Justine (3 page)

“I do, too.”

He takes a chair, places his arms on the rests, brown and hairy, and asks if he can smoke. Apparently, it doesn't faze him when I say no; the hair surges from his armpits like crimped fur.

“Wasn't it you in that video? But you don't want to talk about it, right?”

Now he stands up. Is he leaving already? No. He begins to flip the paintings.

“Stop that,” I say.

Now he's leaving. No. He's giving me a wry look. Like he thinks he's got me figured out. Let him think that. I can tell he assumes things with me are off-kilter.

Now he's leaving. He draws a current of air behind, sharp and dry.

Y
ou'd almost think nothing had happened. Kluden is right where it's always been and Kelly is behind the bar. She's working the night shift, just like the night before.

She opens a beer as soon as I walk in, sets it down in front of me, and pronounces a name that could be mine, I recognize it in any case.

“Well now,” Per Olsvig says, “you again?”

He's sitting at the end of the bar.

“He hasn't gone home,” Kelly says.

“Sure I have,” Olsvig says. “I went to my fucking job.”

It's the same conversation about paid work, which is a necessity, even if you're an artist. In a moment he'll tell us everything he can't recall saying before. That's memory-slinging for you. They land on Kluden's linoleum floor, back in the corners and beneath the bar stools, where they stick.

“I was doing my thing at the grocery store,” Olsvig says. “See, that's honest work with honest people. None of that pretentious piss you all go around and do.”

Olsvig drains a shot and orders another on tab. He's so gray. No. Now he shifts slightly and the light from the lamp over the bar falls red onto his face. In a moment I'll buy him a beer. I feel like I've missed him, even though he's so crass. There's an open place right beside him.

“Do I know you?” he asks. “Nah, I'm just ribbing you, Justine, come here and sit next to me.”

We know each other as well as the song pumping through the room: “Stairway to Heaven.” The sound is like the smoke was massive. Searing. His hooded jersey is thick with grime and old paint, but I can't detect an odor, and my head rests comfortably on his shoulder. He sucks heavily on his cigarette, then stubs the rest into the ashtray, taps the rhythm with his finger on the counter. The door opens, we don't see who comes in, if they know us, it'll happen. Olsvig lights a new cigarette.

“Ahh,” he says, “what a day.”

The beer is cold and curative. Right now I need Kelly, Olsvig, and “a Tuborg Gold,” I say, “no, two!”

He kisses my forehead. Now I want his short arms around me.

“Forty-two,” Kelly says.

“Put in on my tab,” Olsvig says.

His cheeks are lightly swollen with scattered stubble. I couldn't care less, I want to be inside his body, behind the bluster and gestures, back behind it all, away.

S
omehow Per Olsvig just couldn't help it. He graduated from the academy of arts about a year ago, and before that he was already selling his paintings. I was actually there the night it began. Olsvig owed a gallery owner some money, and instead of taking his money, the gallery owner told him he could display a couple of paintings and see whether or not they sold. Before half a day was gone, the gallery sold the first one and the second one shortly thereafter. The owner was beside himself. A mass of drinks were had at Kluden. He wanted everything in Olsvig's studio, all that came from Olsvig's fingers was pure gold, at least for a while. Until it stopped.

B
o left a coffee cup and a stain. Vita notices of course. She notices everything, but acts like it's nothing. Right there, that's where she entered. Wait, didn't she just wander in through the wall?

“Why didn't you use the door?” I ask.

Obviously, she's not going to answer. She'd rather talk about something else. That's unusual. She wants to talk about “sex . . . you know exactly what I mean,” she says. “You head to the sack as soon as you meet someone. Do you even think about anything else?”

“What do you mean by sex? He was just sweet,” I say. “I didn't do anything. Where's all this coming from?”

“Who isn't sweet?” she asks. “Who isn't sweet and lovely in your eyes? Who isn't so unbelievably wonderful that you just can't help ripping their clothes off? And you know exactly what I mean.”

“That's the way people meet,” I say. “To claim otherwise is wrong. First there's sex, the naked and the raw. And everything else comes after that. Besides, he knows he's sexy.”

“Oh right, you're so smart. So in touch with yourself,” she says.

“Could be. But do you really have to spit like that?”

“Hey, I thought you liked secretions.”

“I don't get you.”

“Obviously, he knows he's sexy,” she says. “He has you right where he wants you. As usual, you think you're in complete control. But you don't control anything. You're so transparent. So is he, of course. I give it two days before you're swapping spit.”

“Nothing happens. Sometimes it just up and happens,” I say.

“Don't go thinking that you're the only person capable of being attracted to someone else. Actually, we're all capable. But that doesn't mean that we just run around and do it with anyone. We stop ourselves before it comes to sex.”

