Chapter 3
3.
I hop out of the cab in front of a sleek looking gallery. Too sleek. Maybe this isn't a good idea.
I check the crumpled paper in my pocket to make sure this is the right address. Yup. I walk up to the door and press the bell.
It responds immediately with a counterpoint buzz. I push the little latch and walk in.
"Emmanuelle, is that you?" a voice says from the catwalk overhead.
My boots make sharp clicks as I walk around, looking at the space and, reluctantly, at the paintings.
The gallery is divided into adjoining quarters, each with an oddly dark spot for the viewer to stand in. The paintings, however, are bathed in warm and flattering light. I can imagine Nina sprawled out against these walls, her body up in Broadway lights.
I hear footsteps and turn to meet them.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he stammers, "I was expecting someone."
"Emmanuelle?" I ask.
He wrinkles his brow, nodding.
"Well that's me. But you, pal, can call me Ellie." I say, walking forward and taking his hand.
He has short, spiky, white-blond hair. His striking eyes defy, somewhat, the little boyishness of his freckle covered features. He is a bit too "alternative"-looking, but pretty. It scares me when a boy obviously uses more hair products than me, though.
"Uh, I'm sorry, I guess because I met your mother, I was expecting...I thought you'd be, blonde."
"Well, no, I'm not. That's the trick of the two parent thing and some peroxide, huh?"
He laughs and finally shakes my hand. "Yeah, that's a bitch, ain't it? I'm Ezra, by the way."
"Like the poet?" I ask. He looks like the quintessential goofball now, just cheesing because I have heard of Ezra fucking Pound.
"My mom was an English professor," he explains.
"Mmmhmmm," I reply, " So you're Ezra, the artist, Ezra?"
"Yeah, these are mine," he says, glancing around. "Is this your first time seeing my stuff?"
I sigh. His work is beige. It's tone on tone beige. There is texture, I guess, but it's all...beige. Kind of like a big piece of Wonder Bread. There's no ooomph, not surprisingly. They are finely crafted, but how passionate could anyone get about...beige?
Please don't ask me what I think, I think.
"So what do you think?"
"Shit, I dunno'," I reply, playing the moron. "It's unlike my stuff, but it's interesting."
"Paolo talks a shitload about you. He says you've really got it."
"Thanks."
"I didn't say it. I've never seen your stuff. Paolo says it's good though. My intuition says he's probably right."
"Oh, and what else does your intuition tell you?" I ask, almost haughtily.
"That I'm not your type, but if I ask you out to coffee right now, you won't refuse." He walks away from me, letting his words hang in the air like a dare. He has no ass. But neither do I these days, so I guess that's okay.
I laugh again and really look at him. While he wouldn't make a great topographical study, I actually don't mind him much.
"So get your coat." I say, walking toward the door.
At dinner a few nights later, the conversation stopped as all six eyeballs rolled to a stop on my face.
My mother's eyes held a warning. Ezra's held a pitiful hope. Paolo just stared with unassuming curiosity as he diligently chewed his food. And I, thankfully, spontaneously combusted.
"So you are a lesbian, no?" Paolo had asked before shoving a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
Was I? I was (allegedly formerly) in love with a girl, did that make me a lesbian? I had sex with boys in the past, did that make me straight? I have eaten too many meats.
"No," I said within what I hoped was a brief enough time span to make it believable, "why would you say that?"
My mother let out a sigh of relief and Ezra joyously separated his veal from his linguine.
"Oh, I was just wondering. You paint the girl with such passion that I thought she was perhaps your girlfriend. But maybe she is just a friend, no?"
His seeds of doubt, thrown casually across the fertile table, were embedding themselves in the soil of each mind.
I politely excuse myself from the table, so as to transmit my veal, my pasta, my salad, and my shrimp appetizer from my body to the toilet. And then there'll be room for dessert!
How I love this thing, bulimia! How did I ever live without it? It's like cable, you don't realize that you need it until you get it. Now that my mother is once again a large part of my life, I am content with passing time watching food go back and forth through my body. I am learning that some foods are more conducive to bulimia than others. Ice cream, for example, is better than french fries, which get stuck in chunky lumps on the way back up. And once you're really good at it, as I am becoming, you can eat certain foods and achieve the Exorcist food-launch, rather than the messy novice dry-heave dribble, where there are only a few chunks of bile-covered stuff.
