We Are Water. Wally Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ my last show? That my pieces are political. Howls of protest against the misuse of power. Something like that …

      Coffee. I need coffee. Maybe a couple of cups of caffeine will motivate me to get to the studio today. I’m not sure why I’ve been avoiding going there, or why I lied to Viveca and said I was going. Is it wedding nerves? Has my creativity begun to abandon me? I take the beans out of the freezer (fair-trade, Guatemalan, thirteen dollars a pound at Zabar’s). Grind them, hit the “brew” button. Everything’s high end here. This new coffeemaker Viveca had sent over from Saks brews espresso and cappuccino, froths up milk for latté. I should check the manual; for all I know, it’ll dust the furniture and wipe your rear end for you as well. When it arrived, I saw the price on the receipt: seven hundred dollars. Jesus! The last I checked, you could get a Mr. Coffee on sale for $19.99 … Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m avoiding the studio because my life’s become too goddamned comfortable.

      To stop thinking, I put on the TV, the morning news, and there’s Diane Sawyer, looking as pretty as ever. She must be in her sixties by now. Has she had work done? Have her lips always been that full, or have they been plumped with collagen? These are New York questions. Before I moved to Manhattan, I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass one way or another. Well, she’s probably got her burdens, too. Ratings wars, celebrity stalkers. Being that famous must be so strange … Last week, when I recognized Diane’s husband buying toothpaste at that Duane Reed, I couldn’t remember any of the movies he’s directed, but what I did recall was that his family had had to escape from the Nazis when he was a little boy, and that some childhood illness had left him without body hair. Passing him in the aisle, I glanced over to see if he had eyebrows, but when he caught me looking, I had to turn away. It’s not that I’m a celebrity. Far from it, thank god. But I’m known in the art world now to some extent—here in Manhattan at least. How would I like it if some collector knew more about my shitty childhood than they did about my work?

      One time on this morning show—Valentine’s Day, I think it was—Diane said that when her husband travels and she misses him, she sometimes wraps herself in one of his shirts and his scent comforts her … The Graduate: wasn’t that one of his films? “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” The evening Viveca came into my room, sat down next to me on the bed, and touched her impeccably manicured fingernails to my lips, kissed them, I remember feeling as confused as Dustin Hoffman was in that scene. But when we made love that night and she brought me to that long, unhurried orgasm, it reduced me to happy tears. It had been so long, and I was so grateful for the release, that I could barely catch my breath. But Viveca isn’t predatory the way Mrs. Robinson was. And our relationship is about much more than good sex. She loves me, and I love her. Trust her. I’ve missed her so much since she’s been away. Miss her the way I missed Orion when he was down there tending to his mother. The way I missed my own mother after those floodwaters carried her away. Missed my father those nights when I’d wait for him to come home from the bars. Is that what love is all about? Needing them to come back to you when they’re away? To come home and keep you safe? …

      There’s the doorbell. I call down the hall to Minnie. “I’ll get it!”

      It’s Hector. “Package for Ms. Christophoulos-Shabbas,” he says, handing it to me. When I tell him he didn’t have to come up, that he could have given it to me when he saw me in the lobby, he shakes his head. Reminds me that Viveca’s instructions are to bring deliveries right up to the apartment.

      “Oh, okay,” I say. “Hold on a sec.” I go get my wallet. There are a few singles in there, a five, a twenty. Five seems too little and twenty seems too much, but I give him the larger bill anyway. He glances quickly at it before putting it in his pocket. “Thank you,” he says.

      The package is from Neiman Marcus, and I know what’s in it: that expensive perfume Viveca wears: Clive Christian Floral Oriental. Yesterday when we talked, she wanted to know if it had arrived yet. When I said it hadn’t, she asked if I’d track the shipment on the computer. Can’t blame her for that, I guess. After I found out it was en route, I went on the Neiman Marcus Web site to see what that perfume costs. I wish I hadn’t. Twelve hundred dollars an ounce: that’s just plain ridiculous … But why shouldn’t she buy these luxury items if she wants them? She works hard, she’s inherited money from both her father and her late husband, she’s generous with the charities she supports—even sits on the boards of a couple of them: Literacy Partners, God’s Love We Deliver. I should stop being so goddamned judgmental. Stop feeling guilty that I love the smell of that perfume on her, the taste of the coffee that our Esclusivo Magnifica makes. I guess I’m suffering from … what would you call it? Lifestyle guilt? I should ask Orion to look it up in that book he was always consulting—the DSM whatever it was. Maybe I’ve got some fashionable rich lady’s neurosis.

      Independent of Viveca, I’m financially comfortable now—more than comfortable, actually, because of what collectors pay for my work. Well, independent of Viveca and independent because of her, too. My art is sold exclusively at her gallery, and I’m the featured artist on viveca.com. But I remember what it’s like to live a nickel-and-dime life. To count on waitressing tips—a couple of pounds of change per shift, plus dollar bills and the occasional five or ten. I doubt Hector would be putting on that gray doorman’s uniform and standing in the lobby every Saturday and Sunday if he didn’t need the extra income. Still, he’s always so good-natured. Hector may be the most noncynical New Yorker I’ve met in the four years I’ve lived here … Unless it’s an act. Maybe that big, warm smile of his hides his resentment. “The service people aren’t your friends,” Viveca warned me once, shortly after I moved in here. “Nor do they want to be. Be respectful of that.”

      One time? This was shortly after I began staying at Viveca’s but before we started sleeping together. A customer at viveca c—an investment banker—had just bought one of my pieces for thirty thousand dollars, and I was feeling so flush and free that I opened a window and tossed out a hundred-dollar bill. I watched it flutter end over end toward the street below, then looked away before it landed. I didn’t want to see anyone scrambling after it, or worse, two people fighting over it. I just wanted to imagine someone with a hard life happening by and getting a nice surprise. Picking it up and being on their way, a little less burdened because of that unexpected hundred-dollar bill.

      I sit down at the table, unpeel a banana, and eat it while I work on the Sudoku puzzle I ripped out of yesterday’s paper. The Esclusivo Magnifica plays its little snatch of classical music, signaling that the coffee’s ready. I get up, grab a mug, pour, sip. Back in Connecticut, when Orion and I were first married, I’d reuse tea bags to economize. At the grocery store, I would buy whatever coffee was on sale that week: the store brand or Yuban or Chock full o’Nuts. Chock full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee. Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy. Ha! Guess again. This coffee from our high-priced machine is bracing and delicious. So shut up and enjoy it, Annie. You can’t have it both ways—live like this and resent it at the same time. Stop being such a goddamned hypocrite.

      I give up on the Sudoku puzzle; this one’s too hard and I’m not that good at them in the first place. In fact, I stink. Numbers, logic: that’s never been my strong suit. On TV, Mario Cuomo’s son—the cute one, not the politician—is reading the news. I’m getting a yogurt out of the fridge when I hear him say something about Cape Cod. I look up. They’re showing footage of great white sharks cruising the water. Has Orion heard about this? He loves swimming in the ocean. I’d better call him. Mario’s son says that the Cape’s merchants and innkeepers are worried that this last hurrah of the tourist season will take a major hit during what’s already been an off year because of the bad economy.

       You’ve reached the voice mail of Dr. Orion Oh …

      I don’t get it. Why hasn’t he changed СКАЧАТЬ