MARK
When I find Katie after school, she looks completely freaked out.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
She holds up her phone.
“It’s AntlerThorn. AntlerThorn wants me.”
“Wow,” I say. “Antler Thorn, huh?”
She nods. “AntlerThorn’s already sent me a graphic to post to Instagram. So I posted it. This is so surreal.”
“It most certainly is. I just have one question.”
“What?”
“Who’s Antler Thorn? Because I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type to be getting calls from gay porn stars. And Antler Thorn sure as hell sounds like a gay porn star.”
“It’s a gallery. The one Garrison told us about, remember? AntlerThorn. One word.”
She says this as if it makes much, much more sense as one word.
“That’s awesome, right?” I say. I don’t know much about the art world, but having a gallery want you must be like being scouted by the majors, at least.
“It is awesome. Except it’s also weird. Because it’s a lie that’s coming true. The only person who thought I was having a gallery show was Violet. And now a gallery wants me to have a show there.”
As we head to her car, she explains more of the backstory. I do not tell her that I am slightly distracted thinking of some of the outfits that Antler Thorn, Gay Porn Star™, would wear. I’m not sure she’d appreciate that.
I also know that Ryan would. I almost want to text him and ask him what he thinks when he hears the phrase Antler Thorn.
Then I imagine him responding:
Let me see what Taylor says.
I have to stop. I am spiraling into ridiculousness.
We’re at Katie’s car now. She points to this big, big zip-up envelope thing sitting on the passenger seat.
“I want you to look through those and pick the twelve I should show them.”
We get in the car and I tell her, “I’m not sure that’s the best idea. Ryan’s the art person, not me. If you want to go through it, I’m happy to drive.…”
She shakes her head. “If I try to go through it, it will take me about twelve hours, and at the end of the twelve hours I’ll be certain I am the most pathetic excuse for a non-artist in the history of everything. That’s just the way it is. And we don’t have twelve hours—I am supposed to be there by four. Because they’re doing this show of queer artists, and apparently one of the photographers had to take down his pieces because they were all reproductions of his cheating boyfriend’s Grindr chats, pictures included, and the boyfriend is threatening to sue.”
“Fortune does have a strange way of smiling, doesn’t it?” I say, unzipping the carrier. She’s going to have to drive fast if we’re going to make it downtown by four.
I really don’t know anything about painting. I don’t know whether the colors I see are right or if the shapes make sense. I couldn’t tell you which painters Katie is like or what style she’s painting in. But almost immediately I can tell one very important thing about Katie’s paintings: She means them.
I feel like I’m reading her journal. A journal made of poems, where the spaces and word arrangements are just as important as the words themselves. These paintings are not still lifes. There is nothing still about the life within them. Everything she’s pictured has elements that are present and elements that are missing—you feel the presence and the absence and have to figure out whether the figures are almost complete or just starting to dissolve. A rope stretching across the sky, with a girl trying to balance atop it. The rope is solid, but neither end is attached to anything. In another painting there’s a girl peering into a ring of fire. You can see her face all around the hoop, but when you look inside it there’s a starry sky where her eye should be.
A Pegasus with only one wing, turning toward the ground.
A starfish with a missing limb … but it’s the missing limb that you feel reaching toward a comet.
A lion with a whip for a tail.
An elephant trying to curve its trunk around a crescent moon.
And then, in the next painting, the crescent moon trying to curve itself around the elephant.
She’s painted these things as if every single one of them is real.
“I should turn the car around, shouldn’t I?” Katie says when I’ve been silent for too long.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I reply.
Katie seems satisfied by this.
“It’s just a lot for me to take in,” she says. “It’s one thing when your friends are seeing it. Or people at school. But with strangers—it opens up something else. It gives a whole different dimension to it. Because suddenly the art has to stand for itself. That’s weird to me.”
“You’ve had plenty of scrimmages with your team, but now this is the game,” I say.
“Yes. This is the game.”
I sense there’s something else she’s not saying. So I go, “And?”
“And … I can’t help thinking it’s tied to her. None of this would have happened without her.”
“None of it would have happened without you, either.”
“I know. But I guess my point is that it’s the combination. Her and me equals this. However directly or indirectly. This.”
