage and beef cattle.

Perhaps this is not the right gallery for this work. His work. He is looking for lots of wall space, the best lighting, a one-man opening.

I would consider a one-man opening if I were dealing with an established favorite artist, she said. But I see just a few paintings here. I would be happy to show his landscapes. Those will sell, I’m sure. This one is really very good. I have space for three of four of them. I would like to keep some still-lifes in the stable for the right buyer. I have a few clients who will venture out into still-lifes now and then. I’d be happy to send them custom invitations.

Gonzalo’s heart is in the figures. He is a figure painter who makes do with more, shall we say agreeable? work when his model isn’t available.

That work will be very challenging to show and sell…

I believe it deserves special effort. The work will sell itself if you can bring in the right buyers. Its quality is evident.

Yes, of course, it’s very good work. I mean no offense. If it were entirely up to me I would feature such work exclusively. But you understand that this isn’t New York. People take offense. They expect something less… forthright.

Well, if you reconsider, you know how to reach me.

Like I said, I’d love to show the landscapes.

There will be very, very few landscapes to show. Thank you. We need to get to our next appointment.

The next gallery received them in much the same way. The curator was courtly and effusive, but, with elaborate apologies, he offered to show only the landscapes and the still-lifes. He blushingly admitted that he couldn’t carry the figure paintings. They were just too daring, he said. Risqué. Inflammatory. Potentially, in this small city, offensive to his best clients. He offered to buy the still-life for his own house, but would not agree to Gonzalo’s demands.

*

Over a few weeks, as they made their way through the galleries, Gonzalo adopted a domineering severity, which he would every so often discard in favor of rambling, demonstrative, loud, hilarious storytelling. Most of the gallerists just stood grinning and listening, while Phil translated, editing as he went.

Word got around. All the gallerists knew of the tall, gaunt, formidable but gregarious black man, the enigma, and his humorless white handler. And all of them expressed admiration for the work and an unwillingness to show the figure paintings. Until they met Judith Wallach.

She called Phil. He heard New York in her elderly voice. She said a few pleasant things about the local galleries, about how far the city’s art culture had come in recent years. She said that, of course, the galleries could not be expected to take on the risk of true art, but that if a private individual, a supporter of the arts, were to be impressed enough by the work, she might consider a large private show in her home. Phil told her that there were many paintings, some very large. How very refreshing, she said, that an artist should be dedicated enough to his work to do lots of it. So many artists today are so exhausted after getting home from selling paint and brushes to dilettantes and students that they barely have enough energy left to play video games all night. But productivity shows commitment and seriousness. She said she found that very, very sexy indeed. Phil set a date.

Phil packed his pickup truck with many paintings, including some of the largest. He drove Gonzalo out of the city and up a valley into the mountains. The road wound up through oaks, then spruces. They turned onto a private road. They were buzzed in at the gate. The road switchbacked up the mountain until it opened into a clearing overlooking the city far below. The long, glassy, prismatic house sat back in the trees. They parked, and Judith came out. Tiny, wiry, aged, without makeup or jewelry. An alert but silent German shepherd kept to her hip and sat when she stopped to greet them. Her greeting was quick, without flourish.

They walked through a lush artificial riparian landscape, past a massive fountain consisting of one thick, canted plate of Corten steel. Claire Townes, she said. The name meant nothing to Phil, but Gonzalo nodded gravely. Shoes here by the door, please, she said. They kicked off their shoes. The house swept toward the view, one vast floor of dark polished wood. The glass walls were invisibly clean. They looked down on the grid of the city.

Dios mio, said Gonzalo.

You can say that again, said Judith. What a privilege to live like this, no? Something to be grateful for.

