I Am Having So Much Fun Without You (21 page)

As I sat there watching my discarded goods whirl away into oblivion, I wished that I could get in touch with Anne. I longed to have her beside me to witness forty-two minutes of Rod Stewart ballads being washed away in oil. But you lose the opportunity to share the good things when you do something bad. That was the worst of it maybe, or it was at that moment. Wanting to reach out and make my wife laugh and not having the right to. Not being able to make her smile anymore.

After twenty minutes, a tired-sounding beep signaled that my “clothes” were ready. I opened the door and peered inside. The steel container wasn't as gloopy as I thought it would be—I'd imagined that a mixture of gas and water would have caused the concoction to congeal in oleaginous globs on my belongings, but this wasn't the case.

The cassette was in bad shape—sorry, Rod. The shirts looked like they'd been used to slough off an afterbirth, but strangely, the smell was not unpleasant, a mixture of car exhaust and prune juice. The catalog had gotten the worst of it—it was a battered, pulpy mess, and when I saw the little balls of magazine paper wadded up inside the steel drum's grid, I felt pretty certain that between this and the addition of a hazardous material into the otherwise sanitary space, the poor washer might never work again.

I scribbled the out-of-service message I'd planned on and tried to suppress the guilt inside my heart. It hadn't been
that
much oil. It might, quite literally, come out in the wash. I could put the Lavo-Magick! in the acknowledgments page of the exhibition booklet, if there was one. I could give them some art.

Feeling moderately better once my hand-scrawled sign was on the washer, I took out my mess and transferred it to a dryer, thus preparing to demolish yet another machine.

Or blow up a whole neighborhood. Only about a minute into the dryer cycle, my wife-free (and thus severely compromised) brain kicked back into business, suggesting that it probably wasn't a great idea to combine dry heat and gas. A burning smell confirmed this and I shut the whole thing off, anxious that any moment a neighborhood watch group was going to come in and accost the idiotic foreigner concocting lab tests in their Laundromat.

I shoved the gooey lumps of stuff back into the bag I'd
brought everything in, left a twenty-euro bill on top of the ailing washer as penance, and got the hell out of the Lavo-Magick! The fact that I hadn't burned the place to its foundations seemed like magic indeed.

 • • •

It took me four more days of preparation before I had the courage to call the Azar Sabounjian gallery. By that time, I had desperation more than courage. Camille had been invited on a weekend to Bordeaux with her best friend, Marie, which meant that I had three days ahead of me in which I'd be unexpectedly alone. I figured the time would pass less torturously if I had something to think about. If Azar turned me down, I could spend my weekend wallowing. If he accepted my ludicrous proposition, I could gloat.

I dialed the gallery, and when the phone started ringing, I missed not having a landline. What if there was one of those echoes you sometimes get with cell phones? What would I do then? After five rings, however, a receptionist picked up. I detected a British accent, although she was speaking in French, but I didn't want to be overfamiliar with a person I didn't know yet, so I asked her, in French, if I might speak to Azar.

“May I ask who's speaking?” she said flatly.

An awkward question, as Azar had no idea who I was.

“A dissatisfied client of the Premier Regard gallery?” It was the first thing that came to mind, but it was a lousy thing to do to Julien. Reputation was everything in the Parisian art world—word would get around. But then again, by his own admission, Julien had a bone to pick with Azar. If I acted aware of their past history, it might help my case.

“May I ask what this is about?” the voice continued, apparently unfazed by whether I was dissatisfied or not.

“I'm an artist,” I fumbled. “I've had quite a few shows in the area, and I have an idea for an installation I'd like to talk to him about.”

“But you've never shown here?”

“No,” I said, swallowing, “But I've shown at the Atelier Buci and the Premier Regard
—
”

“I understand that,” she continued. “But we don't just take artists on references.”

“I don't have any references.” Too late, it was out. “I mean, I'm not intending to use these galleries as references. I just wanted to . . . pitch an idea?”

“I'm afraid that—” There was a long pause, and the sound of the phone being put down on a hard surface. I heard muffled voices in the background.

“Could you hold on, please, Mr.—”

“Haddon,” I supplied.

And so I held. After a modest eternity, a man picked up.

“This is Azar Sabounjian,” said a polished voice on the other line. “What can I do for you?”

It was all very well and fine to have a written proposition sitting on the table beside me; I'd forgotten to prepare something conversational to say.

“My name is Richard Haddon, and I've done several shows in the area—”

“Alice explained that to me, yes?”

“I have an idea for an installation that would be perfect for your gallery.”

