The Animators(82)

And our project, slowly but surely, is beginning to pick up. “See?” I tell her. “It’s good, being here. We could live here. We could live here, and it could be great.”

She shrugs, peering at the storyboard, glasses pushed up to rest on her head. “Maybe,” she says.

—

The heat wave stretches into the week after Thanksgiving. Teddy and I eat dinner at a Cuban restaurant downtown and walk along the edge of the Ohio River after, dark and rocky, skyscrapers looming behind us. We have been in Louisville for almost a month. Our studio will be vacant after Christmas. I’m trying not to think about whatever comes after this—after this walk, after this week.

“This is what makes me love Louisville,” he says. “This view. I don’t care that we’re looking out onto Indiana. I really don’t.”

He smiles at me but brings his eyebrows in, like he’s thinking. “What is it?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. Pulls me into his side. Then says, “We’re pretty happy here, right?”

“Right.”

We walk a little farther before he says, “I guess I want to know what you’re thinking.”

I feel my limbs loosen and glow. The warmth climbs right up through my jacket and into my face. “I’m thinking I’m done with New York,” I say.

“Okay.”

“I’m thinking I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of moving here.”

“That’s great.”

“Maybe we could find some new subletters for the spring. I mean, I’d have to talk to Mel about it. But.”

His face lights. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

—

“No,” Mel says. “What the fuck, dude. I mean, what. You wanna move down here forever?”

“Well, maybe,” I say. “What’s the problem? You love it down here.”

“Sure,” she says. “I’m into, like, the idea of an extended fellowship kind of thing. What we’re doing now, basically. But our whole fucking lives are up there, Sharon. You wanna dump that for some tail? Really?”

“Would you mind not referring to Teddy as tail? Thanks.”

“Sorry,” she says. “Just—can we talk about this later? I’ve got something to show you.”

She cracks open her MacBook. There’s a file titled, “Sharon’s Primal Scream.”

“Oh no,” I say.

“Oh yes,” she says. “Don’t decry it till you spy it, little lady.”

I roll my eyes.

“I just thought this might be a good jump-off point for some of what we’re thinking about doing. Like, think of this as you, right before the stroke. This would be that scene. Okay? Hold on.” She shuts off the lights. Hits play.

I hear the opening strains of “Yakety Sax” and groan.

It’s a montage: Sharon hits the ground running, grinning, Satan in her eyes. It pans out—I am chasing crowds of petrified men. There’s me catching one and hugging him while scrunching my face and making a dying whale sound. Me in lingerie perched in the lap of a sobbing Santa Claus. Me calling into a radio station, hearts in my eyes, requesting Bread’s “Make It with You” while a crying DJ stabs himself in the ear. Me springing from a dude’s closet dressed in his three-piece suit, at which point he starts to bawl. Me doing the nasty with a despondent hobo, who grabs a nearby bottle and starts cutting himself. Me catching a grizzly bear in an embrace and making him hork. All with maniacally happy saxophones tooting in the background. My vagina morphs, becomes a Venus flytrap, eats and spits and dons a tuxedo and croons into a little peen-shaped microphone.

Midway through, a soft, low-grade scream commences, growing louder and louder until it rises above the music, and there’s just me humping the air to shrieks, propelling myself with my cooch to meet the curve of the moon and, beyond that, one thousand humping stars, and I fly off into a neon night, a sweaty Lisa Frank stationery sheet of oblivion.

I make Mel play it over and over again. We laugh ourselves sick. It is the funniest shit I have seen in a long, long time. When Teddy arrives at six to pick me up, he has to tap the door twice to be heard.

I open up, giggling. “Hi.”

“Hey.” He ducks inside and kisses me, his cheeks cold, before looking up at the wall, where Mel’s pocket projector has blown up the short from the Mac. The shot is me, glaze-eyed, tonguing the wino while he cries, “NOOOOOOO.” “Oh, cool. Is this part of the project?”

Mel leans over and snaps the projector closed.

A weird silence settles over the room. Mel and Teddy stare at each other for a moment, small, partially open smiles on their faces, both politely waiting for the punch line—for Teddy to hear Mel say, Just joshin ya! and turn the projector back on, and Mel, for Teddy to realize she’s being serious, to lift hands, to proclaim, It’s cool, no problem.

I give Mel a look—you could have been more subtle—and tell Teddy, “It’s not done baking quite yet. But soon. Can we go get food? I’m starving.”

“Shoot,” he says, and frowns. He’s genuinely disappointed.

“Slow your roll, Pushy McGoo,” Mel says. “You heard the lady. This ain’t ready for screening.”

Teddy gives Mel a hard look. She jumps over the couch and comes to him, lower lip pushed out. “Aw, I’m sorry,” she says. “Bring it in, Theodore. Come on. Gimme some.” She grapples him in a bear hug, thumping his back. Teddy rolls his eyes but returns the hug. And when Mel whips a candy cane out of her back pocket and hangs it on his ear, he laughs.