The living room contained several loose clusters of chairs. Black leather and chrome, spotted cowhide and teak. Designs Phil had seen before but couldn’t name. The dog eyed them from a cushion by a look-through fireplace of travertine. Pristine white partitions separated the spaces. A dining room table with 24 chairs, a kitchen of shining orange enamel, a long broad hallway leading to several open doors. A space much larger than any of the galleries they’d visited. And on the white partitions a few sparsely-spaced pieces of art: some old landscapes, a wall of small cubist charcoal drawings, a very large painting with a pixelated grid, a long strip of pinned-up paper covered with hundreds of tiny cartoon figures engaged in every permutation of copulation and murder, an ancient golden icon, and, in the hall and stairways, many more paintings, small and large. Judith went to a switchplate and flicked on maybe twenty sets of lights, and, one by one, the paintings leapt into clear view. No one style predominated.

Gonzalo stood close to the icon. Byzantine, said Judith. Phil looked up at the pixelated grid. Chuck Close, she said. One of my favorites. There’s another of his downstairs. A shame to keep it hidden, but I had to free up space for a Diebenkorn that’s coming from California. A loaner. But let’s see the art.

Phil and Gonzalo brought in the smaller work first. Judith sat with her back to the view. They held up the landscape they’d been taking around. Nice, she said. They held up a few still-lifes. Excellent, she said. So clear and deep. Beautiful colors. Yes.

They went back to the truck and pulled out the large painting Phil had been working on when he first took Gonzalo up to the attic studio. He had added several increasingly-thick layers of paint since then. He felt that it was one of his best. The projected ellipse of sunlight verged on harsh, and the light reflected off her exposed skin to illuminate the rafters above. The window itself appeared to float in the wall, and contained a sharp rendering of the buildings across the street. The white bedding lay tangled and twisted like an arctic icescape, and her tattoos looked incised, almost branded into her skin. She shone there, sprawled in a way that suggested ecstasy and exhaustion and also despair or agony. She looks dead and alive, said Gonzalo. And soft as a mango. He laughed, all white teeth and craggy black skin.

They carried it into the house, edge forward, then turned it toward her with some ceremony.

She sat still. Holy mother of Christ, she said. She stood up and stared, with her shaking hands clasped in front of her. I’m a Jew, of course, but holy mother of Christ. Now that is a painting. She went back and forth in front of it. She retreated to the window. She went up close and put a hand on it. She ran her fingers down Carey’s arm, to the gold and ruby ring that gleamed there on the edge of the shadow of her inner thigh. So much paint, she said. She put her glasses on and tilted her head back. She got up close. It is so genuinely beautiful, she said. And extremely hot. I feel as though I’m right up next to an oversized lover. I can smell her! She studied the whole length of the painting. Touched it here and there. The sheets are gorgeous. So very well painted. Gonzalo, this is a tremendous painting. She looked up at the man. He looked down at her. Phil translated. Gonzalo nodded to her and muttered his thanks. When she turned back to the painting Gonzalo looked at Phil and smirked.

That afternoon they showed her every painting they’d brought. She did not return to the landscape. She set the still-lifes aside. They moved some furniture and leaned the big paintings around the room. She showed delight, sometimes rapturous, at all of them.

They planned a show. Judith would have the house prepared for ten or twelve of the biggest paintings and as many as twenty of the smaller ones. She handed them a dimensioned floorplan of the public rooms of the house and a lighting diagram. They set a date for the fall. She had a long contact list. She would send out invitations. She left the pricing to them, but suggested that they use what she called big, fat numbers. These people do not want to feel that they’re getting a good deal, she said.

Phil pushed hard for the rest of the summer. He completed several paintings of Carey seated, facing him, close, wearing her office clothes. Her light brown eyes glowed and penetrated. She looked startled, accusative, wary, indicting, challenging, frightened, bemused.

As the day approached, they trucked the paintings up to Judith’s house. Movers wearing white cotton gloves put her paintings in storage and hung Gonzalo’s. Phil was moved by a deep and unsettling excitement as he saw his work go up. Careys reclined, lit from the left, all around the living room. In the stairways she sat by the attic window. Downstairs in the large, almost unfurnished display space, they hung the frankest, most startling work: her body hesitatingly bared. It twisted, as though stopped in movement. It writhed. It was not settled. It seemed to oscillate on the boundary between ecstasy and suffering.

