Prototype

“That’s exactly what it is. You know what they are out there? I mean, think about them all, at the clubs, and on the streets. It’s tribal. They don’t formalize it, but it’s still a tribal society.” Sarah rolled onto her back, staring upward. “I miss the ceiling fan from home. That always feels so good now.” A shrug. “That’s all most everyone is these days, just a collection of isolated tribes, finding more and more reasons to be suspicious of each other. In primitive cultures there’s only room for one view, really, just to survive, but ours… hundreds, thousands maybe. And we’re not any different back home in Tempe. All our friends, just about, are just like us. You, me, them, we’re this little tribe of muff-divers.”

Adrienne frowned. “Don’t confine me like that, all right?”

“No, I guess I can’t, can I?” Sarah propped herself up on her elbow. “Because you can’t make the commitment. You’ve still got one foot on the other side of the fence.”

Her voice sounded hurt all of a sudden, and angry, and where was this coming from?

“And you tell me I have trouble making up my mind?”

“I —” Adrienne tried. Anything she could say would be wrong, but silence would be worse. “I never pretended to be something I wasn’t. It’s the way I am. My inclinations just didn’t fall exclusively one way or another.”

“Oh, that’s so analytical,” Sarah groaned. With her hair still in those braids, she looked feral and wounded. “You know, there are times you seem one step removed from your life.”

And it didn’t bear arguing about, for there was no right or wrong here. Each of them was what she was, and true to that; made differently, and perhaps only half-compatible, and it was that other half that could potentially bring so much pain. Pain over what one might long for, that the other could never be.

As quickly as she had launched into it, Sarah drew back out. With downcast eyes and creased forehead, she squirmed in closer to Adrienne’s side, radiant with body heat and sheer presence, one arm thrown across Adrienne’s shoulders, one leg draped across Adrienne’s knees. She might have no words left; her body would say all. That was the thing about arguing naked: There was nothing behind which to hide, only raw truth.

So Adrienne lay in her possessive embrace, even returned it, but felt alive with questions. What will happen to us? — this was the big one. How will we see each other in a year, or two, or five? It could work between us, always, but will our hormones let it?

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.

Twenty-Four

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