The Show

The street was wet, the infinite reflections of the infinite number of city lights diving into the depths of something with a striking straightness, the cars rolling past with their treads hissing sharply through the ¼ inch of water. Everything but the sky was well lit for safety, now fully committed to dark, orange hued light polluted clouds silently, steadily migrating east. They walked at a quickened pace all hunched and forward leaning, a huddle of hand gestures. Tim ambled a few paces back, not exactly having decided to disengage, but not necessarily disappointed about not being included. He was the first candidate to be edged out when the narrowness of a sidewalk only permitted so many shoulder-to-shoulder. Everyone that passed them seemed to wear a vague look of distain, furrow-browed and brazen, their features accentuated by deep cast shadows of city lights; they usually made eye contact with Tim, as he brought up the rear. Despite the group’s failure to ensure his inclusion, his being aware of outsiders’ acknowledgement of the group somehow made him feel like he was the representative member, his posture: protective. His arms were crossed and his eyes forward as the rest of the group peered into one another, Jon, closest to the street, braced and slumped with traps squeezed tight, continuously flinching, evading the low-hanging branches of the teenage trees planted in the little square plots lining the main street and doing his best not to dead-leg himself on the metal benches that face the shops, John’s shirt brushing the opposite brick and stucco store fronts occasionally with a ripping Velcro sound and forcing his right shoulder behind him with a twist of his back.

Josh was between the two, talking only slightly less animatedly than the others. He was nervous, or eager, his attention divided between the conversation and his closing in on the representative fruits of his labor. It was his show that they were walking to, although the others, aside from Tim, had submitted pieces. He had been talking about the show for months, and had organized it with his friend, the lessee of a warehouse space not a mile from his apartment and had spent almost every night of the past two weeks in the space designing the layout and tediously hanging his work on the walls with rationale more meticulous than could probably be appreciated. He intermittently went silent and looked straight ahead and down the street in the direction where the show would be, as if he expected to be able to sense something about what was coming just by way of these momentary detached revelries in his anticipation. At some point, he got stuck in this thought space; it didn’t appear that he was going to resurface in the conversation. His hand-wringing became continuous, and his facial expressions, although slack and lazy, began to morph without his consent as his proximity to the warehouse afforded him imagination and his self-consciousness waned to nothing. His face was all one cheek twitchy half-smiles and brow furrows, alternatingly.

They crossed 5^th Street and the warehouse was in view, a brittle looking red brick building on the corner of 6^th and Girard. Tim noticed the way the smell of the street rapidly changed, almost with every inhale; the smells’ sources could be discerned if careful enough attention was paid to the direction of the wind. First it was hotdogs, then foul wet trash, that dull and sweet smell of the stale air that hovers over manhole covers, curry, and then cigarettes. A few people were smoking around the corner at the entrance to the warehouse; that accounted for the cigarette smell.

“Josh! You’re here. What’s up?” with arms open, one quickly dropping to his side and the other extended with a hand slightly upturned, subtly indicating he didn’t want a conventional handshake, but rather one of those where the fingers wrap around the other’s wrist and which usually morph into something that passes for a hug. Josh missed the cue and realized it quickly, having to lift his hand above Craig’s and descend awkwardly in a slow swooping motion to get the right angle to grab it the conventional way, looking like he was demonstrating the path of a projectile, his forehead beginning to burn with embarrassment; Craig used his other arm to grab the outside of Josh’s forearm to reinforce the shake, and then after a couple affirming slaps withdrew his hands, knowing subconsciously that when you botch something like a handshake, if you follow it up with something vigorous enough it tends to erase the memory. It would probably be more accurate to call the two acquaintances. “Want to go up?”

“Sorry, uh, yeah, give me a minute; I’m going to have a smoke. How many people are here?”

“Probably about twenty,” to which Josh offered an understanding nod and took a second to himself to decide whether or not that was a good amount. The people smoking didn’t count. They all lived in the warehouse with Craig. Some of them were secretly annoyed that there were people roaming around upstairs in what functions to them as a living room. They all talked almost exclusively to each other (right then and for the rest of the night), which they felt their only incidental attendance gave them the right to do. There were eight of them (including Craig) that lived there, and four of them (including Craig) that were smoking outside.