Gonzalo was relaxed the day of the show, though Judith, for the first time they had seen, looked anxious and irritable. Cleaners polished everything. Judith directed the placement of the furniture and the caterers’ set-up in the kitchen. Gardeners made minute corrections to what Phil thought looked perfect. Gonzalo wore an elegant new shirt and his cream fedora and stood out front talking with the gardeners. They laughed at almost everything he said. Phil couldn’t understand much of it. It was too fast and colloquial. Filthy jokes, mostly, and self-lacerating stories of drinking mishaps and miscommunication with rich gringos.

The crews of workers left, and the caterers stood out on the driveway smoking and passing a flask. The late afternoon was quiet and still. Judith went off to rest and change. Phil and Gonzalo sat out by the pool. Gonzalo wanted a drink, but Phil forbade it. You have to be charming, he said. You have to be a smooth-talking player. You have to be the person these rich people feel guilty about.

This will be easy, Gonzalo said. To make them feel guilty I just have to stand by my paintings and smile and be very poor and Mexican and black.

And charming.

Yes. This part of my job I cannot help but do very, very well. I am a professional charmer. He smiled. He kept smiling and looking at Phil until Phil asked him to stop.

Cars started arriving near sunset. Many expensive cars, some with drivers. Many of the people did not look like locals. They looked polished, with their artificial tans and recent facials. Some dressed elegantly, but many looked quite sloppy, in worn jeans and untucked shirts and sandals. They smelled antiseptic and floral and chemically musky. They greeted each other on the driveway. Several stood around the yard talking on their phones, one arm folded across the chest, their heads down, looking at their feet.

They trickled into the house. Phil stood back from Gonzalo. The black man looked out of place in the room. The only man with dark skin. One of the tallest. The only one with a weathered face, with the wrinkles, creases, callouses and scars he’d earned. His cracked yellow nails betrayed his new shirt. His patchy gray hair fought the oil he’d applied. His eyes were rheumy and glaucous, and his gaze, even when he laughed, was hard and appraising. He looked directly at the women. He looked them up and down heedless of their husbands’ presence. He fingered the hand-stitched lapel of an elderly man’s blazer and said, in a caricature of English, Twenty dollar I give you my friend, and slapped the man on the shoulder. He grinned and rocked on his feet. The guests began to crowd around him. Phil translated their questions. Some of the guests spoke Spanish and spoke to Gonzalo directly. One woman looked shocked at something Gonzalo said, and he bowed deeply to her, with evident mockery. But the people laughed, too. A big man with a cultivated South American accent translated one of Gonzalo’s rambling drinking stories, and they responded with abrupt hilarity.

The fog of drunkenness gathered in the room, a kind of convexity held up by Gonzalo at the center. The volume rose. Phil, sober, stood silent, thinking of the evenings painting Carey by the open window with the after-work crowd hooting and laughing in front of the bar across the street. He listened for peoples’ comments on the painting. Their words were lavish, unstinting. Fabulous. Gorgeous. Stunning. Such exquisite control. Such depth and magic. The superlatives rose off the polished people with their perfume and cologne. Women posed with Gonzalo in front of Carey’s splayed body. They canted their hips. They leaned their featureless, symmetrical heads against Gonzalo’s chest. He put his arm around them. He set his massive, gnarled hand right below their breasts, and they stood with their polished cleavage forward as the cell phones flashed and the babble of the crowd grew and grew, amplified by the floor-to-ceiling glass and the polished travertine.

Phil couldn’t hear Gonzalo to translate. Gonzalo did not acknowledge Phil. After some time Judith entered in a vintage lace dress, made up and coiffed, looking energetic and pleased. The people clapped as much as their flutes of champagne allowed. She kissed many people, standing up in the toes of her heels to kiss the men, who held her hands in theirs and expressed their rapturous pleasure. Many women touched her cheek and beamed their flawless smiles and looked honored beyond measure to be included.

