“I love you. Happy birthday!” I was sat in the lobby of a hotel, waiting. I could hear Gala smacking her gum and high winds in the background making the line fuzzy and indistinct. “You’ll be old one day too. What are you going to do? You should come here! We’re staying on for a couple more days. You can meet a Great Plains slob, fall in love, then divorce! Don’t you want to see a tornado?” I told her I was probably not going to meet her in Oklahoma. “So where, then?” she prodded. “Maybe I’ll go home, or maybe I’ll stay. What if I miss a sunset that everybody talks about?” Gala sighed, “Don’t kid yourself. I know you feel the same way. I’d rather Die than live in New York.”
Gala had hitched a ride with two musicians who were driving west to New Mexico, to a place called Truth or Consequences. I worried about her going so deep into the middle of the country. They have a lot of different policies there, and never the best for us. She said she couldn’t stand another winter. “And it’s only getting colder.” Her birthday meant that summer was coming to an end. I told her there was still winter in New Mexico, and she said, “Well it doesn’t matter much. Don’t you know it’s called the Land of Enchantment? Maybe I’ll just continue on west to Tijuana. I’ve always wanted to go.” She said if I changed my mind, it was just one long highway from New York going west, the belt across America’s belly. “What’s in a city, anyway?” Gala said she’d much rather be where wilderness was allowed to grow over. “Don’t act like going home is the last resort! Aren’t you finished forgetting?”
I was house-sitting Anabel’s apartment while she was on a residency in Iceland. I finally had the opportunity to choose between the two beds, but this wasn’t exactly how I thought it might come about. All I did was stay in bed all day on one side of the house and at nighttime migrate to the next! Gala tutted on the phone. “Isa, that’s no way to live.” I had seen press photos of Ester Gladwell before coming to meet her. She was a cool and sturdy woman, with just as firm a reputation. I had purposely come fifteen minutes early to seem serious. I recognized her coming through the revolving doors of the hotel. I told Gala to let me know once she crossed another state line, especially a red one, and “remember, if someone asks you any questions, it’s not your responsibility to give an answer.” I didn’t think she would find herself interrogated, since she can hide behind her complexion. She said, “Let me know if I should have a drink in your honour, to celebrate our misfortune!”
Ester was in her fifties and wore an expression of severity. Her hair was tightly pulled back, as though it had never known another style. I felt soft and naïve in comparison. I straightened myself in the wingback chair, and she looked at me with a smirk. “Would you like a drink? Are you old enough to have a drink?” I said water would suffice. She leaned forward, giving me a probing look. “I’ve seen you before.” I shrugged, taking a sip of water. “I’m always outside.” She frowned and adjusted the buttons on her shirt’s sleeve. “No …” She looked at me again. “Ah! I know. I’ve seen you in one of Anabel’s paintings.” I had forgotten that somewhere in New York my image hung on a wall before many eyes; how tired she must be! Ester drummed her fingers on the chair. “I remember seeing it and thinking it was strange. The eyes wandered away, detached somehow.” That was laughable. I thought of the painting as hours of sitting in order to pay for a phone bill or happy-hour oysters. “Aren’t all women in paintings detached, simply unknowable? And in that way they become so easy to attribute just about anything to.” She ignored my question. “It’s a sad portrait.” I started slowly, “One could see it that way. We were all dangerous once, and it’s sad when that time has passed. Maybe the portrait shows that in me. I don’t see it that way.” A waiter dropped off a gin martini for Ester. “But you know, I always prefer the way I see things,” I told her as she lifted the glass to her mouth. She asked, “Why’s that?” I crossed my legs and said very seriously, “Because it’s all mine, and no one can convince me otherwise.” Ester’s face cracked into a chuckle. “I had heard you were impertinent.” I gasped, placing my hand to my chest for added drama. She asked, composing herself with the usual gruffness, “How did you even get here?” I took a deep breath and began.