Misty and you.
Blocking if anybody might see her painting.
Her signature was at the bottom, below the picket fence, Misty Marie Kleinman . The only thing missing was a smiling face. A heart dotting the i in Kleinman.
“Maybe a museum of kitsch,” she said. This was just a better version of what she’d been painting since childhood. Her fantasy village. And seeing it felt worse than seeing the worst, most fat naked picture of yourself ever. Here it was, the trite little heart of Misty Marie Kleinman. The sugary dreams of the poor, lonely six-year-old kid she’d be for the rest of her life. Her pathetic, pretty rhinestone soul.
The trite little secret of what made her feel happy.
Misty kept peeking back over one shoulder to make sure no one was looking in. No one was seeing the most cliche, honest part of her, painted here in watercolors.
Peter, God bless him, he just cut the mat and centered the painting inside it.
You cut the mat.
Peter set up the miter saw on the shop’s workbench, and he cut the lengths for each side of the frame. The painting, when Peter looked at it, half his face smiled, the zygomatic major pulling up one side of his mouth. He only lifted the eyebrow on that side. He said, “You got the porch railing perfect.”
Outside, a girl from art school walked by on the sidewalk. This girl, her latest “work” was stuffing a teddy bear with dog shit. She worked with her hands inside blue rubber gloves so thick she could almost not bend her fingers. According to her, beauty was a stale concept. Superficial. A cheat. She was working a new vein. A new twist on a classic Dada theme. In her studio, she had the little teddy bear already gutted out, its fake fur spread open autopsy-style, ready to turn into art. Her rubber gloves smeared with brown stink, she could hardly hold the needle and red suture thread. Her title for all this was: Illusions of Childhood .
Other kids in art school, kids from rich families, the kids who traveled and saw real art in Europe and New York, all of them did this kind of work.
Another boy in Misty’s class, he was masturbating, trying to fill a piggy bank with sperm before the end of the year. He lived off dividends from a trust fund. Another girl drank different colors of egg temperas, then drank syrup of ipecac that made her vomit her masterpiece. She drove to class on a moped from Italy that cost more than the trailer where Misty grew up.
In the frame shop that morning, Peter fitted the corners of the frame together. He dabbed glue with his bare fingers and drilled holes in each corner for the screws.
Still standing between the window and the workbench, her shadow blocking the sunlight, Misty said, “You really think it’s good?”
And Peter said, “If you only knew ...”
You said that.
Peter said, “You’re in my light. I can’t see.”
“I don’t want to move,” Misty told him. “People outside might see.”
All the dog shit and jack-off and barf. Running the glass cutter across the glass, never taking his eyes off the little cutting wheel, a pencil tucked in the hair behind one ear, Peter said, “Just smelling super gross doesn’t make their work art.”
Snapping the glass into two pieces, Peter said, “Shit is an esthetic cliche.” He said how the Italian painter Piero Manzoni canned his own shit, labeled “100% Pure Artist’s Shit,” and people bought it.
Peter was watching his hands so hard that Misty had to watch. She wasn’t watching the window, and behind them they heard a bell ring. Somebody’d walked into the shop. Another shadow fell over the workbench.
Without looking up, Peter went, “Hey.”
And this new guy said, “Hey.”
The friend was maybe Peter’s age, blond with a patch of chin hairs, but not what you’d call a beard. Another student from the art school. He was another rich kid from Waytansea Island, and he stood, his blue eyes looking down at the painting on the workbench. He smiled Peter’s same half smile, the look of somebody laughing over the fact he had cancer. The look of someone facing a firing squad of clowns with real guns.
Not looking up, Peter buffed the glass and fit it into the new frame. He said, “See what I mean about the picture?”
The friend looked at the house wrapped in porches, the picket fence and blue birds. The name Misty Marie Kleinman. Half smiling, shaking his head, he said, “It’s the Tupper house, all right.”
It was a house Misty had just made up. Invented.
In one ear, the friend had a single earring. An old piece of junk jewelry, in the Waytansea Island style of Peter’s friends. Buried in his hair, it was fancy gold filigree around a big red enamel heart, flashes of red glass, cut-glass jewels twinkled in the gold. He was chewing gum. Spearmint, from the smell.
Misty said, “Hi.” She said, “I’m Misty.”
And the friend, he looked at her, giving her the same doomed smile. Chewing his gum, he said, “So is this her? Is she the mythical lady?”
And slipping the picture into the frame, behind the glass, looking only at his work, Peter said, “I’m afraid so.”
Still staring at Misty, his eyes jumping around every part of her, her hands and legs, her face and breasts, the friend cocked his head to one side, studying. Still chewing his gum, he said, “Are you sure she’s the right one?”
Some magpie part of Misty, some little princess part, couldn’t take her eyes off the guy’s glittery red earring. The sparkling enamel heart. The flash of red from the cut-glass rubies.
Peter fitted a piece of backing cardboard behind the picture and sealed it around the edge with tape. Running his thumb over the tape, sealing it down, he said, “You saw the painting.” He stopped and sighed, his chest getting big, then collapsing, and he said, “I’m afraid she’s the real deal.”
Misty, Misty’s eyes were pinned inside the blond tangle of the friend’s hair. The red flash of the earring there, it was Christmas lights and birthday candles. In the sunlight from the shopwindow, the earring was Fourth of July fireworks and bouquets of Valentine’s Day roses. Looking at the sparkle, she forgot she had hands, a face, a name.
She forgot to breathe.
Peter said, “What’d I tell you, man?” He was looking at Misty now, watching her spellbound by the red earring, and Peter said, “She can’t resist the old jewelry.”
The blond guy saw Misty staring back at him, and both his blue eyes swung sideways to see where Misty’s eyes were pinned.
In the earring’s cut-glass sparkle, in there was the sparkle of champagne Misty had never seen. There were the sparks of beach bonfires, spiraling up to summer stars Misty could only imagine. In there was the flash of crystal chandeliers she had painted in each fantasy parlor.
All the yearning and idiot need of a poor, lonely kid. Some stupid, unenlightened part, not the artist but the idiot in her, loved that earring, the bright rich shine of it. The glitter of sugary hard candy. Candy in a cut-glass dish. A dish in a house she’d never visited. Nothing deep or profound. Just everything we’re programmed to adore. Sequins and rainbows. Those bangles she should’ve been educated enough to ignore.
The blond, Peter’s friend, he reached one hand up to touch his hair, then his ear. His mouth dropped open, so fast his gum fell out onto the floor.
Your friend.
And you said, “Careful, dude, it looks like you’re stealing her away from me ...”
And the friend, his fingers fumbled, digging in his hair, and he yanked the earring. The pop made them all wince.
When Misty opened her eyes, the blond guy was holding out his earring, his blue eyes filled with tears. His torn earlobe hung in two ragged pieces, forked, blood dripping from both points. “Here,” he said, “take it.” And he threw the earring toward the workbench. It landed, gold and fake rubies scattering red sparks and blood.