“You're familiar with my gallery?” I thought I heard him typing.

“Of course.”

“I see,” he said distractedly. “And where'd you say you've shown before?”

“Well, I'm from London originally,” I mustered. “So I've had some shows over there, and also in the United States and in Paris.”

“Where in Paris?”

“The Premier Regard, Espace 66, Atelier Buci—”

“Aha,” he replied, coughing. “So you know Julien?”

“Yes,” I replied, careful not to insinuate whether I considered knowing Julien a good thing or a bad.

“Has he sold your work?”

“Yes,” I said. “A lot.”

“So why don't you do your installation there?”

“He doesn't do installations,” I replied.

He snorted, which I took as a good sign.

“And what's the installation about, exactly?”

“The situation between America and England in Iraq.”

“And you said you're British.”

I admitted I was.

After a pause that seemed longer than it needed to be, he said, “I'll tell you what, Richard. I like installations. I like international art. I like young art . . .”

I quivered. I was in my midthirties. Was I young, or was I old?

“I'm not a fan of unsolicited phone calls, but I fucking
hate
George Bush.” His words were crisp and clipped. “Look, why don't you pop by the gallery, let's see . . .
Alice?
” he hollered. “Friday the twenty-eighth?”

My response took all of two seconds to conjure. Thanks to the demolition of my marriage, I didn't have a single Friday in my future with anything planned.

“I'll give you ten minutes,” he offered.

“Ten minutes is good.”

“Come after lunch, then. Let's say three?”

“Three o'clock,” I repeated. “Perfect.”

“Very good, then,” he said. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

The dial tone blared its taunting singsong in my ear. Sweet fuck all, I thought, putting the phone down. The twenty-­eighth was
tomorrow
?

19

THE NEXT
day I set out for the sixth arrondissement with my portfolio and my sketches and a gastric ulcer. In the last decade, I hadn't embarked on any type of professional endeavor with an uncertain outcome without a pep talk from my wife. But instead of sitting at my kitchen counter listening to Anne's wisdom while the coffee hissed and the butter softened and Camille got raspberry jam on her school shirt, I'd taken my breakfast upright at a café next to a bunch of inebriates who made fun of my briefcase, a telling reaction for a country with a 9.7 percent rate of unemployment.

Too restless to faff about at home, I spent the morning walking back and forth across the Seine until the gallery district opened. It seemed like it would be a good idea for me to be aware of the work of my contemporaries, which I presently wasn't, and hadn't been for quite some time. After two hours of wandering, I felt doomed to failure. My proposition contained neither images of topless women in printed cotton underpants, nor neon signs spelling out ironic words like
HAPPY
, nor copi
ous amounts of dirt. It was all right. I could always move back in with my parents and work at the Muffin Break.

When 2:45 arrived, I made my way toward the Rue Saint André-des-Arts where the Azar Sabounjian gallery was located next to an Isabel Marant shop—the hand-drawn star accompanying her logo on the window a signifier that one had entered the kingdom of the hip.

When I entered the gallery, the receptionist was on the phone—it was the same woman I'd spoken to the day before, still placing too much emphasis on the wrong syllables, the way we English are wont to do in French. She had endless legs and high-waisted pants, which even on a girl of her attractiveness drew an unnecessary amount of attention to her pelvic floor.

When she hung up, irrevocably convinced from her phone call that she was English, I introduced myself in my native tongue and told her that I had an appointment with Azar. This was strike one for me—I hated when people defaulted to En-glish when I'd been speaking French, so I don't know why I did it with her. I'd meant to be intimate, but I'd been offensive. With a little checkmark in her agenda and a perfected shrug of nonchalance, she informed me (in French) that Monsieur Sabounjian wasn't back from lunch yet, would I like to wait for him in that highly uncomfortable chair?

Still not back from lunch at 3 p.m., he was a Frenchman indeed. The receptionist—Alice, if I remembered from my conversation yesterday—sauntered back and forth making photocopies and pushing things about on her desk and huffing and puffing while she typed out what was meant to look like, but did not appear to actually be, work-related business.

At 3:20 I began wondering whether or not I should go to the loo. This was a hard call to make. If I waited, I might end
up waiting so long that I'd have to go while we were talking. If I went now, I might be in the toilet when he arrived, which would be worse. Tossing the magazine I'd been pretending to peruse to the far side of the bench, I stood up and casually asked where the bathrooms were. Without taking her eyes off the computer screen, Alice pointed down the hallway, informing me that it was just to the left in her insistent French.

