Blake walked quickly out of the studio, heart beating furiously, as Steve trailed after her. “Who the fuck is Ned Frankenwell?” was his first question.
“We were at grad school together,” was all Blake could say.
They were in the middle of Allston. Blake had no idea how they’d gotten there. All she remembered, really, was sitting in the Uber driver’s Corolla next to Jenny, feeling an elation she hadn’t felt in a long time. An elation that had since combusted. She had told Jenny to leave. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to face this problem. Steve spun her around by her elbow. “Let’s focus,” he said. “What more do you know?”
“I saw the Spencer Finch show at MassMOCA with him. We were camping. Christ. Steve, can we get a beer?”
He rubbed his forehead and took a deep breath. “Go across the street, I’ll smooth things over with Darren and his crew as best I can and meet you there.”
In a dive (“Best of Boston 1979,” it said in the window), Blake told Steve the story. She felt almost like she was talking about someone else.
“We were in grad school together,” she started. “Collaborated on a few projects. Ned did video installations, strange surreal videos with people wearing animal heads. He thought the nod to Shakespeare was enough to legitimize them. Usually there was a naked woman somewhere. They were awful. Truly.”
She looked over at Steve, who was listening, expectant. She remembered the videos. Hideous, grainy, crass without being thoughtful.
“We smoked pot together a few times. He was ambitious and I liked that about him. He thought about the business as much as the art. I wasn’t taking notes per se, but I was taking notice. Learning. He had lunches with potential patrons. Networked our classmates, asking what everyone’s parents did. If you said banker, he was like, okay, you can buy my art. If you said waitress, he was like, okay, you can’t buy my art and you don’t know anyone.”
Steve groaned a little. Blake continued.
“As for him. He had a beard. A loud voice. He was brash and fun. We took a road trip to the MassMOCA together, had no idea what would be there, were prepared to lambast it the way we everything else, thinking ‘if only we ran things,’ but it was great, perfectly laid out, everything.”
Blake remembered this part. More than Ned, more than anything. The candlelight. It had enveloped her whole body and imprinted itself on every piece of her skin, behind her eyes, through her whole skull. She remembered it like it was a great kiss. The memory of Jenny flashed before her. She swallowed hard, willing it to go away.
“We pitched tent at some campground in the Berkshires, a tiny two-person.”
Blake stared at the bottom of her glass and flicked her wrist at the bartender for another. Only when it arrived did she continue, but now just looking down at the bar, not at Steve.
“That whole weekend we were talking about the rooms. He had no interest in installations. Just video. I was sitting in the passenger seat drawing up plans, getting excited. This was ten years ago. It has taken me ten years to do this. Alone.”
Steve squeezed her shoulder. “It’s rotten, Blake, I’m so sorry. We’ll get through it.”
“So he’s doing an exhibition just like mine and suing me at the same time? How the hell does that even work? What is this gallery that’s agreeing to mount it? None of this makes any sense.”
“He has a crazy vendetta against you.”
She took a deep breath, thinking she might as well tell Steve everything. It was going to come out eventually. “We slept together once. In that stupid tiny tent.”
Steve’s body shifted next to her, but he didn’t say anything.
Blake sipped her beer, relieved for a moment not to be talking. Then, turning to Steve, “You have the thing—the case?”
“The complaint? Sure. Amanda tweeted it out. Here.” Steve handed Blake his phone with the PDF pulled up. Everything looked strange to her. The heading, her name under “defendant.” The anger was making her twitch a little as she looked at the screen. She didn’t know who she was angrier at. Amanda—fucking Amanda—sharing her bed and doing this. Or Ned, coming from nowhere, trying to steal the thing she was proudest of. Or at herself. For picking up Amanda, for even knowing Ned in the first place, for not seeing this coming.
“What do I do now?” she said, swallowing a cry.
Steve put his head in his hands, elbows on the sticky bar. “I don’t know.”
“Did I tank that interview?”
“No, you sounded good. Professional. They might not even air that last part. I gave them a piece of my mind.”
