
Trapeze Artist by David Serafino
Jane wears jeans with deep pockets for water bags. She was underweight at the last blood bank. At this one, filling out the form, she pauses over the blank for occupation. Blood donor seems suspicious. She tries to imagine dignified employment and instead remembers yesterday, passing the trapeze school at Chelsea Piers, an eight-year-old swinging fifty feet in the air, dangling from her knees, then the tops of her feet, and then she let go, plummeting into the net, her mother applauding below, rings glinting in the sun.
The magazines on the side table feature starlets advertising diets. One famous beauty drinks only rainwater. When the nurse examines Jane, she finds her two pounds above the required weight. She checks Jane’s form. Trapeze artist, she reads. What an interesting job. It sounds like something she says to accountants, periodontists, other blood bank nurses.
I’m just starting, Jane tells her. Working my way up to a circus, maybe a carnival. The nurse hmms, swabbing the crook of Jane’s elbow. It hurts less if you relax, she says. Call me if you start to feel faint.
Alone, squeezing the hollow metal rod they gave her to squeeze, Jane wonders, what is plasma? Something you need to survive. Eighty bucks a week. It looks like regular blood. A bag of her blood. The nausea comes naturally. The edge of consciousness is a foreign sea, the city beside ringed by boulevards around a flaming cathedral, a voice in the flames, wake up, dear, wake up. Fire tickles in her arm.
~
The party is for her roommate Carlos’ film school friend. Eugene just sold a screenplay to Disney. Carlos, inside-out with jealousy, insisted they get drunk beforehand, but it’s their third roommate, Ryan, who stumbles and sings on the train. Jane, a pint low on blood but three pints of beer to her advantage, feels pleasantly diluted. The transit cops have stopped carrying assault rifles. Just pistols, pepper spray, a taser and a nightstick. That’s an improvement, right? So it’s possible for things to get better.
Eighty-third and Fifth, serpentine marble, walnut trim, a doorman, concierge and elevator attendant, all gray-haired black men in burgundy livery, oversized mirrors framing a scene endlessly repeated, of her ragged pale party and their elegant attendants. When the elevator operator calls her ma’am, Jane bites her finger to keep from crying.
The elevator opens into the apartment’s foyer. Hardwood floor, brass sconces, Persian carpets, green velvet wallpaper, walls chockablock with gaudily framed oil paintings. In the salon, a woman with a purple mohawk is shooting billiards with a teenage boy in a pink tutu and cowboy boots. On a green leather sofa two Latino men in kimonos fondle one another while an aged white in a cream tuxedo cuts a line of cocaine as long as Jane’s arm. Three women in the same red vinyl dress are keeping to separate sides of the room, embarrassed by the coincidence. At the baby grand by the glass wall overlooking the park, a child in an open-backed gown calls up a Chopin étude. When she shifts to the base clef, Jane sees an eyeball tattooed at the nape of her neck.
Carlos introduces her to Eugene Fielding, Film School Friend. Eugene’s teeth are too white, and his haircut looks like it cost a hundred bucks, imitation nonchalant. His manners are decent enough not to openly appraise her, but she’ll have a problem with him later. He takes Carlos by the elbow, steering the smaller, shabbier, cleverer man upstairs, having dismissed Jane and Ryan to the kitchen for booze or whatever.
To reach the kitchen they have to wade through a salon swamped in conversation, Jane following in Ryan’s wake, waving off snippets of conversation like mosquitoes. Personally, I think the man’s a reprobate, but certain liberties must be conceded to genius…so I said quo vadis, baby, quo vadis, but she didn’t get it so I dumped her…seventeen mil upfront is a not ungenerous offer, but…Berlin Alexanderplatz and an eightball, because that’s my style, my thang…debt to Mekas and Jacobs, but entirely reliant on Billy Nightmare’s access to copious quantities of lysergic acid diethylamide…three weeks in French Polynesia on, like, a schooner?
Jane understands nothing, which seems preferable.
The party was supposed to be catered – that’s why she’s here – but in the kitchen they only find lowball glasses, pewter ice buckets, liquor and mixers. She checks the fridge. Strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in faux-wooden boxes. Most of a pot roast. Tupperware, styrofoam, ten kinds of mustard. A six-pack of glass bottles, RainWater, with a raindrop logo. A plate of sliced mango. A variety of diet sodas.
