Page 8 of To Have and to Hate

I turn away from the mirror and spot my suitcases on the floor. The one with my art supplies is what I’m after. I tear into it, yanking on the zipper until I can flip it open and spill the contents out around me.

I pilfer through the mess, gathering what supplies I need so I can set up shop on the table in the corner. All the while, I try to convince myself that what I did today isn’t that big of a deal. My day-to-day life will not change. My hopes and dreams for myself don’t have to disappear. Sure, legally I’m married, but who cares?

I open my box of pastels, blowing off some of the residual dust and surveying the short stubs, trying to determine how much more use I can get out of them before I need to purchase a new set. I like to order them straight from a boutique company called La Maison du Pastel in Paris, and it’s incredibly expensive to ship them over to the States. I could find cheaper pastels at any art supply store in New York City, but I prefer working with natural handmade pastels from a company that’s been around since the 1700s. Every great impressionist from Degas to Renoir used pastels from La Maison du Pastel, so I do too.

I reach for the newspaper I picked up on my way home from the courthouse and then dump it out onto the bed. I toss aside sections that bore me until I land on business and smile, knowing the story about booming stock markets will be the perfect backdrop to the ethereal dancers I plan to overlay on top of it. My pastels are extremely pigmented, so I’m careful as I press them down onto the newspaper. I don’t want the drawing completely opaque. I want to see the newsprint through the color so the two worlds collide. My hands move fast. Over the years, I’ve trained them well. One hand draws with the pastels, and the other turns the paper, smudges the pigments, brushes away the dust.

I draw on sheets of newspaper for the rest of the morning and through the early part of the afternoon until I have to leave for an appointment with my realtor. I hired Lisa to help me find an apartment in the city. It was always my plan to finish up my combined degree at RISD a semester early and then move to New York City to begin my career, and I arrived here a week ago after selling off most of my possessions in Rhode Island. It wasn’t much. Most of my furniture was secondhand and worn down, not worth the cost to ship it all across state lines.

Yesterday, Lisa emailed me about an apartment she thinks could work. It’s in Inwood, a neighborhood located on the northernmost tip of Manhattan. When I arrive after an hour-long subway commute, Lisa is waiting for me outside. This is the first time we’ve met in person, and right away, I can tell she’s someone who spends a lot of time on her appearance: spray tan, bottle-blonde hair, long glitter nails, and thick pink lipstick. She waves enthusiastically as she sees me walking up the street, then she points to the structure beside her as if to say, Check it out! It’s an old brick building on the corner of an intersection with a combined deli and grocery store on the bottom floor.

“I know it’s not much on the outside, but give it a chance. The unit is up on seven,” she tells me as she leads me inside and up the stairs. I’m embarrassed to show that I’m already winded by the fourth floor, so I do the thing where you sip in secret shallow breaths instead of great heaving mouthfuls. I fool no one. She glances back at me with an amused grin.

“There’s no elevator, but you’ll get a great butt from walking up and down all these flights every day.”

Right, well, there is that.

Outside apartment 703, she retrieves a set of keys from her purse and unlocks the door, pushing it open wide with a game-show-host flourish.

“Your humble abode.”

Humble is right. I’m not as prissy as the rest of my family, but this is a dreary place to live by anyone’s standards. Chipping paint, stale air, water damage on the ceiling. Still, I look for the silver linings: there’s a large window in the living room, the bedroom is big enough that I could fit a queen bed, and the last tenant left a hulking beast of an armoire in the living room that I could never manage to lift and remove on my own but would be the perfect spot to house all of my art supplies.

I turn back to Lisa, who’s still hovering near the door and giving me space to look over the apartment on my own.

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