Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-three
The Mercedes door shut with a cushioned thud, insulating Iris from the drone of summer insects and stifling heat.
“What was that about?” Gabe frowned beside her.
Iris exhaled inside the air-conditioned interior.
A moment ago with her uncle, she had bitterly regretted accepting Jonathan’s chauffeured car.
But as she sank into the car’s smooth leather seat, temperature-controlled to sixty-eight degrees and ready for a hasty getaway, she decided alienating her remaining family was worth it. “Can we make the A/C higher, Esdras?”
“Absolutely. You have your own controls in the rear console.”
Iris thanked him and busied herself poking at the blue display, cranking the blow speed to the max until the fan sound replaced the silence of her not answering Gabe.
“Iris, are you okay?”
“Yes, sorry, I’m just hot.” She buckled her seatbelt.
Esdras offered them bottles of water, still or sparkling, as if they were in a restaurant.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you with your uncle, but it sounded like he asked you for money. That had to be awkward, I thought you hadn’t seen them in years.”
“I haven’t.” When Iris saw Gabe still puzzling at her, she reached to explain—without telling him the answer. “They saw the car, they think I live this big life in the big city, you know, Manhattan is like a movie set to them.”
“You haven’t exactly had an easy go either. Of all the people to ask for help. Was he drunk?”
“Do you want to stop for food on the way home?” Iris didn’t want to discuss any of this in the car with Esdras, or with Gabe, or ever, really. She held the water bottle against her forehead. She just wanted to feel cold. Colder than cold— numb .
—
Little more than a half hour into the drive, Iris fell asleep, from the letdown of a stressful day or the carb crash of fast food. When she awoke, they were already in Brooklyn.
Iris wiped the corners of her mouth and apologized for falling asleep.
Gabe’s brow furrowed with sympathy. “Even in your sleep, you looked worried.”
“I guess I was a little stressed by…everything.”
“We’re almost to the city. You’ll sleep better in your own bed.”
Iris shook her head. “Nah, I got enough rest. I think I’ll clean out my fridge, maybe organize my closet. I always clean when I’m anxious.”
Gabe looked at her, his dark eyes searching her face with concern, then brightened. “If you’re not tired, I know just the place to blow off steam.”
—
Gabe directed Esdras through Brooklyn to a rather desolate intersection with a Sunoco station and a La Quinta Inn, far from any bars, restaurants, or charm. Gabe said to drop them off just beyond the gas station, beside a gated alleyway tucked between two faceless brick buildings.
“Where are we?” Iris peered out the window from her slumped position.
Gabe smiled. “Come on.”
They thanked Esdras for the ride, and Iris followed Gabe outside, where it was still hot but the skies had grayed with heavy cloud cover. A red neon sign atop the alley’s tall metal gate read Gather Round .
Gabe had a key to the gate, which screeched as he opened it.
They entered a junky alleyway lined with jalapeno pepper plants in plastic buckets and a few stray lawn chairs.
At the end of the alley was an enormous closed garage.
Its crusty metal door had an awning of corrugated polycarbonate from which hung a piece of unexpected whimsy—bright neon glass tubing in the bubbly shape of a rain cloud with a rainbow behind it.
And underneath that stood Gabe, grinning, like a man-sized metaphor.
Gabe had to shout over the metallic clatter of the garage door retracting. “Welcome to the hot shop!” He draped his arm around her neck. “Step into my office, baby.”
The space looked industrial and forbidding.
Brick ovens lined the entire back wall, each with fire glowing inside like orange eyes and mouths.
Everything appeared hard, hot, dirty, or raw: the unfinished concrete floor; cinderblock walls painted white, emphasizing the black soot that had settled into every crevice and grout line; rolling dividers of dented steel like shields; racks of blackened metal pipes and what looked like hellish gardening tools.
The largest, central furnace was a built-out brick structure with a heavy metal facade and a small door around which infernal light escaped like a solar eclipse.
It was not clear to Iris how Gabe found this place soothing.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Uh, I feel like the Brave Little Toaster in here.”
Gabe laughed. “God, that movie traumatized me. Not a good movie for abandonment issues.” He gave her a quick tour, explaining the three types of furnaces in the room: the biggest and hottest one that contained the cauldron of molten glass; the glory hole, an oven used to reheat a working piece of glass to keep it pliable; and the annealers, kilns that allow a finished piece to cool slowly to prevent breakage. “I’ll show you what I’m working on.”
