Chapter Sixteen #2
Raff’s eyes flick to mine. In the span of one sentence our entire year flashes between us.
The accident, the pain, the recovery, the paperwork paperwork paperwork.
Vin and I baby-birding Raff back to life.
Not even discussing it. Just doing it. Just going, going, going. Saying nothing, doing everything.
My question hangs between us. It elongates and echoes, his eyebrows lift and without even saying anything back, it’s like he’s reflecting that question right back to me.
Isn’t that lonely for you? his eyes ask me.
Yes, my sad little shrug replies.
“Just tickle him,” Raff advises, and the tension disperses. “That’s what I do, when I’m sick of his strong-and-silent routine.”
I laugh, trying to picture that. “You really think it’s a routine?”
“No. I think he really is both. But nobody is just one way, you know? I used to worry about that, before he fell in love with you. When does Vin get to crumble? When does Vin get to turn into soup and have someone who loves him come around with a mop? These are things I’ve never been allowed to see, really.
Vin in pieces. I assume he’s made of pieces like the rest of us.
I have to assume that or else I’m really a failure. ”
“Failure! What? You’re the first person in your family to go to college. Let alone get a master’s degree.”
“Oh, don’t remind me.” He waves me off. “I was talking about real stuff.”
I blink at him. “What real stuff? Marriage? Kids?”
“I can want that!” He’s indignant and wagging his spoon at me. He eats enchiladas with a spoon, by the way.
“Well, yeah!” I agree instantly. “I just didn’t know you wanted that. What about your threesomes in Brooklyn Heights?”
He grumbles and pushes his food around. “Those wouldn’t have to end just because I got married, you know. People live all sorts of ways.”
“They would if you got married to Marine.” This is a test of sorts. I’ve just poked a sore spot with a long stick. Hopefully a very long stick.
He props his forehead up on his palm. “I gave up on Marine. She updated her substack with this long essay about her new boyfriend and he seems like good people. I wasn’t right for her.”
I splat more enchilada on his plate. “She’s not right for you! I mean, she’s wonderful. But she can’t handle your heat, Raff.”
He gets a little smile on his face. “My heat?” The smile falls away. “You mean my unintentionally wandering eye.”
“She was the only person you’ve ever dated who didn’t treat you like a trash bag. But there are nice people in the world. You just need to find one who…gets a kick out of your inclinations.”
“This is what I mean. It would be really nice to be a carbon copy of Vin. All I’d have to do is go to work and come home and fuck the one person on earth I want to fuck and also I’m married to her. See, that’s life.”
“That’s a fairy tale,” I admit.
“Exactly!” he agrees, totally missing my point.
I’m about to say more when his closet door creeeeeeeaks open behind me. I jump and turn just in time to see an Everest of laundry come tumbling out. “Ahh!”
“Oh, it does that.”
“You mean it does that when your laundry pile gets so big the door just gives up on life?”
“I’m busy.” He shrugs.
“Raff, you just got done telling me that you watched a nine-hour Ancient Aliens marathon last weekend!”
“Oh, fine. You and Vin are perfect for each other, by the way. You’re both the cops.”
“Finish eating and we’ll drag that crap to the laundromat before my art class.”
Which we do. Raff insists he wants to come with me to the art class to say hello to Lauro, but I force him to stay and do his laundry.
I almost, almost remind him to fold it and not just jam it all back into the bag, but then I consider that maybe he’s right and I am the cops.
So I don’t say anything and just hug him goodbye.
Lauro is leaning against the outside of Nine Five Four when I stroll up for class. He’s looking at his phone and frowning. He double-takes when he sees me and slides his phone away. “Hey, beautiful.”
He’s leaning forward, tiger smile, hands in his pockets.
I cross my arms. “Quit flirting.”
His eyebrows come up. “Really?”
“Yeah, we’re just friends. Art friends.” I hold out my hand for a shake but he gives me a little high-five slide-and-squeeze instead.
“Bo-ring.”
I laugh against my will. “And if we ever go out for drinks together again, don’t eat the cherry out of my glass. The cherry is the best part.”
“Oh, yes,” he agrees, with big solemn eyes. “The cherry is absolutely the best part.”
I roll my eyes, plant my pointer finger on his forehead, and forcibly remove him from my line of sight.
“Well, there’s no point in being a gentleman anymore, then,” he says, and jostles me as we both try to squeeze through the doorway of the building.
“Get a life!” I’m laughing and shoving him.
