Viv

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.

"Joe, pick up!" Viv says to the empty room after she flops on the couch. She kicks off her shoes.

After too many rings, Joey says "WHAT?"

Viv, startled, "Dang Joe, what's that about?"

"Sorry, Viv, it's been a day. I got a bill collector hassling me."

"Joe I gotta rant. I got nowhere else to go with this stuff, so you gotta listen to me."

"Hit me, Vee. Wait, where are you?"

"Home. I just got back from lunch. Had three glasses of wine because that's the only way I can tolerate the pageant contestants. We're supposed to plan the class trip to the capital at the end of their 8th grade year. It oughtta be a completely straightforward, boring thing to do, but I get the feeling that these women have absolutely nothing else to do in their lives, so they go everything in tedious detail."

"Three drinks, huh? That's a lot isn't it?"

"Yeah, I suppose they'll all gossip about how I'm a booze hag later. They're all vipers."

Viv continues. "We went over every mundane detail. The charter bus. The hotel. The tour guides. And we went with all the same choices as every year before. The whole thing was pointless. But these women all act as if they're planning a NASA mission when really they're just stir crazy at home."

"Joe, I'm losing my mind!"

There was a silence for a bit. Joe interrupted it. "Hey, I'm gonna put this on speaker. I'm trying to take apart an old box fan I found on the street last night. Keep talking though."

"You collecting trash?"

"Well, see, I plugged it in here, and it barely works, but it does work. These old box fans are great but the insides get really filthy. I'm hoping I can take it apart and fix it up."

"Tell me about the fan."

"Well, even by my standards, it is pretty beaten up. But I liked it because some kid wrote his name on the side. It says, 'RYAN FAN' and a bunch of stickers make a border. But then another kid wrote 'NO' under it.

"Then there's a whole bunch of stickers on it too. Various kids toys crap. And then also stickers from bananas. And you know how when you get a sheet of stickers, and after you peel them off, there's the outlines of the stickers left behind? They peeled those parts off too and put that on there."

Joe: "The whole thing just really appealed to my aesthetics."

"Uggh these kids must have lived with some smokers because I'm cleaning out the inside of this motor and it reeks like tobacco sludge. This thing is almost tobacco hash. Just straight black tar."

Viv watches her ceiling fan turn over her head. "Speaking of fans, I can tell I'm pretty drunk because my eyes can't follow the ceiling fan overhead."

"Yeah, this fan has to be really old! There's stickers on here from TV shows from when we were young."

Joe goads Viv. "Any of these women looking to meet a dude like me?"

"You know what? You're too good for them. They're awful, awful people. Sure they're rich, and they look the part, but they're stingy tippers even when they spend their husbands' money. Repugnant."

"Nobody says 'repugnant' in casual conversation except for you, V."

More silence. Joe uses a screwdriver to take off the screws holding the fan's safety cover.

"Was the food good?"

"Yes and no. It's hard to relax and enjoy myself when I have to play the role of Garrett's wife. I have to be careful about what I say. I swear it is becoming worse. He wants me to move some paintings before the next fundraiser."

"I told him just to let me keep my fave stuff in here, in the den, and then he can keep guests out of there. It's out of the way anyway."

"Like what paintings? Like any of mine?"

"Joe! Please, I don't let just anybody see your stuff!" Your stuff is in the upstairs hall where the bedrooms are. It's funny. Everyone sees it and they all either love it, or look at me like I'm traumatizing my daughters by hanging these grisly images right outside their bedrooms."

Viv goes on: "Joe, when I got home the other day, I found out that Garrett had rearranged this den. He said he was having friends come over. He took my stuff that was spread around, took all of it down except for the stuff right by this couch, and I found the pieces in the garage against the dryer.

"And then Garrett had hung up a whole bunch of his family photos. Which wouldn't really bug me if it wasn't so obviously a calculated move. See, a while ago, for the campaign, they have been meeting with photographers and image consultants, trying to make his candidate into somebody with broader appeal than he deserves.

"Like, now the guy always wears glasses and often carries books with him when he's going out in public. It's a complete prop, but the weird thing is that reporters don't seem to realize they're getting played"

"Anyhow, now instead of some of those abstract pieces, that were really innocuous, he's got frames of his own life."

"It's like a shrine to himself. A wall of self-aggrandizing shit."

"His JD degree, framed. Photos of Garrett as a boy with his family. Each one seems chosen to show off where he comes from."

