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“Sure seems that way.”
“Yeah. But it’s so twisted together that you can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins. Like they’re intertwined, and they’re also intertwined with the rock, and like, just like all of it has become one. Or something.”
I don’t say anything. Just stare at her with a dopey grin on my face.
“What?” she asks, self-conscious. “Is that wrong? Is it stupid?”
“It’s your impression. So it’s not wrong. And since it’s your impression, I’m also inclined to say it’s not stupid.” I wink.
She grins. “What do you see?”
Nodding, I say, “Pretty much what you do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
There’s a long beat where we just stare at each other and finally she says, “That’s cool.”
The dark. The thrumming. The gyrating, naked people. The art on the walls.
She almost leaps into me and kisses me again, her hand straining for my crotch.
“You wanna get out of here?” she asks.
I laugh. “We just got here.”
“I know, but…”
“I mean, yeah. We can get out of here. I know it’s here. I can always come back. Wanna go to your place? There’s some shitty sparkling cider for us to drink.”
“Oh.” And suddenly she doesn’t seem so eager.
“What? What is it? Seriously. What’s the deal? Do you have a dead body in your apartment?”
“No. No. Nothing like that, it’s just—”
“Mon ami! Where the fuck have you been?”
I know that voice.
Turning, I see Pierce approaching with a wisp of a girl in tunic. Not a tunic dress or a tunic-like thing. A tunic. Hair so black it blends into the background of the gallery. Skin so pale she almost looks like a floating face.
She seems fun.
“Hey, dude,” I say as he steps to us. “Sorry, I’ve been… My bad for being MIA.” He gives me a hug. I hug him back. Pulling away, I offer my hand to tunic lady. “Hi. Andrew Hawthorne.” She just stares at my hand.
“Oh, sorry,” Pierce says. “Andrew, Serilda. Serilda, Andrew. This is Serilda’s place.”
“Oh, well, congratulations. This is. Uh. It’s fucking incredible, actually.”
“Thank you,” she utters sleepily in an approximately Teutonic accent.
“Andrew used to be an artist,” says Pierce.
“Oh?” Serilda… not exactly asks. Because to say ‘asks’ means that someone might give a shit about the answer.
“Yeah. Yeah. I was.”
“And what do you do now? Used-to-be-artist?”
Most people might take issue with being scoffed at so brazenly, but I’ve been around enough artists in my life to have become inured to it. I know exactly who this chick is. So I offer the only answer that makes sense and will change the dynamic appropriately.
“I’m a billionaire.”
The hum continues in the background.
Serilda stands about an inch taller now. “Oh?” I nod. She looks at Pierce. He nods. Serilda follows with, “How?”
“Eh, you know, little of this, little of that. Hey, who’s the artist?”
She re-gathers her comportment of priggishness and says, “His name is unpronounceable in human language, but he is very gifted.”
“Yeah?” I say, unable to stop my smile from spreading. “Is he here?”
“He is here, and he is not here. He is everywhere, and he is nowhere.”
I have to admit, of all the things I miss about art, conversations like these are not one of them.
“Cool. Well if you talk to Insert Name Here when you’re next on Pluto, tell him I’m a fan.”
I smile. Pierce kind of laughs. Eden kind of laughs. Serilda does not. Then Pierce extends his hand to Eden and says, “I’m sorry. Pierce Chevalier. Enchanté.”
I close my eyes and sigh. “Pierce, this is Eden. She works for you. I helped her up a rock wall the other day. We all had dinner the night I got into town. She runs your social media department. You sit a floor above her.”
Pierce nods and squints at Eden as if he’s trying to place her. Then he goes ahead and kisses her hand.
“Well, I’ll surely not forget again. My apologies.” Then, “I thought Gretchen ran the social media stuff.”
“Oh,” says Eden. “She does, technically. I just do most of the actual formatting and stuff like that.”
“Are you the one handling the offsetting of the Sexpert travesty?”
Eden looks at me nervously out of the side of her eye. “Um, yes.”
“Ah, yes. Well, then I’ll certainly not forget again. I do apologize. The whole thing has had me very distracted.”
“Yes,” I say. “Also, he’s kind of a dick.”
“Are we close, And?” Pierce says, staying on his favorite topic.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. We’re close. Any day now we should be able to pinpoint…” Now it’s my turn to glance at Eden who looks at the floor. I step in so only Pierce can hear me. “You still convinced it’s Myrtle?”
He nods. “She’s been acting very weird.”
“Yeah? Weird how?”
“She’s kind of avoiding me.”
“How? She’s your secretary.”
“Executive assistant. Jesus, man. Stay woke.” Seriously, sometimes I don’t understand the guy at all. “She just,” he goes on, “she used to stay late, poke her head into my office to check in during the day, all that kind of thing. Lately, I dunno. She’s just been getting… Weird. So. You tell me what I’m supposed to think.”
