The Wonder Spot (29 page)

As I passed Bobby, he leaned back and said, “Hey.”

I said a flirtless, “Hi,” and kept going.

A few minutes later, he joined me outside. He lit his cigarette, cupping it against the wind.

When he held out his jacket to me I said, “I have a jacket.”

He said, “Why are you mad?”

“I'm not mad.”

He said, “I'm the one who should be mad.”

“Why should you be mad?”

He said, “If you don't know, I can't tell you.”

We stood, smoking, and the quiet made me uneasy. “Just out of curiosity,” I said, “why do you call yourself Bobby?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, instead of Bob or Rob or Robert.” I tried to soften my tone by adding, “My brother's name is Robert.”

“He's probably a Robert, then.”

I said, “He is a Robert.”

Bobby said, “You know the poet Billy Collins?”

“No.”

“You should,” he said. “You'd like him.”

I nodded, as though I often read poetry and always understood it and would seek out the poems of Poet Collins at my earliest opportunity.

Acquaintance to acquaintance, he said, “How're you liking the class?”

“I like it.”

He said, “What about Maureen?”

I was relieved to talk about her, and I went on and on; talking about her made me feel stronger and also looser, like Maureen herself. At the end of my appreciation, I said, “I hope I'm like her when I'm fifty.”

He said, “You don't look that good now.”

When I could talk, I raised my hand and called out, “Medic! Medic!”

“I'm teasing you,” he said.

“You're an asshole,” I said. “You'll never get beyond your hardwiring.”

“You can't do that,” he said.

“What?”

“You can't take something I trusted you with and use it against me.”

“Why?” I said. “You just did it to me.”

. . . . .

Maureen was standing at my easel, her fingers at her mouth.

She said, “Sophie,” and I liked how she said my name; it was thoughtful, even affectionate. She suggested using the whole canvas, and, for the sake of composition, getting my subject down completely before focusing on any one detail.

Out of the corner of my eye, I focused on the detail of Cheryl's lip-glossed lips smiling at something Bobby was saying.

I pretended not to notice them. I pretended to be lost in my art. I pretended to be a painter painting.

When I felt Bobby staring at me, I looked up. Our eyes met, and he held my gaze; he held my gaze like he was holding me, and I held his as though holding him. Then he looked away, he was gone and it was over—a one-minute stand.

Before the end of class, Bert put on his bathrobe and walked around the room, pausing before each easel to regard the painting or drawing or collage of himself. He said nothing to the principal, who sat with his hands folded in his lap, and nothing to Great-grandmother, who beamed at her own sketch. Who knew what Bert saw or hoped to see? His face was expressionless, but I worried about how we all must have wounded his vanity.

I took a few steps back from my painting and saw it now as I hadn't before. It had many failings, but I stared at the most glaring of them: I'd made Bert's belly even bigger and his penis even smaller than life had made them.

It would be harder to shrink his belly than to enlarge his penis. The problem was, I'd avoided looking at his penis while I'd had the chance, and now I couldn't remember its specifics. I tried to call forth
penises I'd known. I'd stared at some of them, but even in front of me they'd seemed unknowable, and not a single one came to my aid now.

I mixed more skin color. Blindly, I added length and girth to the tiny stem. I painted frantically, while monitoring Bert's progress around the horseshoe.

When he was only two easels away, I stepped back to see what he would see: His penis was now porn-long and log-wide, and even worse, waved up and sloped down like the trunk of an elephant.

I had just enough time to reshape it and stopped mid-stroke as Bert approached; I wasn't about to paint his penis while he watched. Instead, I touched up his earlobe.

I held my breath. But Bert sauntered right by my easel and on to Margo's, where he stood, watching her sketch.

“Well?” she said to him. “Say something.”

He said, “I like my chin.”

Margo laughed—it was a good, loud laugh—and Bert laughed with her.

In case they wanted to be alone, I got up to wash my brushes. En route, I glanced at Michele's painting, a fantastical forest in which Bert, medievally clothed and pierced by an arrow, was bleeding to death.

Through her headphones I heard: “If there's a bustle in your hedgerow . . .”

As I waited for the sink, I saw that Cheryl was reading a script with one line highlighted. Faintly, I heard her trying out various intonations under her breath—a cheerful, “Awesome pudding,” a blasé, “Awesome pudding.”

When I got back to my easel, Bobby was sitting on my stool and smiling at my painting.

“Get away from there,” I said.

He said, “I'd like you to paint me sometime, Applebaum.”

. . . . .

That week, I worked with Sam on a pitch for L'Institute, a new line of antiaging skin-care products.

At fifty-two, or roughly 3,100 in advertising years, Sam knew about aging as no one else in the agency did. He'd once been a creative director and now was a freelancer; he'd once produced award-winning TV campaigns and now was designing a mail package containing a moisturizer sample.

I asked Sam what I'd been wondering ever since I'd started in advertising: “Where are all the older people?” Deadpan, he said, “Dead.” Then he said that maturity was valued almost as much in advertising as it was in cheerleading.

He was the only art director who still used a marker and pad instead of a computer. I kept the products on the windowsill for him to draw and me to try—facial cleanser and body scrub, toners, masks, and moisturizers for day and for night. I taped a sign that read
L
'
INSTITUTE
to my door, and Sam added
MENTAL
. I hung a poster warning of the dangers of sun and cigarettes and extolling the benefits of eight glasses of water a day.