We drive a while longer, letting Sky Ferreira and Lorde do the singing for us. I finish looking at her art—even though I’m strictly amateur, there are some pieces that can be eliminated easily. Rough sketches that are rough because they haven’t found their subject yet. Assignments that feel like assignments. A collage that’s supposed to be political but only ends up being obvious.
“Have you made your choices?” Katie asks.
I can’t believe she trusts me. But I nod anyway.
“Good,” she says. “Keep those in the portfolio and throw the rest in the backseat.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
She looks me in the eye and says, “Never.”
* * *
AntlerThorn is located in a somewhat trendsidential area off of Japantown. If it has a name, I don’t know it. All I know is that once we’re inside the gallery I am way, way out of my element. EDM is blasting Every Damn Moment, and the walls are painted the brightest pink I’ve ever seen.
“Intense,” I say.
“That’s one word for it,” Katie murmurs.
The music cuts off. The lights undim. A Mumford & Sons song begin to strum in the far background.
A man comes out of a door in the back and tells us, “Hello, hello, hello!” He’s got a grizzly beard and a Tigger bounce as he walks. He’s wearing a One Direction T-shirt, on which someone has spray-painted AND THAT DIRECTION IS OUT.
“You must be Ms. Cleary. And entourage. Audra is so sorry she can’t be here to see you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. LOL!”
“Hi,” Katie says.
“Oh, how rude of me! I’m Brad. Bad-with-an-r! Or rad-with-a-B! Depends on which day you catch me! Can I get you something to drink? We have tap water, tap water, or tap water. We’re a nonprofit, after all. Not that we’re a charity—we just rarely turn a profit! Ha!”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Me, too,” Katie says.
Brad spies the portfolio in Katie’s hand. “Oh, goody! Audra just loved what she saw on your Instagram—she wasn’t going to take Garrison’s word for it! We always like to check the work in person before committing to it. It’s like online dating!”
Katie is starting to take deep breaths.
Brad talks on. “Sorry about the techno onslaught when you came in—Audra just wanted me to check it out for the opening tomorrow night. It’s so great that you can take Antonio’s place—I can’t believe Ross is being such a bitch about it, but you know, Ross was always jealous of Antonio’s art, in the same way that Antonio was jealous that Ross was sexting dick pics like they were spam. To each his own! Audra was so worried about the whole situation, and then you fell right onto our gaydar, and suddenly it was like, eureka, now we know what to do with Wall Six. ‘Get ’em hung!’ Audra told me. And I told her, ‘I try!’ Ha!”
He’s walking us over to a table in front of a blank wall that must be Wall Six. I’m thinking I might need sunglasses to calm the power of the pink, but Katie isn’t looking straight on. She’s looking to the wall next to hers.
“Lin Chin,” she says with something approaching awe in her voice.
Each piece on this wall is a glass box, and inside each box is a pair of folded paper cranes. At first I don’t get it, but then I look closer, and my mind skips a beat. Because the cranes aren’t just floating there. They aren’t lifeless paper things. They exist in relation to one another. They are having a conversation, and I am observing it. Their bodies have language. The space between them has an intimacy.
“Oh yeah, aren’t those great?” Brad says. “Lin made those especially for this exhibit, if you can believe that. She and Audra go way back. Wayyyyy back, if you catch my drift. Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back.”
As Katie marvels at the cranes, Brad takes the pieces I’ve chosen out of the portfolio and spreads them on the table.
“Ooh!” he says. “Oh yes. Hmmm. Fierce. Very fierce.”
Katie is pretending not to be listening, but it’s obvious that she is. I turn to another wall to find a series of sketches of two men kissing. It starts when they are young—probably twelve or thirteen—and then, gradually, they age. Almost year by year. They’re my age. Then they’re older than me. And older. Their haircuts change. (One of them goes from blond to brunette to something in-between.) Their faces alter slightly, starting full, then narrowing, then regaining the fullness in a different way. The one thing that doesn’t alter is the intensity of the kiss.
There isn’t any explanation. Just the artist’s name, Nic Pierce. But I don’t think I need an explanation. I know, instinctively, that this has happened, that this is true. Nic Pierce found it. The kiss that lasts for years.
“Wow!” Brad says. I turn my head and see he’s gesturing Katie over. I go over, too, because I feel she wants me by her side.
