Another piece to the puzzle and now, instead of dwelling on Jordan, it was Luke. The name was good, that was a start. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Saint Luke was supposed to have written the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Only this Luke was an artist. I looked him up on the net. Only a few scattered references to group shows in the Village. No listing of a gallery affiliation. No website. No pictures of his work. Or of him. Basically, he was invisible.
I planned to meet Jennelle and Daniel for dinner at a small Asian restaurant uptown. Jennelle and I would make informed choices—steamed shrimp, scallop dumplings, maybe Vietnamese shrimp rolls. Daniel, a raging carnivore, would seize on a giant slab of something life-threatening.
I should have been mature enough to have kept the whole letter business to myself. But no, I rushed to tell Jennelle, who was equally immature and immediately shared it with Daniel. No doubt it would become the focus of dinner conversation. After ordering, Daniel looked up at me expectantly.
One, two, three…
“So, Sage, did you talk to the dude?”
I shot Jennelle a withering look. She found it amusing. I dipped a spring roll into soy sauce, lifting it to my mouth, but not fast enough to avoid leaving a trail of splattered brown dots on the white tablecloth so it resembled a Japanese watercolor. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” she said.
“I’ve been swamped.”
She lifted an eyebrow. I took another bite and pretended to be concentrating on the food. Why didn’t I call him? I had worked hard to get the number and now it was sitting at home on my bureau. It had something to do with savoring the idea that the ball was in my court, giving me time to decide how to play it. Waiting meant I was alive. Once I met him and became disillusioned, it was over. And chances were that’s what would happen. The whole encounter would be a crushing disappointment. Luke would be a big, clumsy, stupid man, nothing like the creative, romantic figure my imagination gave life to based on nothing more than a letter expressing someone else’s sentiments. He might be a tour de force with a pen, but a disaster in real life.
Since Daniel was in the art supply business, there was a chance he might know Luke.
“I’ll have to check with the guys in the store who do the day-to-day stuff,” he said. “But the name doesn’t sound familiar.”
The way things were going, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Luke didn’t even exist. Jordan might be playing me, or making a film with Thomas, who was making it with Greg. They were all out to hoodwink me for the cinematic possibilities. I wasn’t getting too paranoid. What I did find out was that Daniel had a show of his own painting coming up during Christmas week. They had ads up in the store, he said. Guaranteed, it would draw lots of artists.
“You have to come,” Jennelle said. “If you don’t hit it off with Luke, you can meet someone else.” She gave Daniel a strange look. “I might.”
Trouble in paradise? If there was, it wasn’t something that she had shared with me—yet.
Daniel raised his eyebrows. “Stop.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said, ignoring whatever it was between them. Parties and openings were like fashion shows for me. Fads came as much from what designers saw on the streets as from new takes on styles of the past. Wedged into the frame of my bedroom mirror was a quote from Chanel: “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only; fashion is something in the air. It’s the wind that blows in the new fashion; you feel it coming, you smell it…in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”
I studied Jennelle’s outfit. It was perfect on her. A vintage black leather Alaia jacket with a nipped waist, and under it, a scarlet T-shirt and tight jeans with high-heeled boots. We bought everything she had on one day when we were shopping along Broadway and down in Soho. She had her own style now, and she dressed with confidence and ease. Wear your old clothes like they’re new, and new clothes like they’re old, the French said.
“So I have news.” She shimmied her shoulders. “My workdays of dull business suits and sensible pumps are over.”
“Citibank is closing down? The CEO is being indicted?”
“Nooo, I’ve given notice at work. I’m going to rep a group of artists.”
In some small way, I thanked myself for giving her a ticket over the wall. Jennelle had bitched about her job for years, but she’d never had the nerve to resign. Despite regular paychecks and health benefits, the bank was a pit. I was convinced that her new image (it had only been about a year) helped her get a creative leg up.
I hoisted my fist into the air. “Yes!”
“The ad agencies are always looking for new artists,” Daniel said. “If Jennelle can represent a good group of people, after some initial pavement pounding it could turn into a decent living.”
He leaned over and put his arm around her, nuzzling her neck. She had a look in her eyes I didn’t recognize. I always thought of Daniel as more than a boyfriend. They were like partners, building their lives together, while Greg and I went down separate career paths. To him, I had a job and he had an obsession. I don’t think he gave a second thought to what I did when I was away from him for ten hours a day. On good days I saw the magic in it, but he saw only the drudgery. He didn’t get the connection between clothes and the psyche, and never would.
They dropped me at my apartment after dinner. As I opened the door, part of me still expected to see Greg stretched out on the couch, watching a movie made by some world-acclaimed director, and calling out to me to come watch some iconic movie moment. I’d sit down and watch, rarely sharing his passion. When the DVD player wasn’t on, he’d be reading something out loud to me, like an article describing Kurosawa’s attempted suicide following an unproductive five-year spell topped off by the release of a movie (Dodes’ka-den) that was a box-office bomb. I guess it gave him hope that Kurosawa’s next film, Dersu Uzala, won an Oscar in 1975 for best foreign film and a gold medal at the Moscow Film Festival.
I flipped on the TV to the local news on channel one. Harry joined me in bed, rolling onto his back so I could scratch his stomach. If I stopped too soon, he shook his paw up and down as if he were pointing to his stomach. At least we understood each other.