Brian Hodge - Prototype

They left the bed later. When neither felt like cooking, Sarah volunteered to go for Chinese take-out. A peace offering, it felt like, her suggestion made almost sheepishly, I know how much you love Chinese.

The condo suffered for her absence, some vitality missing, and Adrienne tried to fill the void with music, turning the stereo louder than it needed to be.

She sat on the sofa with one leg folded beneath her, holding the rainstick that was supposed to remind her of San Francisco, and had when at first, but no longer did. New meanings had supplanted old. She turned it end to end to end, listening to the delicate showers. Whether or not Sarah had covertly intended it, the sound now conjured up her more than anything, from her wide knowing eyes to her peasant feet, and everything between. The gift had become the giver.

And what might the giver become? Adrienne had been worried at first by this evolving Sarah, with the whiplike hair and the navel ring and the penchant for new friends more pessimistic than those she had at home. But these were only affectations. She was the same Sarah, just doing what she had been schooled to do: live amongst the savages, and take them to her heart.

It was entirely possible that the fear on display in the bedroom had manifested itself backward, that her own issue was not whether this was the same Sarah or some darker twin. Perhaps fear of abandonment lay in both their hearts, and only one of them had courage enough to admit it.

She’s so alive and absorbs so much more than I do. There, it was good to admit it. In a year’s time, or two, or five, will I seem like enough for her? That’s the question.

But nobody could answer it now, and sometimes the best anyone could do was sit and listen to the rain. And in lieu of the real thing…

Make her own.

Word spread fast: Graham announced that not only did he plan on unveiling a new piece — his largest and most complex yet, he promised — but tonight would be a first. Tonight he would actually confer a name on something.

Adrienne and Sarah both thought it significant. All those paintings and not a one of them named… like illegitimate children he might have been ashamed of and would rather have forgotten. Perhaps he was entering a new phase. Like Picasso and his blue period, maybe Graham was leaving his bastard-offspring period behind. Although they might as well offer Vegas odds on what lay ahead. Nina thought it had something to do with whatever he was keeping locked in that storage room, and was being so secretive about.

Graham said he didn’t want to do it until everyone could be there, which included Uncle Twitch, so that meant they would have to wait until he got off work. From there it was a short hop to the suggestion that they all pass the night at The Foundry.

Did she really want to be here? Adrienne had yet to decide, every decision borderline these days, it seemed, not necessarily to be trusted. Ulterior motives might be veined beneath their surfaces.

The Foundry was the same, always the same, claustrophobic and smoky and dank, thudding with enough force to twitter the stomach, and packed with Sarah’s tribes of discontent and disillusion. The wall screens dished up one silent, ghastly image after another; at the moment, one was flashing excerpts from what appeared to be an old precautionary film on industrial accidents. The camera zoomed blandly in on the hand of an ashen-faced blue-collar worker being treated at a first-aid station. One finger was flayed to the bone, as if it had been ground down in a pencil sharpener.

“I put in a special request for this tape tonight,” Graham was saying. “Twitch told them it was my birthday.”

“How many birthdays does that make this year?” Nina asked.

“Five. They never remember.”

“They would if they gave free drinks on your birthday,” said Erin.

Sarah leaned forward, elbows on the table, too far away for anything less than a shout. “Any significance to this particular tape?”

He slid back in his chair and watched, eyes either reverent or half-drunk, it was difficult to decide. How did he view this? More carnage, a twisted leg broken in at least three places, the bends agonizing to contemplate. The screen was the mirror of the soul? Maybe that was the key to Graham’s fascination.

“It makes me think,” he said. “I always wonder what the accidents sounded like. You know how bone conducts sound? I always wonder what sound these poor dumb fuckers heard that nobody else around them could hear.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what they heard the next day,” Erin said.

“What’s that?”

“Weeping insurance agents.”

Most of them laughed, a good mean chuckle at the expense of State Farm and Prudential, which suddenly struck Adrienne as a telling moment. They liked tragedy and misery because of the purely random element inherent in them. Suffering was a great equalizer, respecting no money or status. If they could never aspire to the success they saw flaunted around them, what perverse comfort it must be to see that success was no insulation from life’s cruelties.

This they’d understood long before she had.

Adrienne found her eyes returning over and over to Nina, who had undergone another of her metamorphoses. Gone were the red dye and scarves and flamboyant gypsy skirts. Her thick hair hung straighter now, black, and she wore a flowing sari draped about her chunky body. A tiny, jeweled bead glittered at the side of one pierced nostril. She looked like the world’s palest Hindu.

“How does she manage to pull this off?” Adrienne asked Sarah, discreetly, once Nina had gone to the bar. “She should look ridiculous but she doesn’t.”

Sarah beamed. “It’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? Don’t you think it must be that deep down she adopts something of whatever it is she takes on? She never seems to be playing a role.”

“A serial multiple personality.”

Sarah frowned, cocking her head. “That’s a bit severe —”

“I’m joking.”

When Nina returned with drinks, she toasted to celebrate resuming her creative endeavors with mutant children’s literature.

“I know what I was doing wrong with the first ones,” she said. “I really was writing for kids and trying to be as honest with them as I could be, and that’s why it never went anywhere.”

“Better the little brats learn the awful truth now, huh?” Graham perked up with a cockeyed laugh. “That’ll teach you the value of honesty.”

“Right, right!” Nina squeezed his arm, delighted. “See, he gets it! So what I decided I should do is write satirical children’s lit for adults who know better now.”

“I like this,” said Clay, laughing. It was the closest thing to enjoyment she had seen in him for too long. “You’ve already started one, haven’t you. I can tell.”

Nina’s head bobbed with excitement. “It’s a sadomasochistic fantasy on the high seas. The Slave Ship Lollipop .”

Even Adrienne laughed at the idea; and Sarah, well, forget it: Sarah was howling.

“You can publish a whole line,” Adrienne told her, inspired, or maybe it was the gin, “and call the series Crib Death .”

Definitely the gin, but maybe she had needed that for a while. Two parts gin to one part anxiety, then stir. Things did feel better now, looser, and it didn’t even seem so sad to think that Nina’s latest scheme was surely doomed to failure, like the rest. How undaunted she seemed, something noble in the way she flung herself headlong into new identities, new projects, without a trace of bitterness over the past. If only she could hang onto that. Seeing Clay more comfortable than he had been since Fort Collins made her wonder if being around Nina was actually therapeutic for him.