Diary

  Every so often the homeowner standing outside, she kicks the wall and shouts, “You want to tell me what you two are up to in there?”

  Today's weather is warm and sunny with a few scattered clouds and some homeowner called from Pleasant Beach to say she'd found her missing breakfast nook, and somebody had better come see right away. Misty called Angel Delaporte, and he met her when the ferry docked so they could drive together. He brings his camera and a bag full of lenses and film.

  Angel, you might remember, he lives in Ocean Park. Here's a hint: You sealed off his kitchen. He says the way you write your m's, with the first hump larger than the second, that proves you value your own opinion above public opinion. How you do your lowercase h's, with the last stroke cutting back underneath the hump, shows you're never willing to compromise. It's graphology, and it's a bona fide science, Angel says. After seeing these words in his missing kitchen, he asked to see some other houses.

  Just for the record, he says the way you make your lowercase g's and y's, with the bottom loop pulling to the left, that shows you're very attached to your mother.

  And Misty told him, he got that part right.

  Angel and her, they drove to Pleasant Beach, and a woman opened the front door. She looked at them, her head tilted back so her eyes looked down her nose, her chin pushed forward and her lips pressed together thin, with the muscle at each corner of her jaw, each masseter muscle clenched into a little fist, and she said, “Is Peter Wilmot too lazy to show his face here?”

  That little muscle from her lower lip to her chin, the mentalis, it was so tense her chin looked pitted with a million tiny dimples, and she said, “My husband hasn't stopped gargling since this morning.”

  The mentalis, the corrugator, all those little muscles of the face, those are the first things you learn in art school anatomy. After that, you can tell a fake smile because the risorius and platysma muscles pull the lower lip down and out, squaring it and exposing the lower teeth.

  Just for the record, knowing when people are only pretending to like you isn't such a great skill to have.

  In her kitchen, the yellow wallpaper peels back from a hole near the floor. The floor's yellow tile is covered in newspapers and white plaster dust. Next to the hole's a shopping bag bulging with scraps of busted plasterboard. Ribbons of torn yellow wallpaper curl out of the bag. Yellow dotted with little orange sunflowers.

  The woman stood next to the hole, her arms folded across her chest. She nodded at the hole and said, “It's right in there.”

  Steelworkers, Misty told her, they'll tie a branch to the highest peak of a new skyscraper or bridge to celebrate the fact that no one has died during construction. Or to bring prosperity to the new building. It's called “tree topping.” A quaint tradition.

  They're full of irrational superstitions, building contractors.

  Misty told the homeowner not to worry.

  Her corrugator muscle pulls her eyebrows together above her nose. Her levator labii superioris pulls her upper lip up into a sneer and flares her nostrils. Her depressor labii inferioris pulls her bottom lip down to show her lower teeth, and she says, “It's you who should be worried.”

  Inside the hole, the dark little room's lined on three sides with yellow built-in bench seats, sort of a restaurant booth with no table. It's what the homeowner calls a breakfast nook. The yellow is yellow vinyl and the walls above the benches are yellow wallpaper. Scrawled across all this is the black spray paint, and Angel moves her hand along the wall where it says:

  “. . . save our world by killing this army of invaders . . .”

  It's Peter's black spray paint, broken sentences and squiggles. Doodles. The paint loops across the framed art, the lace pillows, the yellow vinyl bench seats. On the floor are empty cans with Peter's black handprints, his spiraling fingerprints in paint, they're still clutching each can.

  The spray-painted words loop across the little framed pictures of flowers and birds. The black words trail over the little lace throw pillows. The words run around the room in every direction, across the tiled floor, over the ceiling.

  Angel says, “Give me your hand.” And he balls Misty's fingers together into a fist with just her index finger sticking out straight. He puts her fingertip against the black writing on the wall and makes her trace each word.

  His hand tight around hers, guiding her finger. The dark creep of sweat around the collar and under the arms of his white T-shirt. The wine on his breath, collecting against the side of Misty's neck. The way Angel's eyes stay on her while she keeps her eyes on the black painted words. This is how the whole room feels.

