February - Giants 6 страница

"Is she all right?" I asked, in spite of Vivian's zealous mood. The shredded tissue was really bothering me. She only did that when she was nervous; maybe she was just nervous because Vivian was talking to her? Sometimes she could get intimidating and overbearing. Or maybe, like usual, Jasmine was working too hard.

"She's fine. You should see her, though. She works a lot," Vivian's responses were a bit stunted. I took it to mean she was busy cleaning and I should stop asking questions.

Gerard was sitting at the table, where the tissue had been and where Jasmine had probably been sitting. I peered curiously into the mug. A strong whiff of herbal tea came back at me. "Since when do you guys drink tea together? I thought you wanted her to try oolong tea and this is peach."

"Wow, aren't you a little detective this afternoon. People can drink whatever tea they want, and she was partial to that kind," Vivian teased. She finished wiping down the counter and walked over to the table to take the mugs away while giving me a demure look. I knew this to mean 'Shut up, Frank and start minding your own business' in Vivian speak, but the whole scenario was weird. Maybe Jasmine and Vivian had been doing this before and I had just never been around. Maybe they started a tradition of afternoon tea when I had been in Paris. But other than today, I never saw Vivian drink tea (hence the disorganization of the cabinet), let alone get excited about oolong tea. Most of that was for Cassandra. She was the tea drinker in the house and she had told me on many occasions that she felt more civilized when she did. Vivian, like Gerard and I, were coffee drinkers. Maybe there was something in coffee that made it not vegan, but I doubted that. It was just beans, right? When Jasmine still worked at the cafe she had never had never mentioned an issue with it. There were probably more chemicals and ingredients in tea, especially when you factored in honey, and I was pretty sure, by some convoluted rule, that honey was out of the question as well.

I was thinking far too much about this. Gerard's lie during the interview had started to make me suspicious of everything around me. I needed to let it go. While Gerard and Vivian began to talk on their side of the table, holding mugs of coffee (See! She usually drank coffee! I was right!), I found the envelope that Jasmine had dropped off to me. It was from the magazine. I forgot everything as I tore it open, not being able to contain my excitement at seeing my photos in print.

On the cover was of a stencil of Che Guevara on the side of a building. The logo for the magazine, that same mouth with the mustache I had seen on their doors, was superimposed over his own mouth and the slogan ("taking talk to the tips of your teeth") was around the wall in an arch. Renegades was written in brick letters at the top and then headlines filled the rest of the space. Considering this was an independent local production, I was very impressed with it. Though the cover was in colour, the rest inside was not. I liked it like that, though. It gave it a more newspaper-and-magazine hybrid feeling. There was also more text than images, which would not yield that much colour. As far as images went, my photos covered a page and a half inside and there was some other photography, with a small political and rather crude cartoon on the last page. I flipped through it all quickly to get a taste of it before I dived into where I was featured. I smiled seeing how well all of them had turned out. Jasmine's article took up a lot of space and the text against the images worked very well together. I saw our names under the title - article by Jasmine Bergen and images by Frank Iero - and my heart skipped a beat. It was so good seeing our names and our work together. It felt like the culmination of our college career together. I flipped quickly to Jasmine's letter from the editor page and saw that she had used one of the photos I took of her for her image that month. It was nice seeing my name again, right underneath her half-smile and block of text.

"Is that her magazine?" Vivian asked. "The one you're in?"

I smiled proudly. I held the pages to my chest and waited for them to ask if I wanted it on the fridge or if I was going to get a gold star or not. Vivian just messed up my hair, said she was proud, and asked to read it for a while. I handed it over to her eagerly, wanting to gloat more than anything right now. I would have time to read it later.

While Gerard and Vivian looked over the magazine together, I began to dig though the rest of the package. There were two hard copies of what the February issue was going to be about, Jazz, and then a super-early edition for the Mikeyh issue, Evolution. I held them eagerly, feeling really special that Jasmine would want me to keep helping. I must have done a good job. I was about to pack up the hard copies again in the envelope for safe keeping when I realized there was a half-page still folded at the bottom. I took out a short message from Jasmine.

Hi Frank! Here is what you worked hard on and I'm glad it came out like it did. Here is more magazine information, too. I have a favour to ask of you. I know it's short notice, but for the Jazz issue I'm going to a small blues club on Saturday night so I can write a story about it. Will you come and take pictures? I know it'll mean no money, again, and I know that you're super busy with Gerard's art display, but it would mean a lot to me if you came. If you can't, stop by the magazine some point soon.

