Emergency Contact(71)

Then Bastian got serious for a second. “I hate Richard Prince though,” he said. “He’s a thief. And Jeff Koons is washed.”

“Do you learn about this at school?” Sam asked.

“Nah,” said Bastian. “Instagram.”

Art was something Sam wished he knew more about. He felt too self-conscious to visit museums on his own and didn’t know anyone who would want to go with him.

Sam walked backward into the middle of the room so he could capture as much of Bastian’s paintings in the frame. This moment felt important. A story he’d be telling someone someday in the future when Bastian was known by everyone and no longer remembered him.

They walked outside and split a smoke.

Sam shot Bastian picking a fleck of tobacco off his tongue.

“What makes you think you of all people get to be an artist?” Sam asked, focusing in on Bastian’s face.

Bastian exhaled a perfect circle of smoke. The kid was so famous already it was ridiculous.

He tilted his head.

“What kind of question is that? It’s fucking art, man,” he said, scowling. “You don’t choose it. It chooses you. If you waste that chance, your talent dies. That’s when you start dying along with it.”

? ? ?

“So he lets you hang out here?” Sam brought Bastian to House, where he promptly made himself very much at home. He was sprawled out on a sofa, with his feet up on the coffee table. “You bring girls back here and party with them and shit?”

“Nah.” Sam kicked Bastian’s filthy sneakers off the table. “I work here, man. You don’t shit where you eat.”

Bastian surveyed the premises. Sam had promised to make Bastian pancakes since that’s what the movie’s “talent” wanted.

“But you have keys so you can be here whenever you want?”

Sam nodded.

“It’s cool that your boss trusts you.” Bastian nodded toward the fireplace. “That thing work?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We crank it up around the holidays. It gets pretty toasty.”

Bastian walked over to inspect it. “Yo, that’s cool,” he said, peering into the flue. “You could make s’mores and shit.”

For his big talk about girls and his budding career as the next Basquiat, Bastian was unmistakably still a kid.

Sam pulled out a folder and handed it to him. “I need your mom to sign this,” he said.

Bastian stared at it. “Yeah, whatever it is, she’s not going to do it.”

“It’s not anything crazy,” he said. “It’s a release ’cause you’re a minor.”

Bastian took it and put it down on the coffee table.

“Luz doesn’t sign stuff,” Bastian said again. “She’s an illegal. I mean, a DREAMer or whatever.”

“But she runs the juice stand,” Sam said.

He knew about undocumented workers, only he never pictured Luz, someone who was the mommest-seeming mom ever, being one. “And her English . . .”

Bastian rolled his eyes. “She’s been here for over twenty years, dumbass,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone. It’s effed up, and every day she’s mad paranoid that someone’s going to ask for her papers.”

To Sam it sounded like Germany in World War II.

“That’s insane,” Sam said. Still, he’d heard the news reports on ICE raids all over Texas but had never properly paid attention. He hadn’t had to.

“Can’t she apply for a green card since she’s been here so long and you were born here?” Sam asked.

Bastian shook his head.

“Nah, she might as well try winning the lottery,” he said. “And with everything that’s going on, if she gets busted now and deported, then what happens to me?”

With the pity parties Sam threw himself on a weekly basis and the panic attack he had about being “almost” homeless and “almost” a dad, there was a woman and countless others like her with real problems.

“Can’t you fake it?” Bastian asked. “Shit, I’ll sign it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam said. “It’s not that deep.”

? ? ?

Sam had been on hold for thirty-six minutes when he realized it was that deep. Alamo Community College’s film department was lax about everything except their beloved red tape.

“The releases for your subjects and the rights for your work need to accompany the submission. The department automatically enrolls you into a series of fellowships and festivals, along with . . .”

The lady on the phone kept talking about the department as if it were some ancient secret society with fanatical rules.

“So, let me get this straight, Lydia,” he said. “Lydia, that’s your name, right?”

“Yes,” said Lydia. “That’s right.”

“So simply by turning in my project to get a grade I’m automatically enrolled in this other stuff?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean the rights for my work?”

“This is what I’m trying to tell you,” said Lydia slowly. “You grant ACC and its affiliates the copyright in the work, and the department is granted the exclusive worldwide right in perpetuity to view, perform, display, distribute, stream, transmit, make available for download, rent, disseminate, issue or communicate copies to the public, telecast by air, cable, or otherwise import, adapt, enhance, show, translate, compile or otherwise use in any media and to adapt as a musical or a stage show.”