[cont.]
She really was so lucky having Brendan. She didn’t even have to ask him: he just knew what she needed. A back rub last night helped reduce the pain along her spine and he really knew how to massage her shoulders. Bringing her breakfast in bed, waffles, her favorite food on the planet. She didn’t know what she would do without him. But then without him, she damned sure wouldn’t be having another baby.
This set of drawings was more angular than the last grouping. The babies’ elbows weren’t soft and rounded, more like sharp weapons, and the rows of little teeth were menacing, ravenous. It needed a slash of red. A good cadmium red, dark. The pencils, unfortunately, couldn’t get dark enough, regardless of how hard she pushed. Still, all three of them looked pretty powerful from across the studio. She reminded herself to stop complaining. Yes, she missed working in oils, the malleability of the material, being able to scrape and smudge and smear. Paper wasn’t as forgiving, although rubbing all the way through on some of them actually looked pretty cool. That’s right. Focus on the good things. She was protecting her baby and doing some dynamite work at the same time. Odessa was going to be pleased.
She was standing in front of the pieces in process, smudging a dark line that connected all three, smiling at the fact this was indeed exactly the right solution, when she noticed that her fingers were swollen. She held both hands up: all of her fingers were pudgy, like the fingers of infants. This is odd. This is really odd. Going over to the sink to wash her hands, she looked at her face in the small oval mirror tacked above the shelf. Her face was noticeably swollen too. Oh, shit. Maybe she should go lie down for a while. Her cell phone was in the kitchen recharging. She should call Brendan. This definitely wasn’t good. Not good at all. As she backed away from the sink, everything began to spin. Holding onto the wall, she inched her way toward a chair near the door and wobbled badly. In stepping back down, the hard soled clogs slid on a fallen pencil. She lost her balance and her grip and tumbled, head first, into the bronze horse holding the door open to let in the mild breeze.
Thirty Eight
Death changes everything, Alex mourned as he sipped his after-work martini in a noisy bar down the block from the store. Normally he didn’t splurge, preferring to shake it up for himself at home where he could use the perfect proportions of gin and dry vermouth and have five or six plump olives. He joked that he drank martinis because he liked what gin did to the olives. Drinking at home was easier on his budget, so tight since two of his handful of part time window designing gigs ended. To hell with the budget, he thought. To hell with worrying about taking the subway so late at night. He couldn’t face the long ride to Bushwick without a bit of lubricant. It wasn’t just the drink. Sid and Jake, his roommates, were on tour, and he couldn’t face being alone right now. He ordered a dirty martini and slowly sipped it, munching on free pretzels, while he watched the late night crowd, everyone talking loudly under the pulsing blue lights, making them all momentarily look like smurfs. The blue lights were why he came here as regularly as his budget allowed, bringing back those few good memories from childhood of watching the silly smurf cartoons with everyone in his family together laughing. When Lori had the twins, he sent them smurf pajamas and tiny smurf socks, his way of passing on good memories. She’d sent him a thank you note with tracings of the babies’ hands. The fingers were so small. Oh, Lori, dearest Lori. Oh, damn. He looked up from examining the pink plastic sword skewering the two olives in his glass to discover that the bartender had refilled his bowl of pretzels and was eying him with some interest. The bartender was handsome enough to be an actor working here until he got his break. Carpe diem, Alex told himself. Celebrate the now because you know the past will wallop you later. So he flirted right back, although not with his usual gusto and wit, and the bartender gave him the third drink free.
Halfway through that drink, the alcohol hit him and he knew he better go home. He winked at the bartender and blew a kiss as he walked pretty steadily to the door. What a way to end the long day. He had just finished adding scarves and these amazing bright orange turkey feathers to the manikins in the store window when he got the phone call from Brendan’s mom. Hondo, Tommy and now Lori. Everyone he loved now gone. When his family had completely rejected him, these friends had become his family. They celebrated his birthdays and his successes. Hell, they drove across country and brandished baseball bats to rescue him from the cult his mother had hired to kidnap him and “cure” him of his homosexuality. The remembrance of Lori with a baseball cap on backwards, chewing gum, and pounding the bat against the door frame as the guy guarding him literally peed in his pants. She was magnificent. And Tommy reciting Whitman at the top of his voice, scaring the bejesus out of everyone within hearing. And the mad ride in the truck across the fields as the queer cure guys chased them, and Hondo standing in the back throwing Golden Delicious apples at them with an accuracy Roger Clemens would appreciate. Now only he remained, only he remembered. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Well, without him, most of their moments were already lost since the three of them were stoned or drunk so consistently that he was generally the only one who remembered clearly to begin with. He was the perpetual designated driver. He liked that role, looking out for them. These three teased him, yet accepted him just as he was. He was the sane one, the dependable one, the one to provide good suggestions when a painting or a photo wasn’t quite right, the one with the unending supply of bandaids. Oh god, he missed them. Cooking in the kitchen while Lori massacred the vegetables and Tommy cleaned the dishes. Tommy whose idea of painting was to slap the stuff on canvas, whose studio looked like a dump site, whose jeans often fell apart without being washed once, this same Tommy thoroughly scrubbed and sterilized the dishes with boiling water, no doubt inspired by one of his mother’s many germ theories. The weird stews they came up with. Pumpkin seed, tofu and cauliflower. They all insisted that his addition of curry made it much better, and then they all spent the night trying to use the same bathroom. He thought about the way Hondo’s hair curled when it was damp and how Tommy could touch the tip of his nose with his tongue, Tommy’s baritone laugh and those persistent hiccups every time he drank anything carbonated, and how Lori would stare at art work and just light up with delight. A moon beam, Tommy called her. Sweet Lori, massaging his hands when he’d been at the keyboard too long. “Oh god, Lori,” he whispered to his martini glass. “Lovely Lori. How sad it all is. Poor sweet Tommy, you tried so hard to bedazzle her, and instead you bedazzled me.” But Alex would not cry in public, not even after three strong drinks. All of them dead. Everyone he loved kept dying. God was he cursed? Stop it. This was just self pity, he scolded himself. Snap out of it and get home.