When Sam and I ran out of ideas, I'd say, “Water,” and get us each a bottle. Or I'd hand him the moisturizer and say, “You look a little dry.”

We showed our work on Monday and again on Tuesday, and everyone loved it until late Wednesday when we met with Bruce, the highest of the higher-ups.

We took the elevator from 9 down to the lobby and switched elevator banks to go up to 23. We shuffled into Bruce's big office with the teams from 18 and 20. At six o'clock, when everyone was still getting sodas from the fridge and joking around, I pictured Bobby walking into Mixed Media I.

It was after seven by the time Bruce said, “Good work,” to the other teams as they left to make negligible changes to their TV and print campaigns.

His face changed from pleased to disconcerted as Sam presented our concept of mailing the package from Switzerland, where le nonexistent institute supposedly was; he shook his head while I read the fictional director's letter aloud in a Swiss-ish accent.

As though Sam and I were children living in a fairy tale, Bruce reminded us that there was no real institute, and these products had been developed in Trenton.

Time was suddenly short; Bruce didn't even want to see the rest of our concepts. “It's more important to show synergy,” he said, and asked us to execute mail packages off of the TV spots “A More Beautiful You” and “About Face.”

As ever, Sam showed nothing but his own equanimity. He took off his glasses and let them hang on their string around his neck. “What's the time frame?”

Bruce wanted to see our work the next morning.

Sam and I didn't talk on the elevator down, down, down to 1, or on the one up to 9. We ordered dinner. He called his wife. At eight, when we sat down to work, I pictured Cheryl standing outside with Bobby while he smoked.

“Why so sad?” Sam said. “You got a date, pal?”

I said, “No,” and felt especially dateless and lifeless and hopeless realizing how much I'd wanted to see Bobby.

Sam said, “You need water,” and got us each a bottle.

We put on night moisturizer.

I suggested the line “Trenton makes, The world takes.”

“Shh,” Sam said. “Hand me a bindi.” I passed him one of the Indian cigarettes he'd smoked since quitting smoking.

About three minutes later, he held up his pad and showed me designs for brochures based on the TV spots.

“How did you do that?”

Sam said, “When someone asks me to eat shit, I don't nibble.”

. . . . .

Before the next class, I watched the door for Bobby, but he didn't show up.

Maureen announced, “Bobby was in a motorcycle accident.”

I heard a gasp, and realized it belonged to me.

Cheryl and I spoke in unison: “Is he okay?”

“He hurt his leg,” Maureen said. “He'll be here next week.”

When I opened my tackle box, inside was a paperback of Billy Collins poems. It was inscribed:

F
OR
A
PPLEBAUM
,

G
RUDGINGLY
,

B
OBBY
G
UEST

I assumed that Bobby had given me the poems to show that he was smart or deep or poetic himself; I assumed it was just Bobby saying his name out loud again.

Still, I took the book to bed with me. I thought I'd read one poem, roll my eyes, and go to sleep. I stayed up half the night reading.

. . . . .

“Listen to this,” I told Sam, and while he drew, I read the first stanza of “Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House”:

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.

He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks

every time they leave the house.

They must switch him on on their way out.

“Go on,” Sam said. “What're you stopping for?”

I read the poems at my desk during lunch and in line for the ATM; I read the poems waiting for the subway and waiting for a friend to meet me for dinner, and then I read them to her.

She said, “You act like Bobby wrote them.”

. . . . .

When Bobby walked into class everyone applauded.

He bowed and leaned his crutches against the wall. He hoisted himself up on the stool next to Cheryl.

Maureen looked exhausted and yawned before resuming class. She asked if anyone would mind if Bert changed his pose.

Only the retired principal raised his hand. He kept it in the air.

Maureen seemed to be lost, and Bobby, our wounded hero, rescued her: “I'm afraid you're out of luck, Mr. Marshall.”

Tight-lipped, the principal lowered his hand. “Fine,” he said, “if I'm the only one.” His tone was punishing, though, and it occurred to me that he probably missed the authority he'd once had to suspend and expel.

I went over to Bobby and asked if he was okay.

He was, he said, and he thanked me for asking.

“I really like the poems.”

He said, “Good.”

“I love them,” I said. “Thank you.”

He said, “Anytime,” and Cheryl nodded as though the gift were from both of them.

Bert struck an excellent new pose in which his thigh obscured his penis from my view, and I found myself doing exactly as Maureen had instructed; I got all of him down, and he filled the entire canvas.

When Bert got up to take his break, Bobby said, “Psst, Applebaum.” He motioned to the door.

“Did you just say ‘Psst'? No one says ‘Psst' anymore.” I followed him onto the elevator. “So, what happened?”

He didn't answer until we were outside and I'd lit our cigarettes. “I got clipped on the West Side Highway,” he said. “Had a little too much bourbon.”

“You were drinking bourbon on the West Side Highway?”

“Not
on
the highway, Applebaum.”

“That is the stupidest thing I ever heard,” I said. “Are you just a fucking idiot, or what?”

That's when he leaned forward on his crutches and kissed me. He kissed me, and I kissed him. Then he pulled back and said, “Yes, I am a fucking idiot.”