If Lexie was Camila’s unspoken favorite client, then Viviane was her unspoken least favorite.
That was when she bothered to show up. Viviane was an executive VP of something or another at some pharmaceutical thingy, and canceled often over work crises.
When Viviane did show up, immaculate in designer suits, silk blouses and Italian leather loafers, she set her own timers, which went off two minutes before the session was supposed to end. Those extra two minutes were too valuable to waste on therapy, it seemed, and were better allotted to something else.
Camila wasn’t sure why Viviane was in therapy. All she did, all she seemed to need, was to vent about her job. There was little introspection or deep emotional work. Viviane just complained for 58 minutes then was on her way.
Because Camila did care about introspection and deep emotional work, she spent a lot of time reflecting on what it was about Viviane that got her so riled up, and how she could push past that to treat her with the compassion and professionalism that every client deserved. The easiest explanation was that Viviane triggered deep class insecurities Camila still wrestled with. Growing up poor had left Camila with a chip on her shoulder. As someone who struggled to find a solid sense of identity, she’d worked hard to no longer define herself by her relationships or her job — which held no promise of permanence — but it was harder to not define herself by economic status.
She was driven to school in rust buckets, wore thrifted clothes before it was trendy and got free lunch when the classmate next to her could afford to pay the full amount. Every season, she contemplated quitting the marching band because the dues were too high, and if they weren’t paid in full, she’d eventually have her diploma withheld.
Every weekend, Era would propose plans and Camila would propose cheaper ones. They’d walk around the fanciest mall in town for hours. Camila would treat herself to a cinnamon sugar pretzel and a cheeky keychain from Spencer’s, while Era bought pre-ripped $150 jeans and expensive video games without a second thought, even as they both got ignored or followed around stores.
Every merit scholarship she earned the year before college was a blessing that chipped away at future expenses, but she learned to keep her excitement to herself when a jerk in the saxophone section told her she was only getting all this money because she was brown. It stung extra because the week before, he’d been feeling her up in the backseat of his green Ford Explorer. She elbowed him in the ribs at practice that afternoon, when her section and his intersected on the field with enough people around to give her cover for her petty violence. He flubbed a note, loudly, and the director made him run a lap. He protested, and had to run another lap.
He didn’t mess with her after that.
Camila had to deal with how Viviane affected her — her issues were her own stuff, and not her clients’ burden.
It was slightly overcast that day, but there was no sign of rain yet. She decided some time outside would reset her, so she walked to an OK sandwich place and settled uncomfortably on a short step outside of the U.S. Steel building.
It didn’t take long for her to start regretting her decision. Downtown stressed her out. The traffic and noise could get unbearable — she didn’t know how people in bigger cities could stand this being the default. Ivy lived in a condo downtown, and whenever she hosted dinner at her house, Camila had heart palpitations. She used to have a therapist who worked downtown, and she switched her appointments to later in the evening only to discover how difficult it was to find parking under $10 when the Penguins were playing. She’d arrived to her appointment 20 minutes late and sobbing, having run blocks to the office. When she moved to Dormont, at least she’d ended up in close proximity to a light rail station, but she’d still give anything to work in a quiet little practice somewhere in the suburbs.
She nibbled at her brisket sandwich as she scrolled through her phone. She looked at Zach’s photos a lot. Like a lot a lot. He had a good eye, and she was as equally impressed by his landscapes as she was by his detail shots. But she really loved his portraits. Zach must have had a way with photography subjects, because everyone who looked into his lens appeared carefree and unguarded. Some of the shots were candid, like the couple he’d snapped at a bar in Spain. The woman was thin, with sharp collarbones and a severe chin that were made more delicate by the contrast with her thick locs and the youthfulness of her freckles across her light brown skin. She was laughing in the direction of a young Black man, sleeves rolled up to reveal every inch of his forearms was covered in tattoos. The photo was close enough that it was clear they knew Zach was taking it — he wasn’t creeping from across the room or anything — but the intimacy of it felt as if the couple didn’t think there was anyone else in the room with them.
Then there were the posed shots. One was of a curvaceous blonde in a sun-dappled room. She was on her side on a bed, reading a thick book and wearing pink undies and a matching tank top. She was looking over her shoulder at the camera like it was interrupting her, but like the interruption wasn’t wholly unwelcome. Another was of a shirtless man with muscular shoulders, looking flirtily at Zach over a tiny cup of espresso in Paris.
The jealous bile in Camila’s stomach was not playing well with her brisket. She wanted Zach to photograph her like one of his French boys. And she wanted to erase the memory of all these attractive, no doubt fascinating individuals who may have been more to Zach than she was. She couldn’t bear asking, wouldn’t survive knowing how many of these gorgeous subjects he’d been with. She wanted him the way a spoiled brat wanted a toy just because she saw someone else playing with it.
