thinking he should do something. There are plenty of things for him to do.
A moment later, Uta’s there.
“Peter, what’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
Tell her. Tell somebody.
He says, “I seem to have fallen in love with my wife’s little brother.”
Uta has had a lifetime’s worth of practice in the art of appearing unsurprised. “That kid?” she says.
“How pathetic is that?” he says. “How stupid and sad and pathetic.”
She cocks her head, looks at him as if he had been suddenly obscured by smoke. “You’re telling me that you’re gay?”
A brief, swooping return to Carole Potter’s lawn, the moment Peter said to Mizzy, “So, you’re gay.” Yes and then again no. Would that it were that simple.
He says to Uta, “I don’t know. I mean, how could I love another guy and not be gay?”
“Easy,” says Uta.
She settles her weight onto one hip, adjusts her glasses. Time to begin class.
She says, “You want to tell me about it?”
“You want to hear about it?”
“Of course I do.”
Okay, then. Go.
“Nothing happened. One kiss.”
“A kiss is something.”
Amen, sister.
“To be perfectly honest, I think I fell in love with… I don’t know if I can say this with a straight face. Beauty itself. I mean, as manifested in this boy.”
“You’ve always been in love with beauty itself. You’re funny that way.”
“I am. Funny. That way.”
“And you know, Peter…”
Her accent, her beloved Uta-esque heavy never-ceasing accent, seems to have grown if anything heavier with the gravity of the moment.
“…you know, it would have been simpler for you to fall in love with some young girl. Poor fuck, you never take the simple way out.”
“Do you think I want out of something?”
“Don’t you?”
“I love Rebecca.”
“That’s not the point.”
“And what would you say the point is?”
She pauses, readjusts those glasses.
“Who was it who said, the worst thing you can imagine is probably what’s already happening? Shrink phrase. Not untrue, though.”
“You ready for the punch line?” Peter says.
“I’m always ready for a punch line.”
“He was just fucking with me.”
“Sure he was. He’s a kid, right?”
“It gets better.”
“I’m listening.”
“He blackmailed me.”
“That’s very nineteenth century,” she says.
“I found out he was using drugs again, and he seduced me so I wouldn’t tell Rebecca.”
“Wow. That’s ballsy.”
Is there an undercurrent of admiration in her voice?
Whether there is or not, Peter understands: he, Peter, is a comic character. How had it happened that he’d imagined, even briefly, otherwise? He’s the capering fool on whom others play tricks. He’s an easy mark, all vanity and pomade.
Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.
“I’m a fool,” he says.
“You are,” she answers.
Uta comes around to his side of the desk, puts an arm over his shoulders. Just an arm, perched lightly, but still, it’s something for Uta. She is not a hugger.
“And you’re not the first fool for love,” she says.
Thank you, Uta. Thank you, friend. But it won’t do, will it? I have, it seems, gone beyond consolation, there’s not much for me in the image of myself, however true, as another sad citizen doing the little dance.
It might be better if I could howl and weep with you. Can’t, though, even if I wanted to, even if I thought you could bear the spectacle. I’m dry inside. There’s a ball of hair and tar lodged in my belly.
“No,” he says. “I’m not.” Because really, what else can he say?
The rest of the day passes, somehow. By a quarter past nine, the show’s been hung. Tyler, Branch, and Carl have gone home. Peter stands in the middle of the gallery with Uta and Victoria.
“It’s good,” Uta says. “It’s a good show.”
Arrayed around them on the gallery’s walls and floors are five of Victoria’s superheroes: the black man in the overcoat; a middle-aged woman searching her purse for change to feed a parking meter; a sharp-faced, portly young woman emerging from a bakery with a little white bag in her hand (her lunch bagel, no doubt); a ratty- looking Asian kid, twelve or so, whizzing along on a skateboard; and a Hispanic girl pushing a double stroller in which both of her twins are bawling mightily. The videos play simultaneously as the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth booms over and over from three discreet black speakers. The worshipful merchandise is on the shelves: the T- shirts, the action figures, the lunch boxes, and the Halloween costumes.
“It’s okay, right?” Victoria asks.
“It’s more than okay,” Peter tells her, though that’s what he’d say to any artist.
Time to turn it all off, douse the lights and go home. The curators are coming tomorrow, along with a few of the gallery’s more prominent clients. The story in
Try to care about it. Do your best to act as if it matters.
What do you do when you’re no longer the hero of your own story?
You shut down for the night and go home to your wife, right? You have a martini, order dinner. You read or watch television.
You are Brueghel’s tiny Icarus, drowning unnoticed in a corner of a vast canvas on which men till fields and tend sheep.
Uta says, “Why don’t we get some dinner someplace?”
Hm. Can’t, really. Not tonight. Can’t sit in a restaurant and talk the talk, not even with the sweet and self- effacing Victoria Hwang.
He says, “Why don’t you two go?” To Victoria he adds, “I’ve been a little sickish lately, and I have to be very brilliant tomorrow with all your clamoring fans.”
How can she balk at that?
Uta gives him the teacherly look. Should he be excused?
She says, “We can just get something quick and sleazy, you know.”
“
