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A look of mild disapproval passes over his face. “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to say yet.”
How is it possible that I’ve been here sixty seconds and I’ve already said something stupid?
“Got it, okay.”
He flicks open the notebook to a blank first page and pops the cap off his pen. “What got you interested in collage?” he asks. “And is it a medium you’ve worked in for a while?”
“Actually, I only started concentrating on collages a few years ago. Early on I worked mostly in oil and acrylics, though I tried a couple of collages here and there. But a while back I saw the big Matisse Cut-Outs exhibit at MOMA, and I fell in love. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and eventually I began experimenting.”
Our coffees arrive, and he takes a small sip of his before moving on.
“Besides Matisse, then, who have been your biggest influences?”
“Good question. I’ve studied the collages of Picasso and Dubuffet, which I guess everyone does if they’re interested in the medium, but I especially admire some of the collage artists who came after them, like Eileen Agar and the German artist Hannah Höch, who did these amazing photo montages in the 1930s. Some of my favorite collages these days, though, are by the Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu. Her work is just so bold and imaginative. I’d love to have my pieces awe people the same way.”
“Interesting,” he says as he scribbles in his notebook, though he doesn’t look all that impressed with the answer. “Why do you think you like doing collage so much?”
I figured that would be one of his questions, and, over the past day, I’ve fashioned a response in my mind that sounds halfway decent to me. I have to leave out one big fat detail, though: the fact that when I finally summoned the nerve to make art again, I knew I couldn’t return to oil painting, which I loved so much in grad school. I decided I’d have to explore a new medium so that there was no danger of being sucked back into the past.
“Collage feels to me like such a unique creative process, very different from painting,” I say. “When I’m making one, it’s like I’m inthe process of telling a story I don’t yet know the ending to. I guess it’s kind of like reading a mystery novel and wondering the whole time who did it and how the story will turn out.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I groan inwardly. It all sounds so corny and unserious, like next I’ll be telling him I keep crystals on my worktable and burn sage before starting a new piece. James Tremlin’s face betrays no reaction, though.
He thumbs back a page or two, appears to read over some notes, and then returns his gaze to me.
“You did your MFA at BU, right?”
“Uh, I only completed one year of the program,” I say, caught off guard. I wasn’t expecting him to travel that far back in order to write a few hundred words about me.
“Didn’t like it?”
I lift my shoulders in an awkward shrug, buying myself a moment. “No, I did. But I couldn’t swing the second year financially,” I lie.
He offers another polite nod, though something in his gaze makes me wonder if he knows I’m bullshitting.
“There’s one thing I’m especially curious about,” he says, glancing quickly back down at his notebook. “The pieces you display on your website are all dated within the last couple of years, and when I searched online, I couldn’t find any references to work you’d done in the twenty-tens or earlier. What kinds of pieces were you creating between grad school and when you began experimenting with collage?”
I stare at him, hopelessly tongue-tied. Why has he felt the need to dig this far into my history? I thought we lived in a world where no one is interested in anything that happened even five minutes ago.
“I just think people will be curious about what you were doing previously,” he adds, clearly noticing my reluctance. “And how and why your work evolved.”
“I actually didn’t do art for a few years,” I manage to say, stumbling over the words. “There were some things that, um, prevented it. Things in my personal life.”
“Right. Well, life can certainly be disruptive.” Fortunately, he seems to have no interest in pursuing the topic.
“I think that about does it, Skyler,” he says. “Thank you again for agreeing to do this.”
“Thankyou,” I say, though I’m surprised that he’s already wrapping it up. We’ve only been speaking for twenty minutes or so, and I haven’t even finished my drink. Did he pick up on my panic over the last question and thus wants to bring the whole thing to a merciful end?
He signals for the bill, and we sit in awkward silence until it arrives. Though I offer to contribute, he tells me thatArtTodaywill be covering it and lays a few bills on the table. On the spur of the moment, I explain that I’m going to stay for another cappuccino. I don’t actually plan to order a second, I just want to finish the one in front of me.
He rises and wishes me goodbye, his tone still polite and a bit removed. As I watch him descend the stairs to the lower level, I feel deflated. Has he chalked me up as a total amateur, someone who dropped out of grad school and couldn’t get her act together but has now limped her way into a show at a small gallery?
I drain the lukewarm cappuccino while drawing circles on the wooden table with my finger. Why did he have to bring up grad school? It’s been hard enough to have to think about my time in Boston as I revisit the night with C.J.
Time to go home, I think finally. Maybe Tuna will let me practice my conversational skills with her—because I damn well need to improve them by Tuesday night.
I’m just about to rise from the table when my eyes wander to the room on the lower level, which has gotten busier while I’ve been inthe café. My breath catches. At a table against the far brick wall, his face in profile, is Deacon Starr. Did hefollowme here?