So much for putting herself in a positive mood for Viviane. She sighed and clicked away from Zach’s page. On her feed, Era teased a new software release, Ivy shared a recipe for protein cheesecake, and Rahul posed shirtless post-workout, flexing his formidable arms. Thirst traps were his favorite type of content to put out since his top surgery, and he was rightfully flooded with likes from girlies flooding themselves.
This was what Camila needed right now. She loved her friends. She loved the absolute shit out of them and she counted herself so lucky every single day that they’d stuck by her through some truly heinous behavior. It was humbling.
Camila felt a wet, heavy plop on the crown of her head.
“No,” she said out loud. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said, looking at what was unmistakably bird poop on her right shoulder. She pulled a strand of hair into her line of vision and confirmed that it was indeed saturated with avian fecal matter.
Someone walking by laughed.
“Keep walking, jagoff!” she snapped.
This was a disaster. Frantically wiping at her head with the rough napkins from the sandwich place was just spreading the poop around. She dumped the food containers and the napkins into the nearest trash can and walked as quickly and calmly as she could back to work, praying that she not be perceived.
She power-walked to the bathroom at work and locked the door. Tilting her head down under the faucet stream seemed to help, and she blotted her shirt with one of the stain remover wipes she always carried. But she couldn’t confirm that she’d gotten it all. What was she going to do? Viviane would be here in five minutes, pressed and poised, and she was covered in literal shit.
She texted her colleague Nat.
Camila
Nat
Thank God she hadn’t been with a client.
The three knocks came ages later. Camila unlocked the door and let Nat in.
“Here,” Nat said, closing the door behind her and handing her a tampon.
Camila could barely get the words out between gasping laughs. “No, I don’t need a tampon. A bird pooped on my head. Please help me,” she said. Now she was crying and laughing.
Nat’s eyes went wide. “Oh you poor thing,” she said. She grabbed some paper towels and they laughed as Nat raked through Camila’s curls. “Oh yeah, right there. That’s a big ass clump.”
“Nice word choice. Don’t tell me about it, just get rid of it,” Camila said. Her mascara was wrecked.
“This is why I don’t go outside without a parasol,” Nat said. She was quite fair. “OK, I think that’s all of it. Here, I’ve frizzed you all up,” Nat said, taking a hair tie off her wrist and handing it to Camila.
“The gods will smile upon your benevolence. Thanks, Nat,” Camila said. “Also, um, please don’t tell anybody?”
Nat zipped her fingers across her lips. “Total confidentiality.”
* * *
After walking through a cloud of soothing lavender room spray and throwing on a cardigan, Camila was ready as she’d ever be for Viviane.
Viviane glided in wearing a sapphire silk pussy bow blouse and pleated pants that would have looked ridiculous on Camila’s broad hips. Her red hair was barrel-curled and frizz-free. She was a femme fatale in a fifties noir.
In one elegant motion, she sat on the couch — she did not plop, like all other humans — and crossed daintily at the ankle. The hem of her pants rose just enough to show the straps on her tasteful yet sexy pointed-toe pumps. She looked like she was ready to be painted, not counseled.
Camila wrapped her cardigan around her midsection and gave her warmest smile. “How have things been since we last saw each other?” She didn’t mean it to sound shady, but it had been three weeks.
“I’ve been pretty great,” Viviane said. “I laid off the lowest-performing 2 percent of my staff and our shares have gone way up.”
Camila wondered if she could make some cosmic deal to eat literal bird shit if it saved her from having to sit here for an hour.
Victory lap over her corporate triumphs at the expense of working people aside, Viviane started to complain. She complained about the food at a restaurant she went to for a business dinner. She complained about the cost of her kitchen remodel. She complained about the clients she had to wine and dine, boisterous old men who hit on her and talked about women in front of her as if she wasn’t one. Here was something, Camila thought. Maybe they could delve into that, get to some actual feelings about Viviane’s place in the world, about the lack of alignment between her values and who she had to be to succeed. But she moved on just as quickly to another complaint about work.
Camila felt like a joke of a therapist. Eventually, Viviane’s timer went off and Camila scanned her credit card, feeling that she had not earned the fee.
Then she noticed Viviane eyeing her. Oh no. The poop. Nat had missed a spot.
But that worry faded when Viviane said, as if surprised, “I really love that cardigan.”
“Thank you,” Camila said, trying not to feel like she did when a cool girl in high school talked to her. She had to clamp her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep the reflexive “It’s from Target” from spilling forth from her plebeian, drugstore-lipsticked mouth.
