Chapter 6
Chapter Six
THE AFTERMATH
I wrap myself in a robe, slide into my indoor slippers and go winding down the stairs.
My heart is in my throat. I realize partway down that I'd jumped into action without thinking. What if I’m rushing down to some kind of early morning package delivery for Mariah?
What if it’s just some kid doing ding dong ditch?
But I know what I’m hoping for... what if it’s Devo?
He did say he was an early riser… My palms begin to slide with sweat against the banister.
It has to be him. The last few days had been so intense.
There’s no way he’d just disappear without seeing me in person, right?
I hadn’t even found the letter Alex told me Devo had sent days ago.
Partway across the second-floor landing, I find myself wishing I’d combed my hair and checked my appearance in the mirror.
Oh well, I think. He can’t expect a beauty queen at the crack of dawn.
Once I get to the first floor, I can see a young man on the stoop with a messenger bag slung across his shoulder.
He’s bouncing up and down and looking around at the street, smacking a white envelope against his hand repeatedly.
My eyes narrow, that’s neither Devo nor his sandy-haired assistant.
My heart drops for a moment, and then I eye the letter. That could still be from Devo.
“Please,” I whisper before opening the door and holding my breath.
“Apartment 3D? Charlotte?” he inquires.
“Yes.” I hold my breath.
“This letter requires a signature,” he says, pulling out a digital signature board. I sign with one eye on the envelope, trying to see if there are any faint paint splatters across the back.
He hands me the envelope and then skips down the stoop, already headed to the corner. I examine the piece of correspondence and see that just my name and address are written on the front. No return address. No postage.
I head back up to our apartment and close the door, hoping Mariah went back to sleep after the buzzer alarm. Unable to wait, I sink down onto our kitchen floor and rip open the envelope flap with shaking fingers. Inside is a folded printer paper covered in black type.
Dear Miss Charlotte Faure,
It has come to the Zenith Foundation’s attention that you have collaborated with the licentious street artist known as Devo.
As our requirements indicate, the annual Zenith Award Recipient must comply with our standards of behavior within their professional body of work during their incumbency, which lasts until our next Recipient is chosen.
Due to the public nature of the problematic piece of art, we must inform you that the Foundation is proceeding with an investigation around the revocation of your Zenith Award Winner status.
Sincerely,
The Zenith Foundation Committee
My blood is roaring in my ears. Revocation?? What. The. Fuck. Standards of behavior? It has come to their attention?
I scan the impersonal typeface again to see if there’s any language about a clawback on the prize money.
I don’t see anything... but still. Who are they to control my life?
To take something from me that I had earned!
And I collaborated with Devo anonymously!
He’d made a point not to reveal any Muses.
How could my participation in Devo’s painting have been revealed?
And to the Zenith Foundation?? I’m sure their members aren’t avid Devo followers.
They’re all in their 60s and 70s—not exactly the demographic of his fanbase.
They couldn’t possibly know the extent to which I’d participated as a “muse”.
.. could they? It’s not like Devo or his assistant would have gone out of their way to sabotage the one artistic achievement I have on my resume besides school. .. right?
An image of narrowed hazel eyes and perfectly waved blonde hair swims to the forefront of my memory. “Daisy,” I hiss. I couldn’t be sure, but who else could it be—
“Morning sleepy head!” I nearly jump out of my skin as Mariah’s cheery voice rouses me from my spiral. “Whatcha got there? Another letter from mystery man?”
Her words slice through me like a knife. “No,” I bite back from the kitchen floor.
Mariah observes me for a minute, and I look back down at the paper in my hands, which I’ve now folded twice over. She tilts her head. “Is it something...” she hesitates, “that you want to talk about?”
I dip my chin towards my chest and avert my eyes while I try to avoid making Mariah a casualty of my emotions. “No. Thank you.”
“Okayy. I’m here if you change your mind.” She comes over and puts her palm on my head. I know she means it as a comforting gesture, but in the moment, it makes me feel like a dog. As if I’m someone’s pet who belongs to anyone but myself.
I abruptly stand and Mariah steps back, still assessing me.
“I’m going to the studio today,” I announce.
“Oh! You don’t normally go in on weekends—”
“I know”—I cringe as I cut her off—“I just—” I take a deep inhale. “I need to get some emotions out.” I gesture outward with my arms.
“I see that,” Mariah responds. “Well, I support that decision! Art therapy is highly effective!” Her words float after me as I march into my bedroom to pull on more appropriate attire. I fling the Zenith Foundation letter on my bed and start getting ready.
Fuck this. Fuck all of this, I think.
“Oh! And I carried in another letter for you from our mailbox a few days ago!” Mariah says from the common space. “It’s on the kitchen counter.”
I hesitate, my leg partway through one side of my jeans. Then I continue my whirlwind of getting ready. “You can throw it away,” I say on my way back through the kitchen to grab my set of keys.
“But what if it’s sexy painter guy!”
I bite my tongue. “So what if it is,” I say under my breath. I try to twist my features into some sort of half-smile when I turn back to Mariah. “See you later!”
I stomp out of the apartment in record time, having only done the basics.
“Good luck!” I hear Mariah yell after me as the door closes.
She doesn’t deserve my snippiness, but I know she understands emotional reactions better than most thanks to her field of study.
Once again, I recognize how lucky I am to have her as a friend, but sometimes I need my space.
My fingers vibrate with the urge to pour my emotions out.
