People in Trouble (14 page)

Kate lifted her wineglass like a man.

Spiros watched her arm move.
 
She saw him.

"Kate, I know what you are saying.
 
You have the same opinions about a lot of old topics and struggle over the same issues and ask each other to run errands.
 
Now tell me your new proposal."

Spiros sat back and watched her speak.
 
Kate could see he was listening.
 
She felt articulate and natural.
 
She tried putting her hands in and out of her jacket pockets for emphasis and that worked well too.
 
Then she discovered that straightening out her suit jacket occasionally contributed to her authority.
 
In these clothes Kate felt capable of suggesting absolutely anything and making it sound reasonable.
 
Then she was done.

"Kate.
 
What you are suggesting is an installation.
 
I am an art dealer.
 
I only sell paintings that people can pay for with a check and take home in a cab."

Were her cheeks flushed?
 
She had embarrassed herself.
 
It wasn't worth trying to convince a gallery owner of something he couldn't make money from.
 
Why had she been so naive?

"But I do sense a new kind of seriousness in you, a new level of investigation and I want to support it as fully as I can.

Last week I was contacted by a prominent businessman, well actually his assistant for cultural affairs."

"What does he want, a mural in his medicine cabinet?"

"No, no, just the opposite, in fact.
 
It turns out that the city, in preparations for upcoming mayoral elections, is about to make a token gesture to the arts.
 
They have promised real-estate developers millions in tax rebates if they provide funding for public artwork on their properties.
 
There are a number of projects under way to convert former public buildings, long in disrepair, into refurbished private space, relocating the public facilities onto barges.
 
The mayor's office will be promoting and publicizing the efforts in a bus card campaign called `Privacy Is Golden."
 
Now, I know that there are large areas of park and sidewalk space available that would be suitable for the piece you have in mind.

I think I can help you get into this granting program.
 
Frankly, it is your only available financial option and the work would be seen by people on the streets going to work, et cetera.
 
It would not be shut up in some exclusive, out-of-the-way gallery."

She drank down her glass of wine.

"Interested?"

"Why do I feel suspicious, Spiros?
 
I have never been involved with businessmen or corporations before."

"Well, your work is getting bigger now.
 
It needs to be supported in a larger way.
 
These men are the new patrons of our day.
 
Better they should spend their discretionary income on the arts than on the Contras."

"But what if they spend it on both?"

"Look, Kate," he said, taking her hand again.
 
"It won't be hidden away in their private offices.
 
It will be seen by the people of New York City."
 
He dropped the hand.
 
"And that's the best I can do."

Kate thought she was going straight home from the restaurant but then decided on the studio but ended up back at the funeral instead.
 
She stood across the street, watching what seemed to be the end of the service.
 
There were Molly and Pearl in the front and a lot of gay men all around.
 
These people at the funeral came ùinto her mind like a sentence.
 
The family stuck out.
 
They looked miserable, crunched together shrinking from the community of -mourning friends, not understanding any of it.
 
They were denying themselves the comfort within arms' reach.
 
They hadn't asked enough questions to be of use.

Kate's own parents had raised her to live comfortably.
 
They had taught her to strive but differed on the goal.
 
Kate still couldn't be real with her mother, even though she was past seventy.
 
Her father had gotten quieter and quieter and finally died.
 
Peter -would be the same way.
 
She thought of them all with great love.

She had vague memories of shapes that felt more like incidents than relationships.
 
Something forbidden had happened with another girl.

What was it?
 
Her cousin had pubic hair, thick black and slippery.

It was secret and sexy to be excited by hair on your older cousin at the age of seven.
 
Did she really want all this information?
 
There were many more details, Kate was sure, but toward what conclusion?

She walked in the door of her studio.
 
That family.
 
They didn't find out who their son was, so when he died they couldn't -understand his funeral.
 
They couldn't find solace with his friends who had stood united before them.
 
There was a deprivation that accompanies this kind of ignorance.
 
She couldn't get them out -of her mind.

"What's this?"
 
Peter said pulling at her necktie.
 
"Is the Annie Hall look coming back?"

She didn't answer.

"How's the new piece coming?"

"I started out using a lot of earth colors, but then it got too purple, man-made colors and metallics, so I've moved away from that for a while."

"Still using the cutouts?
 
I want to come over and take a look soon.

"Yeah, I've got the photos and some collage, using a lot of underpainting and then missing it and madly scraping with a razor blade."

Peter was looking for a way to make her laugh.
 
Things had been so strained between them lately.
 
He knew that she was seeing that girl again, but this time Kate acted strange.
 
It was becoming hard to overlook.

"I'm going out for a walk."

She didn't say anything.
 
Not "Can I come?"
 
and not "Where are you going?"

We still have sex, he thought.
 
