Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“Walk,” John Joel snorted.

They got off at the third floor and started looking around. John Joel could tell that Parker was really interested in the show when he went to look at a group of people who weren’t even naked. Parker stood and stared so long that John Joel wandered off and read what was written about the scene Parker was looking at on the wall:

Though the figures are cast from friends,

by adding color to them, I touched

on terror, hallucination, nightmare.

He stood beside Parker and looked. The most interesting figure was the one that was all blue. By a process of elimination — because he was sure that that was Antony and Cleopatra sprawled on the floor, and because he could recognize Catwoman and Superman and Pussy Galore — the one he liked had to be Bottom.

“Come on,” he finally said to Parker.

“How much does he get paid for doing this?” Parker said.

“He’s a famous artist, so he’s got to be rich. I don’t know.”

They looked at other pieces of sculpture: a woman on a subway car, with something rigged up so that the lights of another subway car seemed to be passing the window. A person behind a counter. Someone seen through a window, watching television. Then they got to the good stuff: a man and a woman sprawled on a brass bed, with an old mattress beneath them, the man’s penis half erect, the sheets a mess. Parker stared. He crossed the gallery and looked at the other bed scene, a blue woman sitting on the side of the bed and a man asleep. The beds both looked very uncomfortable. The lighting was odd. He stared for a while longer, then looked for John Joel.

John Joel was looking at the sculpture that Nick had stared at for so long the week before. There was a girl emerging through tile — tile like the tile that was in their shower at home, but she was breaking through it, her left breast showing, her left leg and pubic hair, some monster of the shower, with eyes that you couldn’t really look into because they were looking down, just indentations, or because of the way the light was. To the side of the woman breaking through the tiles were four other women, or rather fragments of women’s bodies. John Joel was thinking about Mary, and how much he would like to be able to push her from behind so that she would go through a wall like Superman, though hopefully with more pain. The woman breaking through the tile didn’t look upset, though. John Joel couldn’t imagine why she was doing what she was doing, and thought maybe she couldn’t, either.

“Nick says the guy who does these stands around his friends’ bedrooms and when they’re asleep, he does this.” John, Joel was pointing to the figures on the bed, and Parker, beside him, was staring at them.

“Creepy,” Parker said.

“I bet he gets a hundred thousand for that,” John Joel said.

“What does he do? He puts plaster on his friends, like Gold-finger, or something?”

“I don’t know. Nick said he watched them.”

“Who’d go to sleep with somebody watching them? And if he’s such a rich artist, how come he knows people who’ve got such lousy mattresses? They look like rafts with the air going out of them. You know the way a raft curls up before it flattens out?”

“You’re the one who wanted to come.”

“Hey. You mentioned it. I didn’t even know there was a show.”

“You wanted to come, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say the stuff was bad. I just said the guy who did it must be a weirdo.”

“You want to look at other stuff?”

“Nah. What about an éclair?”

“There’s food downstairs, but I don’t think they have stuff like éclairs.”

“Let’s get the train. My feet are starting to hurt. Too bad I didn’t see this thing this morning. It might have given me something to talk to my shrink about. I could have said it was something I was doing this summer. The shrink always wants me to do things. Shrink sits around behind his desk all day, and I should be out running around so I can report on it.”

“What do you go to a shrink for, anyway?”

“Same reason you’re getting braces. My parents made me.”

“What did they make you for?”

“Because they’ve all gone to shrinks. Who knows.”

“Maybe you’re really sick, Parker.”

“Sure. Look at me. I’m sick. I’m hot and hungry, that’s all.”

“I’ve only got ten bucks left.”

“Ten bucks? I thought you had twenty.”

“No. Ten.”

“For the train and everything?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve still got enough for éclairs,” Parker said.

They took the elevator downstairs and went to the counter and got the package. “Ugly bug,” Parker said, in falsetto, when he took the package, pretending to be staring at the picture of the woman inside through the wrapping. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” he chanted in a high squeak.

They walked up to Park Avenue and got a cab. Parker sat on the jump seat and smoked a cigarette, facing John Joel. “I wonder if it’s worth anything. Some of those old pictures are. We could sell it and I’d say I lost it. She’s always yelling about something.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Sure. What am I supposed to do, take this thing home and have to look at it?”

“You don’t know where to sell a picture.” Parker thought it over. He didn’t.

“I wish I had money,” Parker said. “How can I get some money?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I just want it.”

“You don’t have any relatives?”

“I’ve got an uncle in Maine who’s an alcoholic. He floats those little bottles of vanilla extract in the toilet tank. He’s real crazy. He and his wife are poor. They’re not going to give me any money.”

“That’s the only relative you’ve got?”

“A cousin I never see in Greenwich.”

“You don’t even have other kids in your family. You’re lucky.”

“If I had them, I’d get rid of them.”

“Sure. Drown them like the kittens.”

“My mother stopped me. I would have drowned them.”

“You wouldn’t have. You were just waiting for her to stop you.”

“Old alley cat. Wasn’t even ours.”

“You liked them,” John Joel said. “Did I tell you about how our dog got hit by a car? It was sort of my mother’s dog. It ran out into the street and smoosh! It was all over the road. She talks about it all the time. ‘My dog, my dog, my dog.’ ”

“I can see liking a dog. Not an old alley cat.”

“So why’d you try to kill all the kittens?”

“My mother wanted me to. Then she changed her mind.”

“She changed her mind because she was just joking, and you freaked her out.”

“Lay off,” Parker said. “I’m not a sissy like you. I’ll do things. You think I’m the only person that ever thought to get rid of kittens?”

“I’m not a sissy,” John Joel said.

“Oh yeah? You let your sister do anything she wants to you.”

“Come off it.”

“You do.” Parker threw the package onto the seat of the cab. “Tear it up.”

“For what? What would that prove?”

“That you’d do something. Go ahead and do it. Or did you think she was pretty?”

“Yeah. She was real pretty. She was your type, Parker.”

“So get rid of her,” Parker said.

“Yeah. Then you’ll tell your mother I ripped it up.”

“I’m not taking it home. Are you going to rip it, or am I?”

“Lexington Avenue okay?” the cab driver said.

“Okay,” John Joel said.

“Go ahead,” Parker said.

“Leave it in the cab if you don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

“You’re afraid to do it.”

“You’re afraid. So you’re trying to put it on me.” John Joel paid the cab driver. They got out and walked into Grand Central.