Chapter 27
Milan and I locked eyes at dinner service; I’d glanced up to see if my table’s drinks were on the bar mat, and she’d been standing right there, arranging cocktails on her tray. After a beat she turned, lifting her tray, her expression empty.
Throughout the night, I’d catch her scribbling an order, her neck curved downward at an intense, concentrated angle. She’d changed her braids without me. As I moved from table to table, I wondered what I looked like to her through a sieve of anger.
Ryen’s Charger roared up to the restaurant when her shift was over, engine running, puffing smoke. When she got in, they sped down Florida Avenue, out of view. It felt like being at a movie premiere only to realize all your parts had been cut from the final film.
I FaceTimed Jay downstairs. He was outside, the camera shifting erratically as he walked.
“You’re so cute when you’re at work,” he said.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“It’s the messy ponytail for me. I was watching Obama’s 2008 convention speech and I feel so much better. I think we’re going to be okay.”
“I one hundred percent disagree.” Every article since the election was about how this second term would be catastrophically worse than the first.
“That’s fair.”
“The only thing I remember about that speech is how flawless his skin looked. Also remember when he didn’t support gay marriage?”
“He changed! Sorry, I have to put you in my pocket.” The screen went black, but Jay was still talking.
“Tomorrow’s history lesson is on democracy and the branches of government.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to teach this stuff right now.
Hey, kids! Democracy is that important thing our president-elect tried to destroy and will possibly successfully destroy this time and the other two branches are basically dysfunctional.
Should I just show them a video of Schoolhouse Rock? ”
“Yes.”
I heard his car start. He propped the phone on the dashboard so I could see his face again. I fiddled with a piece of hair that had fallen from my ponytail. “In other news, I think my mom’s having an affair.”
Jay laughed. When I didn’t laugh along, he said, “Oh, I thought you were joking. Wait, why?”
“I found this weird birthday card from this guy named Sam.”
“What did it say?”
“It said, ‘Happy Birthday, Dorinda.’ ”
There was a pause. “Cat.”
“She’s also been texting a lot! Like, you’re almost sixty, why are you texting so much?”
Jay sighed. “Couldn’t she be texting your aunt?”
“No. She can’t be.”
“I don’t want to invalidate your experience or anything, but none of this would hold up in court. Like, you’d probably be banned from court, your evidence is so bad. It also doesn’t really sound like your mom.”
“I know, that’s what makes it so diabolical. If anyone could get away with it, she could.”
“Why don’t you just ask her?”
“And get slapped? Anyway, she’d just lie like she always does.”
“You kind of sound like you want her to be having an affair.”
“What? If my parents break up I’ll be stuck with my dad—can you imagine?
Him stomping around the house, me trapped, CNN on all day, no food in the fridge.
Nothing would get done.” I didn’t add that it was possible he’d relapse too.
My phone beeped with another call. “Hang on.” I clicked the green accept button. “Hello?”
“Cat! Hey. It’s Nia.”
Hearing her silky voice sent a chill through me. I fixed my hair, forgetting she couldn’t see me. “Oh, hey!”
“Are you busy?”
“I’m at work but I’m off in an hour.”
“Cool, I’m going to be at my studio for the rest of the night.
The one you came to? Thanks for coming to that.
I probably thanked you already. That night feels like ten years ago.
” It sounded like she was walking down a hallway, clicking heels coming through the phone.
“Anyway, I digress—don’t you hate when people say that?
Anyway, do you want to come by for your portrait if you have time?
” A man’s voice. Loud laughter. Me: mortified as I realized Tristan was there.
“Don’t make that face, come on.” More bubbly laughter, then a kissing sound?
Nia’s mouth suddenly too close to the phone: “I’m sorry, we were… never mind. See you later!”
The phone went black. I stared at it, wound up, for a long time.
At home, I tried to avoid the question of Nia’s studio and whether I’d go, whether I’d go through with the portrait at all. How could I, given what was happening between me and Tristan?
But also: What was happening between me and Tristan beyond him kissing me on the sidewalk, then running away afterward, then saying we shouldn’t see each other, but then acting totally normal when we saw each other at the art showcase?