Following Judith there was a woman Phil recognized. She wore a tapered masculine tuxedo and a severe short haircut. She smiled tight-lipped when Phil met her eye. He couldn’t place her. She went with Judith around the room. Judith approached the big South American, who stood directly in front of the largest painting, studying it over an overfilled glass of red wine. Judith leaned against him, and he looked down and they spoke with great energy. The man set down his wine and gesticulated wildly. He pointed out details in the painting to Judith, who nodded enthusiastically. Phil was shocked to see that the man’s cheeks shone with tears. Judith beckoned Gonzalo to join them. He did. The two men spoke in booming Spanish. The man gripped Gonzalo’s upper arm and neck and shook him, smiling and crying. The woman in the tux stepped forward and leaned down and Judith spoke into her ear. The woman nodded and stepped to the painting and placed a red dot on the placard. The people in the room cheered, and several congratulated the South American.

Over the next few hours most of the paintings sold. Phil stood alone by the fireplace wishing he were a drinker. Gonzalo continued heedless: leering and lustful, loud and boisterous, almost dismissive of most of the men, demonstrative and natural. Utterly comfortable in his role. He shone in their praise. He throve at the focus of their attention. He charmed and offended. They forgave him.

Late, in the ear-ringing aftermath, they sat and talked. Phil was serious. Gonzalo was still high on the attention. They loved me, he said, then laughed. They loved your paintings. I am now a successful artist, and you are a successful painter. He laughed and laughed.

He wanted to talk money. He knew the exact total. Almost a quarter million. He spoke his cut slowly and distinctly, enunciating each syllable in English, beating them out with his great twisted hand on the armrest of the chair. One. Hundred. And. Twenty. One. Thousand. Dollar. He beamed. More than a peon like me makes in five years of labor. Thanks to God, of course, and he blew a kiss at the ceiling and collapsed back in the chair in raucous laughter.

They reimbursed Judith for the expenses of the party. Phil spent a long day contriving billing to explain his income. He set up a trust account for Gonzalo, as the man couldn’t open his own. He faced the dilemma of how to send the money to Mexico if Gonzalo were deported.

He kept to his schedule. He painted Carey Monday through Thursday. He painted no more landscapes, and only a few still-lifes. Local galleries approached him to negotiate shows for Gonzalo, but he turned them down. Galleries from L.A. and New York called. Then London and Mumbai. He told them that sales had been so strong that Gonzalo was working to put together a new collection. Critics called, requesting interviews. The L.A. Times wrote a short piece on the show and speculated about Gonzalo’s background and his sudden arrival. Many smaller art publications picked up the story. They recited, with barely-concealed fascination, Gonzalo’s identity as an illegal immigrant, black, from Mexico, unschooled, a gardener. They wanted a last name. A birthplace. Confirmation of the gossip. Photographs of the work.

Carey stood in Phil’s doorway. Looks like I deserve a little something, right? He wrote her a bonus check.

He reined in her poses. They had become too sexualized. Blogs described the work as demeaning and objectifying. Internet trolls decried the paintings for being exploitative; for being the work of a black man objectifying a white woman; for not being explicit enough; for Carey’s weight. One said she was a fat slut. One said Gonzalo should be lynched. Send him back to Mexico, they said. Or Africa.

He tried to shut out this noise. He worked hard. The paintings languished for a while. They didn’t have the verve that Phil wanted. He despaired sometimes, late at night and when he was doing legal work.

Gonzalo quit his landscaping work. But he showed up one Monday a month after the show, wearing a fresh summer suit and ornate cowboy boots. He had a new iPhone in a gold case. He walked into the office, shut the door, and sat back in the chair. Mister Phil, how are my paintings coming?

Slowly. It’s been challenging to get back in the swing of it after the show and all the attention.

We need to get the next show scheduled.

I’m working on that.

We can hang the other work, all those pictures in the attic.

Yes, some of them will be suitable.

The ones of Carey.

Yes, maybe a few others.

