The Animators(21)

Glynnis turns. “Fenton. Why don’t you take a break? Have some coffee.”

“I’m fine,” he says. And I swear to God, he cuts his eyes at us, the spiteful princess at the eighth-grade cotillion. “I don’t need a break.”

“Maybe the ladies would like coffee?” She lifts her eyebrows at us. Wonders never cease: She hates Fenton, too. “Thank you, sir.” She shuts the door.

“That coffee’s gonna be thirty percent pee,” Mel says.

Glynnis laughs, offers her hand. I can already see it: She’s one of those people who robs the room of all its oxygen. I want her to teach me to do that. “Ladies. So good to have you here.” She turns to me. “I take it you are Ms. Kisses.”

“Yes.”

“I recognize you from your flashes in Nashville Combat.”

The best I can do is “Heh.”

She reaches out, takes Mel’s hand. “Mel Vaught, without a doubt. Your depiction of yourself is quite on the nose, I have to say.”

Mel slips her hands into her pockets, lets her hair go shaggy in her eyes. She’s playing bashful now. “All I gotta do’s draw a broom with a bunch of yellow hair on top. Not much to it.”

Glynnis laughs again. I start to lighten. This is actually going okay. “You know, the two of you are such a compelling couple, visually. Blond and brunette. Svelte and curvy. Contrast is the thing that draws the eye again and again. Though I suspect you already know that.” She removes the wrap from her shoulders and drapes it across her chair. It gives off fragrance: the woods, something sweet. The lines in her face, unseen when she’s on television—a talking head on VH1, those interminable book talks on C-SPAN—are visible. But other than that, she looks scarily like her public self. “At the risk of sounding frivolous, that you’re interesting to look at should help when you do Charlie Rose. They’ve booked you for Rose, right?”

Mel and I look at each other.

Glynnis covers her mouth with her hand. “Whoops. They haven’t yet. I play canasta with one of the producers. Try to act surprised, will you?”

Mel wiggles her eyebrows at me. Canasta.

Glynnis sits down across from us. “All right, ladies, here’s how this will go. I’ll give a sort of intro to you and to your work. We’ll concentrate on Nashville Combat, since it’s still in theaters. We’ll use the question roster sent to you last week. Try to keep it as natural and conversational as possible. I’ll try to posit the questions in such a way that they sound spontaneous. Okay? Let’s go.”

She slips on a pair of headphones. The sound guy appears in the adjoining room, waves at us, does a countdown with one hand: five, four, three, two, one.

A green light comes on.

“Welcome to Art Talk this Saturday, August first. It’s been an exhilarating summer in theaters, not least because of a plethora of small, intensely personal projects finding their way to the big screen in a movement reminiscent of the indie push of the early to mid-1990s. Once again, audiences are leaning toward the warmth of grassroots. The biggest buzz of the summer belongs to cartooning team Mel Vaught and Sharon Kisses, creators of what many are referring to as the little cartoon that could, Nashville Combat. Though by no means is this film little—it is, to quote Spin, ‘a spitting, twitching tour de force of epic freaking proportions,’ building buzz through an incredibly loyal, energized fan base. Combat is the story of Mel Vaught and her childhood with a negligent, drug-addicted mother in the Central Florida swamplands. It is smart, funny, visually arresting, and absolutely unflinching.”

I glance at Mel. She is sitting straight in her chair, adjusting her headphones. Her expression does not change when her mother is mentioned. I close my eyes and see Lisa Greaph, her long purple fingernails pulling open the drawer.

“Vaught and Kisses take as many pains to craft an honest story as they do building the stunning visuals that have taken the cartoon world by storm. And their fans have responded in kind. Witness the Reddit subthread devoted to renderings of Mom, the movie’s cranky, crank-smoking heroine, to which fans have posted their own versions in macaroni, coffee grounds, and most memorably, a painting composed of broad strokes of tinted K-Y jelly. Absolutely a testament to an audience eager for a movie like this, and for the partnership of Vaught and Kisses, a sign of breaking through to a greater audience. Ladies, welcome to the program.”

We splutter ourselves stupid while Glynnis beams at us with the assurance of someone who actually believes in what is happening. “Now, earlier this year, you were granted a prestigious Hollingsworth Grant, worth over a quarter of a million dollars. Congratulations. What’s next?”

She looks to me. My throat shrivels. I nod.

“She’s nodding, ladies and gentlemen,” Glynnis says.

I go, “Huh.”

Mel pokes me. “That means yes,” she says. “In the language of the lima beans.” Opens her hands, shakes her head: What are you doing?

Glynnis likes this. “I’m seeing some partnership going on right now. You two have worked together for over ten years, correct? Do you want to tell us how you collaborate?”

I scowl at Mel. Maybe I should just be honest and tell everyone that me cleaning up from the night before has become our truest form of collaboration. Me getting Mel out of bed. Holding her hair back while she pukes with the height and depth of a longshoreman. Keeping her from brawling with anyone before noon. Making sure she doesn’t fall out of a chair in front of an audience or drop equipment that cost me so much I’ll have to forfeit my firstborn should I actually meet a man who’s not chased off by my stink lines. And pretending she doesn’t reek of gin and the tang of last night’s waitress, lured into her hotel room with promises of Jell-O shots and Full House reruns.