Mignon, as always, wants to know what I’m thinking.

I’ve finally agreed to meet her in person, at the Berkeley Art Museum. The new one, with its blinding white walls and tomato-hued doors and echoey stairwells. A basement café with wine and salads of watermelon and feta and mint.

“Meat time,” Mignon called it.

But by the time we finish viewing the Peter Hujar photos in the lower gallery, I’ve formed the view that no one, ever, should visit an art museum in the company of another person. I want to stomp in the metal stairwell.

Yet here we sit in the museum café, emptied splits of champagne before us. It’s hot and my hair is heavy, redolent with horsey-smelling henna. Everyone else is in camisoles and shorts in ice cream colors. Last night I did my hair — yes, for “the occasion”– and it came out too bright.

“I liked the ones of the wrecked cars,” I say. “And that glum man with the giant penis.” What I am really saying is what I am always saying at museums. “You don’t know me! You don’t know my taste!”

I met Mignon online. Our exchanges have been filled with nuance and shy disclosures. Once, I related the details of a violent crime to which I’d been victim. Mignon confessed she’d once driven into a kid on a bike. Another time, we’d negotiated logging off to cry, after confessing to each other the depth of our loneliness.

But in person, Mignon emits a river of combat and insecurity. Just like everyone else around here. What band/bistro/hiking trail am I obsessed with, that no one else has heard of? Who eats the local-est, grass-fed-est food? Who’s vacationed in the farthest-flung place?

I gaze at the office supply store across the street with its industrial carpeting, balm of greenish light and wide aisles.

“It’s annoying how Hujar framed his subject in the middle of the shot.” I say.

Mignon brightens, pouring the remaining champagne into her flute. “He learned a way of composing called the Angle of Depression,” she explains, eyebrows raised self- importantly. “See, it’s the idea that the viewer’s eye takes this angle — technically this diagonal line ends below the bottom edge. There’s something we don’t see.”

She continues, telling me how Hujar’s last name would be pronounced in Spanish, if he were Spanish, which he probably is. How the British television show, The Office, was modeled after a David Foster Wallace story about working for the IRS. Then she shyly adds that she puts away a bottle of wine every night before allowing herself to open her computer to see if I’ve written.

Mignon meets my eyes then. She picks up a ball of melon and tucks it into her mouth. Meaningfully, it seems.

“Will you excuse me?” I said, then glide to the women’s room. A pullover youth with pimples around their mouth enters behind me.

Determined to act casual, I attempt a “selfie” in the bathroom mirror. My russet hair smolders nicely in the recessed lights. Then my bag slips into the sink, setting off the automatic gush from the faucet. My legs fly from under me. Fucking hell!

I consider staying down for a day or so. Who would know, other than half-in-the-bag Mignon and now this waif currently attempting to exit their stall.

“Hi! Help!” I say, rolling aside. The waif’s sweater as they easily lift me smells of fabric softener.

They ask if I’m all right. “You betcha!” I say, and the waif toddles off.

I gingerly settle back at the table. I feel like I’d been attacked by a javelina. My flank throbs. I swear to fucking god the infant is coming back with a fresh split of champagne.

“You know him?” Mignon asks. “He’s so… frat boy.”

“No frat boy uses Downey.”

“You have an awesome day, ma’am,” the waif says, their mouth a hard line.

Why did  I wear these ridiculous heels? And why does this pain feel good and right and deserved?

Mignon snaps her fingers, as if an idea has occurred to her, or maybe just to capture my attention. How long have I had my nose pierced? Because she recently removed her nipple ring, which she got in her thirties “because of National Geographic.”

“I could give it to you!” she says. “I just have the one…”

“Oh! I guess I always thought they came in twos, like earrings. Or, you know, none,” I say.

“… although I have been wondering how much I could get for it, like, at a We Pay Cash for Gold place…”

Meat time. Who needs it?

Let’s say I summon the courage of my convictions. Soothe myself by purchasing pencils and notebooks across the street. A squishy strip to soothe my wrists.

Or more dramatically, I could emulate the mountain lion in that recent news story. Remember? The one where the two cyclists did all the things we’re told to do: holler real loud, make themselves appear larger. If I could be that magnificent beast, I’d rake Mignon with my claws and let the pimpled waif go, to tell the tale.

But that isn’t the way the story went. Remember?

In real life, it was an elderly couple. The lady neutralized the mountain lion by jabbing it in the eyes with her ball-point pen. She saved herself and her mate.

See, in the end that you can do everything you are supposed to do, and fate really doesn’t give a hoot. Me, Mignon, the cyclists. The mountain lion. The waif from the woman’s room. Even beautiful Peter Hujar, with his portraits of the famous, the abject, the endowed, and the ruined cars.

‘I like people who dare,’ Hujar famously said. Yet here we are frozen, cast in our living roles. I am lonely as hell, and that is no lie.

I split the bubbly between our glasses and say, “To meat.”

