Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

The air conditioner gives a perfunctory hiccup.

Nicolette doesn’t pick up when I call her from the landline at work or when I route calls from various area codes via my computer. First try, it rings seven times then nothing. The other eight calls go straight to voice-mail. Of those eight, I leave three messages using different voices. One as me: “Nicolette, just calling to say hi, see if you want to reschedule, because, you know I get worried and I hope you didn’t not show the other day because something is wrong. Okay.” Stupid. Later, one as a gallery rep: “We’re really interested in talking to you, Ms. Bernhardt, very excited about your work. All of us here at Schmidt Wilson.” And one as her landlord: “You missed rent again, or did it get lost in the mail? Please call me to clear this up.”

I google Nicolette — on a thread some jerkwad posted an address for her, requesting she get an egging for stealing an idea of his, which I know absolutely is a lie. But he’s good for something: I write down the address in my notepad.

I realize all this sounds stalkerish, but what if she’s not merely avoiding me? I’m afraid her unanswered emails and calls from different people prove something far more sinister is going on. She’s avoiding everyone in the world? Even a potential solo show? I highly doubt that. Honestly, it would be great if she were avoiding only me. If she would call back thinking I was a gallery owner (in which case I’d hang up, satisfied she called at all), or even if she called to say, “West, leave me the hell alone or I’ll call the cops,” I would love that because it would mean she’s safe and here in the world where she’s supposed to be. But she’s not. See? She’s not. Because she’s gone.

The guys start throwing the Nerf ball over the cubicle walls, playing an increasingly complex game of H.O.R.S.E. Off the door, off the monitor, into the waste bin.

I google “1950s Nicolette artist.” Someone named Nicolette, who goes by just her first name, does pop up. But the record is spotty — it’s as if she were only there for a few months or a year. There are reviews and shows for a brief period — then nothing. Just like now.

The ball bounces off Fox’s door, off the cubicle wall, into the waste bin.

“You’re up!” Orange-Socks Dave says to me, juggling the ball.

I spin around to him in my chair. “I’m working.” When I spin back, my foot kicks my messenger bag and out flops Nicolette’s old copy of A Brief History of Time . Of course I pick it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if she left a clue in there.

“Come on. You’re not really working. What are you doing?” The way Orange-Socks Dave is pressuring me, it sounds like a test. Mr. Fox’s test, to see if I’ll screw around like they will. And hence lose my job. Or someone’s test, to sidetrack me from finding Nicolette.

“I’m working,” I say again. He makes as if to throw the ball at me but doesn’t.

Chapter ten, Wormholes and Time Travel , only takes me a couple minutes to read because that’s where most of the pages are ripped out. Hawking is smarter than I am but there are things he doesn’t even know he’s teaching. For instance: if there are societal laws and people who break those laws, it only follows that for the laws of the universe there may be atoms or even people who break those laws.

Let’s think about stars. We impose constellations on stars because of our perspective, when in fact they are so far away from each other, the connection is false — those stars aren’t even next to each other; they’re behind or in front, we can’t tell. We have no depth perception when viewing outer space. But we are very good at constructing patterns where none exist — especially patterns resembling ourselves: Orion, a monkey’s face on the surface of Mars, the Virgin Mary in a potato chip.

False pattern-making isn’t just spatial. Our word “time” is one way of denoting the linear movement through the events of the universe. One cannot experience two or more events simultaneously. But that doesn’t mean point A to point B is the only way to move. There are progressions more meaningful than that of second to second. But we must live as if time were linear.

To get at the truth of Nicolette, we must think like a scientist, employing formal logic and deductive reasoning.

PREMISE 1: NICOLETTE, THOUGH 26 YEARS OLD IN 2004, PAINTED “THE SUICIDE” IN THE LATE FIFTIES.

I know what you’re thinking: no way. And I can’t expect you to feel it the way I do. But stick with me for just a minute.

Where is Nicolette? I haven’t seen or talked to her in almost a year, except for texting the other day. At her big solo exhibition in Brooklyn this past winter, she never showed. I overheard the curator say they couldn’t get hold of her. And she didn’t come to the landmine house. And now I’ve called and sent her all variety of innocuous requests from a range of email addresses and phone numbers. No one knows where she is. Because she’s nowhere.

So and therefore:

PREMISE 2: NICOLETTE DISAPPEARS FOR LARGE BLOCKS OF TIME.

My cell vibrates — my mom.

Of course she would interrupt when I’m on the verge of discovery.

I have a phone voice for my mom, another for my girlfriends (real or hypothetical), another for the guys at work. I take the phone out into the hall.

“Honey, how are you, are you taking your meds…no, that’s not why I called, don’t get upset, I know you’re smart…yes, you are not stupid, you haven’t called in weeks, honey, honey, listen, your sister, listen, I need you to come home.”

I haven’t been home since before I was sick.

“Not sure that’s a good idea, Mom.”

She says it’s a great idea and that she has a surprise for me and not to come on one of her “mall days,” by which she means don’t come when she’s busy yelling at rich ladies in fur. “You can find a cheap last-minute flight. And don’t miss your plane.” That’s her attempt at a joke about when she missed her plane the one time she was supposed to visit me, which was when I got out of the hospital for the second time last year. She never rebooked. She’s always been afraid to fly. “What else? Are you seeing anyone?”

“How’s Dad?” I ask. “You talked to him lately?”

She answers by telling me about Cinder, her oldest foster cat. “She’s so sick, I don’t know what to do. Diarrhea all over the house.” When she starts crying I hang up, pretending the connection is bad. Cinder’s been with her a long time. But she can’t cry like that for every cat. She’s had at least fifty over the years. And anyway, Cinder might be okay.

But maybe she was helping me get on track with Nicolette, asking if I was seeing anyone. Maybe I’m on the right track. I go back to my desk. I can’t find Nicolette just by thinking hard, which is how it used to feel. She could be anywhere. Maybe she’s in India. Or Israel or Home Depot. If I’m right, clap twice. I try to think straight into her mind. Maybe she joined a band of Luddites in the desert and stopped using language. Maybe she made it into the space program and now she’s on the moon. But that can’t be right. The truth is that I’ve looked everywhere. But not every when .

Off the computer, off West’s head, into the wastebasket.

Smack in the face. The ball falls to the floor, not the bin. Dave, in his terrorist-threat-o-meter orange socks, starts laughing. “You in or not?” he asks me.

I don’t answer. I miss the time when Dave’s socks were yellow. But is that time gone or simply stuck in the blind spot of my brain?

The laws of the universe are indifferent to the direction of time. Because we’re unable to measure the universe completely at any given point, and are therefore unable to perceive everything at once, it seems as if time moves in one direction. But that’s as silly as saying space moves in one direction. The math clearly shows time as a continuum. Time doesn’t move at all. It just is; we’re the ones moving through it.