They are bored of the others. They want beautiful Carey.

I am bored of the others, too. Always have been.

Okay, then, Mister Phil. So let’s get some paintings of beautiful Carey. Good, big, expensive ones. They love to see her naked in their big houses. They love how sexy she is.

Maybe I flatter myself, but I believe they’re drawn by the quality of the art. It is very easy to get pictures of naked girls. People do not spend tens of thousands of dollars for a picture of a naked girl. 

They spend that money for art.

Yes, yes. It is art they love. Art in their houses. Expensive art.

Gonzalo, I am working on the next show.

But not fast. You work what? Three hours a day, four days a week. You paint fewer hours in a week than I used to work in a day making peoples’ yards pretty.

I have a professional office to run. I have a family.

Yes, and a church. Car payments. Yes, yes. But the art is so much better than all that. So much more fun to go to the parties, meet the beautiful women, take their money, wear fine clothes.

I have a life that I can’t just discard.

You don’t have to! Just make your beautiful paintings of beautiful Carey. Your wife will forgive you. Women want a nice big house, lots of clothes and spending money. She doesn’t care if you’re an attorney. She wants a strong man.

Gonzalo, I will produce the work at my pace, and I will keep my life as it is, without disruption, without hurting the people I love.

The next day Carey came in. Did her usual stretch in the doorway. I been thinking, Mister Phil. This art involves three talents. Yours, Gonzalo’s, and mine. The painter; the salesman or actor or whatever he is; and me, the muse. The body in the paintings. I think it’s fair that you pay me a cut of the sales.

Carey, we have an agreement.

That was then. Everything’s different now. Now I can Google Gonzalo and find hundreds of pictures of me, naked. With my face, my tattoos. I used to be a model getting paid to lie still for paintings that sat in the attic. Now I am the subject of your work, and your work has become an overnight sensation, right? Gonzalo is the hottest thing in American painting today. Everyone says so. I provide my body for twenty bucks an hour, but he makes One. Hundred. And. Twenty. One. Thousand. Dollar. in one night of standing around acting like Gonzalo.

But Carey. We agreed. You even said that modeling is easier than legal work, but it pays the same. This is a win-win arrangement for us.

No, no, no, Mister Phil. It is a colossal win for Gonzalo, a nice windfall for you, and modest status quo for me. I get paid to lie around naked. You don’t even put your hands on me or take pictures or whatever I expected you to do. It’s easy. But don’t I provide something you can’t get elsewhere? Don’t I have something that shows in these pictures besides a nice fat ass? Isn’t it true that I inspire you?

Yes, Carey, it is.

Well, then, I want a cut. It’s ridiculous that Gonzalo gets half. He would have been overjoyed to get a tenth. But that’s the agreement you made with him. I want more. I want you to cut me in as a partner. Give me another raise, if you need to hide it from your wife that way. Or write me a much bigger check after a show.

*

He negotiated an agreement to show the paintings in the winter, at a big trendsetting gallery in L.A. They sorted the paintings in the attic. They set aside all the landscapes, and selected only a few of the still-lifes. They separated the Carey paintings into two groups, large and small. They ranked them. They pared the collection down to twenty of the best pieces. The gallery wanted high-quality photographs, but Phil would not consider allowing a photographer in the attic.

He fended off interviews, except for a few. He insisted on translating for Gonzalo, but the more reputable publications wanted their own translators. Phil did what he could to control access to Gonzalo, but articles appeared every few days. To Phil’s relief, Gonzalo said almost nothing about the paintings, he just repeated the same flat assertion that he loved to paint, and that he just wanted to show the truth as he saw it. In the articles, Phil could sense the critics’ frustration with Gonzalo’s windy, aimless storytelling, but their admiration for the paintings overrode their inability to learn about Gonzalo, the man. They always asked him about his influences, but he waved away these questions, preferring to tell off-color stories of womanizing and drinking. But one prominent blogger kept pursuing the question until Gonzalo answered. He said I admire the art of Claire Townes. Phil recognized this as the name of the sculptor of Judith’s entry fountain, and Googled her. She had a solid reputation as a minimalist who preferred massive, simple forms and the heaviest materials. Her work stood in front of many corporate offices and in the gardens of the wealthy. Within days of that interview, several art writers concocted elaborate theories about the connection between Townes’ work and Gonzalo’s. They pursued her for comment, but she said she didn’t know Gonzalo. In the absence of an illuminating story, speculation thrived, like mushrooms in a basement.