 

Patricia Q. Bidar is a California-based writer with family roots in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. An alum of the UC Davis Graduate writing program and a former fiction editor at Northwest Review, Patricia’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sou’wester, Wigleaf, ellipsis…art and literature, Litro Online, The Citron Review, Jellyfish Review, Barren Literary Magazine, Crack the Spine, and Riggwelter, among other places. Her Twitter handle is @patriciabidar.

Blue light on the nightstand woke me up again. Like a hole I’ve been filling keeps turning up empty. Eagle and the liver guy, that guy’s me. Can’t remember his name, but I get him big time.

Four-thirty in the morning. Loud when it’s quiet like this.

I could make someone be awake. Whatever I want I can do.

Usually there’s someone in the kitchen. I’ve checked. This time of night it’s one guy. He sits in the corner, I don’t know what else he does, probably nothing. He gives me pizza when I tell him I want some. But he doesn’t look at me. Got some problem with me, maybe, doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t know why—there’s people, a lot of people out there, and what they’re saying is, I’m a very likable guy. A very likable guy.

So I think I won’t go down there tonight. Anyway I’ve got other options, got a million of them. I put on a robe. It shines in the light on my nightstand. Little flash of gold. Looks good on me.

I turn on the TV and stand in front of it, let my jaw hang loose. Doctor says I have too much tension, on account of I’m a tremendously busy guy. So I let my jaw hang very loose. The people on the screen are talking fast, always up. I know all about what they’re saying. My head starts to feel not so good, so I turn them off. How do they like that.

I’m gonna go somewhere. Shake things up.

I sneak out the door quiet. No shoes, I realize, once I’ve already gotten started. But I can do it. It’s all up to me, so I can do it.

Walk soft down the hall, scratchy carpet under my feet. Don’t know who decorated this house but tell you what, the guy’s a little out of touch. I go by a picture on the wall. I don’t look at the picture but I know what it is of. It’s a man with a horse and they’re both important.

I walk outside. Feel the night come into my robe. Little cold, and the hair on my skin, it lifts up hard. Makes me wish I had socks now, so I walk fast past the garden and the big white columns. There’s a door up ahead that’s got a window made of funny glass. I stop, want to check me out. But I forgot it’s nighttime so I can’t see. Well I know I’m good-looking, don’t have to see to know.

I go into the building. Take rights and then lefts. It’s fine if I don’t one hundred percent remember the way right now, I’ll remember it soon.

I’m starting to wonder where is everybody. Hallways too empty. I left the blue light in my bedroom. Should’ve brought it with me so things wouldn’t be so quiet, but I didn’t. My stomach feels it first. Realize I don’t know where I am. Why I’m.

Maybe I’ve been going down.

Now there’s something, I can hear it. I want to leave all of a sudden, but before I can do that a man comes around the corner up ahead. He’s got gray hair and a suit and looks mad at me. I’ve seen this guy before, definitely. He puts a hand on my shoulder. Steers me back.

Have you done it, he says. Have you done what I told you.

No, I tell him, no, I forgot. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on.

Dammit, he shakes his head saying dammit a few more times. Then he walks fast, me with him, my robe starting to come loose, but I don’t care. So what if people see, I’m a good-looking guy.

I’m just tired, is what it is, I need a break. I try to tell him. He doesn’t answer. I feel his hand grip hard on my shoulder and I start to think he won’t let go ever. I wonder if I ran would he try to catch me. I could try it. But I’m not wearing any shoes.

When we finally stop it’s at the room, that one. I tell him can’t I just do it in the morning. I’ll be terrific in the morning.

It is morning, he says. You have to do it now.

I don’t want to go in there, I say.

He opens the door. It’ll be quick, he says.

It’s dark when I go in. He turns on the light. The walls round in on my head. He points to the desk where there are some papers and a phone.

He points to the phone. Make the call, he says. Then you can go to bed. Then you can go home.

I want to tell him where he’s talking about isn’t home. Real home’s where there’s a phone but it’s only for calling a woman who brings me pizza if I want her to and never pushes me around the hall unless I tell her to. I have a robe there that’s way shinier than the one I’ve got now. I know all the rooms in it even though there’s a lot, and I decorated it myself basically. Home’s where I never wake up in the night to the blue light glowing on my nightstand, to things growing back huge and worse in the morning.

Make the call, the man says again, holding up a piece of paper with numbers on it.

I pick up the phone and press the numbers. He watches me the whole time I dial. This guy, I’ll tell you what he is, and you know it’s true—unbelievable. I’ll get him back for this.

A voice on the other end of the line says something to me. Why they had to answer. I’ll get them back too.

The man in front of me points to the nameplate on my desk. I guess he wants me to say something. Okay, I can say something. I was going to anyway. I know how things work.

This is Donald, I say.

 

Nell Ovitt is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she focused on English and Religious Studies. She is an artist and a sometime traveler, and is currently working at a university in Japan. This is her first published story.