The morning of the event came, and we woke pleasantly. There had been no incidents the night before, save that Jackson had hopped into the shower asleep and gained consciousness with shaving cream covering his face and then decided it was time for a shave anyhow. The sun was shining, though the weather had predicted fog, and the birds outside did not sound like the kind that live in cities. He whispered me awake, tracing intricate patterns on the backs of my knees. He nibbled on my breasts as if he hadn’t a thousand times before, he kissed me like he might discover something by doing so, he didn’t let a strand of hair obscure my face, we fucked for almost an hour with our eyes open the whole time. And in the nature of lovers, we pretended, afterward, that it had been perfectly natural, congratulated each other on stamina and technique, did not mention that the last time our bodies had interacted in this way, the month was classified under a different season.
I scrambled eggs with fresh produce from the Mexican market, made too-strong coffee, and brought it back to him in bed. He had moved to lean against the headboard but his limbs remained loose in satisfied exhaustion.
He smiled dreamily at the bright primary colors of the food on the plate, then shifted his lightness toward me, and said, with wonder, “I think … I think I’d like to go!”
~ ~ ~
Paul’s gallery was eight blocks from our place. The night was extremely warm, which happens in our city with no pattern, and at the most seven times a year. Jackson’s mood was hard to navigate in that it was, just simply: pleasant. He smiled broadly at a weaving drunk making his way home from God knows where; he gave money to the one bum still out begging; he insisted on holding my hand; he had brought along a six-pack of a beer he used to love but that I hadn’t seen him drink in at least two years. All of which made me nervous. Probably I had some idea of the evening’s turnout, but only in the way that stiff joints often indicate bad weather though they can’t accurately predict the how and when of the downpour.
I could hear it from a block away; it’s funny how the amalgam of many quiet conversations actually feels louder (or rather, more emphatic) than human noise that is booming and frenzied. Of course, it was amplified by the juxtaposition of the hour: the bars had closed an hour before and the homeless people had put down their crime pulp paperbacks and flashlights and settled into their nests of scratchy blankets and cardboard. When we got closer, saw the cluster of people, Jackson stiffened with regret; his eyes began to take a terrible vacation. I knew, then, his coming had been a mistake.
The doors were locked. Paul was inside making lastminute preparations; I felt as though I could feel his mania through the papered glass windows and feared they would crack. He was listening to Leonard Cohen’s Songs From a Room, the song “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” humming through the glass and hovering above the heads of the crowd, the lyrics dolorous and apropos: “In the hollow of the night / when you are cold and numb / you hear her talking freely then, / she’s happy that you’ve come, / she’s happy that you’ve come.” The refrain lilted and retracted as my heart quickened, and I tried to estimate just how many people were there, how many I knew. When I sobered, Jackson had left my side and was making through the crowd with a quick pace that furthered my anxiety. He was aimed for the entrance, and purposefully, coldly touched people’s elbows in the way that means Let me through. Let me through right now. Then he was knocking with increasing speed, the flat of his balled fist pounding rapidly. I couldn’t see his face, but Paul’s when he finally opened the door was an awful mirror. People were watching; whether they knew he was the artist was unclear, but it quickly turned the anticipatory murmur ominous, unsteady.
Through the crowd I saw James, knew instantly he’d been watching me the whole time. He arched his eyebrows not unkindly from where he stood on the outskirts. He was, as ever, strangely immaculate, and smoking his cigarette the odd way he always has, the filter held effortlessly between his middle and ring fingers. I was surprised he had heard about the show and more surprised that he’d come. The knots in my heart and chest reshaped themselves at the sight of my and Jackson’s brother and my brain formed several dark rooms surrounding the possibilities of their interaction, given both the long and stubborn silence between them and the state Jackson was in.
I made my way toward him, our eyes locked and my feet carrying me without my explicit permission. Hi there, kid, he said or I think he said through my ears’ insistent ringing. When he hugged me, I immediately let my body go limp, let myself focus for seven glorious seconds on not the impending doom but the way he smelled and has always smelled: like cedar and also fresh ground black pepper, like long loud nights and the ensuing regret, like history, like small but important reminders.
I, of course, needed to provide no explanations: he had seen Jackson’s pounding at the door, had seen my face thereafter, had felt how gladly I’d received his embrace.
“Wanna hear a joke?” He smiled slightly, and I nodded and felt grateful for his ability to manipulate his emotional surroundings and those of others.
“So a guy walks into a bar,” he said, already grinning, “and he stays there for the rest of my childhood.”
I let it settle, then laughed to the point of hooting, all the frantic blood in my body happy for an emotional release of a different sort from the one currently pending. James was laughing too and we fed each other’s joy, like only old friends who’ve been through much that is not funny can.
When the gallery finally opened, the people trickled in, all the more excited for the mysterious aggravated pounding of the man who, a girl who knew Jackson and me had revealed to the rest of the gaggle, was the artist. James entered by my side but took his cue and dissipated; my eyes found Jackson and I forgot instantly what had been so humorous minutes before. It seemed that Paul, if temporarily, had worked his magic. Jackson was, at the very least, still, but had arranged his body in a way that was a familiar, dangerous indication. He sat in the only chair in the room, one that no doubt Paul had scrambled to find in the hopes of placation. His left hand propped up his right elbow and his right arm crossed his body at a diagonal so that his beer rested on his left shoulder. It was an arrangement of limbs that simultaneously signaled inclusion, defense, fear, disgust.
Despite my overall queasiness and remorse, I recognized that the space looked gorgeous. The pages upon pages clinging to the walls were slightly shellacked and seemed to catch the light, then hold it. There was a modest assortment of strange items hanging from the ceiling on transparent cords: pieces of antique lace handkerchiefs, a faded pink rotary telephone, a rusted toy airplane (the left wing of which seemed to be half melted), several rings of skeleton keys, a mobile of a children’s carousel of gilded horses, a few sepia-toned photographs, a chandelier at a ninety-degree angle, a wine bottle covered in different blues and yellows of candle wax. It spoke clearly to the obfuscation of dreams, to their ability to unite discordant objects into a string that is supposed to mean something. The floors painted a matte gray-black that still gleamed with few footsteps, and Jackson’s pieces stretched and mounted as if they could ever be made uniform. Upon entering the gallery, the guests encountered a small block of text: a matter-of-fact narrative about how the pieces came to be and a biography of Jackson that was scant but made clear that he never, in his waking life, harbored artistic inclinations.