The Museum of Modern Love(50)

Healayas cut bread. Then she took a container of soup from the refrigerator and put it in a blender. ‘Sorry about the noise,’ she said, and he braced as she turned the machine on.

She poured the bright red soup into two dark bowls and tossed small cubes of cucumber and red peppers on top.

‘It’s really good to see you, Arky,’ she said, sliding one bowl towards him. ‘It’s been much too long.’

From Healayas’s speakers came the music he had brought with him. The simple piano, the counterpoint of viola, the introduction of oboes, the answering cellos. A mellow trumpet rising up out of the strings and soaring over treetops.

‘It’s definitely water and forest,’ she said.

‘Oh good,’ Levin said.

‘So, I’m thinking that now it just needs . . . hmmm . . . love?’ Levin sighed. He looked up at the large print on the wall. It was a photograph of Healayas singing. Her hair was loose and she was in a silver singlet, her skin ebony. She looked magnificent as she leaned towards the microphone with her eyes closed.

‘It’s there. It just needs unearthing,’ she said.

Levin sipped the coffee she had made. Turkish, sweet and grainy.

They worked into the night. He on her upright piano, and Healayas feeling her way with the lyrics he had penned. She had an organic, impulsive response to music. She had made him feel at times, over the years they had played together, that classical training had ruined him. When she sang she gave him goose bumps. She had a sound in her voice that sometimes moved him to tears.

After midnight the thunderstorm broke, hammering on the roof too loud for them to continue.

‘I’ll call you a cab. Or you’re welcome to stay. I can make up the sofa bed. We can go out for breakfast?’

He had no idea how he would sleep with her in close proximity. He was unanchored. He wanted desperately to ask her just to hold him, to take him to bed and hold him. But he couldn’t ask such a thing.

‘It’s okay. I’ll walk over and get a cab on Eighth,’ he said.

Was she in a relationship? He never liked to ask. She had sometimes introduced him to men at gigs, but no one had been constant since Tom.

‘So I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon and we’ll put the vocals down?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Okay. See you then.’

‘You know, I’ve never seen it, your new apartment.’

‘I haven’t had anyone over.’

When she kissed him goodnight, she said, ‘You know, Arky, Lydia loves you very much.’

‘Does she?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Have you talked to anyone? I can recommend someone good.’

‘A lawyer?’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘A therapist.’

‘I’m fine. Really. I hate it, but it’s fine.’

‘No one is okay through something like this. It eats away at everything. You’re in pain.’

‘Really, if it’s what Lydia wants . . . you know Lydia. She doesn’t change her mind.’

‘We wouldn’t know if she did,’ said Healayas.

‘Oh, God,’ said Levin. He wished this whole topic had not come up.

‘She loves you. I think maybe she wanted to see who you could be . . . who you both could be . . .’

‘So, like a test? Or an experiment?’

‘No. No. Not like that.’

‘I want to see her,’ he said.

Healayas nodded. ‘There’s a tiny chance, I know it’s remote, but still, that she could come out of this, enough to talk, enough to listen to music together . . .’

‘You mean she’d come home?’

Healayas shrugged. ‘Here, a little poem: Even after all this time, the sun never says, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole world. You never know what love can create, Arky.’

She hugged him intensely at the door then let him go. ‘See you tomorrow. Here—the umbrella!’

The cab sped downtown past melting lights and through new puddles, the traffic hissing and muted beyond and, inside the cab, the windscreen wipers clicked like a metronome in the storm and the rain fell down. Amen.





UPSTAIRS ON THE SIXTH FLOOR, parked at the entrance to the retrospective, was an old van. It was empty inside. Alice liked the idea of living in a van, being on the road with a band or a boyfriend or both. Marina Abramovi? had been a kind of rock chick in those days, she thought. Going from gig to gig, performing across Europe.

Above was a huge black-and-white picture of Abramovi?. Screams and moans could be heard coming from inside the exhibition. A warning advised that the show may be disturbing for some.

Two women stood nearby looking at the sign and one was saying, ‘I tell him to wash his face five times, to clean his teeth five times, to get dressed, and still it isn’t done.’

They nodded together and moved forward. Another couple passed by. The man was saying, ‘Well, I question what these kind of people are doing in art. The business types wanting to make money. That’s a whole other art,’ and they both laughed.

‘Oh, well, here goes,’ Alice said to her father.

Levin smiled and together they moved into the crowded room. Large screens were showing videos of Abramovi?. The first had her vigorously brushing her hair. She was saying, ‘Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful’ as she dragged the brush savagely through her long, dark hair. Alice agreed with the sentiment, but was it okay for a beautiful woman to be saying it?