Yearlong Days

The international triangle convention is a special corner of the world, letting but a few in and, I assume, killing those who attempt an invitation-less entrance. The convention. The convention – and this year they’ve invited me.

            Maybe it’s silly, but I’ve doubted whether I was deserving of such an honor, momentarily of course, but what is a moment? Actually, I find it very annoying, the way people talk about time.

            “Oh, I’ve grieved a thousand years for my mother!”

            “Me? I’ve grieved a thousand for my dog!” they all essentially announced. And I had grieved my mother for a long time at this point. My sense of time has always been different, strange. Accelerated. And it can be isolating, do you understand? This feeling like I’m supposed to follow someone else’s ticking.

            The convention. I’d been hoping for an invitation for years at this point. It was the end of a gallery of mine: the walls were new brick made to look old; the crowd had reduced to the backs of the final five, staring intently at the pieces. It’s strange how you end up liking one piece more than the others. In my case, it was the beach scene, with its three palm trees and sandy clearing, which the trees formed the equilateral corners of.

            Now, they formed the frame of their observer. His jacket looked like it was made from a zebra; the sleeves hung loose about his arms, which were long and ended with spindly hands hanging loosely at his sides. The striped man stood out, he drew my eye and irked me. Why steal attention at another person’s gallery? And this person was an artist, I knew – after all, who else would wear something like that?

            When Liz finally got back with the drinks, she said, “You must be really happy right now.” And, when I clearly wasn’t, she whispered: “That’s Ford Nostrum!”

            I was very happy. I was still annoyed by Liz’s shocked bird-face; she left to get new drinks because I had, despite what she might think, asked for red, not white. Having sent her off, I talked to another person at the gallery, angled so I could see Ford. It was painful, talking to some normal person while the god of my world stood only a few feet away. I sipped my wine, nodded along, muttered my thanks; and I would glance quickly to the side when I thought he had said something. My approach was graceful and slow, I would only allow the smallest clak of my heels on the ground.

            “This is my favorite too,” I said. In retrospect, I feel a little guilty about throwing away the others so easily.

            He looked up and I was surprised by the contrast between real and imagined faces. His smile was wolfish with prominent canines.

            “You get it, huh?” He nodded to himself. “You really get it.” He stood like this, nodding for a hundred years before continuing: “I’m Ford Nostrum, by the way.”

            “Oh!” Too little has been said about feigning just the right amount of enthusiasm. Men like Ford need some excitement on your part to even really consider you a human being; too much, and you’re an insect all over again. My exclamation had to be loud enough to be clearly heard, but not so loud that it echoed. I continued: “You don’t mean that Henry Ford?” I punctuated this with a slight, slanted smile.

            “Yup, yup,” He looked down and grinned as though it were embarrassing. It reminded me of some coy young man who believes that he really truly understands the female. And all the empty space that followed!

            Who just says “Yup, yup” to another person?

            Still, I persevered. “What do you like about the piece?”

            He waited a while to speak; I considered speaking more than once, but there was a strange buzz in the air. Some silence is dead, but some is charged with intent. And it was a battle that we fought – who would buckle first? – and then I was suddenly aware of my heart squeezing in my chest; but then, somehow, it was done, and he was opening his mouth to speak. He smiled like a happy, slightly goofy, canine then.

            “I’ve been all around Chicago, mostly in the triangle scene. It’s just been…” And here he paused again, before saying “what do you think happened with cubism, pointillism? Everyone tries it out, right? And it’s all nothing, for nothing, does nothing – what’s the point? But you. Get it.”

            I couldn’t help but smile at that. And he was right: I truly believe that I have a better grip on the artform than most. “Thank you. This is, honestly, a career highlight for me.” It wasn’t gratitude, the smile. It was simple joy at what I had accomplished – and why shouldn’t it be?

