Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Life is a hornets’ nest. If I don’t poke it, it won’t sting me.

But now I’ve got hornets everywhere. Not literally, which is unfortunate because a literal hornets’ nest in my studio could be my get out of jail free card. I would kill for anything even remotely hornet-adjacent right now.

When I agreed to this fiasco, Open Studios was shrouded in the mists of an unimaginable future, five whole months away. Now it’s here, and the sunlight that slants through my north-facing windows throws into brutal relief every reason I should not allow the general public into my space: bits of colored tin on every surface, gouges in the wood table where I eat my sad little solo meals, clothing slouched around an overflowing hamper, holes in the wall where I neglected to spackle after taking nails out. 

“Breakfast?” Jessie makes it sound like a question, but it’s a command. I put two breakfast bars in the toaster and push the knob down.

I’m not a painter, but I can’t (won’t) show the mixed media pieces I’ve built compulsively for the last six years, so Jessie’s helping me hang paintings. And by “helping me hang,” I mean she’s hammering nails into the wall and putting canvases up. I’m pushing the toaster knob. 

“Pop-Tarts are not food!” Hazel’s in my sleeping loft rifling through my dresser. I think my black shift is arty and vaguely French, but Hazel says it makes me look like a burlap sack.

“They’re not Pop-Tarts.” I consult the box. “They’re Fruitopia Bars. From the health food store. They’re health food.”

“Oh, Mia.” Hazel sighs theatrically and steps to the edge of the loft, holding a pair of pants. “How about these?”

“No,” Jessie says. “Those make her look like Charlie Chaplin.”

“More like Billie Eilish.” Which is fresh, right? 

The toaster pops. “Who wants a Fruitopia Bar?” 

No one but me, I guess. I take a bite. It’s delicious.

“Remind me why you’re doing Open Studios?” Jessie asks.

“Because Axiom told me to.”

“Do you do everything Axiom says?” 

“Of course.” Is that even a question? Axiom is an important sculptor, the only successful artist at Potrero Studios. Mia the Mouse does not say no to Axiom.

Hazel descends and hands me an armful of black fabric. “These were the best I could find.” 

It’s a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved tunic that barely covers my ass. “No.” 

“Just try it, Mia,” Jessie says, sounding tired of me. I don’t blame her. I’m annoying.

Jessie is my girl guide, a salty mountain of don’t-mess-with-me who is somehow, magically, my friend, even though I constantly mess with her.

“It’s okay not to look like a waif from a silent movie,” Hazel says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with waifs. I’m pro-waif.”

I change and stand in front of the big mirror by the door. “I look like a mime.” I tug at the hem of the tunic, trying to cover a potentially terminal case of camel toe.

 “We just need to zhuzh it up.” Jessie digs in my workbench and comes back with a red cord, which she ties around my waist. 

“Now I look like a gift for a Goth.” Note to self: trademark Gifts for Goths. “I need another ribbon to cover this.” I point to the camel toe. Jessie flips me off.

Hazel grabs my hands. “Take a deep breath.” She breathes in, puffing out her chest. I breathe in and hold it, returning her intense stare. “Now breathe out slowly, slowly.” Hazel is always trying to improve herself, and she’s ever hopeful she can fix me, too. Ha! “Mia, be here now. Can you do that?”

I’d rather be literally anywhere else. “Sure.” My leg jiggles out of control, a nervous tic, and I knee her in the groin. She yelps and jumps back. “Sorry. Sorry!”

Jessie’s phone buzzes and she dashes out and returns with a small ball of effervescent joy. “I asked Greg to drop her here. We have a playdate at 11:30. Hope that’s okay.”

It’s more than okay. I bend down as Jessie’s daughter throws herself into a hug. “Kayla-Roo!”

“Mi-Mi-Mia!” Kayla burrows into my shoulder, a squirming jumble of yellow and pink, smelling like chocolate milk and cinnamon. I breathe her in. “Are you okay?” she asks, her kid radar unerring.

“Better now.”

“Of course,” she says with more gravitas than a five-year-old should be allowed. “Open Studios will be awesome because I’m here.”