Sometime before January, when the lease was signed, Craig had the idea to get together a group of his artist peers, most of whom are aspiring film majors, to get a “space” together and form a “collective.” As one would imagine, the idea was appealing to the many artistic friends of the well-networked Craig who actually had to turn down a good many of them as room wouldn’t allow. To the initial delight and eventual dismay of his (ware)housemates, he had followed through on his promise to use the space to host various types of events. Most of the events consisted of the local bands playing for sparse crowds consisting almost entirely of people who knew the band members personally. This was a bit of a break from the usual noise, but still wore on the nerves of the warehouse’s inhabitants.

After a few drags, “How long have they been here?”

“Not long, maybe fifteen, twenty,” at which point one of them emerged from the door, proceeding to weave through the small gathering with a polite smile to suggest a number of excuse-me’s, clutching her bag to her chest and looking through her bangs to make shy and apologetic eye contact to help part them, imperceptibly double-taking at Josh without moving her head as she recognized him from the little picture and blurb posted next to his work upstairs. She took off down the street alone, pretending to be cold.

Without having really decided to do so, but rather as a sort of unconscious impulse Josh threw his cigarette on the ground right then, only having smoked about half of it, stepping on it absently even after it fell on the wet ground and extinguished itself with a small sizzle. It was time to go up and see. He opened the stickered and graffitied side door which you could tell was heavy just by seeing someone open it, almost letting it close on Craig who quickly braced it with his hand and flexed hard to kill its momentum, and then stepped back to hold it for Tim and the Jo(h)ns. They silently climbed the stairs. Josh forced out a preparatory exhale, his chest fluttering all of a sudden; all of his anticipation pooled inside that moment as there would be no more time to feel it, a nervous lump now sitting at the base of his throat, a sort of pleasant nausea swimming behind his sternum, its emanation a warm dizziness that fuzzed up his brain now full of blood, and that dark blue glitter-spangled semi-blindness that comes when you stand up too fast after forgetting to eat. The haze subsided and the impressions gained definition slowly, fading into view were ten or so people, bodies facing art, interrupted looking faces turning toward Josh, who now owns a different kind of their attention. His dazed look gave way to the kind of unnatural smile a kid might offer to his camera wielding mother.

“Everybody, this is Josh, the featured artist of this weekend’s show. He’s going to mingle a little bit, so if you have any questions to ask him about some of the pieces here tonight, I’m sure he’ll be glad to talk with you,” Craig said with a hand around Josh’s shoulder. Craig leaned toward Josh and in a quieter voice told him that there was like coffee and stuff in the big room and that other people had filtered through and are hanging out in there now, but to mingle here for a few. And with a pat on the back, Craig sent Josh into the room, while he and the others walked into the big room.

Josh obediently remained in the room and took a few tentative steps toward its center. He had no intuitive sense of what he should be doing and realizing this, resorted to attempting to see the whole scene in the third person, delegating all executive power to the slice of his consciousness that he had thrown to the ceiling just to the right of him and back toward the wall, the spot which he reckoned would be the best vantage point from which to take it all in. The effect was not as desired; he ended up taking a few very mechanical looking steps to his left and staring for about eight solid seconds at the side of the head of a girl who looked to be examining one of his pieces very intently.

“You’re a weird one, aren’t you? I like that.” With a jolt Josh’s attention snapped back to him like a rubber band from the ceiling space behind him, reunifying and fixing itself on the girl’s face, heavily made-up to cover the acne that she seemed too old to have, which Josh thought probably caused more epidermal issues than it solved. He instinctively did not like her; she seemed too comfortable to have any serious investment in their conversation, but he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“I really like this one,” she said, crossing her arms and giving her breasts a forearm shelf to rest on, seeming to concentrate on the piece, although Josh wondered if she was rather concentrating on whether she could get him to look at her breasts or not. He did not look, as he was too busy searching her expression to decipher intent.

“What about it?” he asked with intermingled skepticism and genuine interest.