Then they found Carey. She said nothing, but Phil found a picture of her on an amateurish local art blog. In an article that was largely art-theoretical gibberish, the blogger identified Carey as the model in the paintings. Phil called her into his office. She was evasive, then came clean with startling intensity.

I told you I want a cut. These paintings are mine, too.

We have an agreement, Carey.

It’s a shit agreement, Phil. You win, I get almost nothing.

They argued. Phil tried to avoided conflict, but Carey was very emotional. He felt himself waver. Ended the meeting.

He called in Gonzalo. The three sat in the conference room. Gonzalo lounged back in his chair in a pale yellow suit, emanating cologne and impatience. Carey sat rigid in a black dress, her hands clenched on her lap. Phil tried to direct the discussion. He proposed that Gonzalo and Carey split half of sales, and that he would keep the other half. Gonzalo looked disgusted, even contemptuous. Carey looked offended.

Phil persevered, explained the gallery-sales model, defended his share on principle. Carey said that she had read a hundred articles, and that everyone agreed, the landscapes were good but not remarkable, the still-lifes were very good but marred by a certain decorative easiness, and that the large paintings of Carey were great. Truly great. Among the finest paintings made in America today. She asserted, over and over, like a mantra, that without her, there would be no great paintings.

Gonzalo also stated his case in the flattest possible terms. The paintings were very good, true, but they were attached to his identity. They sold at such high prices because the buyers believed they were the work of a poor, black Mexican. The buyers considered themselves enlightened for having discovered him. His poverty and uncultured crudeness and blackness made the paintings remarkable. The buyers were less interested in art than they were in presenting themselves to the world as sophisticated and tolerant.

And Phil insisted that the paintings were his. That he had so far in his life been only a hardworking and capable attorney, but that in these paintings he had discovered something excellent in himself, and, though he found Carey and Gonzalo important in doing his work and selling it, he wouldn’t need them at all if he didn’t have a life to maintain. He regretted the words as he spoke them, but he told them that they abetted his secrecy, and that they should be grateful for the easy money.

Gonzalo leaned forward and spoke very softly in clear Spanish, without colloquial distortions, looking directly at Phil. Mister Phil. I get fifty percent or I expose you.

Rage rose in Phil. You expose me and then what? You lose your easy income? Get deported? No more alligator boots and linen suits.

No, no, no, Mister Phil. You misunderstand me. I don’t expose you as the artist. I indignantly maintain that I am the artist. I expose you as an attorney who hires a wetback. I expose you as a member of a conservative congregation who sets up illegal trust funds for non-taxpaying Mexicans. I expose you as profiting from my art.

Phil’s breath became shallow.

Carey stood up. Phil, I can’t say nothing about Gonzalo’s portion. He’s gonna do what he’s wants. I think we can see that. He’ll get what he wants because you made a stupid deal with him and he outplayed you. But I got one demand. You pay me at least as much as you pay him or I’m out. As far as the art people know, I am Gonzalo’s model. Pretty soon they’ll figure out where I work and they’ll look up and see that circle attic window, and they’ll know that Gonzalo’s studio is in your attic. But Gonzalo’s just the salesman. I’m the muse. I deserve at least as much as he gets. You got your law income. I know how much you make. Even if you billed one hour a day you’d make way more than we do. So I don’t think you’ll suffer any. But I get at least as much as Gonzalo. Looks like that means you give him half, and you give me half.

*

That afternoon at four she stood in his doorway and yawned. The fabric of her dress stretched against her. It’s that time, she said.