.. vim: set syntax=rst nosmartindent spell spelllang=en_us: Fuzzing the edges with Joe ========================== Genevieve drives to the wrong side of town. ------------------------------------------- Viv pulls into the gravel driveway. Gravel studded with weeds. Joe’s house is an old two-story house with a big porch. He barely has any grass in his yard. Viv parks, gets out, walks to the front door, then walks in without knocking. She sees Joe painting and she sees also a tiny TV perched on a stool, playing some awful day time talk show. Joe's house has a big dining room but Joe put a few couches in there instead, tarps on the walls, and tons of canvases leaning against everything. Old builtin cabinets are covered in jars of brushes and pencils and rags. Every time Viv sees Joe's dining room, she just for a tiny moment imagines what the room must have been like for the original owners, two generations back. She wonders if the ghosts of the old owners are mad about what's happened to the place. She hugs Joe. She stands next to him for a while. She looks at his work. After a bit, Viv says, "It doesn't make any sense to me yet. It's too early right now." Joe says, "Too early for what?" He sounds annoyed. Viv brushes back her copper hair. "I don't mean it in a bad way. I just don't understand it yet. Imagine if I turned down the volume when we were listening to music to just barely audible and then asked if you liked it. What I mean is, I want to see where it's going. I have no idea what it's going to be." "It's already there," Joe said. "Or, this is already a painting. Maybe I'll keep working on it, but maybe I won't." Viv hugs Joe again. "Joey, you know I love your stuff." Joe doesn't reply. Viv says "Well, tell me about this one." Joe says, "I don't know about it yet." Viv and Joey stand side by side both facing his easel showing his painting. She looks at him sideways. "That's literally what I said... I usually understand something when I look at your stuff. I feel something. I have a thought. Somehow it evokes a response. Your art causes a reaction in me. I don't know that I am getting that." Joe's demeanor changes after a minute. He relaxes. "You want something to drink? There's a bunch of drinks." He walks to the kitchen. Viv realizes he wants her to follow him. She sees his normal smile return once he stands up again from leaning into his refrigerator. He hands her a bottle. "Try this... I saved it for you. I had it recently at a party and got some for you." Viv reads the label. -------------------- "It's sparkling mineral water from a German-sounding place in Europe... We were drinking it as a chaser for this cheap bourbon we had, and at one point, I realized that while the bourbon was tasting worse, this stuff remained nice!" He says all this while Viv and Joe walk back into his dining room converted into a work space. Viv lays on his couch. Her eyes try to follow the ceiling fan blade whirling overhead. They blades turn just a bit too fast. Joe sits at the corner table and starts drawing on a notepad. Viv breaks the silence after a minute. "I hosted another dinner party last week." She still watches the ceiling fan, and Joe sketches and glances back and forth at his canvas. "I have the campaign manager's wife role, where I need to help him. That means charming rich people out of money and acting as if I really care about things that I don't. I'm the booster, the wife that gave up her own career because she believes in her husband's mission. And last week, we hosted a fundraiser. It wasn't great." Viv says more. "And then I have the mother role. Garrett's candidate really pushes the family values angle and so at the fundraiser I play up spending my days taking my daughters to activities, making sure they study, and play sports, and just be perfect examples of how everyone else should live. And that's when the big donors write checks. They want people that walk the walk." "The other women I met that night, other wives of people in politics, I don't know if they actually like this life or not, but they act as if they do. Or if they don't act like they like it, they act like they believe in it. Like it's a religious calling almost. But mostly, they act like this is all so much fun." Joe speaks up. "They sound like androids. You think they're faking that they're happy, or maybe, this is really the life they wanted?" Viv replies. "I used to ask myself that all the time. Now I ask what's with me that makes it impossible for me to be happy with the same thing... I mean, there's lots of them, and they seem happy, and there's one of me, so perhaps I'm the outlier. I'm the aberration." "Viv you're an aberration all right." Joe goes on, "But you know that. What happened at the thing?" Viv grins a little and continues. "Oh yeah, the fundraiser. Last week we hosted a fundraiser, and it went pretty bad." "Not a lot of money?" "No, the money was good. It was a success. It was just a bad scene. The Christian conservative people are getting a lot more attention now and I have a hard time winning that crowd over. I think they know I'll never be one of them, but all night, I'm trying to make it seem like we're all pals, so that other people there will support the campaign." "I emphasize how I ferry my daughters around to activities. I see these other mothers. We chit chat. They're not awful people. They're not catty. But we're from two different worlds." "This life all seems so hollow to me, but they seem to love it. "My husband needs somebody to play a particular role. It is very demanding but not at all what I wanted to do. "Anyhow, it was weird because the husband of my friend Adelaide was there. And he was just a little creepy, mentioning how his wife has passed away recently a little too much, almost like he wanted sympathy. "And he was drinking a fair amount. Garrett looked at me at one point and I knew he wanted me to handle him, so I ended up asking him for a favor. I had no ideas offhand of how to keep him busy, so I asked him to help