My phone glowed eight o’clock in a clean, white font. I didn’t know what Nia had meant by “rest of the night,” but eight o’clock seemed before that. It was my copy of Art Monsters on my nightstand that made me release my hair from its grimy ponytail, throw on some makeup and a coat, and go to her.
There was no reason I should have been surprised to see her, but when I saw her I paused in the doorway.
She was barefoot, toes bent painfully against the cold linoleum on her tiptoes, angled over her desk in a forest-green men’s button-down.
Her hair fell cutely in a short ponytail, curls licking the nape of her neck.
I watched her from the doorway, finding it impossible to tear my eyes away or move into the room.
“Come in,” she said.
“How’d you know I was behind you?”
She straightened up, grinning. “I smelled your perfume. Missing Person, right?”
I was embarrassed that she noticed, a feeling like she could see straight through me.
She walked over and brought the inside of my wrist to her nose. “I’ve been meaning to buy it. But I never do.”
I held my breath while her head was bowed in front of me, her hair sweeping across my forearm.
The tip of her nose was cold against my skin, making me shudder.
Nervously, I untwisted my hand from her grasp before I got any more lightheaded.
My legs fought hard to hold me up even after she turned away.
Her studio looked different unpeopled, cozier: stacks of art books, neat rows of mason jars, brushes sticking from them. I noticed a light blue book on her desk, the name Noah Davis in gold-foiled letters. “Isn’t that that guy you were talking about?”
“Who?”
“Noah Davis. What was that painting?”
She blinked at me, aggressively tying her hair in a bun, her arms working with the violent energy of someone pounding dough. “Oh! The Narrator.” She flipped it open to the painting. “Now that I’m looking at it, you don’t look like her at all.”
I felt deflated. “Why’s it called The Narrator?”
“Who knows.”
This time the woman looked like she was falling asleep. Nia ran a hand over the book. My brain short-circuited: Now Tristan’s hand ran over my copy of Art Monsters at the café. I thought about how they ran those hands over each other, the thought lasting longer than I would’ve liked.
She said, “Don’t you love how sturdy art books are?”
I found a stool and sat. “Yeah but it feels so final. Like, once it’s in this nice book, that’s it.”
“Is it?”
“Is what?”
“Don’t people talk about it, make work in response? Doesn’t it keep going?”
“I guess. It doesn’t make it not painful to have to find some sort of resolution where there is none.” I hadn’t even known how deeply I feared this until then. How was I, for instance, supposed to end the novel about my parents, a story about stuckness, about a tension that never fully resolves?
Nia made a noise meant to convey sympathy. It was a pretty, inquisitive noise. I could tell she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she started, “but I might just sketch tonight. Do you care?”
I said no. She hopped onto her oak desk, sitting cross-legged.
Grabbing a sketch pad, a charcoal pencil, she stared at me for a perplexed beat then put her head down.
Dark hair parted down the center, sliver of scalp paler than the rest of her complexion.
It was oddly intimate, those flashes of naked scalp.
The sprinkle of white dandruff was possibly her one flaw.
She reminded me of those artsy, outcast girls in school who spent the lunch period buried in their journals.
The soft scrape of her pencil was lulling. “You should do ASMR videos,” I said.
She seemed amused. “You like those?”
“They’re all right. I actually go to sleep watching voguing videos, as weird as that sounds.”
She laughed, extending her leg into the air.
Everything inside me fluttered.
Two hours passed like this: One of us spoke, the other responded, then we’d fall silent. Her gaze made me feel suspended in the air. I nearly went into mourning when she said she was done.
“Can I see or is that against the rules?”
“What rules?” She passed me her sketchbook. I studied her drawings. I looked striking, a bit startled, restless. “They’re just sketches,” she said. “I don’t think the painting will be like that, but I had to get those out of me first.”
“But I love them. They look like how I feel inside. Crazy how you did that.”
She pried the book from me. “Like I said, they’re sketches.”
I pulled Art Monsters from my tote. “I feel like you’d like this book.”
She took it, flipping back the flap, grinning. “I feel like you’re right.”
I watched as she delicately set it on the table. I never lent people my books, especially thirty-five-dollar hardbacks. But I wanted to give her something.
The mischievous smile tugging at her mouth then made it worth it.