So what's the problem?
 
Is Kate old enough for menopause?

"Peter?"

"Uh-huh?"

"I'm having dreams in the middle of the day."

Finally, he thought with relief.

Peter went and sat down behind Kate on the couch.
 
They -liked to sit that way together, where he stretched out behind her and became just another cushion to sink back into.

"Human furniture," she said with a sigh of relief.
 
This is -what she always said when he did that for her.
 
They could be -normal.
 
He could comfort her now as always.
 
Nothing was going to change that.

"In my last dream I was going to Vietnam as a tourist.
 
I forgot to bring my guidebook.
 
I was sitting on the airplane, panicking.

I thought, This is what you get.
 
How stupid worrying about a -guidebook when people don't have enough to eat.
 
This wasn't -war-torn Vietnam, this was the modern Communist one.
 
They - I don't care about your dollars here, I told myself.
 
You fool, there are no tourist attractions in a people's republic.
 
Things we take for granted like airport signs translated into English are just details of capitalism.

You know?"

This wasn't exactly what Peter had expected.
 
He wanted something about fear, or her family.
 
He wanted her to say, "Peter, I love you so much.

I don't want anything to ever come between us."

He wanted something tender where he could be strong for her, not dreams about Ho Chi Minh City.
 
She seemed older every time he looked at her.

She was not staying in as good shape as he was.
 
She wasn't sleeping enough and she wasn't working out.

There was no way Kate could make it through the whole winter without getting sick.

"Are you eating enough, Katie?
 
There's chicken in the fridge.

Have you had any?"

"Yes," she lied.
 
Then seemed to regret that.
 
He reached over and touched her.
 
He started to rub her neck.

"That feels good."

Everything was all right.
 
He should watch himself and not let some lesbian make him paranoid.

"I'll take the garbage on the way out," he said.
 
"I bought these new garbage bags because the other kind broke going down the stairs.
 
Did the super fix the intercom yet?"

"No," Kate said.
 
"Not yet."

"I talked to Don on the phone," he said, rubbing her shoulders.
 
"He wanted to know what to wear to a job interview at the Public Theater.

I told him to be clean."

"I would have said to dress exactly like Joe Papp, loose jacket, white shirt, no tie."

Peter started to relax.

"I got the tickets for tonight," he said.
 
"It starts at nine.
 
I couldn't decide between Pound's Electra or that Borges Tango thing.
 
I figured the Electra would probably close first.
 
Besides, we can definitely get weekend comps for the Tango but Carrie could only promise me weekday comps for the Pound.
 
`Seal sports in the spray."

Is that Pound?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you do.
 
Let's look it up."

"I don't feel like playing that game right now," she said.

Then she said, "I'm sorry, Peter, I'm not feeling that well at all."

"You always do that.
 
You always say something really hurtful and then you apologize immediately after so that I can't get angry and you don't have to feel so guilty."

"I don't feel guilty."

"Well," he said, standing up abruptly and pulling on his jacket.
 
"You should."

Then he waited for her to say something.
 
He waited for her to say "You're right" or "You're wrong" or "Shut up," to engage him on some level.
 
But she just closed her eyes and shifted away from his direction, curling into a napping position on the far end of the couch.

"I'll be back by seven," he said.
 
"Do you want to eat before the show?"

"I'll have to see.
 
I'm not really feeling very well."

"Not well like how?"

"Not that way.
 
Just normal flu or something.
 
Have a good - - walk.

Bring me back some magazines."

For that art project, he thought.
 
She voraciously clipped from magazines, anything-True Detective, People, National Geographic, Personal Management, Heavy Metal.

"Peter?"

"Yes?"

That's how they always were, calling each other back.
 
Their hands were always in each other's pockets.

"If you hadn't had this life, what do you think you'd be doing now?"

"I'd be a dad," he said without any doubt.
 
"Maybe teach school in New England.
 
Make things in the basement after work.

Coach Little League.
 
Be an upstanding citizen."

"I could have been a housewife," she said.
 
"An alcoholic -one.
 
Or a frigid professional.
 
I probably would have been an art - - teacher in an elementary school having a twenty-year affair with - the married science teacher, ignoring the janitor's advances and watching the legs of the twelve-year-old girls.
 
What else do weird -women do when they find themselves in normal places?
 
I could -have opened the Kathleen Connell Dance Academy on Main -Street and put on The Nutcracker Suite every Christmas in the basement of the Calvary Church.
 
I'd do my food shopping in a beige leotard and ballet slippers.
 
Or, I could have been a whore at the Sly Fox Cafe in Covington, Kentucky.
 
But with any of those possibilities I'd still end up going out in the middle of the night to buy my liquor and the only place open would be the mall."

Why did she have to say that part about the twelve-year-old girls?