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Chapter Four
Emerson
Will paces back and forth in his living room, shadows shifting behind him. The perspective is unsteady. His apartment still shakes in small, relentless tremors. He’s dressed for a night out. My brother has plans. A dinner to eat. A woman to fuck.
I’ve complicated things.
“I don’t think I should leave,” he announces. This is the tenth time in two hours. Will’s gone back and forth all day.
“You should have left ten minutes ago.”
“You’re sick.”
“I have a cold. It’s nothing. Go on your date.”
Will folds his arms over his chest. Narrows his eyes. “You’re full of shit, and it’s not a date. It’s a…meeting.”
The room continues its low-level trembling. I look back at him from my spot on the chair, this one conspicuously closer to the window. I’ve been sitting here for an hour already in an attempt to prove that everything is fine. Naturally, the conversation is getting harder to follow.
The last bit about the meeting arrives on a delay.
“A meeting with a fuck buddy.”
“She’s not a fuck buddy. She’s an assistant.”
“Who you’re fucking. I can tell. There’s no point in lying about it.”
“But there is a point in lying about your cold?” My brother makes air quotes around cold, and his shadow follows the motion in a skittering fall of brush strokes. “You’re shivering. Your eyes are all red. Whether or not I’m fucking my assistant has no bearing on that.”
“That’s what happens when a person has a cold, jackass.”
“When a person has a cold, they have the sniffles, fucker. You haven’t sneezed once.”
No. I haven’t. Because, of course, I don’t have a fucking cold. The panic attack that came down the night I got here didn’t stop. It never retreated back into its frame. It just got small enough to hide.
To attempt to hide.
I can’t explain to Will that my protective mechanisms are failing. Have failed. That his apartment feels like being locked out and locked in at once. There’s been a breakdown in the process.
Light from his lamp plays across the wall. Its warmth intersects with the corner of a picture frame. Cool shadows reach toward the mass-produced art behind the glass.
I feel nothing when I look at it but mild offense.
“I didn’t think you’d have an opinion.”
“About what?”
“You keep looking at that fucking print, and I know you’re judging it.”
“I don’t care what you hang on your wall.”
“Emerson.” I meet his eyes and find him frustrated. Worried. We’ve kept each other at arm’s length since we left home. I could blame it on my routines, on the fact that I need to stay home more than the average person, but that would be disingenuous at best. “I’m trying to tell you that I’d listen if you had a suggestion.”
My mind pulls back from the offer on instinct. I don’t talk to my brothers about art. Or—I didn’t, until Daphne. That was the first time in years that it felt worth the risk. For most of my life, it wasn’t. From the time I discovered art, from the time I discovered places like the Met, I understood it to be a shameful impulse. Only a pussy would spend his time lurking in galleries, searching for pieces that made his heart ache.
Only a pussy would lose his mind in the dark and have art become the entire world.
I can’t get anything to stay at a safe distance, so I resort to the basics and watch Will’s face for signs that he’s joking. That he’s teasing. That he is indeed a jackass. I take in the shadows on his face. The set of his mouth. The crease in his brow. Cross-reference with all my memories of him in their galleries. Moment upon moment.