Viviane looked like she was going to say something else. Camila caught her looking at the picture frame on Camila’s desk, which was mostly turned to her but could be seen from the angle where Viviane was. It was just a silly shot of her, Era and Ivy at Kennywood, looking like a trio of wet cats after a water ride.
The slightest flush was detectable in Viviane’s cheeks, and she shook her head as if she were waving off a buzzing fly.
“Did you want to schedule for next week?” Camila asked, assuming Viviane would reply that she’d call once she figured out her schedule.
“Yes,” Viviane said, taking her by surprise. She’d almost blurted the word. They got an evening appointment early next week on both their calendars. Viviane rushed out, looking flustered.
Camila was utterly confused. She thought the most vexing thing about today would be having been defecated on by a winged rat, but her ice queen client’s behavior was more notable.
As Camila sat down to write notes about the baffling session, Viviane came back in, without knocking.
“Camila?”
“Yes? Did you forget something?”
“I just wanted to let you know the lavender room spray was way too overpowering today. See you next week!”
* * *
Three vibrations, one after the other, lured Zach away from his current task. He was in the back room of the shop, working with the 3D CAD software to design a bib necklace. He and Irene had long encouraged their mom to sell more costume jewelry options and less-expensive stones, like moissanite, to boost sales. Andrea had often scoffed, saying her store’s quality wouldn’t become diluted with cheap shit.
Zach looked at his phone and saw the three notifications were from Camila.
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
The rest of Zach’s evening was him forcing himself to focus on being a human being rather than a sex-starved zombie with a craving to feast on part of the human anatomy, though it wasn’t brains.
The banalities of cooking dinner and housework and catching up on his pile of mail finally snapped him out of it.
By the time Irene got home with bags and bags of acrylic paint, he could again pass as a functioning member of society.
Tonight, he was helping her with a painting. Irene was a task master when she needed help with a project. Zach’s job this time was to help her mix acrylic paints and pouring medium in separate cups. She’d tsk at Zach when he got the proportions wrong, or when he stirred the paint mixtures too much (“If you over-mix the silicone, you’re going to get tiny little cells!” she’d chastised).
After they had mixed an array of hues, they set them on the old dining table that was stored in the basement. Dozens of cups of paint, in shades of magenta and lavender, black and a spectrum of green, were lined up. They carried them in batches through the walkout and into the backyard, where Irene had set up a drop cloth under four milk crates to hold the canvas.
“First, I need you to just put a ton of white paint all over it,” she said. “Like way more than you think you need to.”
He did as he was told. Then, Irene poured small puddles of the bright individual colors all over the canvas. Finally, a thick stripe of inky black went across the edge of the canvas.
“OK,” she said, bouncing up and down and shaking her limbs out like a runner warming up before a race. “This might end up a catastrophe.”
Slowly, she dragged a wet paper towel over the black paint and across the canvas, covering the pretty puddles with sludge. Watching her seemingly destroy what she’d done was like watching a performance art piece on nihilism — depressing and fascinating.
Then the magic happened. The pinks and purples and greens popped back through the black, bursting through the sludge in psychedelic florals, each petal a lacy web of color. Paint dripped down the edges of the canvas.
Irene looked satisfied.
“Blowtorch,” she commanded.
“Goggles first,” Zach said.
She rolled her eyes but obliged.
As she pointed the flame at the canvas, more big, round cells of contrasting colors sprung forth. Irene threw her head back and let out a mad scientist laugh. Zach joined in.
“It’s alive!” she cackled. “It’s ALIVE!”
Once she was done, they stepped back and admired the mad garden.
“And she saw that it was good,” Irene said solemnly.
Zach smiled at his little sister. “This is fantastic,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Where do you want to hang it when it dries?”
Irene chewed her lip.
“I was thinking we could clear some stuff out of the main bedroom.”
Zach’s tongue felt heavy.
“You want to clear out Mom’s room?”
Irene shrugged. “Why not? It’s all just gathering dust. We could turn it into a cool sitting room or something. Like a mini gallery. I have all these pieces everywhere, and they can’t all go in the shop.”
All the tenderness and pride he’d felt an instant ago for the little girl whose diapers he used to change vanished. He felt the urge to slap her, to scream in her face.
Because how many times had he pictured going into their mom’s room, pouring gasoline on her hideous rug and dropping a match? How many times had he wanted to tear down the wallpaper, to rip the duvet cover apart with his teeth, to smash her ugly antique lamps?
He’d pictured doing all that as many times as he’d gone in there and sobbed since he’d been back home, when Irene was asleep or away. He’d pictured destroying everything that had ever been his mother’s as many times as he’d wished he could see her again to tell her how much he despised her. As many times as he’d wanted to tell her how much he missed her.
“OK,” he finally said. “Whatever you want.”