She walks through the wall.

“That's pretty smart,” she says, looking down at herself.

“Smart.”

W
hen did the whole thing with Ane and Torben start? Let's see, it was probably back during the Berlin trip with Ole Willum, a teacher at the academy of arts. We were staying in the academy's apartment on the attic floor of a large estate out by the Spree. The gable fronting the water had two large glass doors, but the balcony itself was missing, all that remained of it were the iron fittings to which it was once attached.

Torben leaned carefully out and groaned. He was afraid of heights, he said, and didn't want to get too close to the windows. When it came time to choose where we'd sleep, he chose one of the other rooms.

Ole Willum had a show at a small gallery in the city and we were supposed to head out there after unpacking. Torben, a couple of other guys, and Rose, she was always hanging out with the boys, turned up quite a bit later than the rest of us. They were already in high spirits, and were carrying two bags of Weißbier bottles. Ane and I each grabbed a beer and went outside. With a loud laugh, Rose swung her bottle so that it splashed Ane.

“Oh, sorry, little Ane,” she said, giggling again and shoving Torben who shoved her back.

Inside the gallery the rest of the students were walking around and experiencing the installation. Willum had created three universes that he'd taken from Björk songs, a red space, a blue one, and a white, each equipped with diverse effects, furniture, and some curtains.

Ane gave Rose a dirty look.

“So, aren't you going in to see the exhibit?” she asked.

Rose didn't hear her, but kept fooling around with Torben and the others.

Willum said our task during the trip was to create a book. The actual content could be whatever we wanted, but the point was to translate an art project onto the books' pages, just like he'd translated Björk's “All Is Full of Love” to the show's white space and her “Come to Me” to the red.

That evening Willum invited two of his friends, an artist couple, to the apartment. The woman, her name was Leise, had done several art books. She showed us her latest, a print series that more or less gave the identical impression of being somewhat dark, somewhat moist, somewhat hairy, somewhat bulbous. The book was entitled
   
Durch
. Leise explained that the impressions had been taken the moment a baby emerged from its mother's womb. She'd attended twenty-five births, and the instant the baby bubbled forth from between its laboring mother's legs, Leise had pressed the paper to its bloody cranium.

Torben, who was well plied with Weißbier by that time, bent over and inspected the book.

“Does it smell?” he asked.

His nostrils vibrated. Rose snatched the book from his hands and tossed it onto the sofa. He headed for the bathroom and Rose followed.

After Leise and her husband left, Willum and some of the others sat in a circle around a candle on the floor. Outside was blue black. A tall girl lay with her arms hanging out the terrace doors.

Suddenly, someone was shouting: “It's Torben, it's Torben.”

Rose pointed out the slanting roof window and we took turns peering out. There on the neighboring roofline a figure was hunched against the sky. It was crawling along the roof's long ridge.

“No fucking way, that can't be Torben,” Ole Willum said. “How the hell did he even get up there?”

“He crawled out one of the attic windows,” Rose shouted.

She forced her way to the window and opened it.

“Torben! Come back in! Right now! You're going to fucking fall from way up there! You're drunk!”

The shadow that was Torben continued along the roofline until it reached a point directly above a window bay and stretched itself to full Torben height. Abruptly, it slid out and down, landing on the bay. Rose shrieked and raced through the attic to the window out of which Torben had first disappeared, flailing and kicking to get her shoes off, and was on her way out when Willum intervened.

“I'd never actually tell anybody! I'd never do that! I was just talking!” she yelled to Torben.

Torben was slumped against the bay window. People on the floors below were hanging out of their windows, some hollered that they'd call the police if it didn't quiet down. Willum shouted back that it was all under control, just some performance art.

Two hours later Torben was back. Rose had finally persuaded him to crawl in and climb onto the sofa with her. She lay there with a beer. After announcing that he wasn't taking responsibility for someone getting hurt, especially not while they were plastered, Willum went home. Torben sat nodding with a cup of coffee in his hand, and Rose fell asleep on the couch. The others went to bed. Ane and I had planned to sleep on the floor next to the doors facing the river, where it glistened, but Ane wanted to help Torben climb into his sleeping bag first.

The next day Torben was up first, he poured coffee into two vases. Rose was still asleep in her clothes on the couch. Ane wanted to head out immediately. She was going to do something with animals in her book and had bought herself a weekly zoo pass. Before I'd even finished brushing my teeth, she'd left, and she'd taken her sleeping bag with her. Rose woke up and called for Torben, but he was already gone. He'd taken both his sleeping bag and his backpack.

Rose popped open the last beer and lay back down.

“Fuck, he's not too bright,” she said. “He has no idea what he's doing when he's drunk. One time he almost jumped from his workshop at the school.”