Aftermath of Dreaming(55)
“My fault,” a man said, as a cocktail napkin–filled hand started dabbing at and rubbing my chest. I wondered if it was the drag queen who had spoken, all decked out in grand femme style, but stuck with a deep voice.
“That’s okay. I’m fine, really, thanks,” I said, trying to end this invasive and ineffective toweling off, but it wouldn’t stop, and the hands continued roaming all over my breasts, more touching them than doing any drying. Finally, I couldn’t take the pawing anymore. “Please, stop,” I said, but the “please” wasn’t heard. My head was down when I said it, watching strange male hands have more interaction with my breasts than anyone had had since Andrew, which made me wish it was him, made me miss him, then my head had moved up for the word “stop,” but no one had heard the word “please,” so it came out a sharp command.
People all around suddenly hushed and stared. The man froze, leaving his hands on my breasts, as his eyes flashed first with puerile, anxious shame, then adult, vindictive rage.
“I was trying to help.” His hands flew off me, the reverse of a slap, but having the same effect. The spectator circle had widened, more were tuned in. “You are a mess,” he declared in a voice that carried well. Then people parted for him to walk away, leaving me standing in an ever-widening silent glare.
I spent the rest of the opening and that entire sleepless night regretting that I hadn’t seen his face before I spoke, the face of a man I had met weeks before at Tory’s dinner. He was an extremely influential art critic who was known for holding huge grudges and exacting revenge in his reviews, which were very well read.
His pen was mightier than a Glock, and the worst part was that I agreed with part of his review—the sculptures had looked displaced. God, what a depressing word. As if in their transfer to New York, their lease for one homeland was lost, while another never came through. Part of me wanted to call him up and tell him it was Tory’s idea for them to be placed way up high on stands, but I knew I couldn’t. I wondered if she would ever admit that she had messed up, but probably not.
The first cigarette I smoked gave me a head rush, or it might have been the strong coffee I had with it. I had walked to the Hungarian pastry shop in my neighborhood after reading the suicide-inducing review, not wanting to be alone in the apartment with it. A Columbia student engrossed in books was sitting near me, serenely smoking his cigarettes. The third time he lit up, he turned and silently offered me the pack, as if knowing my craving before it reached me. The cigarette occupied my body; the rush occupied my mind. On the way home, I stopped at a bodega, bought a lighter and two packs of Marlboros, and threw the newspaper with the review into a trash can that was brimming with empty bottles of beer. I prayed that with Andrew being halfway around the world, he somehow wouldn’t find out about the review. But I knew he probably would.
Peg called the day after the review came out to say that Tory was heading to London and would talk to me in January. There was something to look forward to. If she was going to drop me, why not do it now? Part of me wished I could talk to Andrew to make me feel better about this, and another part hoped that he’d never find out and that the whole experience would disappear.
I stayed in Manhattan for the holidays, not wanting to be in my mother’s house under the attic where my sculptures had been before their New York ravaging. And Suzanne as usual was staying in L.A. with her new boyfriend, so it would have been just the two of us, which sounded beyond dreariness. Working and running and smoking tons with holiday parties thrown in were all semiuseful in keeping me occupied, but mostly, I worried about what Tory would say when she returned and what Andrew’s reaction was going to be when he found out about the opening. A big f*cking art star I definitely had not become. I had a feeling that thanks to all the people working for him, he easily kept up with anything and everything that he spent energy on. And recommending me personally to Tory qualified as that.
Oh, God, I just wanted to go back in time and redo that opening. Redo that hour, that minute, that one little twist that screwed everything up, but as much as I prayed, time persisted in its forward path, carrying me with it in a dreadful agonizing march of days.
The bronchitis hit right after New Year’s and put an end to all of my activities, except worrying. I wished it were the other way around, that the part of my brain that worried had the exhausting illness and was too tired to raise more concerns while the rest of me could go along merrily. Not that I knew it was bronchitis. I missed day after day after day of work, took aspirin to no avail, and wondered what never-ending nightmare of a flu I had gotten.
By the two-and-a-half-week mark, I figured I might have consumption. Suzanne had gone through a brief teenage period of wanting to die from that, so we had looked it up. And I was practically living in a slum—hadn’t an epidemic started in apartment buildings like this in the early 1900s? Maybe I’d get sent to a sanitarium where I could quietly cough away my life. That’d be an escape from blowing my big opening. For a few delirium-filled afternoons, that sounded like the best idea I’d had in years. Carrie was still in Mississippi on extended holiday and Ruth was performing on a Caribbean cruise, her room rented out to a tall Danish woman who grimly set out each morning on open chorus calls. When I was able to, I worried how I’d make next month’s rent, not to mention all the bills lying unpaid.