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high school.” She’s still smiling, but her face has lost some of the heat it held. She doesn’t seem to care about the info.
    â€œWhose show?”
    She looks surprised. She touches her chest lightly with both hands. The bus rolls behind me, hot with diesel funk. My first job in New York was as a bike messenger. I once watched a guy skid on an oil slick and go down on Madison Avenue in front of the M1. It ran over his head—popped it open. Everyone watching threw up. She leans against the bus stop sign, flattening a breast against it.
    â€œIt’s mine,” she says.
    I look over her into the glare of the makeshift gallery. It looks as if a flashbulb got stuck in midshot. I think it will hurt my head if I go into all that light.
    â€œCome on. I’ll give you a personal tour.” She turns, expecting me to follow, which I do. She doesn’t seem at all concerned with the light. Perhaps I have nothing to worry about, or perhaps she’s become inured over time. The crowd parts for her, some smile and check me out. Now I recognize some of them, from the gym, from the coffee shop. They range in age from twenty-five to forty. Most of them appear to be single or dating. I can tell they’re all childless; they’re too wrapped up in what it is they believe Jane or Judy and I appear to be doing. I’m sure some of them will query her as to
what is going on
as soon as I leave.
    Claire was still a dancer when we started dating. She’d had a show at the Joyce and a party afterward at her apartment. When I arrived, she was busy introducing Edith to her friends. The loft was full of admirers—new and old. There were prep school and college mates, other dancers, East Village divas both male and female. I watched Claire take Edith around. Her mother, as always, was unruffled by the chaos of new faces and personalities—gay boys and bi-girls and art freaks and the loud pumping disco on the stereo. Cigarettes andmagnums of cheap Chilean wine. Edith was in full support of her daughter. Then she saw me. Perhaps Claire had described me to her mother and Edith was trying to determine if I was me. She looked at me too long. Claire noticed her mother’s attention had shifted and looked to where she was looking. She smiled and made sure that Edith saw it. The dancers she’d been talking to looked as well. There was a nudge, a whisper, then Claire led Edith by the waist over to me. I met them in the middle of the room. Claire took each of us by the forearm and placed her mother’s hand in mine. She made it clear to everyone there that she was mine and that our budding romance was mine to fuck up.
    Judy or Jane offers me a glass of wine, then a bottle of beer, and seems somewhat taken aback when I refuse, as though the drinks are inextricably linked to the paintings, and by extension to her. They’re all headless nudes of women except one, which has her face and an enormous erect white penis. She’s slumping, sexily, I suppose, in a Louis XIV chaise.
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œDo you like Freud?”
    â€œFreud.” She laughs sharply, perhaps to hide her offense. She looks up at me, raises an eyebrow, and shakes her head. “Freud?”
    â€œLucien.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I like them.” She looks deeply into the representation of her face. The nose is crooked and one eye socket is smaller than the other, which on her real face is true, but not to the extent that she’s depicted it. In the painting, she’s made a slight asymmetry much more pronounced, as though her defect is an expression, as though winking would make the bone rather than the flesh atop it contort. She’s made a mess of her skin tone, which is medium to dark brown. But she’s shaded her painting with peach and pink and gray—layer upon layer of paint, like theory upon theory to solve a problem. What isthe problem? She’s a sloppy