She had spelled it that way when I had given her my phone number; her pretty, curly script written too heavily on an overturned receipt for windshield wipers from Pepboys. My name. god free. What was she thinking? Why even separate the words?
No one ever called me that. The full thing is Godfrey Michael Dufresne. All family names that no one could ever pronounce. God-frey Michael Doo-frez-nee was as close as they ever got. I go by Michael to keep it simple. The correct pronunciation is Godfree Michael Doofrain.
The wooden frames about the glass were tinted a strangely bright blue in the failing light. The gray of the stone above the storefront was too clear, too sharp. The lengthened shadows were the cool mint the city gets just before the streetlights click on and dispel them with warm orange. I saw a desk behind the glass on the left. The doors had a place for a padlock, but there wasn't one. The metal gates were still open. There were no lights on inside.
There was a smattering of trash on the tiled floor. The walls behind my reflection were white and bare. Gallery track lighting hung from the ceiling. Some of them were missing bulbs. It was an art gallery. She'd left our words - her intimate whispers - on the windows of an art gallery.
I moved toward the door, fingers toying with shaking lips. I was dizzy with the rise and fall of my chest. How could she have done this? I fought a wetness under my eyelids.
* * * * *
Her lips were free of lipstick and her teeth weren't a brilliant white and when she smiled the right corner of her mouth didn't quite meet the height of the left. She was astounding. She had her long hair parted off center and pulled into a loose braid that curled around her long neck. She even wore glasses.
The lights were defused and angled away from everything other than the art that hung on the walls or was illuminated within little pools on the cement floor. There were people everywhere. Someone was playing piano; variations on Satie. A pretty caterer slid beside me and deposited an aperitif and a red wine in my hands. I didn't need the little napkin she left with them.
"I'm smitten." I said.
Marci didn't answer me. Her eyes were in the bottom of her second wineglass. When she came up for air, she asked "What?" from behind a blotting napkin. "What?"
"Do you know everyone here?" I asked.
Her blink was slow, "Anybody who's anybody." She had plastered her black hair onto her scalp with gel and tied it tightly in a high-fashion bun at the base of her head. I remember she said it hurt when she laughed. Her foxy, pointy face was done up with deep reds and too much base.
I pointed across the room with my glass. "The tall girl over there with the braid."
"I can't see that far." Marci was short and on the heavy side. She strained onto her tiptoes. "Where again?" I couldn't help but notice that there were crumbs in her cleavage.
"Over there."
Across the room, I could see that she held her high-heeled shoes in her hand. Marci pulled on my arm and attempted to stand taller.
"Its useless." She said. "Let's move closer."
"Hold on." She grappled my proffered arm and I led her through the crowd.
* * * * *
The doorknob was only for show. When I twisted it, it didn't move. I pulled open the door and stepped inside. My lungs were shaking.
"Hello?" My voice sounded shrill to my ears in the dusky emptiness. "Hello?" I tried again. There was a chair behind the desk. An old rotary phone with no phone line connected broke the wide stretch of white. What light still arced in through the windows was filled with tiny motes that rode around me as I shut the door, whipping and twirling in the air. There was a sense of recent occupation.
* * * * *
"Her name is Claire." Marci said, stopping a waiter and swapping her empty glass for a full one. "I can't remember her last name. I think she's a photographer or something."
I could see now that she wore a long black dress that framed her hourglass curves with faint red leaves of velvet. There were no straps to hold it up. She didn't need them.
"Claire." I said when I forced my eyes to blink, "It fits."
"You want me to introduce you?"
"God, yes."
* * * * *
I could see the detritus of a show on the clean, white walls; picture hooks, slight angled pencil marks that would be hidden behind frames. There was a hallway behind the desk on the right. I tried again, "Hello?"
There was a shatter of glass; a sudden, loud spark of sound.
I moved down the dark hall. My steps were loud and slow, "Hello. Everyone okay?" Suddenly defensive, "The door was open."
A door opened, a slice of light fell on the tile.
A voice, quiet and female. "Yes?"
My god, I thought, she's terrified. "I'm so sorry to frighten you. The door was open. I'm so sorry."
A woman peered from the the doorway, her face half-lit. Sharp, black bangs over thick, horn-rimmed glasses. Her lids were heavy, asian. "It's alright. It's alright. How can I help you? We're closed, you see." I was sure she held pepper spray in the unseen hand behind the doorframe. But when she looked up and saw my face, the fear dissipated into a sad smile. "Oh. It's you. Come in, please."
I hadn't the slightest idea who she was.
* * * * *
"Claire!"
She turned her head toward us. Her eyes were blue.
"Marci!"
They gathered each other into a hug. The tiny hairs at her neck curled about her ears.
"Hello, sweetheart." Claire's voice was fresh and clear, a fall of rain on wind-chimes.
Marci gestured to me, "I'd like you to meet Michael. Don't ask his real name."
Her smile made me blush, "Well, then...I'll have to."
* * * * *
I followed her into the doorway. She was speaking with her back to me, "I'm just packing." There were frames, newsprint, butcher paper and packing peanuts strewn against the wall. She was still speaking, "I'm just going to lock the front door." She bent down, fished in a black purse on the floor, and stood with keys held in her hand. She was so quick, darting about me. "Back in a moment." came her voice from the hallway.
There was a frame face down on the floor with shattered and broken glass around it. I knelt and tipped the frame up. My surprised intake of breath must have been louder than I thought.
"You all right?" from the front room.
* * * * *
I wrapped my hand about hers and stammered, "Nice to meet you."
Marci was playing the wingman. "He's in deep smit."
I didn't want to let go, but did with a roll of my eyes. Before I could speak, she continued, "He saw you across the room and practically peed himself."
"Nice." If I could have jabbed her in the side, I would have.
* * * * *
She found me against the wall with the broken print in my hand. An artfully out of focus picture of me underneath the splintered mosaic of clear glass.
"My god...you didn't know..." her voice filtered down through the cotton that seemingly stuffed my ears. The words were tinged with tears.
I threw myself forward and began tearing through the leaning frames; pulling paper free and shearing through taped boxes.
All of them. Pictures of me.
* * * * *
We talked and laughed, moving through the odd modern works that hung on the gallery walls. Her hand about the crook of my arm sending delicious chills across my skin. I don't remember what we said. As the crowd thinned, she asked for my number, pulling a thin, paper from her clutch-purse.
* * * * *
"This was her last show." the woman was speaking over my fevered search. Looking back, I am pleased beyond belief that she didn't make any effort to stop me.
Below my trembling fingers, Claire and my life together was catalogued in varying hues. Close ups of smiles and silly faces. Our room, disheveled and comfortable, I was asleep under white sheets. Cooking dinner, chopping onions, faces blurred with the movement of laughter. Frame after frame, some with our hands - fingers around fingers - wedding rings bright silver and glinting in dappled sunlight.
"It was some of her best work." her voice so desperately trying to comfort. "We kept the show up for sometime after..."
The final frame focused before me. love me god free. It was scrawled on the back of a scrap of paper.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment