Aftermath of Dreaming(34)
As I turn toward the next painting, Michael emerges through the crowd carrying a small plate brimming with food. “If these paintings were a voice,” he whispers in my ear, “I’d call it monotone.”
“Michael.”
He kisses my neck and ear as I explain about Steve’s wife.
“That’s horrible,” he says, holding the plate out to me. “Here, I grabbed the last shrimp for you.”
As Michael puts it in my mouth, Steve suddenly appears, so I quickly finish chewing as we hug, then introduce Michael to him.
“Great stuff,” Michael says, transferring the plate to me, so he can shake Steve’s hand.
“Oh, thanks.” Steve always appears vaguely surprised when complimented about his work, as if it were a particularly handsome dog that just happened to be following him. “I’m really trying to explore the nature of monotone in my work.”
Michael looks momentarily nervous—did Steve overhear his remark?—then slightly abashed that his critique was so dead-on. I look around at the paintings and notice for the first time how acutely alone each one looks despite sharing space on the walls, then a woman steps in front of me, blocking further inspection.
“You,” she says to Michael, planted before him like she is more art to view. “Are revolutionizing the FM experience.”
“Thank you, I’m—”
“I know who you are. I saw the article in the LA Times.”
I am surprised that Michael’s fame has extended past the airwaves into the visual realm. I have always considered him famous, but in a concealed sort of way, a secret celebrity for the people at his station and the radioheads who were in on it, too. But here this woman is, great looking in a Kundalini-cum-collagen kind of way, gushing all over him like some love-crazy teenage fan.
“Since you took over,” she continues. “The difference—you can’t even measure it.”
Steve smiles a goodbye at me as someone pulls him away. I wish they had pulled fan-woman away instead.
“That station is your voice, just lots of different conversations you’re having all throughout the day, and let me tell you—”
“Wow,” Michael says, his eyes enrapt on hers. “That’s really wild you say that because that’s exactly how I think of it.”
She puts one hand on his arm, the other on her left breast. “You are reaching me on a very deep level.”
Even through the silicone? I think.
“That’s just great. I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” Michael slips an arm around me, as he holds his other hand out to her.
The only thing preventing me from falling off my couch is Michael’s arm encircling my waist. My head is turned at an odd angle, forcing me to look uncomfortably down to see his head resting on my chest. He appears to be asleep. At least it sounds that way. One minute, his personal noises were connected to ecstasy; the next, exhaustion, with no transition in between.
It started at my front door when he brought me home from the art gallery, as my key was finding the lock. Michael pressed against me from behind, making my legs weak, then the door opened and our clothes flew off, as if it were an indignity for them to be on, and my mouth found him, and the familiar and the now and the memories of all-other-times as he made me come again and again before he did as well, pulling us down into that lovely afterward drowsy spell.
Michael stretches awake on top of me, causing me to slip toward the floor, but he catches me in time. “God, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
I reach out for the soft woven tapestry I keep draped on the couch and wrap it over us as I nestle against him. My parents got the tapestry in Paris on their honeymoon, its deep blues and sad yellows a prophecy of their marriage to come.
“That’s downright scary,” Michael says.
For a moment, I think he has somehow heard my thought, then I realize he is staring at my sister’s wedding veil, which is perched on a tall iron dressmaker’s stand in front of the large living room windows. The outside light is filling in the netting’s empty spaces with a soft, pearly glow, making it look like a bodyless bride ready to proceed through the semidark.
“Yeah, I guess it is. Actually, it reminds me of a dream I had when I was really little, like in second grade.” I turn to face him, wanting to gauge the interest level in his eyes before I continue, but he is just watching, waiting for me to begin. “I was in my house, in the dream, though it didn’t look like the one I grew up in, and it was filled with tombstones, but wonderfully ornate ones like the mausoleums in New Orleans.”
“Easy Rider.”
“Exactly. And it wasn’t sad or scary, just beautiful and homier because all my ancestors were there. Suzanne was standing next to me when suddenly this angel gravestone—the most beautiful one, very Gothic, one hand carrying a torch, long hair streaming back—came flying through the house—well, rolling, really, she was on wheels—and the house was a shotgun design, so all the doorways lined up in a row, and she tore straight through with sirens whirring and bells clanging. I looked at Suzanne as if to say, ‘What’s the deal with her?’ and Suzanne very matter-of-factly said, ‘She thinks she’s a fire engine,’ as if that explained everything, and in the dream, it did, like we weren’t supposed to ruin her fantasy.”