The Animators(124)

This is the first real fight I’ve had with Danny. It turns my stomach inside out. Some of the worst vomiting since the stroke, so much so that Danny breaks his silent treatment to stick his head in and grudgingly ask if I’m all right.

I find him in our bedroom at midnight, hunched over his laptop. I sit behind him and rest my forehead into his back.

I say, “Okay. Ready?”

I tell him everything. I tell him about going to Florida to identify Kelly Kay’s body and I tell him about the fight Mel and I had in the Times Square subway station. I tell him about the stroke and the hospital and about Teddy and about my mom. I tell him about Mel and me and the cold, dirty, lonely year we put in on Irrefutable Love. I tell him that meeting him felt like waking up from a long, dark sleep. It’s the longest I can remember talking in months.

I show him the sketches Caroline Palik gave me. He pages through them slowly, nodding as if it confirms something for him.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. We’re lying on our bed, holding hands. It’s two in the morning now. We will turn off the lamp, I will climb on top of him. The sex is where we really forgive each other; the compromise that can only happen when he is inside me. “I’m not the greatest at talking about myself. Irony enough, considering what we made our stuff about.”

“I think you should do something with Mel’s project,” he says.

We both understand that I am not totally forgiven. But for now, I have been given concession.

—

I call Donnie. “There’s something I need to show you.”

She drives over from Manhattan with a warm, fragrant bag of chicken tikka masala and naan. She has business to discuss: Irrefutable Love has been excerpted in a documentary about fantasy and feminism, and permission is needed. Someone else wants to option it into an off-Broadway play. “A play? How in the fuck do they expect to do that?” I ask her.

“Never underestimate what people can do.” She looks around the apartment. “It looks great in here. Much better than the studio. No severed body parts. No smeared feces on the wall.”

“Okay, how crazy do people think I actually am? I should have gone on record for that goddamn book.”

“I’m kidding,” she says, pulling plates out of the cabinet and ripping the bag open with a gesture of finality—she’s as sick of talking about the book as I am.

After we eat, I show Donnie the sketches. She goes through them slowly, glasses perched on top of her head. “Yes,” she says. “These are Mel’s, for sure.”

“It was about me. You don’t find that a little weird?”

“Frankly? No. She adored you.” Donnie leans back, folding her arms across her chest. “Okay. So what’s next?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I feel weird even looking at these. I’m not sure how much my story this is. It feels…private, I guess.”

We look at each other. Our kitchen is clean, well lit. Danny’s cat clock hangs on the far wall, a smiling Felix staring glassily off into space.

“I guess the main thing,” I say, “is the fact that, when I look at these, I don’t really know what to do with them. I used to be able to look at our stuff and see four or five scenarios I would just sit with, you know? And a couple would usually stand out as best options. I’d try them out, work with the strongest choice. But I look at these and just flatline. Because they’re not mine.” I lean back, scrub my eyes with my hand. Say very quickly, “I look at these and all I can think is she kept these from me.”

Donnie gazes at me levelly. “Look at them long enough and you won’t think that anymore,” she says. “You can make this your project. You two had to have diverged at some point, right? You and Mel were not one person, Sharon. You were fifty percent of that partnership. Just think of this as another collaboration. You don’t have to be Mel’s conduit or anything. Pick it up from your end and do your work, as you always have.”

I pull the last of the Ketel One from the freezer and take a look around our kitchen, our apartment, a place I never would have thought to put myself a year ago. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”

Donnie pulls a couple of tumblers down for us, then leans against the counter, arms folded across her chest. “Would you be willing to try to work on this?”

“I guess I would be willing to try.”

“Fair enough.” She takes the vodka from me, pours a half inch into each glass. “Things we can think about. What you’re doing on your own will be a departure from the way you worked with Mel, so you might want to think about bringing in some help. Brecky, if she can? Or Ryan and Tatum?”

“Someone in that book said I would never draw again. Did you see that?”

Donnie rolls her eyes. “I did. I didn’t pay much attention to it. Of course you will draw again. Surrendering work period was never part of the plan.”

“I wasn’t aware that we had a plan.”

“Oh, there’s always been a plan. You’re not just going to make a full stop here.”

“I’ve never done anything on my own before,” I say.

“Sure you have.”

“Storyboards, maybe. My senior thesis. But that’s it, man. That’s the extent of my solo stuff.”