Over the next hour, with all four of us working, the rest of the paintings get hung, cookies get put out for guests, the stray clothes disappear, and Kayla leads us in a K-Pop conga line (my favorite part of the morning). 

At 11:10 am, I prop the door wide, hiding the “Studio 3” in cracked, gold peel-N-stick lettering and the shadows underneath where I can’t completely expunge “Mia Lieberman, Multimedia Artist.”

Jessie and Kayla bump me from behind. “Excuse me,” Kayla says. I step to block her and she runs into my backside, giggling.

“We have to go. Kayla’s playdate.”

Oh, right. “Come back later?”

Jessie shrugs. “Busy day. No promises.”

At least Hazel — oh no, she’s putting on her coat. “Where are you going?”

“Naked meditation in Dolores Park.”

How am I still thrown by Hazel’s choice of self-improvement activities? “Naked — wait. Won’t you get arrested for public indecency?”

“It’s not indecent. It’s transcendent.” She gives me namaste, followed by a tight squeeze that’s over far too quickly. “Love you.” 

After Hazel leaves, the emptiness feels immense. I prop myself on an uncomfortably high metal stool (every art studio must have one, so I do, but why?) and await my fate with all the joy of a figure in a Bosch painting screaming from the seventh rung of hell.

#

Open Studios is blessedly uneventful for 49 minutes. I’m almost bored enough to wish for a visitor. 

My wish is granted when a guy about my age, so 29, give or take, walks in. 

This is it. My first chance to humiliate myself. Oh boy.

Even at midday, the winter sun casts weird shadows in my space, so my visitor is all perpendicular angles and straight lines, very minimalist, but also built, the outlines of his muscles visible under his tight jeans and the long-sleeved tee stretched over his broad shoulders. He carries himself with a fluid grace I rarely see in men. He strikes me as a dancer, though none of the dancers I know could afford the designer jeans and fancy sneakers he wears.

“Hello,” he says, looking directly at me. His voice is a rich tenor. I could listen to that voice for hours. Days. Years.

I’m smitten.

“Hello,” I croak back, trying (and failing) to play it cool.

He turns to examine my paintings and I examine him. He’s tall and (this is what slays me) has long bangs that swoop across square-framed black glasses, a cross between Clark Kent and a manga hero. He’s too cool to smile but, even turned down slightly at the corners, his lips look eminently kissable. 

I want him. The thought startles me. I don’t date or even hook up. Of course, there are the idle crushes, the erotic fantasies, but no feels for an actual human standing five feet from me. 

I slide down from my stool and stand too close to him to be socially appropriate. He smells like eucalyptus with a whiff of something else. Cleaning products? Maybe he works as a janitor. 

A hot, rich janitor. 

“What do you think?” I ask him.

“Of you or the art?” His eyes are intense, deep brown irises blazing through the distortion of corrective lenses. I can’t look away.

“Of the paintings.” And by paintings, I mean me.

He frowns, and there’s the cutest little furrow between his eyebrows. I reach up to trace it with my finger but stop just in time. 

“I think the artist is more interesting than the art.” He looks at my lips as he says it and my sad little mouse heart races so fast I think it might spin out of my chest. I don’t know what’s happening but I’m here for it.

“Mee-ah!”

There is no good time for Samira Abdo to come to my studio, but this is the absolute worst. The contender for Most Kissable Lips in San Francisco whips his head toward the door and the moment is lost. I manage to arrange my face into a smile by the time a familiar head of honey brown curls bounces through the door. Barely.

“Samira!” Even without the unfortunate timing, I wouldn’t be happy to see Samira, not because she’s not a nice person (she’s the nicest) but because she's everything I’m not: outgoing, gorgeous, a successful working artist. She’s the only member of my MFA cohort who kept in touch after I cratered out of the program, and I wish she wouldn’t. 

Samira has a way of looking at you when you talk like she really sees you and her eyes sparkle when her perfect, heart-shaped mouth curves into a smile. She's the most likable person I’ve ever met, and she never stops reaching out, even though I don’t reciprocate. 

I hate her.

She dances over to hug me as if we’re best friends and she smells like honey and fresh oranges, because of course she does. I’m surprised a flock of bluebirds doesn’t flutter around her head.

