It was one of those moments when Izzy again realized how cultlike the project could be, but she knew this was unfair. Or was family, in any formation, its own kind of cult? Finding a partner, bringing a child into the world, surrounding yourself with people you cared about, all of these things required a reorganization of your brain, an expansion of what the world could be.
But no, Izzy finally decided. She could be disappointed that Jeremy and Ellen were here, making letters, even if she was happy that they were part of her family. Pettiness, jealousy, secrecy, these were aspects of her makeup, and she would not erase them. It did not matter right now, though, Izzy knew. Ellen and Jeremy were not leaving, and so she rolled up her sleeves and got to work with them.
David had e-mailed Izzy, asking her to meet up with him at the studio. I need your help with my piece, he wrote, and she gave in to her curiosity, feeling genuinely intrigued by David’s work, why someone who could make something so beautiful would want to smash it into something ugly.
David was wearing a tank top that said JAPAN in bright red letters, his right shoulder bearing a tattoo of a hammer and a paintbrush crossing over each other to make an X. His pants were too short to be pants, but too long to be shorts. He was standing over the table in the middle of the room, rolling a joint. Next to him was a ceramic vase, pure white, with a dozen black birds in flight. It was so wonderfully made that Izzy would have believed it was over a thousand years old.
He noticed her and waved her over. “It’s beautiful,” she said, gesturing to the vase, but he merely shrugged. “Not yet,” he replied. “It’ll be beautiful when we’re done with it.”
“What did you want me to help you with?” she asked.
He held up the joint, perfectly rolled. “First we’re going to smoke this,” he said. “And then you’re going to smash this fucking thing with a hammer.”
“Oh, no,” Izzy said. “No thank you.”
“No thank you? Do you mean the joint? Or the hammer? Or both?”
“I don’t know,” Izzy admitted. “Both, I guess.”
“C’mon, Izzy. If you’re an artist, then make art.”
“I’m not an artist,” she said. “I just make art sometimes.”
He leaned in and kissed her, once again without her permission, but this time she gave herself over to it because it felt so good. As they continued to kiss, she could sense that he was reaching for something, his hand scratching at the table. When they broke the kiss, he held up the joint.
“I promise that you’ll like it,” he said. “There is nothing better than getting high and smashing shit to pieces.”
“Okay,” she said, still recovering from his mouth on hers. “Okay then.”
David lit the joint, took a deep hit, and then passed it to her. She held it for a second, observing the bright orange glow. She thought of Dr. Grind, his disappointment in her, but she brought the joint to her lips and took in as much smoke as her lungs could hold, enough to obliterate her nerves. She was young, wasn’t she? She was allowed indiscretions, stupid decisions. She was allowed to be around people her own age, who didn’t have children, who didn’t live in a woodland complex funded by a billionaire, whose lives weren’t some grand experiment. As she held the smoke in her lungs, she thought of her wild period, after her mother’s death, and how thrilling it had been to do something bad and realize that no one was going to try to stop you. Izzy blew the smoke in one long, unbroken plume right into David’s face, which made him smile. They made out again, this time on the floor, and he put his hand down the front of her pants and rubbed his long, slender fingers against her, making her shudder, sending flashes of colored lights just in front of her eyes. “Let’s slow down,” Izzy said, removing his hand from the waistband of her panties, tapping the palm of his hand as if calming a skittish horse.
David smiled and shrugged. “We can do more of that later,” he said, and then he reached for the hammer. “Now, let’s make art.”