Jane sticks two green apples into her purse, a handful of edamame in her pocket, and sits down with the heaviest of the styrofoam boxes. It’s a chicken parm with linguine alfredo. Ryan pours gin and tonics while he prattles. He says Carlos is going to pitch his screenplay to Eugene tonight. He’s gonna ask Eugene for fifty thousand dollars. But the dialectic is unworkable, because Eugene has two (two!) shelves of Schwarzenegger films in the living room. Eugene will never understand Carlos’ vision. In Ryan’s opinion, Carlos needs to go guerrilla. With Eugene involved, he might as well make corporate art.
Ryan is twenty-three, studying for a doctorate in philosophy. He comes from money and will go back to it someday. He’s basically slumming it with Jane and Carlos, and she’d like to tell him that about himself, so he’ll go easy on Carlos. Michelangelo took the money, she’d say. But what she really wants is to say nothing at all, to anyone, ever again. She’s thirty, freshly divorced, no rich family or friends apart from her ex. Her resume features ten years of fucking around in the south of France. Now she can barely sell her own blood.
She’s been ignoring Ryan. In general, but also right now specifically. His tone changed, and he’s staring over her shoulder with an expression of confusion, then joy, pointing an inch to Jane’s left. In the next room, spotlit in the dark, a painting of an orange lighthouse, sea green sky, pink churning sea, thick strokes of canary sunlight wound into carmine clouds, the beach in frothing, virulent yellow, a Camargue afternoon on bad acid. Jane’s been to that lighthouse.
They drift toward the painting together. Do you think it’s real? Absolutely, look at it. Ryan touches it, knocking a crumb of sea into the carpet. Put it in your purse, he says. Come on, nobody ever paid him for it. You’d be doing these people a favor. Their insurance will pay out, they’ll get a nice new Picasso.
Jane looks around. Everywhere else, the paintings hang like grapes. This one has its own wall, three spotlights. Someone loves it, or very much wants to show it off. She raises her glass to the painting, to Ryan, then takes a handful of cigarettes from a silver tray and slips through the party, up the carpeted stairs.
The walls here are just as thickly hung, but with family photos. Eugene and his parents on skis, at the shore, in matching pyjamas, kayaking. The photos seem to run chronologically down the hall, so tip-toeing to the fire escape she watches them grow younger through the seasons and the fashions of those seasons. They must be sad people, Jane thinks, to document their happiness and nail it to the wall.
The cigarette cools the air, helps her breathe. Dusk. Streetlights flicker like fireflies, then snap to flat dead life. It’s an interesting idea, stealing that painting. It wouldn’t fit in her purse, but if she took a sheet from the closet, wrapped it up and walked upstairs, nobody would notice, just like they didn’t notice her before. Out the window, down the fire escape and onto the train. She’d prop it on her knees, staring into space like nothing exceptional had ever happened anywhere, keeping the most amazing secret. Hanging it would change the way they ate breakfast, who they invited over, the way she walked into the room. Could Ryan and Carlos play twelve hours of video games with that painting watching? No more casual farting. Jane would have to stop feeling sorry for herself.
In the hall a door opens, light spilling out with Carlos and Eugene, high on something, arms around each other laughing. She tosses the butt, ducks through the window and coughs. Just looking for the safe, she says. Eugene laughs a public laugh. Carlos beat her to it. He’s already got all Eugene’s money.
That’s great, Carlos. Ryan mentioned something. Which film? The D.F. noir? Carlos looks uncomfortable. Nah, not that one. Ennui? No, not that one either. Eugene announces in voiceover: Antibes, je t’aime. Winter. Ze tourists are leave, ze city she sleeps, ze glamour does not glam. An American, jilted, wants to leave town, but she has nowhere to go. We’ll shoot in color, because we’re trying to make money, but the grays will inform the palette.
It’s not about you, Carlos says. Inspired by you, but it’s not you.
Have you done any acting, Jane? You look like a model, but can you act?
Jane glances at Carlos, then Eugene, covering the bruise in the crook of her arm. I gave blood, she explains. I’m not into that stuff.
The film’s not about you, Carlos repeats. Just someone like you.
We’ve actually got somebody in mind, Eugene says. Madeline Cavailles. You know her? No, you definitely do. She’ll probably get the part, but you could come read for us. You know, in case something happens to Madeline.