            He shook his head and said, “You earned it,” as though he was refusing some credit that I had offered him. Still, I smiled as though I were saying “You’re welcome.” He still distorted things for me, like the penultimate drink that leads to that fateful, terrible decision. That slightly see-sawing reality feeling. “What’s on your mind, mister Nostrum?” This was the idiotic result.

            Had his eye twitched? Still, he laughed like a bell, a startlingly loud laugh that made his great fronds of hair shake. “You are insane. Just crazy.” And then, suddenly still-faced and reverent-eyed: “It really is so rare these days.” The great blonde locks swept from side to side. “So, so rare.” With that, he walked away; I was returning to the view of his back, now shrinking away; the zebra jacket and the hair, set bright gold beneath the streetlamp. And then black as he disappeared into the thick night.

            I felt as though I had lost track and fallen stepping through blank air. Of course, then I caught myself, so I panicked and wondered, stopped. Again. Had I failed somehow? Again, that jolt. Why had I done that? What had I said exactly? All the while, I stopped and paused, physically pushing all this to the edges, like some psychic water repelled from the center of my forehead.

            This all meant that I was far from the right mood for my good old pal Liz to come back like some clueless, grinning chicken with two glasses of red wine. Someone once spilled a wound of it across a piece of mine. As a result, it was as though she was holding two weapons – and when you consider the context, it was as though she had walked into the mother-me’s home with two machine guns. I screamed, but not words; I bared my teeth past the lips and screamed like a sailor in a roaring storm, like an angry woodsman driving his axe into a body, repeatedly to the heaving oarsman’s rain-drum, screaming pain the whole time.

            For the four others left in the gallery, this was startling. It was enough that it caused them to, after whipping their startled heads around, mill about for a polite few minutes – or minute, in one, pixie-cut woman’s case – and waddle out as though they were wearing full body casts. Liz herself stood a little open mouthed and with the glasses still held out.

            It is true that I asked her to get them, and that it required her to go ask for one specially from the catering service, given my instructions to them. I apologized. Later, in my kitchen, we were both talking like nothing had happened. I’d opened a nicer bottle as way of apology. Still, my heart was falling and then not falling down the stairs.

            Liz was still annoying me. The wine, she said, tasted “Spanish, but it’s all French!” I knew that she was making it up. I said nothing. Up and down the stairs. Why had I said that?

            “Are you okay? If you’re still thinking about before, it’s fine now.” I was vaguely aware of her smiling at me from across the kitchen counter.

            “Hm? No, no.” The light rippled white across the wine’s amber surface. When it was done, I tapped the fine glass again, letting out a muffled ting-g-g.

            She was talking about her latest romantic getaway, somewhere in California; she had a tendency to go on about these. It’s a strange thing – I find her words themselves generally boring, but there’s something that emerges when she gets like this, the way she looks into some non-existent distance as though into the story, the eyes round and white at the big parts. Annoyingly, this always makes me sad – and make no mistake, I have no real interest in love and all that, but sometimes I wonder what that interest feels like.

            Anyways, she was going on: “…and Horatio said ‘No! I can’t swim,’ which was a real shock to me. I’ve always assumed – I mean, of course I did. But we all assume that everyone can swim, even if we never do it…” This wasn’t helping my state of mind, which had predictably sunk from the storm into a deep-sea sadness. Mentally though, Liz’s monologue was helping to distract me. I was mostly staring at her slightly smudged lipstick.

            Suddenly, gentle, quiet – I spoke: “What did you think of the gallery?”

            Liz beamed. “It was amazing! Of course!” She cocked her head. I never asked, really. If I think back on it, there is maybe one time that I can remember, but it could just be some phantom.

            Her voice sounded like two fingers tiptoed towards someone. “What did Ford say?” Her big eyes made her seem like a cat then.

            What had he said, really? That I got it? That I was good?

            “That I was good.”

            “That’s good!” Liz said.

            I don’t know why I said it. Was it an overstatement or an understatement? He’d said more than that. But had he? And hadn’t he zebra-walked into the night? Out of the blue and into the black.