I wipe any stray marks from the porcelain of the toilet with a wad of toilet paper. Bulimia is not as precision-oriented as, say, darts, for example. But it is fun.
He sounded fucking pleased as punch to hear from me, even though it was one in the morning. Dork.
"Is this Alterni-boy?" I asked, leaning in toward the phone booth and standing on my toes.
"Excuse me?"
"I said is Ezra there?" I sighed, jumping up and down so I could feel my minimal ass jiggle with each landing.
"Speaking, is this Ellie?"
"Uh, yeah." I say. I hate phones. I'd rather send smoke signals than talk on a fucking phone.
"Hey!" said he, enthusiastically.
"Hey." I replied.
"How are you?"
"I'm fucking freezing, if you really want to know. How long would it take you to get to the corner of Store Street and Beecham?"
"Five minutes, I live really close-"
"It's a date." I said, hanging up and checking the phone for change. My quarter bounced down the slot and back into my palm. Sweet.
I hoped he would kiss me. Dancing closely in the crowded nightclub, I bit my lips and squinted my eyes. And hoped. He teased me, coming close, then retreating. Until finally he did lay one on me and man oh man, I could hardly bear to part from his lips, even for a few seconds of respiration. A few tart seconds full of need. I was investing so much hope in that kiss- so many failed attempts, so so many long, lonely, tiny days, so many nights without arms to hold me, nor ears to hear my prayers. Oh God, it's been so long. Please just let me love. Oh lord, just let me love.
"I had never been in love, before her."
Ezra and I are laying in bed together, smoking. The room is black, but I can feel his eyes on me.
"Never? Never ever?"
"No. Well, I may have loved something about this boy or that one, but it was an objectification of the boy-"
"Not love," he finished. The orange circles of our lit cigarettes cut the darkness like little lasers.
"Right. What I loved was strategizing and conquering, stalking and pouncing...I used to see men as a sort of sport. The thrill was in the pursuit, the seduction, the manipulation. Then, after the kill, I was satiated for a while, until new prey came into sight."
Quietly, I cover my tracks. "Of course, I feel differently about you..."
"But you loved her" he implores.
"Yes. I loved her." I say, putting the butt of my cigarette in what I hope is the ashtray, "I love her."
I watch the embers glow until my eyelids grow heavy with sleep. The last sensation I have is of his eyes, unwaveringly watching me.
The goddesses of the night are playing a fine trick on me. Each starlit attempt at slumber is interrupted by their follies. Bitches.
I guess I can't do anything right, not even dream.
I am resigning myself to stopping all thoughts of her, all my attempts to replace her, all my efforts to change myself for her. I miss the comforts of a confirmed love. A come-what-may-I'm-yours love. Although I know he isn't "the one" (mainly because he isn't a beautiful girl), I love him for loving me, for appreciating what I feared was no longer there, perhaps was never there. I have snapped out of my trance and into a love that doesn't quite fit, but is comfortable and well-worn.
And he's just so fucking hopeful. He obviously feels the anxious anticipation of something possibly being right. He doesn't want to lose it. In his arms, there is a tenderness; a familiarity I fear is not real. Still I hold. And, still, I am his in his arms.
The thought of him scares but comforts me. It hurts to let my tiny, tightly-wound heart unravel around this boy and his promises.
Where is the peace that will complete this puzzle that I am? I just need one more clue to the riddle.
I want to disappear for a while, let the world engulf me and turn me into a Where's Waldo until I'm stronger.
And yet I care (anew) for this boy and all the hope there is between us! How wonderful and like a blessing it is to feel loved! And just for being me! I must throw away my insecurity, my inhibitions, my mistrust of men and try, just try to welcome him into my life. And actually let him in. That's the scary part.
He's not perfect- not gorgeous, brilliant, funny. But he does deserve my love, if not forever, then for today and just maybe tomorrow, and just maybe tomorrow's tomorrow.
-Look, I know that he's not the one that will melt my heart, for my cold, logical, clinical, cynical mind won't let him. But can't we let him help me to feel again? Won't loving him make me stronger?
-It might. It might also break you. Are you willing to risk it all on a whim, a fluke?
-Yes. No. But yes.
-You're scared. You're wise.
-But scared of what? Of love?
-Of love with the wrong person. You've done that before. You still have scars from that hateful yet beautiful love.
-So I'll be careful.