Gabe led her to a large annealer that reminded Iris of her grandfather’s hunting freezer. But when Gabe unlatched its heavy door, she could feel the waves of heat emanating from the ceramic interior, even from three feet away.
“This is how I pay my bills. It’s called ‘production.’ Useful glass stuff people actually buy.”
Iris peered inside, where rows of identical cups stood like little soldiers. She marveled at the neatness and uniformity of them; they looked made from a mold, not a mouth.
Gabe closed the annealer. “But I’ll show you what I’m really excited about.
It’s in the gallery.” He walked her across the hot shop, through a door to a cluttered storage room with many shelves of glass creations.
But against one wall stood two chopped telephone poles with black wires pulled taut between them, and, to her amazement, the wires displayed glass sculptures dangling precariously off the ground.
The pieces were three pairs of shoes tossed over the power line—sneakers, work boots, and laced platform heels—made entirely of glass.
Iris got closer and saw the detail on the sneakers, the Nike swoosh embossed on the side, the worn sole just beginning to separate from the body, the Timberland boots with the creased toe box, the tongue curling away from the upper, all rendered in clear glass, yet instantly recognizable.
The only part of the shoes that wasn’t glass were the laces they hung from.
“This is incredible!”
“Thanks,” Gabe said, suddenly shy.
“It makes me nervous, them hanging like that. Are they secured somehow?”
He shook his head. “The peril is the point. Anyway, they stay pretty balanced. You can move ’em. See?” He tugged one glass Air Jordan and it raised the other like a seesaw, causing the wire to bounce and all the pieces to sway threateningly.
Iris yelped. “Sorry,” she said, hands over her mouth.
“Art should make you feel something, right?”
“Are you going to sell it, or display it somewhere?”
“My friend is a dancer, her troupe is performing for a charity fundraiser, she was looking for some local artists to participate.”
“That’s cool, but maybe after, you can shop it around. Gabe, this belongs in an art gallery. This has value.”
He shrugged. “The production is what I do for money. The art is for me.”
“Have you ever thought of selling to interior design?”
“That’s very hard to break into. A small group of artists with well-established relationships to manufacturers and designers.”
“Yeah, if only you knew someone in lighting design.”
He chuckled.
“You know, Mr. Wolff, who lent us the car today, I’m designing the lighting for his new luxury tower in Hudson Yards. The lobby is my blank canvas, they tasked me with finding a dramatic central installation. I was going to ask you for recommendations, but maybe I should be asking you for a piece.”
He scrunched his nose. “Nah, that’s your gig. You don’t have to get me a job.”
“It wouldn’t be that easy—Wolff isn’t easy to please, that message has come through loud and clear. It was just a thought.” Iris didn’t want to push it or make him feel criticized. A man’s pride could be fragile as glass.
—
They reentered the hot shop. Iris pointed to a couch against the wall, facing the furnaces, her puzzled look asking the question for her.
“The spectators’ couch. For visitors when we have a demonstration or class,” Gabe supplied. “Also for hangovers and postbreakage depression naps.” He untucked and unbuttoned his dress shirt, then unbuckled his belt.
“A strip show? I’ll take a seat.”
He grinned, having stripped down to his undershirt and black slacks. “Metal belt buckles get hot. And you’re no spectator today. I’m gonna teach you to blow glass!”
He took her to the central furnace and slid open the oven door with a rustic wooden handle to reveal the eye of Sauron.
He had to speak up over the fire’s breathy roar.
“This furnace holds our molten glass, made of silica, lime, and soda, and it burns hotter than any other, about twenty-three hundred degrees. It takes a week for the temperature to get that high, and then we have to leave it running to keep it there. Take a look, but go slow. When you first get close to it, it can trigger your flight response.”
Iris hesitated. Even the sound of the fire echoed in her memory, but she wanted to fight it. She stepped closer.
The wall of hot air hit her like a truck.
It made her heart race. The furnace’s metal lip was coated in drips of glowing orange glass, like electric drool.
She could see no flames inside, only a white-hot, blinding light, so bright it hurt to look at.
But when she closed her eyes, she was back in her childhood bedroom, the door a glowing rectangle limned in fiery orange, and Jacob—
Gabe’s hands landed on her shoulders. “I’m here. Just breathe.”