  Angel holds her finger against the wall, moving her touch along the painted words there, and he says, “Can you feel how your husband felt?”

  According to graphology, if you take your index finger and trace someone's handwriting, maybe you take a wooden spoon or chopstick and you just write on top of the written words, you can feel exactly how the writer felt at the time he wrote. You have to study the pressure and speed of the writing, pressing as hard as the writer pressed. Writing as fast as it seems the writer did. Angel says this is all similar to Method acting. What he calls Konstantin Stanislavski's method of physical actions.

  Handwriting analysis and Method acting, Angel says they both got popular at the same time. Stanislavski studied the work of Pavlov and his drooling dog and the work of neurophysiologist I. M. Sechenov. Before that, Edgar Allan Poe studied graphology. Everybody was trying to link the physical and the emotional. The body and the mind. The world and the imagination. This world and the next.

  Moving Misty's finger along the wall, he has her trace the words: “. . . the flood of you, with your bottomless hunger and noisy demands . . .”

  Whispering, Angel says, “If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.”

  Stanislavski, Sechenov, Poe, everybody was looking for some scientific method to produce miracles on demand, he says. An endless way to repeat the accidental. An assembly line to plan and manufacture the spontaneous.

  The mystical meets the Industrial Revolution.

  The way the rag smells after you polish your boots, that's how the whole room smells. The way the inside of a heavy belt smells. A catcher's mitt. A dog's collar. The faint vinegar smell of your sweaty watchband.

  The sound of Angel's breath, the side of her face damp from his whispering. His hand stiff and hard as a trap around her, squeezing her hand. His fingernails dig into Misty's skin. And Angel says, “Feel. Feel and tell me what your husband felt.” The words: “. . . your blood is our gold . . .”

  The way reading something can be a slap in your face.

  Outside the hole, the homeowner says something. She knocks on the wall and says, louder, “Whatever it is you have to do, you'd better be doing it.”

  Angel whispers, “Say it.”

  The words say: “. . . you, a plague, trailing your failures and garbage . . .”

  Forcing your wife's fingers along each letter, Angel whispers, “Say it.”

  And Misty says, “No.” She says, “It's just crazy talk.”

  Steering her fingers wrapped tight inside his, Angel shoulders her along, saying, “It's just words. You can say it.”

  And Misty says, “They're evil. They don't make sense.”

  The words: “. . . to slaughter all of you as an offering, every fourth generation . . .”

  Angel's skin warm and tight around her fingers, he whispers, “Then why did you come see them?”

  The words: “. . . my wife's fat legs are crawling with varicose veins . . .”

  Your wife's fat legs.

  Angel whispers, “Why bother coming?”

  Because her dear sweet stupid husband, he didn't leave a suicide note.

  Because this is part of him she never knew.

  Because she wants to understand who he was. She wants to find out what happened.

  Misty tells Angel, “I don't know.”
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  Old-school building contractors, she tells him, they'd never start a new house on a Monday. Only on a Saturday. After the foundation is laid, they'll toss in a handful of rye seed. After three days, if the seed doesn't sprout, they'll build the house. They'll bury an old Bible under the floor or seal it inside the walls. They'll always leave one wall unpainted until the owners arrive. That way the devil won't know the house is done until it's already being lived in.

  Out of a pocket in the side of his camera bag, Angel takes something flat and silver, the size of a paperback book. It's square and shining, a flask, curved so your reflection in the concave side is tall and thin. Your reflection in the convex side is squat and fat. He hands it to Misty, and the metal's smooth and heavy with a round cap on one end. The weight shifts as something sloshes inside. His camera bag is scratchy gray fabric, covered with zippers.

  On the tall thin side of the flask, it's engraved: To Angel—Te Amo.

  Misty says, “So? Why are you here?”

  As she takes the flask, their fingers touch. Physical contact. Flirting.

  Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.

  And Angel says, “It's gin.”