I walked down the hallway past a series of bondage photographs that appeared to be executed with Fruit Roll-Ups and string cheese until I found the bathroom, which was completely papered in aluminum foil. When I made it back to the reception area, I was greeted with the unfortunate sight of a handsome man in a three-piece suit sitting on the edge of Alice's desk.

“Richard, I presume?” he asked, tilting his head to one side. Bloody hell, I thought, reaching out to shake his hand. My hands weren't even dry yet.

“Shall we chat in my office, then?” He indicated the way.

“Yes,” I stuttered. “I just need to fetch that . . .” I reached for the briefcase that I'd left beneath my chair and followed the man who held my destiny down the hall.

Azar's office was just what I'd expected: organized and meticulous, with two shelves showcasing a tightly curated selection of books. His desk was a massive mahogany structure with a leather top, underneath of which ran the pelt of what I hoped was an imitation panda.

Azar walked behind his desk to a see-through swivel chair and gestured toward a stool for me to sit on. Danish in design and certainly expensive, it was nonetheless a stool, and I wondered if he also had a dunce cap for me to put on.

“So,” he began, folding his arms on the table. “I don't have a lot of time.”

“Right,” I said, snapping open my briefcase to remove my
portfolio and sketches. “These are some photographs of my recent work, along with press clips.” I slid the portfolio to him.

“I'll look at that later,” he said, pushing it to the side. “Let's talk about Iraq.”

“Brilliant,” I said, trying not to redden. “So I've got a proposition here, you could read it, or . . . ?”

“Why don't you just summarize?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Very good,” I said, trying to sit as straight as possible on my stool. “So the idea is, it would be called
WarWash
, and although I know there's not a war yet—”

“Oh, there will be.”

“Right, so I'm English, but I spent a lot of time in America, and the fact that they're teaming up around something so unfounded is, you know, absurd. So the idea would be to make the installation an interactive one based upon mistakes. I'd have two washing machines, one British and one American, and I'd have certain objects that remind me of errors made in each country, both, uh, personal and governmental, that I'd wash in each respective machine, and the public would be invited to bring in objects as well. But everything would be washed in oil.”

“Oil,” said Azar, his eyebrows lifting. “As in petroleum?”

“Right. And behind all this, behind the platforms, there would be a hanging line where we'd dry the objects, after. I'd identify the object and the person who donated the object with hand-stamped dog tags.”

“I see,” he said, drumming his fingers on his desk. “So they'd look like corpses?”

“It would depend on the size of the object, of course,” I offered, “but seeing that they'd be covered in sludge, they might. Either that or, uh, fetuses.”

“Fetuses.” He nodded, writing something down. “I see.”

I fell silent. You couldn't really say much after the word
fetus
.

Flipping through my portfolio, he said, “I'm assuming you've already tried this?”

Relieved, I said I had.

“And nothing blew up?”

“No,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “But you can't dry anything. And paper makes a mess.”

He nodded. “Do you have a materials list in there?” he asked, looking at the sheaf of papers on my lap.

I handed him my proposal. To my horror, he began reading it out loud.

“‘Needed: 2 washing machines, one a Whirlpool (cost: 400 €), one a Tricity Bendix (cost: 350 €). Anticipate 1 converter and 1 surge control (cost: 25 €). 2 large wicker laundry baskets (IKEA: cost p.p 9 €). 6 containers of gasoline (cost per container: 18 €). 3 packets of latex gloves (cost: 10 €). 2 large stockpots (cost p.p: 15 €). 2 wooden platforms of 10m2 (supplies from Castorama estimated at 100 €). 50 “dog” ID tags: (200 €); metal engraver (75 €); laundry line (15 €); laundry pins (5 €); nylon to create permutated version of the American and British flag (25 €); paints to create flag (40 €); black tarp (20 €).'”

He rubbed his chin, reached for a pen and marked something on a piece of paper. Then, without glancing up at me again, he continued.

“‘Setup: The installation requires approximately 40m2. The two washing machines are to be placed side by side, the American one on the left, the British one on the right. There should be a distance of one and a half feet between the two machines. One laundry basket should be placed on the left side of the American machine and one on the right side of the British machine, with a canister of petrol beside it. Be
hind the two machines will hang a fused oil-painted version of the British and American flags to be created by the artist (see drawing attached). This flag will be painted in such a way that the fact that there are two flags will become evident the farther the visitor steps
away
from the machines. The washing machines, laundry baskets, and oil containers will be mounted on a wooden platform. The setup should call to mind a political debate. The laundry lines will be hung to the right of the machines. Black tarp will be used underneath the drying objects, and will be cut in such a way as to recall body bags.'”

