Girl in Pieces (33 page)

Every so often, when I take coffee mugs to the shelf behind the front counter, I sneak looks outside the window at Riley. He's been off shift for a few hours, but he hasn't left yet. He's installed himself at a table by the front window, a thick paperback in his hands. Steam rises from the cup of coffee wedged on the windowsill next to him. He banters with the Go players at the next table. He compliments an old hippie woman on her knit hat as she passes by. We don't speak to each other at the coffeehouse; we follow Julie's rule. So here he is, sitting out front until the open mic starts, when he's allowed to come in and set up the stage for the performers and emcee the show.

This is my first open mic at the coffeehouse. When Riley comes in, he's greeted warmly by everyone at the tables and he walks around like he owns the place, which I guess he sort of does. From behind the counter, I watch him check amps and adjust the mic, things he's done a million times in his life. He looks at home on the ramshackle stage and there's a moment, when he presses his mouth to the microphone and murmurs
Check, check, check,
that my heart starts to stutter at the way his husky voice travels the room. He soft-sings a few lines of Dylan's “Tangled Up in Blue” and everyone in the audience gets very, very quiet. But then he stops and stoops down to the amp to adjust the levels.

Riley introduces the first act, a hip-hop poet who prowls the lopsided stage, waving his arms and slouching his hips. “He's like a fuckin' cheetah on acid,” Temple says dryly. He scratches his belly and chest incessantly and drops
bitches
so much that one woman trying to drink her latte and read her paper shouts, “Oh, please stop him already!”

He's followed by a waifish girl with a pixie cut who reads horrible poems about hunger and war in a childish, thin voice. An older woman with hair to her knees and thick ankles peeking from her tie-dyed skirt lugs her bongos onstage; she's actually pretty good. She plays intensely, her grayish hair fanning behind her. The pounding of the drums is so hypnotic, even Linus comes out to the front counter to listen.

Riley sits on a chair just off the stage. He jumps in front of the mic and asks the crowd to give a hearty welcome to a nervous high school trumpet player whose forehead gleams under the bright ceiling lights. Riley dims them, casting the coffeehouse in an amberish light. The trumpet player's hands shake; he plays something sultry that makes me think he and the bongo player should join up. At the break, I collect empty cups and glasses. The tub is almost full when I notice Riley helping a young woman in Docs and a sleeveless black tee adjust the mic. Her black skirt looks like it was cut with scissors; the hem hangs unevenly. Her hair is black and spiky and her face is lit with contempt. She looks like she's my age. Her dark eyes take stock of the room. I haul the tub to the dish area and then go stand by the counter again. Riley's leaning down, whispering something in the girl's ear. She laughs and kind of curls her head away from him. My heart stops. What was
that
?

Temple and Randy catch the look on my face. “Uh-oh,” says Randy smoothly. “Somebody's got a jealous streak.”

“Don't worry about it, Charlie,” Temple tells me, patting my shoulder. She's got henna tattoos on both hands today, swirling designs that wind around her knuckles. The minuscule bells hanging from her ears tinkle as she shakes her head. “There's nothing there. She's been playing here since she was, like, eleven.”

Linus comes out from the back, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her face lights up when she sees the stage. “Oh, man! Awesome. Have you heard Regan yet? She's gonna blow you away. Riley
loves
her.”

Temple keeps patting my shoulder. Riley's never said anything about this girl.

“Ladies and germs,” he murmurs into the mic. “Please welcome back True Grit's favorite troubadour, our own sad-eyed lady of the lowlands, Regan Connor.”

Applause fills the café. There's an eerie wind-down as the room gradually silences and grows attuned to her presence. When the café has stilled, she attacks the golden acoustic guitar with single-minded purpose, her fingers flying. She stands as though she's staring a bulldozer down, her legs planted hard on the stage, one knee bent. Her voice is reedy, scratchy, and divine; she can control it enough to suddenly shift to a whisper or a growly bark.

You can't break me down,
she sings.
You can't cut me clear.

On the sloppy stage in the dim light she looks exuberantly defiant, and her words have rough, girlish hope. The crowd is rapt. Some people have their eyes closed. I look back at her, flooded with envy. She's my age and so confident. She doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks. Her voice is threatening and silky, floating over everyone in the café.

Regan is transporting the room; I watch them, one by one, fall for her.

You can't break my heart,
she cries, breathy and furious.
You can't own my soul. What I have I made, what I have is mine. What I have I made, what I have is mine.

When she's through, the audience roars; even the hip-hop poet shouts, “Dang, dog!” Riley uses two fingers to whistle; his eyes are wild with light. I look from Riley to the girl and then back again, anxiousness
ping
ing inside me.

I'm always losing things.

The boxy warehouse sits snugly against the far lip of downtown, beyond the shiny buildings that rise and dominate the skyline. Pickup trucks and bicycles clog the wide gravel lot. A hand-painted sign by the double front doors lists artists' studios and three galleries. I look at the ad in the
Tucson Weekly
one more time.

