He takes a deep breath, removes his glasses, polishes them with his shirttail. Turns to me. “I love that you guys are so invested,” he says, “but there’s a line you have to maintain between work and life. Just to keep yourself from going crazy. And I think that’s something you need to work on.”
This makes me grit my teeth. “I appreciate you thinking of me,” I tell him, measured, “but there’s no need for worry. I find our balance pretty healthy, honestly. First stages, we go a little overboard, because we’re just getting into it. Later on the pace will become more even. This is pretty standard.”
He shakes his head, unconvinced. Still polishing his glasses. I want to rip them out of his hands. They’re clean, goddammit, rub any more and the lenses will disintegrate. “When Mel’s like this,” he says, “you know what she reminds me of? Did you ever read the Captain Beefheart biography?”
I sink down in my seat. “Nope.”
“He used to lock his band up in this attic in his house for days on end. He was angry and irrational and he had insane mood swings, but he was brilliant. And he was their boss. So they put up with it. One of the band members told this story where he was really pissed off about a take they’d done that he wasn’t happy with, and he just went on a rampage, breaking shit and yelling. And finally, he turned a water faucet on full blast and pointed at it screaming, “Play like that! Play like that!”
“Mel’s not Captain Beefheart,” I say.
“No. She’s not.” Teddy puts his glasses back on.
I open my mouth just as the lights begin to dim. It saves us from whatever I was going to say to Teddy next. I silence my phone instead. Tell him, “When you turn the work on, you can’t turn it off, okay? Mel’s just doing her job.”
“She’s not your boss, Sharon,” he whispers. “She’s your partner. You can stand up to her, you know.”
I roll my eyes and cram the cookie into my mouth.
—
Our project pulls itself together and begins to stagger around. It seems to happen quickly, though we both know it’s the product of hours banked and material shorn, a million births and deaths.
We trim, weed, liposuction, force the thing onto a treadmill to run its belly off, knowing we’ll have to do it all again. It’s only the initial draft, but in Louisville, we get our first minutes—our project becomes a living thing with reflexes and breath, an animal, our cipher. It takes over. Always sitting in the room with us, refusing to leave until we finish its business. It eats and drinks and sleeps with us. It interrupts our sentences. It makes itself everything’s point.
Around the first deep freeze, we start to pull twelve-hour work blocks, sketching and inbetweening. Fingers stronger, I join in: take upon take until it is the best it can be.
We bring Ryan and Tatum on as runners, drink fetchers, pencil sharpeners, careful not to let them see too much of the product until we’re ready to bring it out into the world. Eventually we let them sketch a little for us. They’re good. We’re surprised at how good they are. It’s only been the two of us for so long, we almost don’t know how to handle the help.
We set up the laptop projector against a white sheet one night and watch the first ten minutes in silence, the room darkened. The storm scene, the throwing of the ottoman. We’ve been through it a thousand times, but I’m still struck by how profoundly creepy it is, how I can still feel it next to me after I’ve stopped watching. I mention it to Mel.
“Yeah, it’ll do that,” she says. She’s chewing her lip in the shadows of the carriage house, thinking. “It’s still the beginning. But it’s there. It’s on the highway. You know?”
“You think soon?”
“Yeah. Soon.”
—
It’s two days before Christmas.
Teddy, true to form, has produced his holiday accessories. A vintage train set, a small, taxidermied reindeer. At some point, I find myself thinking that this might become grating: his attachment to the antique, to the quaint, to the rusted and enchanted. But for now, I’m still charmed by the brandies he’s made for us, the little potbellied stove in the corner in which he’s built a fire, wrapping a big block of coal in newspapers and feeding dried sticks into the flames. The sky purples at six now, going full dark by seven. It is snowing.
I clench and unclench my hands at the fire, wincing. My joints glisten large and red. “I had to draw myself all day today. It was weird.”
He’s at his desk, shopping for the store. He’s been haggling with his favorite retailer, a guy in Berlin who sells what he calls “antique pleasure films” on Region 2 bootlegs. He shifts, looks up at me. “Won’t hear many people say that about their day.”
“Well, try and find as many people who are as self-absorbed as me.” I turn, waggle my butt at him.
“Oh, you hush.” He swipes at me. “Most people wouldn’t be able to do that. I don’t see how you can.”
“Very uneasily. With lots of fuckups. It’s hard to have that kind of outer perspective you need when it’s, you know, your face. We’ve come up with lots of versions. It’s just that Mel’s not happy with any of them.”