IN-BETWEENESS
Michael sat in the front room while a police officer talked to Emma in the hallway. Two officers in the kitchen nook behind him shared untoward details.
“A tape of her masturbating in the midget’s VCR…”
The painter’s febrile brain swelled inside his skull. He could not put a single fact to what he saw during the night, yet the image of a woman pleasuring herself was burned indelibly in his memory. The idea Emma was in such a film was bad enough, but the notion she made it for Jacques was unbearable. On happening upon him at the Spyglass House the night before, the performance artist left the impression there was more to his estranged acquaintance with the photographer than met the eye.
A police officer peeked at the message tally blinking on the phone machine, and knowing Michael was eavesdropping, kept his reply to a fellow officer serviceably brief. “Leave it for the inspector.”
Emma’s weary eyes locked on her houseguest once the officer interrogating her stepped away. Swallowing his pride, he moved toward her in a tortured piece of acting. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The young woman held out her hand in a weak way. He took her fingers to feel their pained attitude tremble down into his palm. Her head found his shoulder, although the awkward embrace made her resemble a board threatening splinters. At that second, another car pulled up outside. It was Seth Bowles. Michael dropped his arms to release her, in relief. It was more than the dejected suitor could endure to see the professor in the apartment. A female officer took Emma aside when another policeman walked up.
“What’s your connection, here?” he asked the new arrival.
Seth puffed up. “I’m a good friend.”
The officer turned to Michael. “You’re free to go.”
It was the painter’s opportunity to skip out of the house, though the professor barred his way.
“It must be terrible for her,” the older man ventured.
Michael nodded, not wanting to speak for fear any embellishment would involve more entangling questions.
Seth was inquisitive. “Emma tells me you’re a painter. Where did you do your MFA?”
It was an odd topic at such a moment, but he answered, “Indiana University.”
“A highly ranked program, then?”
Michael, glancing over at the professor’s picture on the bulletin board, responded to the insincere approval of his school choice. “The only thing that matters is having something to say.”
“Do you exhibit anywhere?” the rival continued. “Do you exhibit in Chicago?”
“Did.”
“Did?” he echoed. “Did you run out of things to say?”
Michael was surprised by the boyish show of turf, but was otherwise unscathed by the retort. Even though he was generally timid around authority figures, he was not impressed by any of them. With few exceptions, he found the exemplars of culture and academe to be only accidentally insightful, and just as likely to bury a truth as to trip over one. Too frequently they were middlebrows who trafficked in fashionable, off-the-shelf opinions; and it galled Michael such men were routinely patted on the back and looked up to by kingmakers and sycophants only marginally more mundane than themselves.
A policeman interrupted. “Whoever’s car that is at the bottom of the driveway needs to move it.”
Seth stepped outside to comply with the request, and wanting to spare himself further humiliation, Michael aimed in the same direction; Emma’s pitiful voice caught him at the door.
“Are you leaving?”
He cobbled together a reply. “I feel I need to.”
There was a pause on her end—a disappointed pause. “If you must.”
“It’s for the best.” His proclamation felt more like a dispassionate assessment of the situation than a grudging sacrifice of his wishes.
Her response was haggard. “This obsession thing with Jacques. It’s more than I can deal with.”
“What Jacques did—it was about him. Not you.”
Emma sighed. “Why is it all the wrong men fall in love with me?”
The painter assumed he was just another wrong man, and resented the unsolicited rejection. “I have to be going.”
Seth’s reappearance at the door was enough to send him hobbling down the steps outside. He slowed on spotting Harrod Pincher on the sidewalk below; the accompanying officers parted like the sea on seeing him approach.
The detective stood erect in a greeting. “Ah! Mr. Louden-West! You’ve been in our tiny hamlet but three days and I’ve seen you as many times.” Affecting a pose, his gaze rose to where the professor was still visible in the doorway above. “Clinging too long to youth is a sin, wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
Michael felt the pointy end of this remark, too. “What business is it of yours?” he grunted.
“No business of mine,” Pincher replied. “Only unfinished business of yours.”
The man was in no humor to spar with the detective, so turned huffing down the block.
A smirking fellow with a microphone came running up from an open van across the street. “What does the death of the midget have to do with the woman in this house?”
“No comment.”
He persisted. “The police say they found scads of sex tapes in his trailer. Are you one of the guys on the videos?”
“What?”
The reporter explained, “I’ve heard she’s had a couple of hundred men.” He crowed, glaring at a cameraman. “Are you guys getting this on tape?”
Michael, dropping into his Saturn, bristled. “No comment!”
He was halfway down the block before realizing the news van was pacing him.
Proceeding
onto Broadway, an opportune crowd of protesters bustled outside the
doors of Bean and Nothingness. They were the crunchy granola-type
massing with placards protesting the use of dairy products inside the
establishment. One sign read, “Stop the Enslavement of Cows”;
another, “Drink Soy”. They were having little effect at changing
minds; the coffeehouse was in the middle of a certifiable rush. The
patron, abandoning his car, took advantage of the confusion to meld into
the throng. He gravitated inside to a window seat and watched the news
van circle the block a couple of times before it gave up. In the interval
he glanced over at a newspaper rack to read a below-the-fold headline
of the day’s paper:
Elderly man killed by a lightning strike near Nadir Meadows Road.
There was no end to the farcical nightmare.
Reflex put Michael queuing up for coffee, though he was late remembering Erica was covering Emma’s shift.
The barista spoke over clanging mugs. “How’s Emma?”
“Okay.”
“Did the police kick you out?”
“No.”
“So you left her to the wolves?”
“Seth is with her,” he mumbled.
“Seth?”
(Michael forgot about the three-way nature of the relationship.)
“You should take some coffee back to her,” she insisted.
Erica clearly did not want Emma to be alone with Seth, and was attempting to employ Michael as a wedge. The painter resented the way he was being used as a fourth leg on a table he shared no part in. Before she commenced the second drink, he grunted, “I’m not going back.”
Erica noted the terseness in his tone. “Are you so busy today?”
He did not answer when any answer would have easily ended the conversation.
She took the non-reply the way he intended. “What kind of person bails on a friend in her hour of need?”
He threw it back without thinking. “More of a friend to her than you.”
Erica was pulled up short by the curt, cryptic remark. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“I saw the professor and you at the party.”
Squinting out from under layers of mascara, she thought to ask, “What makes you think Emma and I are such good friends, anyway?”
He shared in her bafflement. “You came to lunch with us.”
The girl almost laughed. “I did that as a favor. She was trying to set me up with you.”
Michael could not hide his disapproval of the notion.
Erica circled her wagons, too. “You’re not my type, either.”
He faded from the counter without his drink, careening in the direction of the door and crowded sidewalk.
Chapter Eighteen. Section Two/ Back/ Contents Page
Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.