"There's one of him and his friends when they were all boys at some sailing camp they all went to as children. They're all in front of a big sailboat and there's an American flag hanging over the side."

Viv gets up and walks around studying the photos closely.

"Christ, every fucking thing this man does is to maintain his image. I'm looking at this picture now, and he can't be even sixteen years old, and he's already got this well-practiced smile on his face."

"You ARE drunk!" Joe laughed.

Viv: "I am. I need to calm down. Tell me what you're working on. In detail."

Joe: "The knob on the fan got ripped off. Maybe Ryan broke if off. Maybe his brother did. I don't know. I can fix it though. Right now I'm turning the fan's knob with some pliers. Later if I get this fan working, maybe I'll put on a different knob. I bet I can find one."

"But why did Garrett put all his stuff?"

"Why did he do it? Why did he toss my paintings in the garage and hang up his own stuff? "He had a bunch of people over for drinks and cigars. They were all guys that were alumni of the snooty private high school he went to and he wanted to hit them up for support for the campaign.

"After I got our daughters to bed, I came back down, and he gave me the strangest look when I went into the study."

"Isn't it weird how really he didn't want me around? Like, we're all attorneys, aren't I worth talking to? I've begun to notice he avoids having me around unless it is to come in, say something prepared that we discussed in advance, and then leave.

More silence while Joe works takes apart the fan. Viv says she'll be back. She wals to the refrigerator, grabs a glass bottle of mineral water, opens it, walks back, picks up the phone and goes back to studying the picture.

"I'm looking at more of these photos from Garrett an sailing camp. Some of these boys were also at the fund raiser. I suppose that's why he wanted to get out these old photos. But see... that's the thing. When I came downstairs, and met everyone, I realized that while Garrett had put up the photos, he hadn't pointed them out to his guests.

"I asked if he had shown the photos to his friends, and then he looked at me and almost winced, like I had said something tactless."

Now Viv stares closely at one of the pictures. All the boys crouching in a huddle on the front steps of a cabin.

Adolescent Garrett and another boy with their arms across their shoulders.

"Also, there's something about these prep school boys. I don't know how to say it, but they all are so clean and well-mannered. Like I'm looking at this photo, and you know what? They're all clean. Their hands and faces and clothes are all spotless. A few of them are wearing loafers."

Viv stares intently for several minutes. "Joe, you can't tell this to anybody. But I'm wondering something."

Viv looks at one photo. Then another. Then back to the first.

"You ever know anybody that's been secretly gay?"

In bed with Mas

Viv and Mas watched the rain hit the dirty skylight window until Mas spoke.

"Do you remember when we met? At the art show?"

Viv smiled. "Of course I do."

"You were so intense. Why did you want to know about what my parents did?"

Viv sighed and rolled over.

"In order to do the kind of art you make, you had to learn a ton of techniques. But before that, you had to have a hunch, a feeling, maybe an innate belief that you could make something amazing at the end of that training."

Mas looked at her with no obvious expression on his face.

"Mas, you had a supportive family, didn't you? When you started painting, they encouraged it, right?"

"Is that a bad thing."

"Not a bad thing. But... there's art that's really more like a suicide note. An attempt to be understood. You're not in that category. Which is strange, because I pretty much only like stuff when it's in that category."

"You know those green pieces in the hall? Those are from a dead friend of mine. Objectively, they're not sophisticated art. It's conventional. But Judith was making those after finding out she was going to die from the same cancer that killed her husband. And I can see the rage and heartbreak and the desperate desire to finish what she started.

"If I take away the heart break, it's just a pattern of shapes in shades of green."

After a pause, Viv said how she tried religion. Tried so hard.

Never got any of the peace she was promised.

She figured she was so rotten, such a hopeless sinner, she

Then she tried psychology. Went through one miserable memory at a time, and again, never got out from under this feeling she's had her whole life.

She said the only thing that ever takes the edge off is fucking.

"Why not leave him?" Mas asked.

Viv winced a little. "Really, it's because I'm a coward."

She sighed. Mas looked at her face for a while.

She looked away from him and focused on the dirty window pane in his studio.

"It's going to be hell for me to leave. He has spent his whole life cultivating this image. Me walking out will destroy all that.

"It's kinda like mutally assured destruction right now. Both sides have nuclear weapons that can destroy everything. If I leave, it will devastate his chances with the conservative family values party.

"And he'll take it out on me. He's vindictive like you wouldn't believe. In law school, there was a professor that he didn't like. I don't remember exactly why. Maybe he refused to write him a recommendation for something.

