The Show

The street was wet, the steel beam reflections of myriad city lights diving into the depths of something with a striking straightness, receding infinitely downward. The cars rolled past with their treads hissing sharply through the quarter 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; Tim took notice of this from his vantage point behind them and walked close to the street so that he had a better angle from which to glimpse Josh’s face. It was Josh’s 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 down the street in the direction of the show, 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. Tim was absorbed in his study of Josh’s face.

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. 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. 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.” Talking out of half of his mouth and lifting the lighter to his cigarette, “How many people are here?” The lighter chafed and ignited.

“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 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 made up 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?”

A sneeze issued from Tim, whose eyes were fixed to Josh, his nose and mouth buried in the pit of his elbow; he was paying close attention to Josh, reading him. He was sensitive to the smoke.

“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 sat 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 then 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 owned 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 that he had to take a piss. And with a pat on the back, Craig sent Josh into the room, while he and the others walked into the big room, Tim shaking Josh’s shoulder encouragingly on his way out of the room, causing Josh’s entire frame to sway. They were the closest pair in the group.

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 behind him 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 mild acne that she seemed too old to have, which Josh thought probably caused more dermatological 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 wary expectance.

“I really like the use of color…” It took until that utterance for Josh to completely divest from the conversation. Her voice persisted and functioned to supply Josh’s busy mind with the background drone of Charlie Brown muted-trumpet teacher-speak; he scanned the room quickly whenever he got the sense that she was too engrossed in what she was saying to notice Josh ignoring her in her periphery, “… my time spent in Argentina.”

Josh paused when she was done, and looking her in the eyes remarked with an insincere smile, “You have nice boobs,” and walked away.

In the big room Tim and the Jo(h)ns were sitting on a wrap-around couch nestled in the corner closest to the hall which led there. The room was cavernous. Its twenty-foot ceiling was decorated with disco balls, some of which were cracked and damaged, most likely from sustaining falls after being hung carelessly, its plaster peeling off in patches. Industrial windows climbed the walls almost to the deteriorating ceiling, swinging on hinges and opened for ventilation. There was a stage built at the far end of the room where the tenants were gathered, sitting on chairs and couches, talking loudly. Josh emerged from the gallery and plopped down next to Tim forcing the air out of his lungs through limp lips, the couch voicing protest with the rusty sound of compressing springs. He looked defeated. This wasn’t a surprise to the others. They said nothing. Tim offered a firm few slaps to Josh’s thigh for consolation and encouragement. They exchanged a look, their faces identical, mouths cocked to the side acknowledging the disappointment of the night.

There were twenty-six people in the room arranged mostly in groups of two to three and spreading the tile floor, the exceptions being the tenants and Josh, Tim and the Jo(h)ns. Nobody seemed to have broken from the person or small group of people that they came with; they probably only felt comfortable to stick around because of the amount of noise that the tenants were making which simulated a party atmosphere, along with the music that was playing quietly through a couple of wimpy speakers hooked up to a laptop sitting on one of the tenant’s laps.

Almost everybody was holding a red plastic cup filled with cheap beer, all carrying on in half-hearted conversation and intermittently scanning the room for eyes scanning the room. There was an air of expectancy about the whole night; everyone was there for the idea of everybody that surrounded them, but it swelled like carbonation in all their chests and soon deflated. Soon the Jo(h)ns took off with their hey-man-good-show’s and I-think-it-went-well’s.

The corner of Tim’s eye caught something as he was seeing them off with handshakes. A cat, appearing black because of the dim lighting but that was actually grey, was making its way to the center of the room with slow yet steady tentative advancement. His head, carrying his yellow anxious eyes, was alternating side to side as it moved, inspecting the groups of visitors. He stopped in the center. It looked at Tim, remaining stone still and seeming to beckon, although with uncertainty. Without diverting his eyes from the cat, Tim stood up slowly and made his way to it, it now looking somewhat alarmed; as he knelt down to greet it, it quickly looked about itself and retreated, stopping after about six feet of fleet and then looking back at Tim. The sequence continued, approach-stoop-run-look, until the cat led him into one of the tenant’s bedrooms, where Tim closed the door so the cat would have nowhere to flee.

The cat was equally as elusive behind closed door, slinking and squirming out of his hands, hiding under end tables to render itself inaccessible. But after every attempt the cat would look back at Tim, and not in fear. Tim began to strategize; he would let the cat get used to his presence for a while, and so they sat. After about ten minutes had passed, an idea. There was a gaudy necklace lying on the floor, a brass chain with turquoise tear-drop shaped pendants dangling from it. Tim sensed that the cat was uncomfortable with being paid acute attention to. He sat on the bed and picked the chain up off the floor with his thumb and forefinger. He looked at the chain with exaggerated interest, pretending to concentrate hard, cocking his head to one side and then the other, inspecting each pendant on the chain, allowing the rest of it to dangle tantalizing low to the ground. The cat was of no interest to him, no sir.

Soon the cat needed to investigate. It stalked the dangling chain and eventually took a swat at it, to which Tim reacted to by quickly pulling the chain to his chest and reaching his hand out to pet the cat on the back. The cat, taken off guard, frantically darted to the corner of the room; Tim imagined it felt betrayed, scandalized. He decided against using a lure this time. It felt too deceitful.

Ignoring the cat seemed to work well, so he decided to stick with this course but to use different means. He picked up a book that was lying on the bed he was sitting on, and pretended to read, keeping track of the cat’s movement in his peripheral vision. The cat studied Tim from the corner of the room, making odd movements and then looking at him, seeming to attempt to gauge his interest. Each time, Tim stood his ground, looking at the book, feigning absorption. The cat came closer in increments, sometimes looking around and seeming to mull his options, his tail swaying rhythmically. Eventually, it made its way right to the foot of the bed. Tim deliberated about whether or not it was time to act. The cat looking up, Tim pretending to read. Five minutes passed.

To Tim’s surprise and satisfaction, the cat suddenly jumped onto the bed and climbed over his arm, positioning itself on his chest, directly between his head and the book, and began to purr, at which point, Craig’s head peeked from behind the door, “There you are! I see you’ve met Thurman. That’s weird, he usually hates everybody,” and then with a nod indicating the big room behind him, “Why don’t you hang with some of the cats in here.”