  The cap unscrews and swings away on a little arm that keeps it attached to the flask. What's inside smells like a good time, and Angel says, “Drink,” and his fingerprints are all over her tall, thin reflection in the polish. Through the hole in the wall, you can see the homeowner's feet wearing suede loafers. Angel sets his camera bag so it covers the hole.

  Somewhere beyond all this, you can hear each ocean wave hiss and burst. Hiss and burst.

  Graphology says the three aspects of any personality show in our handwriting. Anything that falls below the bottom of a word, the tail of a lowercase g or y for example, that hints at your subconscious. What Freud would call your id. This is your most animal side. If it swings to the right, it means you lean to the future and the world outside yourself. If the tail swings to the left, it means you're stuck in the past and looking at yourself.

  You writing, you walking down the street, your whole life shows in every physical action. How you hold your shoulders, Angel says. It's all art. What you do with your hands, you're always blabbing your life story.

  It's gin inside the flask, the good kind that you can feel cold and thin down the whole length of your throat.

  Angel says the way your tall letters look, anything that rises above the regular lowercase e or x, those tall letters hint at your greater spiritual self. Your superego. How you write your l or h or dot your i, that shows what you aspire to become.

  Anything in between, most of your lowercase letters, these show your ego. Whether they're crowded and spiky or spread out and loopy, these show the regular, everyday you.

  Misty hands the flask to Angel and he takes a drink.

  And he says, “Are you feeling anything?”

  Peter's words say, “. . . it's with your blood that we preserve our world for the next generations . . .”

  Your words. Your art.

  Angel's fingers open around hers. They go off into the dark, and you can hear the zippers pull open on his camera bag. The brown leather smell of him steps away from her and there's the click and flash, click and flash of him taking pictures. He tilts the flask against his lips, and her reflection slides up and down the metal in his fingers.

  Misty's fingers tracing the walls, the writing says: “. . . I've done my part. I found her . . .”

  It says: “. . . it's not my job to kill anybody. She's the executioner . . .”

  To get the look of pain just right, Misty says how the sculptor Bernini sketched his own face while he burned his leg with a candle. When Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, he went to a hospital to sketch the faces of the dying. He brought their severed heads and arms back to his studio to study how the skin changed color as it rotted.

  The wall booms. It booms again, the drywall and paint shivering under her touch. The homeowner on the other side kicks the wall again with her canvas boat shoes and the framed flowers and birds rattle against the yellow wallpaper. Against the scrawls of black spray paint. She shouts, “You can tell Peter Wilmot he's going to jail for this shit.”

  Beyond all this, the ocean waves hiss and burst.

  Her fingers still tracing your words, trying to feel how you felt, Misty says, “Have you ever heard of a local painter named Maura Kincaid?”

  From behind his camera, Angel says, “Not much,” and clicks the shutter. He says, “Wasn't Kincaid linked to Stendhal syndrome?”

  And Misty takes another drink, a burning swallow, with tears in her eyes. She says, “Did she die from it?”

  And still flashing pictures, Angel looks at her through his camera and says, “Look here.” He says, “What you said about being an artist? Your anatomy stuff? Smile the way a real smile should look.”

  July 4

  JUST SO YOU KNOW, this looks so sweet. It's Independence Day, and the hotel is full. The beach, teeming. The lobby is crowded with summer people, all of them milling around, waiting for the fireworks to launch from the mainland.

  Your daughter, Tabbi, she has a strip of masking tape over each eye. Blind, she's clutching and patting her way around the lobby. From the fireplace to the reception desk, she's whispering, “. . . eight, nine, ten . . .” counting her steps from each landmark to the next.

  The summer outsiders, they jump a little, startled by her little hands copping a feel. They give her tight-lipped smiles and step away. This girl in a sundress of faded pink and yellow plaid, her dark hair tied back with a yellow ribbon, she's the perfect Waytansea Island child. All pink lipstick and nail polish. Playing some lovely and old-fashioned game.