move some boxes in Garrett's study. "And here's the fucked part of it, Joe... the guy thought that I was trying to get him upstairs because I wanted to..." Joe shakes his head. "Sometimes I believe men are oblivious, and other times we're just shameless, but this time, this guy is both." "I told him how much I miss Adelaide. I could tell it turned him right off to hear me bring up his dead wife. "That asshole wasn't even there when she died, Joe. It was me, asleep on the couch in her hospital room, and then waking up and she was gone. "Adelaide would have died alone if I hadn't been there. And now he thinks I want to fuck him? He must be insane. Adelaide was my best friend." Viv looks at Joe. He stopped sketching. Now he's got a tray out and he's rolling up joints. A few are already lined up. She watches him light one, pull air through it a few times to make sure it is fully burning, and then he looks up at her. She gets up off the couch, walks to him, picks it up, drags air through it, and then exhales a big cloud of smoke. They pass the joint back and forth and Viv looks at Joe's new sketches. Joe had used pencil initially but then had used colored chalks. Viv spreads them out on the table. ---------------------------------- "You picked mostly blues, violets. You sad because of my gloomy story?" Joe frowns. "More like this girl told me she doesn't want to see me any more." "That's terrible! I'm so sorry!" Genevieve tries to console him by getting him to talk about what he did not like about her. "Nothing. She is perfect. She's like if scientists scanned my brain and then designed somebody that I would be absolutely... absolutely... what's the opposite of invulnerable?" "Vulnerable" "Yeah, that." Joe glances at her and for a second Viv sees the depth of his pain. She looks back at the sketches on the table and then at the work on the easel. "These make sense to me now," she says, waving her hand in a circle over the table. Joe walks into the kitchen and grabs another beer, opens it, and leans in the doorway. "She was really special, Viv." "Wait, is she the one with the terrible music taste? The one that plays all that Jingoistic shit? “And when you were out shooting pool, she picked that awful music on the player, and then got really mad?" Joe looks at Viv. "Yeah, that was a weird night. I didn't know she had just picked this song, but I guess everyone else had seen her do it, and when the song started, I think I said something like 'Seriously? Fuck this song!' or something like that." "And I didn't realize it, but she was standing behind me, dancing to it, I guess." Viv is smiling while watching Joe tell this story. He's still looking at his canvas, with his pencil in his hand and he's succumbing to a smirk. "Yeah, and then she made it worse by defending the guy." "I think maybe she was pretty hurt actually that night, when I think of it. We had already gotten into a fight earlier that night because I told the bartender not to give her that sugary pink wine she really liked." "Joe you're an ass!" Viv says. "Oh, shut up. Weren't you complaining just earlier how your husband tells the same stories since he was in law school?" Viv laughs and Joe grins. Viv sits up on the couch. "So, she goes to the music box, picks out a song, comes back to you and your other snotty dirty painter friends, and she is standing behind you, and hears you insult what she just picked?" "Well when you say it like that, it sounds really bad!" Viv picks up and lights another joint off the tray. They sit quietly for a while on Joe’s couch, passing the joint back and forth. After a few minutes of silence, Viv mutters, "Damnit Joe. This stuff is too strong." She starts to stand up. Then she sits down again. "I guess I'm not going anywhere for a while." Joe watches and then stops for a moment and then nods his head. Viv lays down on the rug. ------------------------- "I wanna talk but you don't have to listen, OK?" she says. "You owe me that for giving me this elephant tranquilizer. "It was a few nights ago, at home. Garrett was home and I made dinner for the family. I had gotten dressed up too. I looked amazing. "I told him to relax, and I said I would clean up. Garrett went upstairs first. So I cleaned, I tucked in our daughters, and then I went back upstairs. Garrett was in his office, on the phone, talking to someone about work." Viv speaks slowly. Only partially because of the intoxication. "I checked my makeup in the hall mirror and stood outside his office and waited for the call to end. "When it did end, I went in, and I saw him writing down notes in his notebook. I said 'Good evening, darling' and stood in the doorway. "He didn't look up at first. So I repeated it, hoping he'd get the hint." Joe keeps painting while he listens. Viv remains sprawled on the rug. "Joe, I'm so high, my eyes aren't tracking anything." "You'll be fine! Just take a nap later. But, actually, my friend Ivan that got me this stuff, he said how his one friend that's really into computers tried it, and then stayed up all night programming some kind of artificial life form." Viv stares blankly at Garrett. "I have to go home and appear normal in a few hours." "You'll be fine. A few hours? Yeah." Viv squints. "I gotta finish the story. I need to get it out of my head." "I was standing in the doorway of his office. Garrett looked up, smiled back, and said, 'I have some things to take care of honey.' "I said, 'Can't they wait? Just for... tonight?' I must have sounded like I was begging. "And then Garrett picked up the phone, and looked back at me, smiling again, and then he said, 'This is the campaign, honey.' "Then he started dialing again. I stood and listened. But I was determined to make this happen tonight." "I started talking, and then he looked at me, and looked at the phone, and then said, 'Honey, I'll be in there soon, would you close the door?' "I kept up my smile, but I realized he was telling me to leave. So I left. "Back in our bedroom, I figured he would be in soon. I sat in