            Still, I kept going. “He was different than I thought he’d be.” Hot, sour shame in my stomach. Peacocking is completely pathetic to me. But now I was stuck.

            “How?”

            “I thought he’d be more formal…and he was suddenly all serious and…” I was sent tumbling again, stuck between having to share more and the sharing itself causing my heart to glitch. I was pulling out knives only to drive them back into their wounds. Until: “And he kept saying that I ‘got it.’” Something about re-saying this calmed me down a little, triggered more of a sound-memory; he had really seemed to admire me from atop his mountain.

            What followed was, actually, a really lovely remainder of the night. I drank enough that I almost toppled over on my high stool; but the metal legs did still clank back down, following which we laughed like monkeys babbling away on their branches. I found myself getting less annoyed at Liz, but the wine did play a role.

            I was gasping. “And did you see the man that came in while it was raining? He was surprisingly bald for his age!”

            “Yes! He kept trying to make that terrible combover work!”

I awoke to find that I had moved to the living room sofa at some point, my dress in a bunch around me, a disgusting line of drool down my cheek. I rubbed my mouth, my eyes, pushed the hair from my face and groaned. It was depressing to see the room around me. Open bottle on its side, one drink of vodka spread thin; table askew beneath, carpet imprints exposed. I groaned again, long enough to notice that I also felt sick. And then I turned. To the front door, the corridor outside visible only by the thin yellow under-light seam. There was something shadowed there. It was a pink envelope.

            I walked low and slowly, as though it were a wild animal, a rabid dog. I eyed it the whole way, until it was there beneath me. I had completely forgotten that I was hungover; it was a douse of arctic water. The corner had nicked my finger, but my blood was pounding in my head and my hand was still fumbling at its smooth surface, struggling to get some grip beneath it.

            The envelope itself was good thick paper, bubblegum pink and adorned with a single thick triangle line. It sounded like the stroke of a paintbrush as I opened it. There were long, spindly fingers around my beating heart, and I was waiting to see if they would squeeze. Why did I feel like I had received a letter from a college? I laughed one big laugh, my hands quivering the whole time, holding the paper like a newborn. The text itself took up very little room on the twice-folded sheet. I began to read:

            Dear Miss Boulder,

            You get it. Are you ready for more? Come to no. 3, Oak St. at 7 PM.

            -F

            I read and reread the words. I’d expected good news to make me calm but I was more nervous than ever.

I was there at five. Small as it was, the letter could have been shorter still: I knew the address by heart. The building featured the same triangle, here big as a billboard feature, the metal shining in mixed street-and-moon-light. The structure itself was a mansion-big white cylinder, surrounded by a circle of low stairs; columns at the base rose and stopped midair to curl into scroll-like shapes. The door was a heavy wood painted red, thrice as tall as me. I sat at a park nearby, overdressed in long, flowing purple. Nothing would make me late.

            I hadn’t spent much, or any time, at the park in years. It began with some novelty, to be at a park bench, to walk around a little. And it was nice, the wind sighing through the trees, the relatively blue sky, the always far-off sound of children yelling. It’s not that I’m so busy that I physically can never go to a park, or that I’m some intensely indoor-person – I just never think to do it. But then it was boring, and the quiet noise of the park felt like quiet, and it made room for me to keep glancing at the way towards three at seven, shocking myself each time. It was slow, silent, finger-tapping anticipation. I saw a girl running with a green stuffed dinosaur, huffing and pigeon-running so the poor toy’s neck flopped about everywhere. Her mother came up jogging behind her, recording on her phone and laughing. Almost immediately, the girl tripped and hurt herself, falling awkwardly on her toy. She started to cry, beating her fists against the ground, and then waving them up at the air as though she were screaming at god. The mother also seemed to go from concerned to angry very quickly and I thought I could hear her despite the distance. “Get up. Shh. Get up!” When they walked off, they both seemed tired, the girl holding her dinosaur by the foot so that its head dragged against the grass, the mother holding her hand.

