San Francisco, June 15, 2001
Peter was quiet, lost in the process of inventing a color. Light flooded his airy South of Market studio on this fogless spring day. He was reliving a color nightmare. Daubs of an evolving red contrasted with the bucolic background color left dried on his palette, like blood splats on a quilt of lichen. He mixed in yellow with his trowel, transforming the oil paint into an explosive orange red. Applying this to the canvas would blow up the image, blast the outline of the shed to smithereens. Add a different color? Start over? When would this nightmare end?
The phone rang, breaking Peter’s concentration. He looked from the canvas to the table, where he examined his sketch of the shed. The phone rang again. Peter couldn’t adjust the paint to the color he remembered, and now, as he reviewed the sketch, he wasn’t sure this shed fit with the abstract landscape on the canvas. Another annoying ring. The shed read almost New England, even though he’d drawn the thing in all its bright red glory while squatting not a dozen steps off a quiet Mendocino country road. The persistent phone rang a fourth time. No progress today. Peter pushed aside the drawing on the table, smooshed together the colors on his palette, and walked to the phone.
“Hi, Peter, it’s Erica.” It was the New York gallery on the line, a call he’d anticipated a week ago and then forgot about after a few days. It wasn’t a good sign when these sorts of long-distance negotiations petered out. “Hello? You there?”
Phone pressed tight against his ear, Peter took a breath. “Of course.”
“I meant to get back to you sooner,” Erica said, “but a major client asked to meet with several of my artists and I have a show opening tonight. I wanted to let you know my decision before the weekend.”
Another breath. “I assumed no reply was your reply.”
“No,” Erica said.
“So it’s a no?” Peter asked.
“No,” Erica laughed, “it’s a yes, yes, yes. As long as we can open your show September eighth.”
Three months. Not even. Didn’t leave much time. He’d nearly given up on an invitation. Now Peter was shocked. Ecstatic and shocked.
“I can’t get everything to New York that soon,” Peter said.
“Don’t worry,” Erica said. “Relax. Celebrate your good news with friends. Right now I have to celebrate another opening.”
“Thanks so much,” Peter blurted before they said goodbye. He paced back and forth. There was no way to finish everything by September, much less ship it. He began questioning whether his work was good enough for New York. The invitation had to be proof it was. But maybe not. Adrenaline excitement shook Peter’s hands. Like any self-respecting artist unable to concentrate, he put away his brushes.
Celebrate? Maybe clean the studio instead. It was pointless to paint. The New York gallery show marked a new direction for Peter. He needed a distraction, a chance to absorb the significance. Celebrate or clean? No friends around this weekend and, after last night, no romantic interests left to impress. Dinner had been as bland as Peter’s date. Dessert was even worse. Spooning a flan, Mr. Bland enquired sardonically how Peter was enjoying what was, to Peter’s surprise, their second date. “Am I supposed to remember everyone I’ve slept with?” was Peter’s unfortunate apology.
Cleaning it would be then; a soothing, mindless afternoon of spring cleaning. After Erica’s news, the studio required a preparatory cleanse. It commenced in a dark corner at the far end of the studio. Even the cobwebs were dusty. The last major clean was a dozen years back, after the Loma Prieta earthquake cracked the walls and pushed supplies off the shelves. A half hour into the effort, cobwebs safely suffocated in plastic bags, Peter, climbing to the top of a metal shelf, stretched to reach a long-forgotten box. It was Rano’s box, a box someone must have placed here not long after the earthquake, a box Peter couldn’t wait to open. Not quite a decade since someone placed it here, Peter calculated as he stretched, not quite a decade since Rano died from AIDS. He wasn’t sure what intimacies were inside. Surely photos of friends and Rano’s favorite dildo, but possibly some less amusing artifacts from their relationship.
Peter’s unbalanced nudge accelerated to a shove and the decrepit cardboard box flew from the shelf and crashed to the floor. Scrabble tiles exploded from the wreckage, bouncing to form gibberish. Peter climbed down. Photos were scattered like bodies over a debris field, photos of Peter and Rano, of Brice, of other friends, of Linh, of Angel, of Angel’s boyfriend and other faces like Angel’s boyfriend, faces that Peter recognized but could no longer name. Prehistoric floppy disks crammed with Rano’s unfinished writing strangely circled the black dildo—larger than Rano, but not much. Among the other memorabilia strewn across the floor was a black book, clasp broken; a journal wide open, open to a page about Peter, a page that, as he read it over and over, brought back dark memories of a long-ago night, the night of Carl’s attack. “I’ll explain what Peter did after Carl attacked us another time.” What did Rano mean by that?
Cleaning came to a halt as the excitement of Erica’s call dissipated. Peter sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through a few pages. Each journal entry was addressed to someone he didn’t know, someone named Mustafa. He read a few more entries before returning the journal and the rest of the mess to the box. Ten years after the fact, Rano found an odd way to remind Peter that he also had wanted to work in New York, that he had wanted to move to New York with Peter. If Rano were here, he’d let Peter know whether his art was good enough for New York. Peter’s heart beat too quickly as he climbed to replace the box on the high shelf. All these years later, he wasn’t sure he had the strength to finish his art, to leave San Francisco, to make the trip to New York without Rano.
April 30, 1989 – Anniversary
Dear Mustafa,
Tomorrow is May Day. I was reading about May Day protests and remembered that Carl and I met on May Day thirty years ago, a few months, my dear son, before your first birthday. I was the street urchin who knew how to wear a bathing suit. Carl was the vacationing sadist who made sure I accompanied him back to San Francisco.
What I couldn’t have known when I agreed to Carl’s offer to live in America was that I would not return to our sunny Algerian coast after Carl captured me, that I wouldn’t see you these thirty years. In the excitement of a new country and a new city, it didn’t occur to me. I was too young then to know the limits of my street smarts.
It wasn’t entirely Carl’s fault that I haven’t seen you, Mustafa. Peter played a role, too, although I haven’t let on. It’s better that way. Peter can be stubborn. I’ll explain what Peter did after Carl attacked us another time. It’s why I haven’t seen you.
Today, though, Carl is on my mind, not Peter. Well, the memory of Carl. He returned to Algeria more than once, never with me. He never explained why I couldn’t accompany him. Probably more trips with the same scary French assholes who introduced us. Probably exploring his fetish for dark guys. Naturally there were other street urchins with talent similar to mine. Similar, mind you, but not as prodigious. Also, Carl must have worried I would stay in Algeria if he brought me back. He always worried I’d leave him. He never bothered to understand me.
If Carl had bothered to understand me, he would have known my only interest in returning to Algeria was to see you. Well, perhaps I would have visited the family who forsook me and tracked down a few of the other street urchins who became my chosen family. Perhaps I would have checked out the bookstores and cinemas to see if anything changed. I wouldn’t risk returning to Algeria, though, if I knew how to phone you, hear your voice, see your smile.
Even without bothering to know me, sadistic Carl should have known my departure from him was as inevitable as my departure from Algeria. I moved to San Francisco for my freedom, not his bonds.
Please excuse me if I repeated myself here. I don’t remember everything I’ve told you about Carl. I do remember I haven’t told you about the way Carl blackmailed me before he died. I’ll tell you that when I have more time, dear Mustafa, because it concerns you as well as Peter. What’s important to know, though, is that Carl never revealed to me where you moved, so I haven’t found you. Yet.
Right now, I have to go to another funeral. Two funerals, actually, one for Eric, the other for David, best friends in the time of AIDS.