the big stuffed chair and grabbed a magazine and read it. I saw the antique clock and noticed the time. "After a while, I stopped reading. I listened for a second. He wasn't using the phone any more. That meant he would be in here soon. I looked at the clock again and it had been an hour. "So I went back to his office. The door is still closed. But I pushed it open just a bit. "I saw him, pacing around the room, again, on some call. The speaker was on. Several other voices were on the call. It sounded like they were having some argument. "Then Garrett saw me, and I tried to smile at him again, trying to hint that I wanted to be with him tonight. "He looked at me, and looked up and down at me, and smiled again. And I felt like, finally, he got it. " He nodded at me, and tapped the mute button, and said he would be finished soon. So I left and pulled the door shut. Then I went to my closet, got undressed, put on a new nightgown. I got in bed. I made sure to pose at a flattering angle. Then I waited. And waited. Viv sighs loudly, sits up, and then looks around the room. Joe tosses her his soft pack of cigarettes. And then tosses her a lighter. Viv pulls one cigarette out of the pack. Lights it. Looks around and finds an ashtray on an end table. She puts it on the floor next to her. "Joe, I was determined to make it happen. "I got up, turned on some lights, and turned off the others, trying to make the room perfect. Then I grabbed another magazine, and got back in bed, just so, and pretended to read while waiting for him. "Then I waited some more, and started actually reading the magazine. After a bit, I turned the last fucking page. I got out of bed, tiptoed back toward the office, and I heard him again on the phone, talking loudly. "It used to be so sexy when we were young, seeing how he got so passionate about his work. He was so dedicated. He had an unstoppable will. Maybe I was more clever than he was, but Garrett was just relentless. He'd read papers, then look up the papers mentioned in the footnotes, and then read them. I used to love that part of him. "I waited until I heard the call was done, and I heard him sit down again. I could hear him typing again. I went in again, just in this silk chemise, and a robe, and I stepped around his desk, and started rubbing his shoulders, and then massaging his scalp and neck. "I leaned down, next to him, and I told him I missed him. "He said, 'Honey, honey, honey. Keep doing that.' "So I rubbed his shoulders, and his back, and his neck, and his temples, while he wrote emails." Viv crushes the cigarette. Then she grabs a pillow off Joe's old couch, lies down, and puts the pillow under head. "Then I leaned down, started kissing the back of his neck, and his ears, and started unbuttoning his shirt." "He grabbed my wrists, which was really sexy, and held them for a second, and leaned his head to one side and back. "I kept kissing his neck and breathing in his ears, while he held my arms and pulled me close to him. Then he said, and it confused me a little, he said ‘I can't work when you do this, honey.’ "I said 'that's the idea' and kinda giggled a little, and then he let go of my wrists." Viv says this in a deadpan voice. But her eyes are red and full of tears. Viv forces herself to track the fan on Joe's ceiling. Actually, Viv's eyes track a silk scarf that hangs down from the chain hanging off the ceiling fan. At the end of the scarf, it has been stuffed through a few beads, and then the scarf has been tied in a knot. Viv watches the beaded scarf for a while. ----------------------------------------- "That's a beautiful scarf." Joey looks at it. "My friend Maggie gave me that. She said the beads are magic, too. They're good luck, or they keep away bad luck." Viv says, "You need a lot more of those then." Joey looks at Viv again. "But what happened next though, with you and Garrett? You said, 'That's the idea...' and..." Viv touches her head for a second. She slowly widens and closes and then opens her eyes. "This stuff is too strong. I'm delirious." Viv watches the beads for a while. "I said 'that's the point' while I was biting his ears, rubbing against his neck, everything I could do to get him interested. "He let go of my arms. Then he straightened his neck and instead of leaning back, into me, he leaned forward, and started typing again. "I waited, and then I finally realized he wasn't going to stop. It hit me so hard, Joe... he didn't want to stop working on this campaign to be with me. I was less important. I wasn't angry though. I was sad. Like maybe the most sad I've ever felt in my life. I felt like trash. Like unwanted trash. I couldn't pull him away. "And this is the worst. He reached up and patted my arms and said something like 'good night.' Like I was a pet and he was sending me on my way. I felt stunned by it all. I realized I just wasn't that important any longer. He really didn't want me. I just about laid out on his desk, begging for him to fuck me, and he didn't want to. "So, I kissed his cheek, I hugged him, I told him good night, and I left. I don't think he even noticed the nightgown I had on either." Joe says "that's so sad, Vee." "What the hell, right? I did everything I could think to do." Viv realizes she's crying. She curls up on her side. Joe is sitting on the old couch now, smoking, looking at Viv. He asks her, "Then what happened? He came in later, right?" "I went downstairs, poured a big drink and stared out the kitchen windows at the back yard for a while. I thought about burnng down the house, maybe just to get some attention. “Then I walked back upstairs. When I walked, I was dizzy. I think it was more from the disappointment than the booze, but the booze didn't help. Then I went to bed. At some point later in the night, I woke up and realized he was next to me." More quiet minutes pass, where Viv watches the scarf move. Then she stands up, applies new lipstick using the hallway mirror. Viv puts on her big sunglasses, kisses Joe's cheek, and walks out the door.