Samira eyes my paintings, walking from one to another and I get a sinking feeling in my chest.

“These are…nice.” She damns me with faint praise. “But is this all you’re showing? Where is your other work, your constructions?”

“I don’t do those anymore,” I lie.

Samira turns to me, alarmed. “Why not?”

“You know why not.” My dentist has been on me about grinding my teeth. She should pay my next dental bill.

I see memory flood her face. She opens her mouth, but before she can speak, Dreamy Guy says, “Do you mean these?”

He’s opened the top drawer of an ancient dresser I use to store art supplies. I stashed my other work in there, the pieces I don’t show anyone, not even Hazel and Jessie. He and Samira peer in. I wish I could melt through the paint-splattered floorboards into the San Francisco sewer system. Being carried to the ocean on a river of effluent would be better than this.

Samira picks one up. “Do you mind?”

Of course I mind, but I don’t stop her. 

It’s a piece I just finished, a ragged little Franken-dollhouse room made of colored tin and wire. Inside, tiny tin figures eat and dream. A thought bubble hanging over one says, “I’m never getting out of here.” 

The only reason I still make these pieces is I can’t stop. As art, they’re worthless. Someday, they’ll all go into the dumpster, but, for now, I guess they’re a kind of therapy. And I need a lot of therapy. Just ask Hazel.

Samira turns the piece around with delicate, caramel-skinned fingers. “It’s amazing, Mia. Why aren’t you showing this?”

I’m sweating under my tunic, even though it’s freezing because my studio has 20-foot ceilings and a wall of windows that make it impossible to heat unless I want to hand my entire paycheck to PG&E. “It’s not for sale,” I say. I take the piece from her roughly and shove it into the dresser. Something snaps, but I close the drawer before any of us can see what it is. I’ll deal with that later. Right now, I wish they would both leave. 

“I agree with Samira. It’s your best work,” Dreamy Guy says.

“Well, you don’t know me, and a lot of people don’t agree, including me,” I say, dying a little inside. 

My declaration is followed by a moment of supreme awkwardness when no one moves or knows what to say. Then Samira holds out a hand to Dreamy Guy. “Samira Abdo. And this is Mia Lieberman.” 

“Justin Wu. Nice to meet you.” He smiles politely as he shakes Samira’s hand, but when he turns to me, he looks like he’s calculating how much he could get for my organs and sizing me for a body bag. 

Which makes me think, Dismemberment is cheaper — you can use trash bags.

Except I didn’t think that last bit. I have a bad habit of blurting my most random thoughts instead of keeping them tucked behind my teeth where they belong.

Justin drops my hand like it’s a hot potato. 

Samira looks bemused. This isn’t her first rodeo with my quirks. She probably thinks I have an unusual form of Tourette’s. Maybe I do.

“Too many true crime podcasts.” I babble, desperate to change the subject. “There’s a dance studio next door. You should check it out.” 

Justin’s body is angled toward the door, ready for escape, but when I mention Studio 4, his spine stiffens. He narrows his eyes, looking even more murderous than when he shook my hand. 

Jesus. He really might be a serial killer.

“Nice to meet you.” His tone makes it clear what he really means is You’re dead to me. 

Hopefully not literally. 

He stomps out of my studio without taking me prisoner and murdering me and, when I hear the lobby door click, I start to breathe again. 

“Well, Mia.” Oh yeah. Samira’s still here. “I think there’s a market for your constructions.” She hands me a card and I let it slip through my fingers onto the floor behind my back. “Please call me.”

The worst thing about Samira is that she genuinely wants me to call her. The absolute toad.

After she leaves, people drift in and out but none of them are gorgeous janitor/axe murderers, which is a relief and also oddly disappointing. It starts to rain toward the end of the afternoon, the drops a faint drumbeat on the metal roof. I like the sound of rain — God knows it’s rare enough these days — but it steals the light and leaves me feeling empty as Cindy Sherman’s boots. I count the minutes till I can close the door on this dismal day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 2
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share









"King of Pantsers"?




ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES








×
×
  • Create New...