“Thanks. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“So, was this guy in love with you or—?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” She could feel Steve staring at her, with a little heat, and clued in that he was feeling something a little more complicated than she had understood, given this news. God, that old crush he had still went unextinguished. She wanted to roll her eyes or start raging against him, but she couldn’t afford to lose any more allies today. She tried to put on a jocular tone, even as anger filled the whole field of her vision. At Ned, at Amanda, at herself, and now at Steve, too. “Steve, give it a rest, okay? I’m gay. Always have been, always will be. Give me a break.”
Steve chose to ignore her and said, “Go home. I’ll make a few calls. We’ll meet early tomorrow.”
After they left the bar, Blake started wandering, too antsy to sit on a bus or trolley car and sketch. She needed to move her legs, even through the frigid air. Her breath was hanging in front of her in short bursts as she made her way up Harvard Avenue. With each step she remembered more about Ned, their ill-fated and short-lived liaison. Why had she slept with him in that stupid tent? Just curiosity, that was mainly it. Maybe boredom, and loneliness, and the feeling that nothing she did had any consequences. She was on scholarship, sure, and there were teachers who believed in her. But the whole business was so cutthroat, and she had no role models. The idea of getting paid to make art that wasn’t even functional—a vase or a painting you could hang in your house to make things look more pretty—had seemed impossible. Ned had made it seem like there were no limits. He was convinced that the world needed his stupid videos. That bravado was somehow intoxicating. She was jealous of it. Maybe in that tent that night she’d thought if she had sex with him some of that confidence would rub off on her.
As it was, that didn’t happen. Not right away, anyway. Not that it was altogether unpleasant. He was more attentive as a lover than you might expect someone with his ego would be. But she had no desire for a repeat performance. This was perplexing to him. She tried to explain, but he claimed it was “dehumanizing.” She stifled a laugh. He stopped asking her to go to events with him. They never went on a road trip again.
After their friendship fizzled, she went back to being unaccountable to anyone. She had gaggles of friends throughout the city, her sporadically attentive mother, and a rotating cast of lovers. But no one expected her to be anywhere, do anything. It was just her and her studio. Her studio mates didn’t know her schedule and were seldom at their stations in the loft they rented. She would go up alone to the roof that overlooked the Manhattan skyline. There was an incredible freedom to being so untethered, to having nothing expected of her.
But now Steve expected something of her. His job depended on her making money. Same with Davis, the curator at the Albie. They had never even met before this week, and now his livelihood rested on her success.
But would either of them show up at her door if she were ill and needed someone to run to the drugstore? Who would? Certainly not her mother, who only called to update her when she’d found someone new to live off of for a few years. Not any of her buddies back home, too swept up in their own careers and now, some, in their own families. None of the girls she had one-night or one-week stands with from the local bar. Not even Evelyn, who floated in and out of her bed, naked, stopping by when she was back from London. Or rather, when she claimed to be back from London. Evelyn had said she called on Blake whenever she was stateside, but once, she’d seen her at the Union Square Farmer’s Market on a Sunday morning, her thumb in another woman’s belt loop. She never said anything. The arrangement had suited them both fine. No need to mention it.
Now this lawsuit. Who did she have to call? She didn’t want to tell any of her friends. It was embarrassing. They’d believe her, she was sure. But it wouldn’t take away the sting of shame. She didn’t want anyone to worry. This was hers, hers alone to bear. That felt, for the first time, unbearable.
She drew a ragged breath, choking on the cold air. She wanted to cry. That’s what she wanted to do—needed to do. She looked for a warm spot, but saw only a Gap and gastropubs that weren’t open yet. Then there it was, right in front of her, a jubilant painted mural wall almost obscuring the name. Zaftigs Delicatessen.
She knew who she wanted to call. But that would be impossible. She had ordered her away, turned from her coldly, embarrassed about the whole thing for a host of reasons. Her survival instinct had kicked in. Flee. Do not share. Solve the problem. Only she didn’t know how to solve this problem. And she just wanted Jenny to tell her it was going to be okay.
If Blake called her now, Jenny would think that she was being opportunistic. Working the connection to try to get legal advice. No. She’d screwed everything up, quickly and efficiently. Sure, she hadn’t been kissed like that in years. Maybe ever. It had been so long since she had let herself go, tasting tongues and lips and skin, for the sheer fun of it. My God, it had been fun.
But now it was over. She would be back in New York in a week. Steve would figure out what to do. And Jenny would find someone else. Someone with less drama. Someone she deserved.