Jane doesn’t know her, but a film-star doppelganger would be a beautiful revenge. A heroine answering to Jane’s name, sitting by the window in her cafe, smoking her cigarettes, buying her bread and going home to find her husband clichéing the maid. They’ll need a better plot. But she can picture Jean-Paul in the theater, wanting to fuck the unattainable movie star then, during the credits while the audience applauds, feeling loneliness and regret.
While she was dreaming Eugene’s tone became merely hospitable, and he leads them downstairs, arm around Carlos, patronizing him rhetorically and financially as far as the living room. Carlos must have mentioned she was looking for a job, because Eugene latches onto Jane and escorts her in a broad circle, introducing her to a dozen friends in strange clothes with impeccable posture and business cards they bring to parties. Eugene’s website developer is a shy, delighted acquaintance from high school who desperately needs somebody to run his social. The child pianist with the eyeball tattoo is seventeen, actually, someone Jane should have heard of, and it’s awkward she hasn’t. One of the women in red vinyl is in pharmaceuticals (unlike the other two, who are into pharmaceuticals, har-har). Some of Eugene’s film school friends have day jobs in finance. The sixteen-year-old in the pink tutu designed and sold a cell phone app for a sum so obscene it has to be danced around in polite conversation – he’s been looking everywhere for an interior decorator with a flophouse aesthetic. Jane should give him a call.
She tucks everyone’s cards into her purse, minding her posture until Eugene deposits her in the kitchen. It seems like a different kitchen. She returns the apples from her purse, but keeps the cigarettes. Carlos has been waiting for her. Has she seen Ryan? He’s disappeared, and someone said he is very drunk, maybe wants to steal paintings? Carlos is going to take him home. Jane says she’ll take him, she’s low on blood anyway, feeling sleepy. Carlos should stay to celebrate.
He blushes and mumbles I’m sorry into the floor. I should have told you. I know it’s creepy, but your story is perfect. Not perfect for you, obviously, it sucks, but perfect cinema. Dramatic and quotidian, driven by sentiment, but not sentimental, a story worthy of Fellini. Leaving like you did, I think it was righteous, brave, telling that bastard fuck off, I don’t need your money, and the consequences you’ve endured, your suffering, it gives you texture, nuance. It makes people care about you.
Poor Carlos, open as a wound, she shouldn’t laugh in his face, but once it’s out it feels so good, like picking up smoking after years without. Jane laughs so hard she has to wipe her nose and sputter sorry. He studies her with his hands folded to his lips in conscious imitation of some director, possibly Hitchcock. Nevertheless, he declares. You’re an intriguing character. Person, I mean. But Jane shouldn’t misunderstand. He’s not obsessed with her. It’s not a come-on. He can’t afford distractions right now, and she clearly needs to focus on herself. Besides, even if they had chemistry, which they don’t, but especially if they did, it would skew his film about not-Jane, making it impossible for him to ever have a Jane of his own. Does she understand?
She does, thank you, that was very thorough. Jane understands it’s meant as a compliment, because she’s had creepy compliments before, but anyway she’s glad her suffering is beautiful to him. No point wasting it. And if all she gets from it is a laugh, it’s still better than what she had before. Between the laugh and the chicken parm, this is the best party she’s been to in years. Just one more thing and it will be perfect. Then Carlos can grab Ryan and meet her in the alley.
Carlos, I need you to stand by the door and cough if you see someone coming.
No, Carlos says. Jane, please. He tugs the hem of his shirt, clearly in agony. She can’t steal the painting. It’s a copy, Eugene did it in high school, it’s his mother’s pride and joy. He’s been so generous. Eugene isn’t a bad person, just rich. Please, Jane, don’t?
Carlos’ suffering is the compliment she wanted. He truly believes she could be an art thief. Jane Doe, cat burglar, an occupation to make a blood bank nurse drop her clipboard. She hums the Pink Panther theme while she empties her purse, Carlos sinking into a stool under the weight of moral panic, staring in helpless stupor, her spellbound public. She feels like a film star. A black-and-white, choppily cut, silent film star.
David Serafino is a novelist, translator and proper noun. Visit him at daveserafino.com for a DNS error. He’s considered reading stories on TikTok or Instagram (daveserafino), but is unlikely to follow through.
13 February 2024
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