-But when you're not getting scars, you're giving them.
-So I'll be careful.
-Is he that special?
-Maybe not. But I need this that much. I need to end the lonely, shitty days and sad, shitty nights. He may not be a miracle and he may not be a dream, but he's real and he's love and he's here and that's more than I could ask of any dream.
Ezra came with me to my apartment to pick the paintings for my exhibition. I hadn't been there in almost a month. He had never seen my home. To him, Nina was just a collection to be hung on the walls of a gallery. To him, she wasn't the only sunlight my myopic vision would let in.
He walked around, looking at my work. Here she was again, big as life. Each painting was a tribute to an olive nymphette, a chestnut autumn pixie. Now he could see why I was so in love with her.
I left him to find a bottle of wine in the kitchen. I poured two glasses and tucked the bottle beneath my arm. He was standing in the doorway, staring at me. I started, sloshing wine onto the floor.
"You are so amazing... I had no idea..." He took both glasses from me and put them on the counter. I looked at him shyly as he enclosed me in his arms.
"I had no idea..." he murmured, kissing the top of my head.
Imagine, I felt loved.
We are pleasantly intertwined on the sofa in my studio. We are drunk. At least, I know, I am drunk.
The T.V. is on. I watch intently, desperately trying to follow the story line. But who is this girl? Is she the same one from before? Has she changed her clothes? Why don't they make it easier to understand? Why is it all so confusing?
"She reminds me of my ex-girlfriend." He says. It takes a whole lot of concentration, but I realize that he is still looking at Nina. He can't help it. She is exquisite.
"She's just so thin..." he sighs, taking a sip from his can. We have progressed to beer, a natural succession.
"I know," I offer, "She is exquisite."
"No. Your work is exquisite. She is...so thin. It's awful."
"No, no, it's exquisite. She's almost asexual and that's so...sexy. She's a girl."
"Exactly. She's not a woman. She has no womanly stuff. I wouldn't want to fuck her."
All this objectification of my girlfriend is making me bitter. Hostility requires energy, however.
"I would. I did. I fucked her," I almost sing, "So so wonderful."
"The sex?"
"The sex. The association. We were virginal. We were thin..."
"But you are not as thin as she. You are normal, but she is just...awful-"
"I could have been. I could have been if I kept trying." I mumble, letting my head rest on his arm. He jostles it in an obtrusive manner.
"My ex-girlfriend was anorexic, you know." I meet his gaze.
"So was mine."
"It was the most difficult thing... But I couldn't leave her, I loved her."
This ex-girlfriend thing of his is getting so tiresome. Every moment with me seems to spark a memory of some awesome thing that she said, some perfect thing that she did. Oh, somebody shoot all the people in love, please.
Awake.
As the electric blue light of a late night monologue scratches my head into the reality of...? Yeah, okay. Whatever.
I wonder first why I am awake, laying here on my sofa, then why the Pointer Sisters are alive and still performing.
Sex, he suggests. I toss the idea around. The word rolls easily off the tongue. Sex. Yeah, okay. Whatever. Calm down, pal. No need to get all fired up.
My head hits the couch pillow and I am out like a proverbial light, wishing I was in my bed. Or, worst case scenario, in his.
Awake.
As the roughness of his tongue laps at my neck. No dear, not now. Go watch Letterman. Pleas and begs fall so heavily that I turn on my back and try to make my hairs stand on end. It tires me, so I take a nap.
Awake?
As I try to fend off his advances, everything is so fuzzy and heavy and I realize that I am weak from the wine...so weak that I can't really stop him, don't really care to, and it's all getting so, so dark and hot and Letterman is almost over and OW you're hurting me shit stop hurting me, please. I just want to sleep, but he won't let me so I just lay there and after a while he stops and I can get my precious sleep, now that the Twilight Zone is on. I missed Letterman. I cry myself to sleep with that realization.
Awake.
As the smell of bacon and eggs in my kitchen pull me off of the sofa. Dismal Sunday morning sunlight filters through the window. The T.V. is off and I thank God I don't have a hangover.
His unprotruding ass shimmies as he pours my coffee.
"Will that be all?" he asks efficiently, wiping his hands on my apron.
Do I love him? I dunno'. I must like him a helluva lot though, or else I wouldn't be standing here with him, thinking he's a pretty neat-o person.
And he can cook a mean omlette. Okay. I love him. Whatever.
