Fuck. . I shouldn’t have done that! I’m floundering, switching off, when a call from Sorenson comes straight up. She tells me she’s started getting back into her work and she’d love me to come over and look at her stuff. — I’ve sooo much energy since I started this program, Lucy. I know that we met under terrible circumstances, but you know, I sometimes feel it was destiny that brought us together!
— Okay, I’m on my way, I hear myself saying. Jeez, when your best offer is a creepy dwarf, you know your social life is on the slide.
— All righty, she sings. — See ya!
Little does this beetchball know that I’m not in the mood to be fucked with. I’m going to inventory the contents of her refrigerator and cupboards, and if they ain’t up to shape her Scandinavian ass will know the meaning of the word “pain.”
With the Cadillac’s engine wheezing all the way, by the time I get to Sorenson’s I’m in no mood for bullshit. I decline her offer of coffee and tell her to make some green tea from a proferred box of bags I picked up earlier. She grudgingly complies, asking me about my day. I tell her all about the television bullshit. — Media assholes. They have no goddamn balls and no enthusiasm, unless it comes to cheerleading some Bible-belt, needle-dicked fascist!
— I hate them all, Lena says, and suddenly tears across the room, picking up a large piece of black curtain material from the dining table, which she starts hanging over the window curtain pole, trying to turn Florida into Illinois or Minnesota. — I don’t want them shooting their long lenses in here. . I know I keep going on about it, but I am just so sorry about that video clip. It’s an artist’s thing, we have to record, we have to exhibit. . but I feel so cheap—
— Chill, I tell her sharply, exasperated by her constant fucking apologies. — Look, I’d really like to see what you’re working on.
Sorenson’s face crinkles in pain. She lets the curtain fall. — I don’t feel right about showing people. . I mean, I—
— Why the fuck call me up and tell me to come see it if you don’t want me to? What kinda games are you playing here?
— I do, she flushes, — it’s just. .
— Just what?
— I get nervous!
— I’m not a fucking art critic, Lena, I tell her, rising out of my chair, resting the mug of tea on the polished wood floor. — The only criticism you’ll get from me is centered on your lifestyle. I don’t have the qualifications or inclination to criticize your work. So either show me what you were gonna show me, or don’t waste any more of my fucking time. What’ll it be?
— Okay. . she groans, and reluctantly takes me out to the garden. — You must promise not to touch anything, she says, as she opens the studio doors.
— Why would I touch something, Lena? It’s your shit.
— I’m sorry. . I guess I have trust issues.
— I guess you do, I agree, which doesn’t cheer her, as we step inside and she clicks on overhead lights which blink awake, exposing the space. Then she goes over to the wall and pulls open a series a series of thick, dark window shades. The sunlight pours in and she switches off the lights.
I was expecting an arty-crafty chick haunt, but this place is more like a dude’s workshop. The first thing that hits me are the smells — vaguely sulfurous, catching in my nose — and I find myself rubbing at my watering eyes. The space has two big benches with loads of power tools — saws, drills, and some shit I’ve never seen before. There are piles of tins of paint, and bottles of chemicals, obviously where the pungent aroma (which Sorenson seems oblivious to) originates. She notes my discomfort and clicks on a powerful exhaust fan. I’m looking at a huge, steel boxlike device. — Is that a kiln?
— No. She points at a smaller contraption in a corner. — That’s the kiln over there. This is my incinerator.
— Right, I nod, impressed, now looking at these huge fucking molds, like they are made for the bones of prehistoric animals. It gives me the impression there’s more to Sorenson than meets the eye, another side to this silly girly-girl. There are some big sculptures, with bones set in a fiberglass-like resin. On heavy-duty shelving sit glass jars and plastic containers full of animal bones. It’s like a Holocaust scene; you can imagine Dr. Josef Mengele’s lab being like this. All those little monster men, being constructed from those cleaned rat and bird bones. . this bitch is fucking psycho! Is this the same person who looks at animals on Cute Overload?
— This is where I. . sort of work. . she says apologetically.
And there are some standard Miami paintings, all bright colours reflecting the light, but nothing you won’t see in any gallery. What really grabs my attention is a tall structure, which looks like a figure, with a sheet draped over it.
— What’s under there?
— Oh, it’s just a work-in-progress. I don’t like showing it at this stage.
— Fair enough, I tell her, again examining her smaller bone sculptures on the benches and shelves.
Sorenson’s lip turns down, and she says to me, — I strip the flesh from the bones of animals and birds, and clean them.
I must be looking in some sort of horror as she’s moved to explain, — I don’t kill them or hurt them, they’re all creatures who have perished naturally.
— Right, I say, bending down and looking at a cluster of little figures of lizard-men.
— All the fur and features, skin and tissue and organs go into the incinerator, and she drums with her fingers on the big iron furnace. — I keep the bones, reassembling the ones of different species into my new skeletal structures, modifying them, giving the creatures, say, maybe longer legs. I’ll sometimes recast anatomically correct fake bones in my molds. But I much prefer to source the bones of another animal if possible.
— Wow. Where do you get the animals? Like, you don’t go into a pet store and ask for half a dozen dead rats? I start thinking of Miles’s dog, poor Chico, how his bones seem to be little bigger than many of the ones Lena has here.
— No, of course not, she laughs, then shrugs and says, — Well. . yes, in a manner of speaking. After they’ve died of course. I go around and pick up the dead ones. Parrot World is a good place for me. I also get around the zoos. Obviously, I pay for them.
— But why animal bones?
— It gives the composition authenticity. I’d like to think that some part of the spirit of those poor tiny creatures goes into my figures, and she points to her little mutant men and women on the shelves. — I’m thinking, she says wistfully, — you’re a kind of sculptor too. I guess I’m your work-in-progress.
For some reason that strikes me as a creepy thing to say. — I’m just glad I’m making progress with something, I spit, suddenly stung again by the weakness of those TV assholes.
— I believe in you, Lucy, Sorenson responds as if reading my mind, and I’m more touched than I should be. — That man was crazy. He’d have just kept on shooting.
— Yes, he would, Lena, I nod in agreement, now shamed by the power I’ve ceded to her, which compels me to look her in the eye. — You say you believe in me?
— Yes, she says, disconcerted, — of course I do. I thought I’d said—
— Do you really believe in me?