The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [50]
You’re goddamned right. His eyes are suddenly wet; he stares up at the ceiling, and blinks, furiously. I think it’s over, he says. I don’t know if I can ever get back to it.
Then there is something else you must do, she says. It could be a message. Perhaps you are not a painter at all.
He feels a sharp pain in his solar plexus; for a moment he struggles to breathe. That’s easy for you to say. I’ve never done anything else. This is my whole life you’re talking about.
Then what do you want to do?
I want to go back. I have to start over again.
She looks back at the floor. If you let go of it, she says, if you don’t make here and there—if you stop always thinking Thailand and Hong Kong—it will be easier for you.
That’s impossible, he says, his head rising from the floor. I don’t want to play these word games anymore. How does the world exist, if you don’t have here and there? I’m not a nun. I have to choose.
Yes, she says, giving him a defiant look. You should choose.
When he says his name into the phone it echoes loudly, drowning out the receptionist’s voice in New York. A long silence, and she asks again, annoyed, Curtis who?
Curtis Matthews for Alex Field. He represents me. The sentence repeats twice and dies away. It’s a bad connection, he says. Can you hear me?
Where the hell are you?
Hong Kong, he says. Alex, it’s good to hear your voice.
I’m glad you called. How’s the leg?
Goddamned travel insurance wouldn’t cover any of the hospitals in Bangkok. I had to leave; there wasn’t any other way. This woman I met, Mrs. Mei—
He stops. Something—a tiny click, a muffled sound on the other end of the line, as if a hand has been placed over the receiver—tells him Alex isn’t listening.
It’s a long story, he says. I won’t bother you with the details.
But you’re recovering, right? That’s the most important thing.
I hope I am, he says. It’s hard to tell. Did you get the last paintings I sent?
We did.
And?
For a moment he wonders if the connection is broken, but he can hear the faint ticking, ticking of the timer, his Hong Kong dollars falling into space.
I think they’re wonderful, Alex says. But the market’s changed, Curtis. We haven’t gotten the kind of interest I hoped we would. It’s all swinging back to conceptualism now—nobody’s looking for color anymore. Nobody cares if you can draw. You’d be amazed at the crap I’ve seen this season. Every figurist painter I know is having a terrible year.
He looks down and sees a sampan bobbing across the water, and for a moment he imagines it exploding, raining bits of debris on the black waves. I had a feeling, he says, willing his voice not to shake. Well, then. This is costing a fortune.
You should come back to the States, Alex says. We miss you. Everybody here misses you. You should apply for a summer residency, maybe a teaching job for the fall. Once you’ve recovered, I mean. Things will pick up again.
I think I may go to Mexico, he says. I’ve lost my taste for mescal, you know? I think I’m ready to eat the worm.
Alex gives an audible sigh, almost a groan, at the other end of the line. Don’t do this, he says. It’s melodramatic. It’s self-pitying. It’s not like you, Curtis. I’m saying this as your friend, understand?
Write me a letter sometime, Curtis says. Say hello to Helen, would you? He presses down the receiver and covers his face with his hands.
He wakes at the first graying of dawn, tears starting in the corners of his eyes. Images float out of his last dream. The tiny white eye of the moon above Doi Suthep. An emaciated Burmese boy curled up in the darkness of a kitchen hut, his face lit by the glowing opium in his pipe. Now you wish you had smoked it when you had the chance, he thinks. Even your memories are nothing. He turns his face to the wall, closing his eyes, but the faintest sounds invade his sleep; buses whooshing around the curve toward Central, garbage collectors calling out to one another in a hoarse singsong.
For three days he stays in bed, rising only to drag himself to the toilet. His knee is fused solid; there is no