  She runs her open hands along a wall, feeling across a framed picture, fingering a bookcase.

  Outside the lobby windows, there's a flash and a boom. The fireworks shot from the mainland, arching up and out toward the island. As if the hotel were under attack.

  Big pinwheels of yellow and orange flame. Red bursts of fire. Blue and green trails and sparks. The boom always comes late, the way thunder follows lightning. And Misty goes to her kid and says, “Honey, it's started.” She says, “Open your eyes and come watch.”

  Her eyes still taped shut, Tabbi says, “I need to learn the room while everyone's here.” Feeling her way from stranger to stranger, all of them frozen and watching the sky, Tabbi's counting her steps toward the lobby doors and the porch outside.

  July 5

  ON YOUR FIRST REAL DATE, you and Misty, you stretched a canvas for her.

  Peter Wilmot and Misty Kleinman, on a date, sitting in the tall weeds in a big vacant lot. The summer bees and flies drifting around them. Sitting on a plaid blanket Misty brought from her apartment. Her box of paints, made of pale wood under yellowed varnish with brass corners and hinges tarnished almost black, Misty has the legs pulled out to make it an easel.

  If this is stuff you already remember, skip ahead.

  If you remember, the weeds were so high you had to stomp them down to make a nest in the sun.

  It was spring term, and everyone on campus seemed to have the same idea. To weave a compact disc player or a computer mainframe using only native grasses and sticks. Bits of root. Seedpods. You could smell a lot of rubber cement in the air.

  Nobody was stretching canvas, painting landscapes. There was nothing witty in that. But Peter sat on that blanket in the sun. He opened his jacket and pulled up the hem of his baggy sweater. And inside, against the skin of his chest and belly, there was a blank canvas stapled around a stretcher bar.

  Instead of sunblock, you'd rubbed a charcoal pencil under each eye and down the bridge of your nose. A big black cross in the middle of your face.

  If you're reading this now, you've been in a coma for God knows how long. The last thing this diary should do is bore you.

  When Misty asked why you carried the canvas inside your clothes, tucked up under your sweater like th
at . . .

  Peter said, “To make sure it would fit.”

  You said that.

  If you remember, you'll know how you chewed a stalk of grass. How it tasted. Your jaw muscles big and squared, first on one side, then on the other as you chewed around and around. With one hand, you dug down between the weeds, picking out bits of gravel or clods of dirt.

  All Misty's friends, they were weaving their stupid grasses. To make some appliance that looked real enough to be witty. And not unravel. Unless it had the genuine look of a real prehistoric high-technology entertainment system, the irony just wouldn't work.

  Peter gave her the blank canvas and said, “Paint something.”

  And Misty said, “Nobody paint paints. Not anymore.”

  If anybody she knew still painted at all, they used their own blood or semen. And they painted on live dogs from the animal shelter, or on molded gelatin desserts, but never on canvas.

  And Peter said, “I bet you still paint on canvas.”

  “Why?” Misty said. “Because I'm retarded? Because I don't know any better?”

  And Peter said, “Just fucking paint.”

  They were supposed to be above representational art. Making pretty pictures. They were supposed to learn visual sarcasm. Misty said they were paying too much tuition not to practice the techniques of effective irony. She said a pretty picture didn't teach the world anything.

  And Peter said, “We're not old enough to buy beer, what are we supposed to teach the world?” There on his back in their nest of weeds, one arm behind his head, Peter said, “All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.”

  In case you didn't fucking notice, you big boob, Misty really wanted you to like her. Just for the record, her dress, her sandals and floppy straw hat, she was all dressed up for you. If you'd just touch her hair you'd hear it crackle with hair spray.

  She wore so much Wind Song perfume she was attracting bees.

  And Peter set the blank canvas on her easel. He said, “Maura Kincaid never went to fucking art school.” He spit a wad of green slobber, picked another weed stem and stuck it in his mouth. His tongue stained green, he said, “I bet if you painted what's in your heart, it could hang in a museum.”