Again, he jotted something down on his infuriating piece of paper. He was probably making out a grocery list.
Could you tell my wife I'm thinking wild mushrooms and farfalle? And we're out of double-ply toilet tissue. Thanks, Alice, you're a doll.

He leaned back and ran his fingers through his luxurious head of hair before picking up the last page of the proposal.

“‘Artist's statement,'” he continued reading. “‘This installation, tentatively entitled
WarWash
, is designed to highlight the senselessness of the American and British government's WMD pursuits in Iraq by engaging the public in an absurd domestic act: the washing of things in oil. By selecting objects that remind the artist and the public participants of their past mistakes, the exhibit will be engaging on an intellectual, visual, and olfactory level, and should appeal to fans of artists such as Sophie Calle and Maurizio Cattelan.'”

That was it. There was nothing else to read. Only my drawings were left, which he'd hardly glanced at.

Azar swiveled once to the right, and then he swiveled to the left in his fancy swivel chair. Then he pushed all of my papers into a neat little pile and placed a silver paperweight in the form of a pinecone on top of the stack.

“Very well,” he announced, nodding. He jotted down a final
line, which apparently ended in an exclamation point.

“Come with me,” he said.

On our way out of his office, instead of turning right to take me back to my high-waisted compatriot wasting time online, he walked me around the corner to where an archway was covered with drop sheets attached to the ceiling with blue electrical tape. He unzipped a plastic makeshift door and gestured for me to walk through it. I understood what Julien meant when he'd said that Azar was “tough.” He had a back door for rejects.

Once he'd made it through the plastic door himself, Azar reached into his blazer and pulled out a pocket flashlight.

“We're still working on the electric,” he said, twisting the flashlight on. “And obviously, the paint.”

I stared around the space and said nothing. He'd examined my skill set. He'd seen my way with a brush. It was possible that he was going to ask me to touch up his decorative molding.

“Right, so, that's that,” he said, pulling aside the plastic and motioning for me to walk through. Back in the hallway, he brushed off some dust that had collected on his suit.

“This space,” he said, “will be ready by the end of March.” He shook a piece of dried paint off his elbow. “Will you?”

Without waiting for my RPM level to descend back to a normal rhythm, he continued: “Because we've never worked together, you'll have to front the installation costs yourself. If it sells, though, we'll reimburse you. That work?”

I found myself mesmerized by his perfect teeth. I was flabbergasted. I simply couldn't speak.

“Fantastic,” he said, smiling. “I think this will be grand.” He reached for a card from the inside of his jacket. “Call me next week—set up a time with Alice.”

Making a concerted effort to mask my excitement, I mentioned that my phone number and address were written on my
proposal, that I didn't have a card. He looked at me with a certain compassion and extended his hand.

“Ah, and if you ruin my gallery, you pay for it. We'll come up with a rider.”

“A rider,” I repeated. “Of course.”

Azar saw me to the door, and on the way properly introduced me to Alice, who
was
British, the little minx. They both told me to call if I needed any help getting supplies and wished me “
Bon weekend
.”

 • • •

In a daze, I stumbled out into the pre-cocktail-hour bustle of the neighborhood, bumping into old ladies with shopping caddies and women carrying cut flowers. It had happened. He said yes. After months of feeling like I'd been cut off from an essential source of energy, I had a tiny percentage of my old self back. I felt electric. Proud and nervous. I wanted to tell Anne.

I walked up the steep hill past one of the branches of La Sorbonne, in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens. I was swinging my briefcase. I had bounce in my step: my afternoon was a musical, and Paris was my stage. I made it all the way to the fountains at the entrance before I realized that I simply could not contain my enthusiasm, I had to tell my wife. I took my cell phone out of my jacket and found that it was dead. I'd been using it so little recently, I hadn't thought to charge it before I left the apartment, and now I had no way of sharing my good news with the one person who mattered. I sat down on a bench and weighed the pros and cons of stopping by our house. On one hand, I was right by it; on the other, since it wasn't even five o'clock yet, it was doubtful that Anne would be home, especially because Camille would have already left for Bordeaux. If Anne were there, she'd be upset that I hadn't rung before coming by.
But then again, maybe she'd be moved to know how much I wanted to see her. I decided to try it. I was only a fifteen-­minute walk away, and I could always leave a note. Maybe she'd agree to go to dinner with me? Maybe there was a small chance—just a tiny one—that she didn't yet have plans?