Jas

It had been a long time since Jasmine had written me a note. I felt like we were back in high school again, where she and I had worked out this elaborate system in which to get messages to one another. We would often write during those last few months of school when I was back to finish up and Gerard was no longer around. It was our small correspondences that kept me sane. We'd write the letters, then fold them up super tight and tape them under the bleachers on the football field. We had different lunches, and she had a study period, so we were always able to get away and go outside to our own personal mail slot. We had also figured out a way to slide them in reference books at the library. We would write the letter, and then, whatever was the ending word in our communication would be the first letter we would stick it in for reference materials. It was always so thrilling; we had both felt like spies the last few months of school, especially since we would usually report back rumours we had heard and try to debunk them or just comfort one another about the hurtful things that were said. I never really fully understood how much shit Jasmine had put up with just to be my friend. She was constantly accused of having AIDS or asked if I had AIDS or something ridiculous like that. Our note writing back and forth and our clever way of hiding them made us feel like we were the better people, like we were smarter than them. And it drew us closer together. We had so much secrecy between us and gossip around us that these small messages contained the only truth we could believe.

I held the letter in my hand, and though it wasn't as cryptic as the high school ones, it made me feel a lot better having it. I realized I had been slightly jealous of Vivian and Jasmine hanging out. I was glad that I had gone to the interview with Gerard, but I was also internally kicking myself that I had missed hanging out with her as well. I wanted to be two places at once - and that was what letters did for us. I was still able to hold and communicate with Jasmine through her words on paper. And she said she wanted to see me again. Another job, sure, but she had told me to come by her office, even if I couldn't take pictures. This was a great sign. Maybe she was feeling more comfortable in her job and she wanted people back in her life. She had stayed and talked with Vivian for at least an hour.

I folded the note back up and put it in the envelope with the hard copies. Vivian and Gerard were still looking at the magazine, reading the Food Not Bombs article. I got up and went into the kitchen, deciding to get a drink.

"This is really good, Frank," Gerard commented. "You told me about this before, I think, but Jasmine does the topic justice."

"Yes," Vivian agreed. "Are you working with her again soon?"

"Yes," I divulged with a smile. "We're going to take pictures in a blues club."

The two of them nodded and made approving noises and then went back to their reading. I grabbed a mug and was about to walk to the coffee machine to get a drink, when I decided against it. I plugged in the kettle for tea instead.

On the last night of Gerard's show, we all stayed inside. There was a blizzard and a freezing rain warning, so even if we hadn't decided early on that we were going to pass, Vivian wouldn't have let us drive in this weather anyway. It was her car and her insurance, so we couldn't argue with that. By the time Vivian got home from work and by the time Gerard and I woke up for the day, the warning had yet to be made true. Vivian, who had been very adamant about not attending in this weather, found herself questioning about whether or not we should go.

"It's up to you, Gerard. Your show and it's the last day for it. You could capture some wonderful memories and store them up for the rest of winter?" she asked, but it was no use. Gerard and I had decided a long time ago that the art scene was dead. We had our opening, we realized the success and failure, and now, we just wanted to stay home one night.

"I think I had my last fill of myself with that interview," he stated. "But go if you want, Vivian. Frank and I will keep ourselves company."

She shook her head and scrunched up her nose. "The party is always where you guys are."

She was right, too. The party was always with us. Even in the middle of the night during winter, as we passed our days when I wasn't on the night shift, Gerard and I managed to make things have more meaning. Tonight would be no exception.

Vivian made us all Kraft dinner, and though Cassandra complained, we ate it up heartily. It was a cheap meal and we made it look elegant as we decided to serve it in the china that was usually reserved for special occasions. The clash between low and high classes was exciting, fun, and it made us balance out our artistic selves with a human touch. Part of the art of living that Vivian had instilled with that first month back was knowing how to have fun with what you had. We had Kraft Dinner and we had china. It was what made the most sense. We also had each other and we sat at the table and talked about our lives instead of our money, fame, or perceived notions of that, for most of the night.

I learned that Cassandra was working on more Wagner during her piano lessons. This time it was Tristan and Isolde, but it was getting to be too much for her. Not too hard - nothing was too hard for Cassandra - but it was difficult to convey the necessary emotion on the piano. I suggested that she should try some jazz, some improvisation, and although the idea seemed repulsive to her at first ("What, no order? How would you be able to reproduce it and then play it for others?"), she eventually agreed to have a look through some of her books to see what she could find. She was craving something new artistically and I hoped she found what she was looking for.

Gerard talked about his new fascination with nudes and how, when he started to draw again, he would begin to pursue honesty instead of decadency, and draw the human form as he saw it. Like Lucien Freud, he would paint the body with all of its flaws and in that act of not looking away, he would create something worthy to look at. Vivian seemed quite excited and was the first to volunteer for the project. I smiled, knowing that Gerard had already started some small sketches of me in the basement, and I laughed to myself when I saw Cassandra roll her eyes.