I text Alex on the way to Copper Works and he lets me know the location of the hide-a-key. “Glad to hear you’re inspired to work!” he texts back. Ah, Alex, the ever-positive force in the world. I look around when I enter the studio and see that it is empty, nothing like the event from last night.
Instead, I'm reminded of the day I met Devo here. The day we “collaborated.” Against my wishes, my core heats up and my lower abdomen tingles at the memories. I grind my teeth as my body betrays me.
I eye the closet at the far end of the room and find myself walking toward it.
Following a brief hesitation with my hand on the doorknob, I crack the door open and peek in.
Then I open it wide. Still a normal storage closet.
No couch, no carpet. No champagne. It’s like I made it all up.
I flick the door closed and suck on my teeth. He’s not here.
I catch my reflection in one of the windows set into the concrete wall. My expression is blank. I move toward my canvas in the other corner of the room. Untouched for days. There’s no note propped up on the easel.
He’s not here, I think again.
I assess my painting and decide what I’d like to add to it today.
In some respects, the painting could be finished.
The central figure, the woman in the mist, is realistic—the details that make up her face are precise.
Her features are pinched together as if they’re in pain.
I’d painted them using my brush with the finest bristles.
The woman has one hand reaching toward the audience, completely clear of the swirling mist. With the other hand the woman clutches her charcoal gray jacket together at her collarbone.
As I tilt my head, I wonder how much of this scene I’d pulled out of my head and how much I’d pulled out of Pride & Prejudice.
It’s not what I want. There’s emotion on her face, but the rest of the painting.
.. it’s emotionless. The craggy landscape she’s in with the jutting greenery is painted too precisely.
Even the mist, with it’s white and gray swirls, is too perfect.
I know I would have gotten an A from most of my oil painting professors if I’d submitted this piece, but suddenly, I hate it.
Devo had liked it, whispers a little voice in my head.
Devo isn’t here! a more cynical side of me roars.
I go through the process of grabbing different oil paints and brushes as the irritable voice in my head continues.
He’s not here and he’s not coming back, it hisses.
This is what he does. He goes from town to town, seducing women and selling their sexuality.
I know that isn’t how I felt at the time, but the torrent of thought continues.
Everyone is going to find out about your promiscuity, your vulnerability. My heart squeezes.
I sloppily tie my apron behind my back and roll up my sleeves.
The flower paintings are still clothespinned to a wire in the corner diagonally across from me.
Fuck Daisy. I dip a medium size brush in light gray paint.
Fuck Devo. My hand shakes as I hover the brush tip before the canvas.
I shouldn’t have gotten involved, I think, turning my ire inward.
Shut up! another part of me weighs in. What’s wrong with trying new things?
Who am I trying to please? What do I want?
I press the brush onto the woman’s hand that’s reaching through the mist. It’s the only part of her body that made it through the opaque wall of gray working to envelop her.
It reminds me of the hand pushing through the canvas in yesterday’s Muse Painting.
Is this where he’d gotten the idea? So he stole some inspiration from me… why can’t I steal some from him?
I smear the gray across the woman’s hand and forearm.
Now it appears that she’s behind the mist, like she lives in it and she’s peeking out at a world that’s more clear, more defined.
I begin mixing more shades of gray, blue and white.
I use similar colors to what’s already on the canvas to refresh the mist that takes up most of the background. When I’m done, I set my brush down.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what people want from me, or what I’m supposed to do, or how I’m supposed to feel.
I place the first two fingers of my right hand on one of the fresh swatches of paint in the background. I drag the wet paint over and up, spinning my wrist as much as I’m able to as I do, creating a swirl.
I step back.
It ruins the realism style of the painting, but that’s what I want.
I repeat the motion on another section of wet paint, this one more bluish—I hadn’t mixed it into a perfectly natural color.
I swirl the paint up and over the woman’s head, nearly grazing it.
Without wiping off my fingers, I do it again.
To a whiter patch near the ground this time.
And then I do it again. And again. A lot of swirls, some straighter smears.
A couple of movements had even created angular shapes in the newly disordered sky.
I pick my brush back up and adjust the initial gray patch over the woman’s previously outstretched arm.
I step back again. One more thing.
I take up my fine-bristled brush and go about changing the woman’s expression.
I don’t want her to look distressed. I want her features to be smooth, and her eyes to be hard.
She chooses to let the mist wrap around her—it’s part of the landscape, and so is the nebulousness it brings. She can handle it. Whatever comes.
I stand back again and look at the new creation. The image is similar, but it’s from a new perspective. The woman is in the mist, but she chooses to reside there. Nothing is clear or perfect, and the shapes that make up the mist continue to morph. But so can the woman, if she chooses.
It isn’t what I expected to do. A part of me thought I might destroy the canvas and start again in order to make something even more perfect.
But perfection is a subjective standard.
This type of art isn’t what’s expected from me.
It doesn’t fit in with much of my body of work.
It’s not realistic. And while I’m used to painting tension, I’m not used to painting power.
That’s what’s so uncomfortable about the woman’s somewhat blank expression, I realize.
Her world is in chaos, but she still has her choices.
She knows who she is and she’s not afraid.
The Zenith Foundation can have their righteous ideas of feminism and proper behavior, and Devo can fuck right off to the land behind his mask. I don’t want to be confined anymore. I stand by my choices, and I will move forward in whichever manner I desire.