The Animators(107)

I wrench away from her and fling Mel into the air, not even aiming for water. Donnie wrestles the jar away from me. I bend over and I scream until I can’t hear myself anymore.

—

There’s a McDonald’s off the boardwalk. Donnie hustles me into the bathroom to change into the sweatpants and Columbia field hockey sweatshirt she produces from her trunk. I am coated in ash—my hairline, the inside of my bra, between my teeth. I open my mouth and fish a piece of enamel out of my cheek. One of her teeth, a chip of it. I dreamily put it in my pocket.

Donnie is drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. “When did you start smoking?” I ask her.

“I don’t smoke. You have ash right there.” She leans over, combs her fingers through my hair. Dust rains down. “Just shake. Don’t worry about the shirt. Shake like a dog. Come on.”

I lean over and wag my head from side to side. A group of construction workers stops to stare. Donnie smokes, stares back. They turn away.

When we return to Donnie’s, the jar holding approximately one quarter of Mel is slipped into my luggage, lid secured with packing tape. It stays in that suitcase for the next six months.

I go back to our studio.

—

After the memorial, there is more press. Limited engagements for Irrefutable Love turn into longer runs. Movie theaters we didn’t think would ever show the film do. The volume of articles and online chatter on it, and us, doubles, then triples.

I don’t have to worry about money anymore. I keep getting checks. Now I’m getting Mel’s share, too.

I dream hard, the first night back in the studio. We’re at the morgue in Florida, just me and Mel this time, walking that long hallway that goes on and on. Then I blink and we’re in the room of bodies, and we go to the drawer and Mel reaches over with long purple fingernails to tug it open. And instead of Kelly Kay being in the drawer, it is Mel. Live Mel looks at Dead Mel. And then Dead Mel comes to life.

Of course she does. Of course my subconscious is a big, crusty, low-budget horror movie, full of spooky shit lifted from all those grainy VHS dubs of Motel Hell and The Slumber Party Massacre rented from the rated-R section at Cornett’s Family Time Video. If I’d had my dream as an idea for a cartoon, Mel herself would have made that fart noise she liked to make with her mouth and say that it sounded like something John Carpenter queefed out on an off day. The dream is embarrassing, but unsettling. Because everyone knows that a zombie’s eyes are always empty. And Dead Mel’s eyes, when seeking me out, are full. Sometimes with pleading, sometimes with relief. Sometimes with blame.

I stop sleeping.

—

The Sharon Wall is still up. We never took it down; it was a sort of motivation for us, making Irrefutable Love, and Mel protested when I tried to remove the sketches after on the argument that they were creepy. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I like having a perpetual audience.” And she bent over and shook her fanny at the Sharons.

A couple of weeks after the memorial, I sit at the drafting table, just to see what happens. I fix coffee, crack open a fresh pad of sketch paper. And nothing. Nothing happens. I flatline. I keep looking at the Sharon Wall—all those versions of me, still watching. Appraising.

I grab a bedsheet from my room and tack it up, covering the sketches, feeling a hint of triumph. When I’m done, I give it the finger.

I try it again the next day, thinking I’m just out of practice. And the next. And the next. I try doing all the things young artists are instructed to do when they’re just starting out—carve out an hour a day in which to work, carry a notebook around to record ideas before they flit off into the ether. More nothing happens.

It’s what I’ve always feared.

For years, we had a wealth of ideas. We had too many ideas. The visions were endless. This new blocked feeling is awful, a whole-body constipation. Everything is made of rock and nothing moves. The problem of what to draw, how to draw it, why—none of these are questions I can answer without her. I hold up my hand, wiggle it in front of my face. She took it with her. She robbed me.

Our drafting tables are still in the studio’s center, back to back. I’ve been making a wide berth around Mel’s, afraid to touch it. She left it clean. Nothing except a couple of pencils rolling off its surface.

I keep looking at it. It seems darker, now, the top duller. Is that a film of dust over the surface?

I stand up, knocking my chair backward, and run to the bedroom, grab a quilt from my bed, run back in, and throw it over her drafting table, draping it completely from view. Then I take it and drag it to the far wall. It could be anything now. A drum kit. A rocking chair. Fuck all.

I sit back down and stare at the board. My heart starts to pound, faster and faster. My vision narrows to a slim, dark tunnel. The table and blank sheet blur, the fuzz fades to TV snow, flurrying and buzzing, becoming indistinct. Bells chime louder, louder. The steady hum of the emergency broadcast system. I cover my head with my hands.

I push my drafting table to the far wall, too. I let it pile up with bills, newspapers, not quite able to bring myself to cover it with a blanket.

When I can’t stand to be in the studio anymore, I rent an apartment in Park Slope on a quiet street with dogs and old people. I write the studio off as a workspace on that year’s tax returns, in spite of the fact that I have nothing to work on. Work is on hiatus. Indefinitely.