Chapter 23
Outside, Paul leans against the window of a closed florist and lights a cigarette.
The smoke fills him up, tastes delicious.
He lets his mind drift over the past several hours: meeting Tasha, Jahan’s gorgeous assistant, who seemed to instantly like him; seeing the rooms to be filled with Judith’s framed photographs, and his own printed words; signing the contract that said CONSULTING CURATOR in all caps.
In all caps like: FUCKING PARASITE. I BET YOU’RE GLAD SHE’S DEAD.
The words jolt him out of his reverie. He forgets the glory of the day and fixates on the letter again—especially the accusation that he’s “glad she’s dead.
” He isn’t glad she’s dead, but he can’t deny that things are working out for him because she died.
If she hadn’t, and if she’d ever published her photographs—which was doubtful—he’d have been a brief mention in her interviews at most. I had a photography instructor who pushed me to send out my work.
I resisted but finally did it, thanks to him…
She wouldn’t have named him, because who would need to know his name? Only hers would have mattered.
But now his matters, too. Maybe he won’t be the great photographer himself, but he’ll be the next best thing: the one who recognized genius and ferried it deftly into the world.
A few might share the letter writer’s view—like Charlie, maybe—but most will see him as a generous mentor and promising young curator.
He exhales a great cloud of smoke at this vision and the vision slowly disintegrates; the city returns.
A hobo walks by, dragging behind him a cart stuffed with paper bags and old electronics.
Paul thinks of Judith: how she could have captured this man’s image, made him into something magnificent.
He lets the fleeting joy of this thought swell inside of him, generous and unenvious.
Judith had her talent; he has his own—and yes, she’s gone, but he’s still alive.
Instead of heading home, he ducks into a bar in Chelsea and stays until midnight.
He thinks he might go home with one particular pretty girl, but she says she has plans and slides him her number for a “rain check.” Once he finally leaves the dim, cozy glow of the bar and finds himself back on the street, alone and wobbling drunkenly, the unwanted phrase pops into his head and repeats, repeats:
FUCKING PARASITE
FUCKING PARASITE
The words trail him down the subway stairs.
Standing and swaying in the train car, he sees nothing but strange characters, some of whom catch and hold his eye: a man with a deeply scarred cheek; a woman with a swollen-shut eye, compulsively knitting; two shockingly thin young women, possibly twins, leaning together as if conjoined at the temple.
Paul thinks he may have entered some kind of hell, after having lived in paradise briefly.
But it isn’t hell, of course, it’s just the city, flaunting its mundane horrors.
They’re nothing new, they just seem especially horrible after his time at Doven Gallery.
He’s relieved when he’s climbing the steps to the door of his building.
He thinks about going straight up but instead heads to the row of metal mailboxes with a quickening pulse.
He pulls out a small stack of letters and bills and shuffles through them, spotting another envelope with the address written in block letters.
Are they the same block letters, though?
He can’t tell. He tears it open and unfolds a sheet of yellow legal pad paper bearing a message from someone who signs off, “An ex-con.”
Did that bitch really take those pictures or did you take them?
Is there really even a Judith Stanley or did you make her up to make money?
That’s what I think. I watch a lot of television and I never saw a news story about a Jersey housewife getting killed so I think you made it up.
I don’t really care except I hate bitches like her. Glad she’s dead.
The last line sends a chill through him.
Despite the half-witted, delusional content, Paul can’t ignore how this letter echoes the other one at the end.
Glad she’s dead. Could this “ex-con” be the same writer putting on an act, trying a new way of goading Paul?
His instincts tell him no, they’re different people, but even so, he compares the two envelopes when he gets upstairs.
His eyes flit back and forth between them but he can’t be certain they’re the same—or different.
They look similar, but one slants slightly to the left; the other is nearly perfectly vertical.
But who cares? He sets both letters aside.
He’s just had one of the best days of his life; it doesn’t matter what an ex-con and an angry woman (or just one angry woman) wrote in their unhinged letters.
No one will see these letters but him—and he isn’t required to open them!
But he does require sleep. Tomorrow—or later today, really—he has to drive to New Jersey and teach class.
It’s been two weeks, and he’ll have to dip himself back into his old life for a while—though he can hardly imagine it.