            At a quarter to six, I began walking just fast enough that I’d get there with two minutes to spare, the equivalent of fashionably late in a situation when you cannot be late. The gate swung open noiselessly as I approached; the grass swayed. The great white cylinder stood out in its field of green; it was like one great progenitor-column surrounded by its children. And it was like a bright, strange castle.

            Since I walked slowly, my footsteps were already quiet enough. But the whispered heel-claks were further silenced by a whoosh of shushing wind. I stared up at the great column reaching up to nothing and wondered: did it reach with outstretched palms? With the palms pushing up at the heavens? Was it Adam or Atlas?

            I was surprised when I heard footsteps coming up behind me. A man in a red suit was approaching, his red legs moving rapidly beneath the red rest of him, which was busy attempting to appear calm. He smiled and said hello as he dashed past me and up to those red doors. He looked practically invisible near those behemoth slabs. His hand darted out and back into his pocket; he had snake-struck the doorbell. There was the sound of some click or latch being released, but there were no creaks or groans as the doors opened out.      

            The woman standing behind them wore a butler’s uniform and pose – her arm across her chest, a cloth around said arm. Her eyes were a startling white-like blue. She smiled: “Welcome, both of you.” She asked after our health, the drive over. I responded that it had all been good.

            The man had a higher voice than I had expected. “All good, yes.” He sounded vaguely European.

            She continued: “Mister Nostrum has asked me to remind you not to record anything inside the building.” She flashed us a brilliant smile. “Come inside, please!”

            There are places that you walk through and places that you truly walk into. Here was such a place, one whose tall, art-covered walls and snaking corridors curved away to reveal more and oh so much more. We were ascending – I was dimly, dizzily aware – a spiral staircase set along the building’s edge. The stairs were slightly shallower than average, likely to give blessed visitors ample time to see. Art. It was art. There was every kind of triangle piece imaginable, all puzzle-slotted together on the wall and there were millions of frames and art within those frames scattered all over the floors we passed. Still, I wanted more time and as I quickly eyed the red man, I saw that his face was a painting of how I felt, that sweaty joy melded with panic at the passage of time, his eyes squirreling about in his head.

            We finally emerged in a large, gold-bright room; I was excited to go back down the stairs later, to see it all again. And then I noticed the large dining space around us, the light scattered by a white-diamond chandelier. In the center, there was a massive round table, covered in a glittering black tablecloth that may as well have been covered in diamonds too. It was, I would soon find, an extremely soft and fine velvet.

            There could be no default head-of-the-table position at this table, but the lion-maned zebra man created it where he sat. He waved his thin fingers and dog-grinned as though we were friends. There was that same sense of the air being unstable around him, and – having just emerged from what had felt like a massive cave of the wonders I lived for, that gave me life – it was all a dream to me.

            He had us, there were nine, sit around. Looking around at the faces, I realized how quiet it was. They all bore the artist’s sign, some loud show of individuality: a rubied ring or tall tulip collar or high pile of hair. And there was Ford with his stripes. Everyone was quietly looking at everything but him, and he was grinning shyly. He began to speak and all at once we all turned to him as quickly as a room goes silent at the right hm-hm.

            “You all just amaze me, really. I mean, wow. Every single one of you, I saw the work and I said, ‘I have to have dinner with them.’” There was a chorus of chuckles. “And we should probably start eating, right?” He ran his fingers back and through his waves of hair. I wonder if he signaled somehow because, suddenly, men and women dressed in white uniforms were bringing in trays of fine foods.

            Much has been said of the food at such committee events. Lorenzo Mortly, writing for the New Yorker, said “I have been to many restaurants run by those who pour the liquid of their soul into what they do. Today, I was saddened because I will never enjoy their work again. I knew that the world of food that awaited had staled somehow, upon that first bite.” And he was, I knew, correct. There was a sort of mousse that tasted like salmon, dolloped and spread – all bright white-pink – over fine toasted bread. I felt that same sadness as I tasted the salty, buttery richness of that salmon, as I felt the crunch of the toast, beneath which there were folds of steaming bread. I can honestly say that most food has been ruined for me.

