But as I sipped my wine and listened to their patter, I found I was wrong. They talked about their work with a weary professionalism, like union members down at the local. The walls in the Chelsea gallery weren’t right for the kind of mounting they usually used. Pearl Paint was out of Donald’s preferred brush. Donald wanted to finish a big series, and they were all going to have to work late to get it done. The work wasn’t about pretension. It was about humble logistics. Theirs was a mild sort of complaint, and I could tell that Elizabeth and her coworkers actually took pleasure in it. It was the breaking down of something big into a series of finely grained tasks, like glass melting into sand, something you could sift through your fingers.
The skinny Asian boy handed me the joint. I took a small toke before passing it. I didn’t want to get too high or too drunk. I’d gotten to New York a day earlier, on a sweltering Friday afternoon, and that was overwhelming enough on its own. I tilted my head up. The ceiling of the loft was so high that I could barely see it. Donald had bought the space in the 1970s, when the city was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in one place for so long. Keeping your head turned to the light, letting the seasons change and the decades pass, doing your work.
A little later, when we stood to get another drink, Elizabeth led me to the wooden door. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “We’re not really supposed to bring other people back here.” She made sure no one was watching, then we slipped through the opening.
The noise of the party vanished behind us. The studio was even bigger than the living space. The dim light that filtered through the windows gave just enough illumination to see by. The room had the patina of long use: paint-splattered floor, walls spidered with cracks, empty tubes and crusty brushes. But the artwork hovered above and separate from the ordinary mess of the room. Donald Gates was known for his big, aggressive, abstract canvases, a throwback to an earlier era. “You can get closer,” Elizabeth said, nudging me forward. I felt drawn to the paintings like a magnet to iron. The thick and tactile smears of paint. The blend and contrast of colors. They were so beautiful, but so ordinary, too. It was just paint, applied by the human hand. They glowed, gently, through the darkness. I couldn’t believe that something that revealed itself to be so simple, when seen up close, had the power to move me so much.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said. “It’s hard to turn away.”
“Exactly.”
“He’s just a guy. He sleeps, eats, breathes just like the rest of us. Gets grumpy, makes stupid jokes. But then he does this, and I realize I have no idea what’s going on inside his head. How he comes up with it.”
“It’s so beautiful.”
“I know.” A beat later: “We should get back to the party.”
The night continued. Guests arrived bearing bottles of wine and gifts of food. Some were young, like us, but many were closer to Donald’s age. The gathering felt like an assortment of friendships collected over a long period of time, like a plant shooting off vines in radius. As the hours passed, the room gradually quieted until it was only the lingerers with their empty glasses. Donald was holding forth from a high-backed velvet chair, a shaggy mutt curled at his feet. Elizabeth stood up, stretched, and yawned. “I’ll say good-bye, and then we can go, okay?”
Despite the late hour, in bed back at Elizabeth’s apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I kept remembering how Elizabeth had looked, when she said good-bye to Donald. The dog awoke, his tail thumping the floor when Elizabeth reached down to scratch his ears. Donald patted Elizabeth on the shoulder. Together they looked like a version of home. Elizabeth had found the tiny nook in the world that was shaped just for her. She possessed a sense of belonging that seemed so rare to me in this city. But I’d encountered it before; a path that I’d been too foolish to pursue. I turned on the bedside lamp. My wallet was sitting on the dresser, and inside it was the business card I’d been hanging on to all these months. I took it out and stared at it for a long time.
In the morning, the card fell loose when I stood from the bed. I double-checked the time—well past noon on a Sunday. A perfectly reasonable time to call. I took a deep breath and dialed.
I hadn’t been planning to stay longer than the weekend. My tote bag held a few changes of clothing, my phone charger, a book, and that was it. I took the train down midday on Friday, and I had a return ticket for Monday morning. Rob sounded nonchalant when I called. “Okay,” he said. “No worries. I gotta go. See you around, Julia.”
Elizabeth met me at her apartment on Friday afternoon. “If you want to shower, the shower’s weird,” she said, showing me around. “The faucet is on backwards. Let’s see…help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. You can use my computer if you want. I have to go back to the studio for a few more hours, but maybe we can get takeout or something for dinner. Oh, and I already changed the sheets on the bed for you. You’re welcome.”