Don Lee - The Collective

“I guess so.”

He flipped a can of mousse up into the air and deftly caught it nozzle-down, oozed out a dollop onto his comb, and threaded it through my hair. “So I bet a soothing massage would be just the ticket, right? I’m trying to build word of mouth, you know, so how about I give you a massage on the house?”

“I don’t really need a massage.”

“No? You sure? You seem tense , mate. Think about it. On the house. I converted the old office in back for privacy. I’m telling you, the girl’s got some talent, mate.”

In his attic room, Joshua plunked on a geomungo , a six-stringed zither usually reserved for Korean folk songs, that he had been teaching himself how to play. He was trying to accompany Hendrix’s “Little Wing” with the instrument — not very successfully.

“It was your idea, wasn’t it?” I said to him.

“What? What’d I do now?”

“The ‘massages’ at Pink Whistle.”

“I don’t want to take all the credit, but I might’ve mentioned to Jimmy that they could be a boon to his business.” He was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and a traditional Korean gat , a black, wide-brimmed, cylindrical hat made of horsehair. “What, you didn’t like the girl?”

“You guys think this is a lark, a game,” I said, “but it could land Jimmy in jail. You, too, if you’re getting a cut of the action.”

Joshua put Hendrix on pause. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I looked at the piles of books on the floor, the strewn clothes and CDs, the pig piñata dangling from the ceiling and the collection of swine postcards on the bulletin board. “You and your fucking prostitutes.”

“You think she’s a prostitute?”

“Obviously she is.”

“Is it because she’s Thai or because she’s a masseuse that makes you assume that?” he asked. “Because they’re equally dim-witted, loathsome stereotypes.”

“Come on, you’re actually going to deny it?”

“She’s a licensed massage therapist. She’s a health professional. Just because she’s a masseuse and/or from Thailand does not make her a sex worker.”

“Is she in the country legally?”

“She must be if she got licensed.”

“How old is she?” I said. “She can’t be more than sixteen.”

“Nineteen. She’s nineteen.”

“That’s been verified?”

“What are you asking me for? I don’t have a stake in this. But yeah, Jimmy says he checked it out.”

“Like he’s such a trustworthy source.”

“What is your problem?” Joshua said. “I’m telling you, it’s on the up and up. Don’t worry about it. What’s it got to do with you, anyway?”

As it happened, it would have a lot to do with me, for when I got back from another seminar in New York several weeks later, I walked into the second-floor bathroom of the Walker Street house and barged in not on Jessica, but on the young Thai girl. She wasn’t naked, at least, but she was in a somewhat compromising position, sitting on the toilet with her skirt and underwear bunched at her ankles. “ Pai hai pon!” she screamed at me, hunching over.

“Oh,” Joshua said. “She got kicked out of the place she was living in, and Jimmy asked if she could sack out on the couch here for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“I don’t know, a few days, I guess.”

“Why can’t she just stay with Jimmy?” I asked, although I assumed that he’d been sleeping with the girl all along and it’d gotten messy somehow.

“Jimmy’s got a new girlfriend,” Joshua told me.

“Who? Not anyone from the collective.” After Marietta Liu and Danielle Awano, after his shenanigans at Pink Whistle with his staff and clients, Jimmy was persona non grata with the 3AC women.

“Naw, some random chick he met at the Toad,” Joshua said. “Hey, where you been , man? You’re never around anymore. You’ve disappeared on me. First it was Mirielle, now these business trips.”

“You didn’t think to run this by me first?”

“What?”

“The girl staying here.”

Joshua cocked his head to the side. “I know we operate like this is a co-op, but it’s not really a co-op, is it?”

“You’re fucking her, aren’t you?” I said.

“No way. I have some scruples. I don’t partake in jailbait.”

“I thought you said she’s nineteen.”

“She is!” Joshua said. “What is this? The only times I see you, you just rag on me.”

I was short-tempered with nearly everyone those days, overworked and stressed out and more than a little depressed. Yet Joshua in particular nettled me. All of his antics and tirades and lectures and riffs had become tiresome. Everything I used to admire about him now seemed fatuous. He did nothing all day but attend to his whims. He needed to grow up.

“You swear this is aboveboard?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “You see, the thing is, I don’t think the girl likes me very much. In fact, I don’t think she likes men very much. She likes Jessica, though. She seems infatuated with her, actually. Keeps following her around like a newborn pup.”

“What’s she have to say about this?”

“Jessica? She’s fine with it. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t seem to care about anything anymore. Have you talked to her lately?”

Jessica was home less than I was. She had tacked on a fourth job, teaching a beginning painting class at Martinique College of Art as a last-minute replacement for the spring semester, hired on the recommendation of a former RISD professor. Two mornings a week, she would borrow Joshua’s Peugeot and drive up to Beverly to teach, then would rush back to town for her other jobs. The schedule was taking its toll. She was often sick, and she looked terrible — thin and wan.

“Is there any way you could back out of the class now?” I asked her. “The pay’s not really worth the commute, is it?”

“That’s not the point,” Jessica said. “I’m trying to ingratiate myself so maybe I’ll be able to teach there full-time someday or get a tenure-track job somewhere else. I can’t string along these part-time gigs forever. They’re killing me. I need to build up my CV.”

“How’s the installation coming along?”

“You had to ask, didn’t you?”

She had yet to start work on her one-woman show sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Council. The exhibit was scheduled to be shown on the second floor of the City Hall Annex, beginning on May 7, for three weeks. It was almost the end of March.

Nothing had gone right for her this winter. The Creiger-Dane and DNA galleries, after teasing Jessica repeatedly with promises to include her in group shows, passed in the end. She was turned down for every grant and fellowship she applied to. She was delinquent on her student loans. The IRS had nailed her for not paying self-employment tax on an independent contractor job three years ago in New York, and she now owed five hundred in back taxes and interest, plus an additional fifteen hundred in penalties. Her carpal tunnel was flaring up, and she was back to wearing wrist braces while she slept. She’d had a panic attack one day in Bread & Circus, and a shopper had called 911; a phalanx of emergency vehicles had converged on the grocery store, exacerbating the attack even further, and Jessica had to be hospitalized overnight. And, most devastating to her, more than I could have ever imagined, she had been undone, waylaid into dark submission, weeping in her room for days, when Esther had left her.