This is the most physical contact Lauro and I have ever had, but he’s keeping his word, it’s not flirtatious.
I wonder, for a brief second, if it ever really was genuinely flirtatious.
I think come-ons might be his first language. Everything else is a translation.
“Excuse me,” a quiet voice says from the sidewalk behind us.
Lauro and I turn in unison to see Em waiting for entry to the building. Her eyes flick to us and then past us, down the hallway. We are not classmates, we are merely obstacles between her and class.
There’s an absence at my side and Lauro has turned into vapor. He’s stepping back out onto the sidewalk, holding the door wide open. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
I’m through first, Em follows me, and Lauro trails behind.
“Hi, kids. Hi, kids,” Daniel calls from his desk, feet up, nose in The New Yorker.
I decide to take the easel next to Em’s. She’s quietly setting up her supplies and, oh, cool! Today she brought watercolors.
“I like your shirt,” I offer.
She’s wearing a long silk duster over bike shorts and a Haim concert tee.
“This is the sort of outfit tall, young people get to wear and look like runway models,” I say. “If I wore that, everyone would assume it was laundry day.”
To my great delight, she gives a surprised chuckle.
Across the circle of easels, Lauro glares at me. Quit flirting, he mouths.
I roll my eyes.
“What’re we working on today?” Daniel asks, hands in his pockets, strolling around toward Em and me. He’s talking to Em, of course.
She wordlessly opens her drawing pad to show him some of what, I assume, she’s been working on this week.
They are watercolor paintings of a pug. Done in every shade.
There are a few hurried ones. Rushed lines as he bends down to a water bowl.
One where he’s got two paws up on a windowsill, the neighborhood watch.
Another where he’s sitting patiently at the door, clearly waiting for someone he loves to come home.
And then there’s one where she had more time.
The colors are vibrant, the details luxurious.
He’s backstroking through a nap in a warm pool of sunshine.
“Holy smokes,” I can’t help but murmur. They are gorgeous.
“These are great!” Daniel says happily.
“Jesus Christ,” Lauro whispers from behind me. He’s got his arms crossed, one palm covering his mouth. His eyes are somber and, maybe, a little wrecked.
Lauro drifts back to his easel and Daniel and Em jump into a technical conversation about color theory and perspective and my God there is so much to learn.
How come I can’t effortlessly turn my number two pencils into absolute stardust?
I set up my easel and prop my drawing pad up. The front cover swings open and the papers accordion out from the spiral binding.
“Oh,” Daniel says.
I reflexively look up to see which of her drawings he’s talking about, and then give a start of surprise when I realize he’s looking at my drawing pad. He’s talking about my drawings.
My drawing pad has swung open to my drawings of Vin from last night. All the chopped-up ones.
Daniel’s head is cocked to one side and he doesn’t say anything. I start to get a little self-conscious and fiddle with one corner of the paper.
“Shan brought raspberry pie!” Shan calls as she bursts through the classroom door.
The pie takes precedence over all, because duh, it’s pie.
The other students file and scramble and shuffle into class. The model is new, a twenty-year-old self-proclaimed football player (“Call me Teddy”) with muscles only previously discovered in medical textbooks.
Maybe it’s Teddy’s ability to hold a naked fifteen-minute headstand or maybe it’s just a warm summer Friday, but there is an electric breeze, the classroom smells of raspberry pie, and everyone’s pages are lavishly filled.
Reggie calls to the class toward the end of the fifteen-minute break. “Class potluck at the park tomorrow night? My wife has been wanting to meet you all.”
“Shan, bring more pie,” Esther agrees, by way of demand.
“I’m in,” Lauro calls.
“I’ve got my kids…” Daniel says. “Will Fabi come?”
“We’ll bring some stuff for them to play with.
Roz, bring Vin, he’ll entertain the kids for us.
” That’s Esther again, making more demands.
I nod, because what else am I supposed to do?
Explain that I’m not sure how to ask him to join me for something like this because he’s endlessly confusing to me?
Then the break is over and Teddy closes us out with muscleman poses à la Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is glorious.
“Hey, Roz,” Daniel says. “Would you mind staying behind to talk to me for a second?”
“Oh!” I’m surprised. “Sure.”
Everyone is packing up, Em taking the longest because of her paints, and I think Lauro is lingering at the door for me, but when I look up again, they’re both gone.
Daniel is propping the classroom door fully open.
He plops onto Em’s stool and folds his hands. “The drawings of yours that I caught sight of earlier…I didn’t recognize the model.”