"Something like a decade later, that professor was up for dean. Garrett at this point wrote a letter to the law school saying this professor would substantially hurt fundraising and had it cosigned by a bunch of the well-off recent donors. He said it was because the professor was a radical leftist. That's how he got all the donors to sign on. But really, it was just because of a grudge.

"It's wild... I used to find his mean streak really sexy. God, what's wrong with me?"

It started raining. Mas and Viv watched for a while.

Viv looked back at Mas. "I'm not ready to go to war with him. To lose everything. My home, my relationship with my children. I got nobody else really to fall back on. He was the center of my world."

Mas whispered. "Gilded cage."

Viv looked away from him, reached over to the floor, picked up her watch, checked the time.

Then got up and started getting dressed again, quick.

A few minutes later, Viv was in her car, driving home while wearing sunglases and blasting music loud, tears running down her cheeks.

They fuck in his studio.

She is totally smitten with him.

A dealer has been mentioning for years how he has some collectors that are very interested in one piece she has -- a painting by Judith Greene -- that was one of the first things she ever bought, and she bought it way before Judith Greene made it big.

Viv sells the painting to the dealer on the condition that he get Mas an exhibition in his gallery.

He paints more. She sets up another gallery show for him. This time she goes out of her way to pull in everyone she can to be there.

Some writers talk about what he is doing as really new. His stuff takes off. She helps him plan a show in California.

She reads about it. It is a huge hit.

Viv blinked a few times.

Mas had just said that he couldn't see her anymore. She realized he was looking at her with pity and detachment.

Viv rolled her eyes. She couldn't believe this was happening. "This voice you use right now," Viv waved her hands between them, "your whole 'I'm a thoughtful Japanese painter' act... Do you practice it?"

"Mas, you met me, you could tell I was into you, and you could tell I was vulnerable. And now, now you're gonna tell me that you've had a change of conscience? After all, I did for you? You knew I was married when we fucked in your studio."

Mas replied, in his soft voice, "I don't feel good about that."

Viv felt herself toggling between anger, despair, and panic, over and over, in an accelerating loop.

And for a fraction of a second, Viv desperately wanted to win him back. Then she felt disgusted with that part of herself.

The two stood outside her car in a parking lot on a hot sunny day. They had met at a cafe. He had been avoiding her for so long, and when he finally contacted her and said he wanted to meet, she felt so much elation. It was finally going to be the end of this grey numbness she had been in for so long.

The grey numbness was gone. Now it was all pitch black fear. Like being in a cave, alone, with no light.

Mas replied back through his teeth. "You've been fucking around behind your husband's back with others before me. You won't leave him because you don't want to lose his money, but you're so unhappy because he ignores you, so what other choice do you have, right?"

His words missed the mark, but Viv realized how she really had been living this double life for years now. That part was true.

"I would have done anything for you if you asked. I would have sold my soul for you, and you knew it! Do you feel any shame taking advantage of somebody? Or is it like I deserve to be treated like trash?"

"Mas, I told the owner I'd let him list my Judith Greene pieces if he gave you a show in his gallery and promoted you."

Now, he was shocked. His exhibition breakthrough was only because he had the right backers. He wasn't a genius but people were talking about how he was.

"My fucking Judith Greene pieces. My absolute favorite pieces."

She saw in her mind the old series of green paintings that she had in her office. People said It was the best example of Viv's uncanny ability to discover the next big thing before anything else.

When she sold it, it was worth more than the value of her house. More than fifty times what she had paid twelve years ago.

But it was nout about the money. When Viv met Judith at the tiny community gallery so long ago, they were kindred spirits. Viv collected everything she could from Judith for the next several years. Now maybe because Judith Greene was dead it was OK for the community to admit she really was a genius, and now the investors were snatching up her stuff from her early fans that didn't know anything about how much money that this stuff was about to be worth.

And then Viv cashed it all out to help the man she thought was also her kindred spirit. She figured Judy would understand.

But he had been wearing a disguise. He had pretended to care as she unlocked her heart and poured out all her secrets and fears and fantasies. She felt like a stupid animal, like a bird that mistook its mirror reflection as an other bird.

She looked at him and saw nearly a stranger now. "At what point did you realize if you played with my heart, I'd do anything for you? You fucked me, and I paid you for it by launching your career."

He was still so silent. She went on. "What's it like, pretending to be so into somebody? Do you know when you're doing it, or is it just instinct to use people so it feels natural when it happens?

Viv looked down at her watch. It was time to go.