The water felt refreshing. I placed my head under the spray, closing my eyes, wishing I could cleanse myself. I wondered why I was not feeling as bad as I should after last night. Maybe the reception was too surreal, maybe I drank enough to subvert any real feeling.
I opened my eyes to reach for the soap and saw a large spider at the edge of the tub, small body with long, spindly legs. It was struggling hard to get out of the tub, but drops of water were getting in its way. I was sure the steam was not making it feel safe either. I wanted to help it, but did not know how since I was wet. I turned my back to it to block the water and help it climb out. I soaped myself, thinking the spider had to save itself. Usually, I used a tissue to move spiders out of the way. I was fond of them.
My first boyfriend, Fadi, had to study the Koran like all dutiful Muslim boys. I remember him telling me a story once about one of the adventures of the prophet Muhammad. When the prophet was running away from infidels who were trying to kill him, an angel told him to hide in a cave. Once the prophet went in, a spider built a large web covering the entrance and a dove laid eggs within the web. When the infidels arrived at the cave’s mouth, they decided no one could have entered without disturbing the web and the eggs. The prophet was saved. Ever since I heard that story, I liked spiders.
The phone rang. I turned the water off and reached for the bathroom phone, hoping to get it before Dina woke up. I said hello and heard its echo from Dina in the bedroom.
“Oh, good. I got both of you.” My stepmother, Saniya, was on the phone, calling from Beirut. “Tell me everything. How was it?”
“Disaster,” I moaned on the phone.
“Wonderful,” Dina said.
“That’s about what I’d have expected you two to say,” Saniya said. I could hear her chuckle on the phone.
“Don’t listen to her,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the tub. “It was an unmitigated catastrophe. There was a fistfight, for crying out loud. Guys were punching each other at my opening. How can that be wonderful?”
“Did you know the men?” Saniya asked.
“No, she didn’t know them,” Dina added. “They were just guys who walked in off the street. It wasn’t a big deal. The show looked fabulous, Saniya. It was gorgeous. You’d have been proud of her.”
“What do you mean no big deal? People were slugging each other at the opening. How can that not be a big deal?” I wanted to get out of the bathroom and slug Dina myself.
“Let’s just say her paintings had an extreme effect on viewers,” Dina added. “The show elicited visceral reactions. Emotions were flying all over the place.” Saniya began giggling at the other end. I was jealous that my stepmother and my best friend got along so well.
The evening was a disaster. Dina and I left our hotel at five-thirty. We took the subway from Seventy-second Street and got off at Fourteenth to avoid the midtown crush and then frantically searched for a cab to take us down to SoHo. We arrived too early. The reception was from six till eight. One of the gallery assistants was still sweeping the floor.
The gallery had three rooms with three different exhibits. Mine was in the main room. In the smaller gallery there was a group exhibit of New York artists, both paintings and sculptures. In the smallest room was a conceptual exhibit by a Russian émigré.
By six o’clock, no one had arrived. The wine, however, was on the table. There were, count them, six jugs of cheap white wine. The only other thing to drink was tap water in pitchers. The gallery had gone all out. The owner must have spent all of twenty dollars.
By six-fifteen, strange-looking men started arriving. The elevator door would open, and a couple of haggard, wretched-looking men would pour out. They did not look at my paintings, but walked straight to the smaller gallery where the wine was. The other artists from the group show soon followed, every one of them dressed in black, looking pretentious and self-important. They too began to drink. Everybody congregated in the small room, and no one was looking at my paintings. I went to the table to get myself a glass of wine, but almost gagged when I tasted it. It was fructose-laced vinegar. I threw the plastic cup in the wastebasket only to be glared at by two of the men for wasting precious liquid.
I ran back to Dina and whispered. “They’re winos. These guys are here for the free wine.”
“Sure looks like it,” she said, amused.
Thankfully, some friends from my college days in New York arrived. They loved my paintings and we were distracted for a while. The other gallery was full, everybody hanging around the wine table, when a fistfight broke out. One of the winos punched another. The punchee gulped down what was left in his glass and jumped the puncher. They dragged each other around the small gallery, each man using a headlock on the other. One of the artists, a skinny, acne-faced, effeminate young man, jumped up and down, screaming hysterically, “Watch out for my sculpture,” a traffic-department wooden sawhorse covered with sheepskin. He tried to direct the combatants away from his chef d’oeuvre without daring to get within reach of them. The owner of the gallery did not budge from his seat. Finally, a couple of the other winos separated the two. One guy, a South Asian, took the man who lost the fight out of the gallery. For the next hour, until the wine ran out, the South Asian came up to the gallery and left with two glasses of wine every ten minutes.
None of my friends stayed for more than a couple of minutes. I could not blame them. I wanted to leave my own opening. Two drunks, probably homeless, stood in front of one my paintings. One said to the other in a loud and quivering voice, “These are awesome paintings. They keep moving.” He was barely able to keep himself standing, swaying from side to side.
“See.” Dina nudged me. “They get it.” She was taking everything a little too lightly.
“They’re moving because you’re drunk,” the second man said, slurring his words. He could handle his alcohol much better than his friend. “There’s color interplay here, but I don’t think you’re sober enough to see it. These paintings are informed by Mondrian as well as by the hard-edged abstract school that came out of Los Angeles. I think they’d have worked better if they weren’t all so uniform.”
Dina cracked up. I wanted to kill them. I actually moved in their direction to give them a piece of my mind, but Dina held me back.
“Only in New York,” she said. “Let it go and enjoy it. This is only the reception. As you can see, no one who loves art will show up tonight.”
A group of Russians, friends of the conceptual artist from the smallest gallery, went out the fire-exit door carrying their own bottles of vodka, wanting to smoke. Shortly thereafter, they began singing Soviet anthems. We could hear the singing clearly, though muffled, coming from behind the wall. The first drunk looked at his friend. “These paintings are singing now,” he said.
“That’s really weird,” his friend replied.
I freaked. I wanted to leave right then. The two walked back to the table and realized the wine was all gone. Within a couple of minutes, the gallery emptied. All that remained were a couple of artists, the gallery owner, and Russian songs. I walked out fuming, went to a bar and got drunk. To add insult to injury, my own mother, my only relative who lived in New York, did not show up at my reception.