Working with Kevin and Darren had been intense, and I was grateful for the distraction from my beaten wreckage of a love life. We fought. We drank. We made music and art. I brought my pain to the table, using it to color and nuance a work of art that was basically about heartbreak, loss, and grief.
When we’d had breakthroughs, I couldn’t have been more content. And then, one day, we realized we’d done it. Though plenty of it could use a tweak or ten, the piece was generally finished and not a minute too soon.
Standing in the center of the draft room, listening to my viola playing Kevin’s lullaby, forty some odd tracks of my voice in wordless harmony, over Darren’s techno thumping, I laughed. I felt drunk, melancholy, miserable, high, blissed. For two weeks, I’d cried every night and put on a customer service smile every day, but when I worked with the guys, I was myself.
When the thing was finished and photographed, we lounged around on a circle of couches in Kevin’s backyard and drank cheap beer out of the bottle. Darren and Kevin had gotten wrapped tighter than the old amp cords at the bottom of a duffel. They called each other when they weren’t working. As far as I knew, Kevin was still into women, and Darren was at least marginally involved with Adam, but I often felt like a third wheel to a marriage of kindred souls.
Kevin made broad intellectual pronouncements. Darren shot him down. Kevin pulled reasoning from the rubble. Darren told him he was full of shit. Over and over. By the time we’d documented every track, sound, and scrap of material in the piece, the two of them had become white noise.
I hadn’t gotten over seeing Jonathan looking so hale the other day. So polite. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.” Asshole. But my meeting with Eddie had hardened my resolve. I never, ever wanted people looking at me like that in a meeting, and the only way to change it was to lose the song and Jonathan. I had to do what I’d been trying to do for two years: focus on my career.
“Earth to Planet Mon,” said Darren, waving his beer around.
“Yeah.” I barely snapped out of it.
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
“National Orphan Feelbad Day,” I said. We clinked bottles and drank.
“Did you get a flight to BC?” Darren asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. Darren and Adam were going a day early to hang out in Vancouver. “Same plane as Kev.”
“And your passport?” Kevin pushed his longish black hair back for a second, lowered his hand, and it flopped below his eyes again.
“Done. Do you need me here for the breakdown and pack up tomorrow?”
“No way,” Kevin said, worrying the label on his beer bottle. “Pros do that. They’ll have it boxed by noon and at the B.C. Mod in a week. We just show up to put it all together and look pretty for the preview exhibit. Black tie. All rich guys. Just like you like them.”
“Fuck off.”
“Agreed.” Darren stood and took a last swig from his beer. “I gotta blow.”
“So to speak,” I shot back.
“Hilarious. See you on the couch.”
“You’re joking,” Kevin said. “You’re still sleeping on this asshole’s couch?”
“If it happened to you, you’d feel uncomfortable and violated too.”
“The P.I. said the cameras were gone.”
“But I don’t know who put them there. Once I know, I’ll go back.”
“And how are you going to know?” Kevin asked. “I mean, you dumped the guy who hired the P.I.”
They couldn’t see my face go fire-engine red in the dark, which was just as well. They knew I’d split with Jonathan but not why. Kevin had a point, and Darren and I had gone over it all a hundred times. I should have told my mother to sell the place. Just pull it from under me. It wasn’t like I’d ever call it home again.
“On that note—“ Darren tossed his bottle in the recycling. “This city’s bouncing with parties in honor of National Day After Thanksgiving Day, and I’m being dragged to the gay half of them.”
“Hey, wait!” Kevin said. “You guys have to sign the copyright papers.” He ran inside, and he came back out again as if they’d been right by the door. After setting a stack of papers on the crapped out old bar he’d salvaged from an empty lot, he handed Darren a pen. “Right here.”
“Dude, you got me signing papers by candlelight.” Darren put his face nose-close to the page, and Kevin laughed. Darren signed. I got up and did the same. I felt as though we were sealing a deal, probably because I was half tipsy, and the outdoor space, candlelit and cool, added a coat of profundity to the proceeding.
“To us—,” Kevin held his beer aloft. “The Nameless Threesome.” We clicked bottles to our collaborative name. We were a cooperative, the future of creation, the new trend in authorship. Collaborators. Teams. Kevin had seen the trend and made sure he was a part of it. Kevin was a visionary, even to the detriment of his own ego.
It had been fun. More fun than I’d anticipated, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel anxious and alone.
When Darren left, Kevin held up his bottle. “Another?”
“I have to be at work at nine-thirty.”
He handed me another anyway. “This is a small show, but it was a good idea. I’m glad we did this.”
“Yeah. It was good. And I’ve never been that far north.”
“You’re smart, Monica, and you get it. You get what it is to make art I’ve been meaning to say something to you.”
“You’re not going to get maudlin on me, are you?” I leaned my elbows on the bar behind me, bottle dangling from one hand. The beer was going to my head.
“I was wrong. The way I treated you. Calling you Tweety Bird. Marginalizing you. I denied the world your beauty, and it was wrong to you and the world.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb. I was slow to react, and if I was being honest with myself, the human contact felt nice. He leaned in, his nose close to my cheek, and I caught his malt and chocolate smell. “You were right to leave.”
“Kevin, I—”
He put his full lips to mine, and my body responded by twisting. He held me. His tongue tasted of beer. I pushed him away.
“I can’t.”
“Why?” His face found my neck. I recoiled, hating that I was so hungry to be touched but only by one person.
“I’m in love with someone. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He clamped both sides of my face. “I’ll live with it.”
When he went to kiss me again, I scrunched up my eyes and lips, shaking my head. He held me fast. I did not like it. The sweetness of being touched was gone, replaced by a feeling of violation, like control of my body was being taken from me. I panicked.
“Kevin, no!”
“Do you need a safeword?”
“What?” When I tried to pull away, he clamped his arms around me and shoved his knee between my legs, spreading them.
“Monica,” he said with effort as I wiggled. “Calm down. What’s the—”
I bit his shoulder, hard. He screamed, and when he pulled away, my teeth still had him. Skin broke. Blood soaked through his shirt. Faster than an insult, I felt a hard impact on my face, and I lost my bearings from the slap.
He wore an expression both shocked and ferocious. I swung a full bottle of beer at it. The bottle didn’t break, but it hit his temple with a thok. I lost my grip, and inertia pulled the bottle out of my hand and onto the ground. It landed at my feet in a sunburst of suds.
Kevin was crouched, holding his bleeding head. I didn’t know whether to help him or run away. I was shocked into inaction until he came at me. Then I ran.
I ran into the studio, through the kitchen and his workroom, past the installation in its finished form, down the hall, and out the door. When I got to the front, where my car was parked, the metal front door didn’t slam right away. He was right behind me, his gorgeous face smeared with blood.
“Kevin. Stop!”
He didn’t stop. He grabbed my arm and threw me against my Honda.
Fuck.
My keys were in the studio.
I swung. He ducked. I had my opening. I ran down the block and didn’t stop until I heard music.