Linus went with me to buy the portfolio, a large, handsome envelope of leather. I used the last of my Ellis money. Linus whistled as I brought out the bills, but I didn't tell her where the money came from.

I didn't tell Riley I was coming here, either. Seeing him happy about that girl at the open mic, the way he talked about her on our walk home and how beautiful her voice was, and thinking of the way I never went to Ariel's class because I didn't want to spend any time away from him, made something wake up inside me, a spiteful, angry thing.

Watching that girl, her confidence. I wanted that.
I
wanted that.

I take a deep breath and enter the building.

The hallway's dusty and cluttered. Some studio doors are open. In one, a small man is swiping yellowy paint repeatedly up and down a blank white canvas. His room is a mess of paint cans, rolled canvases, jars of murky liquid, books. A woman in the room next to his is bent over a tall table, her face pressed close to the paper she's drawing on. Tendrils from spider plants dangle from the tops of her bookshelves. Salsa music drifts from a speaker at her feet. Other doors are closed; behind them I hear loud thumps, whirs, grinding noises. The air smells mechanical, plastery, and oily all at once.

The gallery at the end of the hall is sprawling and empty, my boots echoing against the shiny wood floor. There are no windows; the walls are bright white and bare. A boy, not much older than me, sits at a long table against one wall. When I walk closer, the table is actually an old door nailed to some two-by-fours. He's typing away at a keyboard. He's dressed like Beaver Cleaver from that old show. “Yes?” he says plainly. Not annoyed, but slightly dismissive.

He glances at my portfolio. “You have work to submit for consideration?”

“Yes.”

“Uh-uh. We can't do hard. We wanted digital. You know, like images over email or on a website? Do you have anyone to take photographs for you or can you do it and scan them and send them?” He begins typing again but keeps his face on mine while his fingers dance.

I shake my head. “No, I just kind of thought—”

“No, sorry. You've got to follow the submission instructions.” He turns back to the monitor.

I turn to go, disappointed, thinking I'll walk my bicycle back to my room instead of riding. It was hard to ride and hold the portfolio at the same time. My hand got sweaty, holding the portfolio against my bobbing thigh.

“Hey-oh, what do we have here?”

Ariel's friend, the painter, is clutching a sheaf of papers and a gym bag, out of breath. Tony Padilla from the art show.

“I know you. Ariel pointed you out to me at my show. The girl dressed like a farmer. Did you like it?” He smiles expectantly. “My work?”

I swallow, considering. Wisps of dark hair curl from inside his nostrils. “Not really.”

He laughs, putting down his papers and bag. “You didn't like it. That's good! We don't always like what we see, do we? We should always say so. Give me a look, yes? I see you're old-school. I miss the days of toting a portfolio around.” He slides it from my grasp.

He spreads the portfolio out, kneeling to look at it. Today, he's not dressed in an elegant suit. He's wearing khaki shorts and Birkenstocks with socks and a sweat-stained T-shirt with a rabbit on it. His hair is no longer in a ponytail; it sprays across his shoulders like a black fan streamed with slivers of white.

“You submitting for the show?”

“I was, but that guy…”

“That's my intern, Aaron. This is my little gallery. I'd like some new work by younger artists this time around. They tend to be interesting in different ways, you know?” He examines a portrait of Manny. “You have model permissions?”

“What?”

“Release forms. If people are posing for you, they need to sign releases agreeing to have their image shown in public. Aaron, print out some sample release forms. Do you have your résumé?”

I shake my head and he laughs. “I haven't had you in a class, have I? There's a great deal of proficiency here, and something odd, too. But I like them.” He peers closer to the drawings, lifting his glasses away from his face. “You're in. Leave them here. I've got hours of videos and films and an installation of a childhood bedroom. And a nudist. But not one drawing. Not one painting. You kids today. If you can't watch it, walk through it, or sit on it, you don't want to make it.”

He zips the portfolio gently and hands it off to Aaron, who shoots me a quizzical look as he passes me the release forms. “Antonio Padilla. Tony.”

“Charlie.” His hand in mine is smooth and hairless, with fine, tapered nails and a single silver bracelet that knocks against his wristbone.

“Your people are…interesting.” Tony Padilla gazes at me curiously.

“They live in my building.”

He says, “Is that so,” holding his chin in one hand. “Bring one of my cards, too, Aaron?”

Tony sighs. “Well. We have a lot of work ahead of us, putting this show together. One thing I always tell my students, and it always surprises them, God knows why, is that an artist's life is all about work. No one is going to do it
for
you. It doesn't just appear on the page or on a gallery wall. It takes patience, it takes frustration.” He looks at the blank walls.

He laughs a little. “It takes spackling, nails, projectors, lights, bullshit, and long days. I expect everyone in the show to pitch in. I hope you're not afraid of hard work, Charlie.”

I can feel how big the grin on my face is. It practically busts my cheeks wide open. I haul mop water and bus tubs all night and clean up piss and shit in restrooms and now I'm going to have my work on walls, for people to see.
Me.

“Nope,” I tell him. “I'm not afraid of work at all.”