            And with each serving, the lucky few near Ford (I was a medium distance away) got to talk with him. Those who were further struck up conversations with each other. I heard talk of composition and “the scene down west. They’re really doing some amazing things. There’s this man…”

            I had no intention of joining in, not in any meaningful sense. To lean towards Ford was to lose immediately. To really spend the night on anyone but him meant that it was all a waste. I should be clear: I respect all those who were at the table. I understand what it requires. But I also cared so little about them, outside of their roles as obstacles to overcome.

            So, when my neighbor on the side further from Ford introduced herself as Betty Candle, and as her sequined cloak shushed about as she reached out a hand, I simply operated automatically. Most people in the art world are easy to do this with: compliment what they say and do and wear, and it should all go well. I always ask them old classics here and there. “Was it difficult to find your style or did you always know?” “Where do you want to take it from here? How will it evolve?”

            And as a train of words emerged from her mouth, I listened past her to where the lucky few were circled around Ford like kids telling ghost stories.

            “Oh, and I didn’t get it, really, until I had literally gone crazy. I hated my stuff like it was a person. And it literally got to the point where I was burning one in my yard and then I just got it. Started working on it while it was still burning.”

I heard several hmmms of approval. “Look at me, look at me!”

            He continued: “I don’t know…” – he chuckled – “Maybe it’s all nothing, you know? Like some mornings I wake up, and I’m not kidding, I almost pass out from thinking about it. What if it’s all nothing?”

            Lisa was saying something; I was muttering some quick question-reply.

            Hmmms again.

            “And other times I wake up and I think I’m gonna go crazy all over again but this time from getting it. And it’s too much, you know?”

            I was stuck between the sound of it, the way Ford’s voice had a pair of sunglasses on, and a real, aching sense of truth in what he was saying. It echoed around in me, sending ripples of goosebumps up my back. I listened to him like this the whole time, as the duck arrived, and then a different duck dish. All through the murmur of conversation and the occasional bustle of plates being taken and replaced, I examined every word. And when those plates held the room’s attention, I would steal a look at him, scan for what I’d heard. I would be at the convention.

            He was fascinating, Ford Nostrum. I got the sense that so much of what he did was a defensive illusion, a warping of the air around himself. There was a rare occasion when I thought I caught a fox-glint in his eyes and the rest of his face looked like stone to me. A strategic disguise is, I believe, extremely respectable. When someone, a man, said that the triangle was “the perfect shape,” I thought I heard it in his voice, the thing beneath him saying “Of course, of course.” It was in the way the words were ended so abruptly, the slightly forced joy. You don’t get it. You don’t know. He stared out from beneath his cement features and into others’, through the cracks.

            When the dessert, a chocolate tart made perfect, was finished, I was perfectly satiated. It felt as though I had learned a good amount about Ford, and nothing about Betty Candle, who proceeded to compliment me on my conversation skills. “I wish more people were like you!” What was next, then?

            He cleared his throat, and the room was all eyes again. “You’ve probably been wondering, right? About what’s going on here?” He laughed as though he couldn’t understand the situation either. The room chuckled back. “Well,” he said. “You’re all so close, honestly.” And he leaned a little forward, tilted his voice and his head down as though he were sharing a secret. “But there’s one more thing.”

            An easel covered in a large, red cloth was brought out by the blue-eyed butler. She set it a few feet from the table so that it was visible to all the guests. In one, whipping wind motion, the painting beneath was revealed. There were a few gasps; I do not know if I was one of them.

            It was coal flesh. It was a slab taken from the burned body of a giant, the burning still there between the cracks. It was the painting from his story, and it looked like a dead thing. I thought I saw veins of bright lava and genuinely wondered if I was staring at something satanic. I was cold.