"But you say that it's an eventual project, that you don't want to pursue it right now," Cassandra came in. "Does that mean you're taking a break for a bit?"

Gerard nodded. "I am overwhelmed by my own image right now. I need time to appreciate life as life gives it to me before I can start creating again."

"So what will you do with your days?" Cassandra seemed baffled by all of this. If she was not eating, cleaning, sleeping, or doing her homework, she was practicing piano. It was the only way she knew she would get better, and wasn't getting better the goal of very thing? Practice, practice, practice and then eventually perfection would follow. The idea that Gerard could just stop doing art for awhile was unheard of and terrifying to her.

"All artists need a break. You need time to think through your actual life and appreciate the inconsistencies of reality before you run off and escape into art. You need to be present more on some days, so as not to miss opportunities," Gerard, though speaking very broadly, I knew exactly what he was talking about. "Besides," he added. "I think Frank and I have some cooking to learn. As much as I love Kraft Dinner, Viv, we need to learn how to make our own vegetarian meals."

So that was our next project, then: cooking. It had now been made official, although we had already been dabbling into the art when we saw fit. Some nights after he had drawn me for awhile, we laid out together and looked through the piles and piles of Vivian's cookbooks. She had a few solely dedicated to vegetarian affairs, and we had also gone through the famous and iconic ones as well. The Joy of Cooking and Julia Child's books offered an interesting read and we kept in mind that we could simply omit the meat and the recipe would still be the same and just as wonderful. As we looked through the measurements and increments, we wanted to make everything. Sometimes late at night, our eyes would play tricks on us. We could see the deliciously cooked food in front of us, smell it already coming from the kitchen, or hear Julia Child's iconic laugh echoing down Vivian's halls. We had mastered a lot of breakfast endeavours, since that was the only meal that we shared with Vivian and Cassandra other than dinner. Our entire schedules were flipped because of my night shift, but I had gotten used to the uncanny feeling of eating dinner for breakfast and then snacking at four in the morning for lunch, to be followed by preparing pancakes or trifle for Cassandra and Vivian in the morning. I was getting used to living in a basement with no windows or visible light and then coming upstairs in the morning and watching the sunrise with Gerard. We had decided that the sunrise was our favourite, most definitely. The sunsets were put to shame by comparison. We tried to paint it one morning, solely for fun, and never ended up finishing. It went by too fast and we were more interested in each other.

Gerard kept talking about all the foods he wanted to make. We had done enough cooking recently, he proclaimed. What was really fun and skill testing was the world of baking. One had to follow a recipe exactly in order to have it pulled off correctly. It was like chemistry and it produced such beautiful things once done right. He kept speaking about the cake that Mikey had brought when we first came back and he seemed determined to reproduce that rainbow in batter.

"Followed by croissants, naturally," he embellished with a smile.

"What about vegan baking?" I asked. "That would be even more puzzling since so many ingredients are eliminated."

"Sure!" Gerard said. "It's winter. Let's fill the house with smells and call it our day’s work."

Although Cassandra rolled her eyes at a lot of this, when we began to take down requests on what specific items we should be baking, she seemed quite excited when Vivian mention lemon-poppy seed scones. I made sure to underline that so we would make them relatively soon, and perhaps restore Cassandra's vision of us. Maybe she could eat them with some tea, I thought to myself.

After we had talked about the decadence and the luxury of cooking and baking, we turned our attention to Vivian to see what her next project was. She walked around the issue a lot; first, by talking about her commissioned works for Gerard's pieces. It was good for us to hear; we would have to eventually know the numbers and where we stood (especially if we wanted to keep going with our baking schemes), but it was rather dreary and a heavy topic to broach, especially when we wanted to keep things light for our last show. She informed us that even if no one bought a single piece on the last night, we were still coming out on top. Not grossly, or anything like that, but we had earned some money. It would go a long way if we spent it wisely. Any of the paintings that were not sold were going to go back to her classroom and she would loan them out for art lectures and pressure people into buying them if they took it more than once. She also mentioned the possibility of Gerard going on some guest lectures and appearing as a special speaker on the campus. This would be better paid than painting and wouldn't take up as much time. Hopefully, within a few years of doing that, he could teach an undergrad class, and then after that, he would probably be able to be a professor. He could keep selling paintings and paint in his free time, but it wouldn't have to be his sole form of money anymore. He wouldn't have to feel as if he needed to escape from an escape anymore. Gerard nodded eagerly to everything that Vivian was saying and it sounded pretty good to me too. I was almost a little envious, but I supposed, when I got to be as old as Gerard, maybe I would have some notoriety as well.