“These are so fierce,” Brad tells her. “I mean, so, so fierce.”
“Fierce,” Katie repeats. “To be honest, I don’t even know what that means.”
“Ha! You are so adorable. The bottom line—and I’m a bottom, so I’d know, ha!—is that Audra loves your work. Adores it. Have you sprung fully formed from the head of Cindy Sherman? No. Is your work on par with, say, Lin Chin’s? Ha! But you have more promise in your little finger than most people have in their heads, and Audra just loves how many followers you have. Buzz always greases the wheels of art, and our wheels need all the lubrication they can get! You leave these with me and I will get them framed lickey-split—I know a guy who owes me some favors, and his framing’s better than any of the other favors he could offer, ha! It’s too late for us to get you in the catalog—sorry about that—but we can send out a release pronto that you’ve been added to the show, and the hits will follow. I promise: The hits will definitely follow.”
“Can I have a minute to talk with my manager?” Katie asks.
“Sure!” Brad chirps. “Especially since he’s cute as a butt. I mean, button. Ha!”
Katie yanks me over to the front of the gallery. We’re now near a wall that has what I’d call the c word written in different fonts. It’s very strange to see it in Comic Sans, but I guess that’s the point.
“It is very unclear to me whether they are truly interested in my art, or are simply interested in my followers,” Katie tells me. “And it’s also very unclear to me whether that matters.”
“I think he genuinely likes it,” I tell her. “I mean, he finds it fierce.”
“Catwoman is fierce. Cate Blanchett playing an assassin is fierce. Lady Macbeth is fierce. I’m not sure my art is supposed to be fierce.”
“He did say wow. That’s less ambiguous, right?”
“I just don’t know if I’m ready for this. Am I ready for this?”
I want to tell her, How am I supposed to know? I want to point out to her that the only reason I’ve even looked at the lit mag was because I knew it would mean a lot to Ryan if I did. I want to pass the buck to someone who knows her better.
But I also want to tell her what she needs to hear. So I simply say, “Yes. You’re ready for this.”
She doesn’t question my credentials. She doesn’t thank me. She just nods and says, “Violet thought I was going to be in an art show. Now I’m going to be in one. I can’t accept it, but I will anyway.”
“That’s the spirit,” I tell her.
“Are we good?” Brad calls out.
“We’re good!” Katie calls back.
Brad squees, then says, “Ooh, Audra will be so pleased. She has such an eye for talent. Such an eye. This will make her so happy. And when Audra’s happy, we’re all happy! No wire hangers! Ha. I think I’m going to break out some sparkling apple cider. Who’s in?”
“We are!” I tell him.
He runs into the back room and returns with three plastic cups and a bottle.
“It’s always good to have something on hand for special celebrations with the underage!” Brad proclaims. At first it looks like he’s going to open the bottle over the table where Katie’s art is lying, but she body-blocks him. Which is good, because when he pops the cork, the contents geyser onto the floor. “Ooh, that’s always happening to me!” he giggles.
Eventually he gets some into the cups. As he does, I tell Katie, “I’m excited to be here. This is a big moment, right? Your first gallery showing.”
“This is happening, isn’t it?”
“Yup. It’s happening.”
Brad hands over the cups. “I’d like to make a toast!” he says. “Even though there are no true beginnings in life—there’s always something that came before—there are definitely moments that feel like a beginning, and it’s always good to stop and take a second to enjoy them. Your talent started long before you walked in that door, Katie, but here’s to the start of a different, wider recognition of that talent. To Audra!”
“To Audra!” Katie echoes, while I say, “To Katie!” Then we clink our plastic cups and sip the warm cider of our celebration.
Katie looks like the kind of happy that doesn’t believe itself. And I’m a more straightforward happy to see it.
We’re so caught in the moment that we don’t hear the door open. We don’t sense anyone else in the gallery. It’s only when she says, “Excuse me? Are you open?” that we turn to look.
I see a pretty girl with a sequined scarf looking somewhat confused.
Katie, however, sees something else.
“Violet?” she says, her fingers clutching the plastic cup so tight that it cracks.
“Kate? Is that really you?”
And Katie says, “Yes—I guess it’s really me.”