The Animators(90)

We stand there gazing at each other, our faces half in shadow in the January air, that heavy Southern wet that sinks the sinuses. Teddy is more right than he knows. I will push as far as I need to, to make this project get up and live. The damage was done the moment we watched the first scenes for ourselves. What’s been the source of my happiness here? Teddy? Or was it really, truly getting back to work, getting lost in the work again, its gorgeous forward momentum?

We’re finished. We both know it. We’re just dancing now.

“I’m leaving,” he says. He strides onto the porch, yanks open the door. “Car’s leaving right now unless you want to walk,” he calls inside, then jumps down off the porch and moves away.

Mel sticks her head out the door. “Teddy. Come on.”

“Fuck you, Mel.”

She looks at me. “Well. Fuck me, then.”





A LITTLE STRANGE


One week later, we close up the carriage house and leave Louisville.

“We could rent a house in Faulkner,” I say as we drive east on I-64. “We could do it cheap. Like three hundred bucks a month.”

“Huh.” Mel’s drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, reading signs to gas stations aloud: Love’s, Fast Track Waddy Peytona, Shell. “Do you really want to do that, though? I mean, we’re more or less done down here. Those guys moved out on the fifteenth. The studio’s empty. We could get more subletters, I guess, but it doesn’t make much sense now. Do you not want to go back to New York?”

I can’t go back. I can’t do New York like I am, wounded, still limping. I can’t do the dodging and weaving, the constant intimidation. I can’t do the specific kind of loneliness that comes with being there. I think about the crowds of people pushing at each other as they climb from a busy subway station, all blank faces and swinging hands. My stomach burns.

“Not really,” I tell her. “I mean, what am I going to do up there?”

“What do you mean, what are you going to do? Work. Go back to your life. Faulkner’s a pipe dream. You would go crazy there.”

“Maybe not. Peace and quiet. Cheap rent.”

“All our real equipment’s back in New York. We made do here, but the stuff we’re going to need for the brunt of the work is up there.”

I lean my head against the window. “I just can’t do it anymore,” I tell her. “It’s expensive, it’s cold as fuck, and I can’t make anything decent up there. It seems like everyone around me is making amazing shit and I’m just treading water. I know that’s not really the way it is. But still.”

“Dude, everyone’s a little marketer up there. Don’t let it get to you.”

“It still feels awful. I just keep imagining a roomful of Brecky Tollivers who keep telling me where they did their undergrad and won’t stop tweeting to take a piss. I’m goddamned tired of feeling on the outside of everything.” I’m just complaining now. But Mel keeps nodding.

“Teddy hates me.” I look to her. “Right? Hates me.”

She hesitates. It was Ryan and Tatum who fetched my belongings from Teddy’s apartment. I could hear Mel outside on her cell talking to them as we packed up to leave. There were lots of shut up dudes and right right rights. Mel nodding with her bleakest shit happens face. Apparently they didn’t know the boy in the clips was modeled on Teddy—had no idea, in fact, what had sparked our argument, until Teddy told them.

“He won’t hate you forever,” she says finally.

We pass Frankfort. Mel lights a smoke and flips the bird at a sign for Kentucky Republican headquarters. “You know what I would have done? Tell him right after he shoots his load. All those sleep endorphins swimming through his system. He would have been cool with anything then.” She glances at me. “Joke, Kisses.”

“It’s my fault. My mess,” I say. “The blame’s on me.”

“You were not making this to hurt him or anyone else. I’m sure he knows that, deep down. It’s just.” She shrugs. “His dad’s a sore spot with him, you know? He struggles with it. You can tell. He saw all that stuff play out on a screen and freaked. He’s not used to this kind of thing.”

“Who is used to this kind of thing?”

She shrugs. “Artists and sociopaths? I dunno.” She packs a smoke thoughtfully on the steering wheel. “Maybe I’m a little surprised that you never brought it up, but that’s irrelevant. You weren’t obligated to discuss this with him in the first place. We sought him out to see where and who he was now. That’s all. I’m sorry if he feels offended. I hope he finds closure. And I wish him the best.”

And that’s that. She looks at me.

“I messed up, Mel. This is not something to feel good about.”

“You did not. Think about whatever let you walk away. You didn’t compromise with him. You are committed. Look.” She pushes her finger down on the center console to punctuate. “When you take the things that happen to you, the things that make you who you are, and you use them, you own them. Things aren’t just happening to you anymore. Make this thing because you are compelled to, and because it’s yours. And do it whether or not it suits Teddy ‘Fuck you Mel’ Caudill or anyone else.”