Aftermath of Dreaming(33)

Yeah, then why didn’t I tell my best friend? Well, I still can tomorrow when we have breakfast again. Just say very casually, “Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that I saw Andrew the other night. Not ‘saw’ euphemistically, but ‘saw’ literally across a crowded theater with tons of people all around, including his wife, so it was more like being stranded on a desert isle and watching a glittering cruise ship go by than having any real contact, though it did feel like real contact for me, and for him, too, I believe.”

Okay, that’s exactly why I can’t mention it casually to Reggie. Because it doesn’t feel casual to me, and the words that would betray my true feelings about Andrew would come streaming out of my mouth as if my heart had found an outlet for them since Andrew’s not around to get them, so telling Reggie would give them someplace to land, even though Reggie doesn’t want them and would ban them from coming in, like they were boat people, uninvited and made to turn back around.

So I was right to not tell Reggie. Except that now, for the first time, a page in the journal of our friendship is blank.



The art opening where Michael and I are on our first postbrunch date is a vision of rousing yet mellowed expression: subdued black-hued paintings explode on the walls; subdued black-clad people throng the rooms. Through the mass of bodies, I catch glimpses of Michael at a table loading up a plate with food. His jeans and simple white T-shirt stand out in the crowd like a flare further highlighting his exquisite looks. I want to walk over and wrap myself all around him, but someone brushes past me, snapping my attention back to the paintings.

The artist is my friend Steve, with whom I used to go to En Chuan’s meditation sessions. Steve is an old-moneyed WASP from back East whose personal style is mixing Zen with Ralph Lauren, making each the better for it aesthetically. His paintings emit a somber, elegant silence into the art opening revelers’ din. Each one is surrounded by quiet admirers, gradually ebbing into the art crowd’s hysteria in the middle of the rooms. The effect is like a wedding with beautiful caskets on view.

Steve’s wife died from ovarian cancer seven years ago, and this is his first show since then. I went to his studio a few weeks ago to see the paintings before the opening. He made green tea on the Bunsen burner he keeps there and served biscotti, and we sat in the loft’s large silence with his paintings all around. We talked and didn’t speak and spoke and quietly watched the sunlight shift and wash across the large canvases of deep gray and black and dark blue as well as a few that had words painted on them, too. Tonight, when Michael and I walked into the loud and crowded gallery, I was glad that I had first seen the work in the sanctuary of Steve’s studio.

Which actually is where Steve and I originally met. About four years ago, a gallery owner suggested that I check out the Santa Fe Art Colony, a group of old warehouses converted into artists’ lofts on the edge of downtown, to find a work space to share. Sure enough, on a large message board in the courtyard of the colony were ads for lofts that people were looking to share. The handwriting on one of them caught my eye—it was one step short of calligraphy, but not fussy, just beautifully expressed. I figured if the loft looked the way the person wrote, it’d be a great place to work. I immediately called the number from my cell phone and Steve answered right off, then gave me directions to find his loft.

Two minutes later, he opened the door and welcomed me in. He was wearing jeans and a worn Brooks Brothers shirt, and the smoke from his cigarette curled up from his mouth toward his hair as if it were painting the few gray strands in the black there. He was the most relaxed person I had ever seen. I had a palpable feeling, while talking to him about rent and square feet, that just being around his energy would improve my work.

I don’t know if it did, but the arrangement we had was great for a bunch of years. I had a nice sunny section where I pounded and soldered and fused my sculptures while he worked at the other end filling his canvases. We’d meet in the middle to share the lunches we had brought, items that always complemented each other although unplanned, and he’d smoke cigarettes afterward and we’d talk about music and art. It was how I always imagined it would have been if I had ever been allowed inside my father’s work shed with him while he was working, and got to see that side of him close up. The same quiet, creative energy. Nothing mattered except the piece at hand. Then last year when I dropped art completely for making jewelry, I stopped renting his loft.

Not that I don’t think the jewelry I make is art; I do. Sort of. But I’d never call it that because it would sound pretentious, frankly. A pin or a pair of earrings that someone puts on is just less precious than a work so uniquely produced it must hang untouched on a wall. The jewelry I create is definitely not for a museum or a gallery. Though I still sketch—I’m unable not to. But I have no interest in showing them to anyone. Except maybe Andrew. And wish I didn’t.

Michael is still across the room, but now he’s talking to someone—I can’t see whom. I try to get a better view through the crowd, but people are crushingly close. I nudge past a woman next to me and catch a glimpse of a broad back and shoulders in front of Michael. Okay, he’s talking to a man. I think. Or a drag queen who left her dress at home.

I seize a bit of unoccupied space in front of my favorite painting. It’s a huge canvas, sprawling and almost barren, painted a deep shiny black with the word “epithalamium” in the darkest of grays written sideways, but straight up and off center to the right. When I first saw it at Steve’s studio, he told me that the word means a song or a poem to celebrate a marriage and is from the Greek root “thalamos” for bridal chamber. Maybe I should buy it for Matt and Suzanne’s wedding gift. No, I don’t think she’d get it. She likes Impressionists, as I do, but sometimes I tire of paintings that conjure up a story of when and where and who. Though looking at a word referencing marriage is not evoking joy in me.