            And then I could see that parts of it were painted over the burns, around them, the lines loosely forming a crooked triangle. And, after looking for long enough, there were patches of subtle color there too. Foggy lines of green like ore, hazy silvers and dots of gold – all applied thinly so they were like ghosts. Such terrifying beauty, an iridescent corpse. I looked at red man and I thought he might vomit or sing.

            Ford had a hand raised; he grinned sheepishly so the points of his long canines showed. “It’s a lot, I know.”

            And red man did vomit then. He turned so I could only hear him retch, the wet sound of it hitting the ground.

            “And,” Ford continued, “I don’t expect anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. Bu-u-ut” – and here he paused, breathed so the rest of us could too – “if you want to join us, join the committee, you have to do it. You have to kill your favorite piece. You have to let it be reborn. And you’ll get it.” And now, there was no mistaking it: he was looking right into my eyes, and he was daring me somehow. “You have to let it be reborn.”

The walk down the steps and back into the outside was a shaky one. I didn’t let myself lean against anything or sit down. I could still feel those eyes behind me. Only when I was past the quiet gate did I let myself look back, and he was still there, the zebra man, barely visible in the darkness. Had he been standing there the whole time?

            I walked all the way back to my bench and sat down, nauseous for a good twenty minutes. He knew, of course, which one was my favorite – I had told him with no prodding. I was calling a taxi and turning through the night as though there were hidden answers there. Fences flashed by the car window; houses, trees, powerlines. And I had the TV on as I sat on the sofa where I had slept, somehow, a day ago. It was an old movie I had never heard of. It was nice, cozy to be back in my own sizable apartment. The world had felt too big.

            I could see the painting, still in the gallery. From my sofa I stared at it hanging on a brick wall where the TV had been. I stared at it as though it too might have answers somehow, and I saw, stuck up next to it, the pink envelope. And there was the burned meat of murdered art. God.

            Were you excited?

            Had I felt a thrill back then? When he unveiled it? There had been disgust – but beneath it, was it a thrill? A prick of fear? What? I wasn’t ashamed. I was scared. And…what was it? What was that other feeling underneath it all?

            And she was there too, of course. Not some apparition or anything like that, but my mother was in it all. What would she say, I wondered. And what was I doing now? The words would not come and of course they would not because these things couldn’t be forced.

            I considered drinking but felt that things were already too unstable. I was stuck in the space between.

            Between the present and the future.

            The me I liked and the other one.

            I trailed up and down the staircase.

            And I sat still as stone on that sofa the whole time. I heard birds begin to sing to the morning, and still I was stuck between. I knew where I had to go – this had never been a question. There was only the one path up. I sat for a long time before the words came. I considered calling Liz, got as far as beginning to dial. And even when I decided against it, my thumb lingered over the phone screen, quivering up and down. I thought about drinking. The night replayed over and over for me: what was the secret way out? I could feel it snaking in my stomach, that vague excitement, the fear in response. I walked in circles and felt my insides spin. I thought I would vomit, and there were the words.

            “We don’t take the bus.”

            When I was eight, maybe nine, my mother took me on a trip to the zoo. I remember it was crowded because entry was free or cheap that day. I don’t remember what animals we saw at all – only a vague summer memory of heat and a too-bright sky. And she was covered in sweat, her face red beneath the fur coat she always wore. She wouldn’t fan herself – we had to stop and sit what felt like every few seconds and for increasingly long periods of time. I would never suggest that she take off the coat, of course. We passed by a zoo-guide and she, ever-paranoid, asked him when the zoo would close. She hated a stampede of people. And he good-naturedly responded with the correct closing time as well as where we might find buses departing around then. What a mistake.

            “We don’t take the bus.”

            I will not tell you whether I laughed or cried when I killed my painting. I will not tell you how it felt to drive an axe into its body, over and over again, tears running down my cheeks, a pain vaguely around my mouth. I will, however, tell you that there was something inside. And I listened to the zebra man. And I’ll tell you that, when I painted it first, I painted it in a yearlong day.

            I am going to the convention. They’ve invited me.