"You probably won't be able to move out on your salary yet," Vivian commented. "But that's okay. I kind of like having you two around."

"Well, that's a relief," Gerard teased her with a laugh. He held his drink up and asked that we all cheer to Vivian for her insurmountable effort in getting us to where we were. "And we felt like giants from where we had been before," he stated, and we all clinked our glasses together.

"Thank you," Vivian said, her blush evident on her pale skin. "But honestly, Gerard, I would have done this for you whether or not you were my best friend. You have talent and other people need to see it. I'm glad they finally do."

"And my dear Vivian, you are very good at the art of career planning, the art of money managing, and the art of production. You have many capabilities, no matter how hard you try to underplay them. But I want to hear about an art form that is solely focused on you. Tell me. What is your new project now that this is all done?"

Vivian thought for a moment, then began to tell us about Callie and Dean's graduate thesis and the courses she was teaching. Gerard cut her off with a wave of a hand.

"Ah, ah, ah. You, Vivian. I want to hear about you. You're bursting with creative energy inside your body."

She laughed, fidgeting nervously with her hands. "Tell me about it!"

"Yes, exactly, tell me about it Vivian. I want to hear about what makes you excited."

It took a while of prodding, but she eventually revealed that she had been thinking about knitting again, or sewing clothes. "I did it a lot when Cassandra was a baby. It was easy to pick up and start again whenever, without losing the vision as easily as I did with any other art. It also had this durability and practicality that I liked."

We all nodded at the table, completely supporting her. This was the perfect task for Vivian in my mind. Her pragmatism and energy folded into one tiny little creative process. It was brilliant, and though she was shy about it (a rare thing for Vivian) we could all see how important this was to her. I made a mental note to keep asking her about this, to tell her to update me regularly.

"What do you plan on doing first?" Gerard asked, and Vivian returned to her coy self. "You'll see. It may end up being for one of you."

We finished dinner shortly after that and began the clean-up routine together. Even Cassandra wasn't trying to get away and run off and practice. We all finished up the dishes, with Gerard and I washing and Cassandra and her mom drying and putting the dishes away, and then we all sat down together again. We decided to play cards, since I knew that was a "leisure activity" that Cassandra liked, other than chess, which was for more than two people. We sat around the table again, talking quietly among ourselves and sharing victories without gloating. It was quiet, demure, and nothing like the party that we had been to for the opening of the gallery. It was nothing like the artistic frenzy of colours, sensations, and stimulation that I had been used to. But it was still art, and it was still so important. I found Gerard's hand on my knee halfway through one of our games, and without thinking about it, I leaned over and kissed his forehead. I put my head on his shoulder after that round, and Vivian took this as her cue to exit.

"Don't forget to go to work tonight," she told me just before she and her daughter went down the hallway to bed. We all said goodnight to one another, and then Gerard and I were alone in the kitchen. He rested his head on mine, the cards still out in front of us, and we sat in silence awhile. The art scene really was dead now. It was gone and over with and I didn't even care. This night had been more fun than I ever could have conceived of it being. How could moving so little, creating something that was gone after the moment, and sitting together not saying a word be so satisfying? Was I getting old, too? Did it even matter, so long as I loved the people I was growing old with?

"I better go soon," I said, but didn't really move. Gerard rubbed my back and kissed me to rouse me to attention. He stood up with me and straightened my clothing out before hugging me and laying our foreheads against one another.

"Go and have fun. Back to the drudge, yes, but we'll be here when you come home," he reminded me, he kissed my cheek and off I went.

It started to snow as I rounded the corner to the drug store, the warnings from before finally taking affect. I clocked in right at midnight. The art show really was now over and the reality of the world had resumed the same stasis as before. But my life - our life - was only beginning.

Chapter Four

The club that I was meeting Jasmine at was called Léger. Light. It had been on the hardcopy of the assignments that she had sent along in the envelope. She was writing something on the history and evolution of the jazz scene, which was no easy task to undertake, and it was going to end with a modern day depiction here in this club. I knew virtually nothing about the subject, but I was eager to go and find out. To me, jazz had always seemed like such an outdated trend and filled the same place that classical music did. People did listen to it, but it was more background music than anything, right? At least, that was how I had considered composers like Brahms and Beethoven. Then I had met Cassandra. She seemed to breathe new life into music that was basically a fossil to me and hearing her play the last couple of weeks was an act of resurrection and appreciation in my mind. I wondered if Jasmine was going to do the same for me with jazz. I knew no names of musicians as I stepped into the club, but I knew the familiar cadence of what I heard. The thumping that seemed erratic but right on time, the sounds of a saxophone that seemed to be playing a solo no one had scheduled, and the slight pounding on a keyboard that made you stand alert and pay attention. The music was so full of light, sudden and vibrant life; it seemed to have a pulse of its own. It didn't seem antiquated anymore when I walked in, and I didn't feel as if I was stepping back in time, either. My ensemble of hoodie with jeans seemed to work with the casual thumping and rhythm of the instruments. I stepped inside and looked around for Jasmine.

Although the club's name translated as Light, it was really dark inside. It was a good thing that jazz was based a lot on improvisation because it would have been nearly impossible to read music in this lighting. There was a bar at the back that was full of stools with some low hanging lamps that provided enough light to illuminate the taps for the tender to see. Along the side wall the bathrooms were positioned, and decorating their doors were portraits of famous jazz performers that I didn't know the names of to mark the gender distinctions. After the bathrooms, and extending to the centre of the room, were the wooden tables with chairs. The place mostly served alcohol, but I saw a few people with coffee cups. Snack food like peanuts, chips, and nachos being distributed as well. The front was where the jazz band was playing. Or was it blues? Jasmine had said blues on the phone and in the write-up it had mentioned the jazz, blues, and ragtime movements, but I had no idea how to tell them all apart. In the darkness, I couldn't really make out very many people at all, either. I checked the wall clock to the left of the bar and I was even a bit late. Jasmine must have been around there someplace, but I couldn't see her yet. I ordered a coffee and sat on a stool and waited. I listened to the sudden stomp-stomp of the beat and I tried to get into the music. Just as soon as I thought I knew what was going to happen, it changed. And just when I thought the song was over, it would start again. As much as it was exciting and thrilling, I was beginning to feel off kilter and since I still couldn't see Jasmine, I was feeling more out of place. Most of the people in here were dressed in all black and were young kids. Students, I figured. The people playing were much older and gray flecked their hair. The band members were all wearing black pants, but everyone varied in their choice of shirt. Some had plaid (or what looked like plaid from my distance), gray pinstripes, or just plain white. Some of them had suspenders, some had small hats, and many were unshaved and skinny. There was a pianist who was on a keyboard, in addition to a saxophone, clarinet, and guitar player. The guitarist wasn't always playing; in fact, he was too busy talking to a woman off the side of the stage for most of the song that I was watching.

Even the coffee in this place was throwing me off. It was strong and bitter, and there were no easily accessible sugar and creams around, so I just drank it slowly and tried to wait out the awkwardness. When the song finally did end (for real this time), the guy with the clarinet leaned into the microphone and thanked everyone for coming. "I'm glad we could all bring a little spirit back into your lives on this winter night. It's almost over, folks, and then we'll get back to summer and you'll be wishing for the blues again."

He cracked a few more jokes, his voice liquid like velvet. I found myself wondering what his singing was like, and bemoaned internally that jazz (at least, this jazz I was listening to) had no vocals. He talked a little while longer, telling us this long and drawn out story about how his wife had left him, before they launched into their next number. I looked around for Jasmine again and finally saw someone come out of the woman's washroom. It was her. She seemed startled at first; the music had started right up again as soon as she stepped outside, as if her foot forward had hit an 'on' switch. She stopped and looked around, and that was when we made eye contact. She smiled at me, though wearily, and I felt my awkwardness disappear. She was wearing a long white top (or a short white dress with long sleeves, I could never tell) over a pair of jeans. Her hair was actually down long by her shoulders. She usually hated wearing it down in winter because it always got tangled from her hat or scarf, but she was had forgone those items tonight. I looked at a table near where she was standing by the washroom and realized all her stuff had been there this entire time. She moved away from the bathroom, past her table, and began to come towards me. I had gotten off my stool the moment I realized it was her and we met partway.

"Hey, there you are," I told her. "I was beginning to wonder if I had gone to the wrong place."

"Yeah, I'm sorry I wasn't around to meet you. I felt a bit off. I think it was the sudden darkness and the music. It was a bit disorienting at first and I felt a little dizzy. I'm okay now," she insisted. She still looked a little flushed. I touched her arm briefly and began to move us towards her table.

"I'm really glad you came," she said as we sat down. "Did you bring your camera?"

I held up my bag that suddenly felt extremely heavy. "I brought a couple rolls of film too. I underestimated how much I needed for Food Not Bombs and I had no idea what to expect here tonight. I got the magazine and the article, by the way. Thank you. It turned out really well. Our pieces worked well together."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14