The door to the bedroom is open, and Lilia walks by. She pauses, peers in, and says nothing to me. I figure if I were doing something wrong, she’d tell me, or take away the paint. Maybe the room is starting to look how she pictured it would. Yes—the word strums in her head. Yes. And there’s a warmth in my chest and my knees as Lilia returns to the living room.
There’s only one more thing to do: I need to take on the secret painting again. The lines on the opposite wall are back, having faded in like sunlight. I abandon the closet and go straight to them, to catch them before they disappear. They seem clearer this time, though, and less likely to dance away. I grab a thin brush and a palette of colors and go.
I’m quick and smooth—like scribbling with a brand-new rollerball pen. Like Angela’s hands across the piano. Like Victoria in the Gershwin show, making effortless leaps across the stage and falling into a pirouette. There’s a move in modern dance called the downward spiral—Vic is always trying to perfect hers. Maybe this is my downward spiral, careening yet controlled. When art is like this, when the work is so hard and so easy at the same time, I feel like I’m breaking all the rules of the universe. It’s thrilling. It’s terrifying. I may as well be falling through the floor, down to the beach and the gulf, straight down to the water, all the while managing to bring this painting to life.
It is taking shape. Curves and thin lines. Wrinkles. Eyes that are open and wide and friendly. It’s a portrait of the person I most want to see and most want to avoid seeing right now. Abuela Dolores.
Abuela, who loves her dogs and mofongo and flowers and funny nicknames. Abuela, who has always accepted my art even when she hasn’t loved it, and loved it when she hasn’t understood it (which is great, considering all the times I haven’t understood it either), and now I guess it’s fitting that she’s part of it herself, here on my wall.
And I want to tell someone, or show someone, but can I? Should I? Is this painting even mine?
Elsewhere in the Estate, the music starts up again. Quietly, like a footstep on carpet. Like it’s coming toward me but has a while before it reaches me.
I sit on the floor next to the painting and work on the corner and the bottom, which seems to be some sort of background pattern. The guidelines are barely here now, but maybe they’ll stay long enough to let me finish this corner. It’s coming together. The pattern down here, whatever it is, is more intricate than the rest.
Actually, it’s not a pattern—it’s a word. This.
I keep going. More red paint and clean brushstrokes. More spiraling.
The next word: really.
And one more: happened.
And a dot at the end. Final.
I drop the brush and stumble to my feet. This really happened. Okay, but what did? This is where I need the English-class analysis skills of Angela and Victoria. Maybe I’ll let the painting hang out and be on its own for a while. At the doorway, I peer out into the rest of the apartment.
The music is clearer and louder now, like bells, or a brand-new piano. Every note, no matter what instrument makes it, is full and bright, bursting through the walls of the Estate like a searchlight.
“Lilia?” I say into the hall.
No reply.
“Hey, I’m going to take a short walk, okay?”
She has left. In the living room, she’s finished a whole new ceiling section of Goya cans, and cleaned up her supplies. She told me before how we wouldn’t be alone here, how this is a community of artists, so maybe she floats from one place to another, checking on other people’s red or purple or orange rooms. I just know that my urge to find the music tonight is stronger than my urge last night to leave without seeking it out.
Out in the hall, it sounds different. It’s still bright and brilliant, but it’s clearly coming from somewhere farther away. Another floor.
I take the stairs one floor up. Still farther away.
Two more floors, and I peer into the hallway. I’m on the fifth floor. The hallway is identical to Lilia’s floor. The music seems to be coming from an even higher place now.
Sixth floor. Seventh floor.
Finally, at the eighth floor, the music stops.
I step out into the hallway.
There. A note. The strains of a new song. They start as whispers with glances of a tone, but they fold on top of one another and now the music pours over me. It floods from the end of the hall. As I walk closer, other instruments announce themselves: bass, keyboard, and saxophone. The door to number 810 is ajar. I push it open only enough for me to slip through.
They’re all here. In the living room, in the kitchen, in the hall. These must be the other working artists Lilia talked about. The rooms glow a dim orange, and the artists cluster in groups, shoulders close together. I have walked into parties before: Bill’s pool parties where he would grab my hand and jump with me, fully clothed, into the deep end; Tall Jon’s parties, full of members of two-month-old bands; a popular-kid party I went to with Connor and Victoria; a cast party for one of Victoria’s shows, just after the lead dancer had announced that she was leaving; weed parties and cheap-beer parties, all of which smelled more like guy sweat and microwaved food than anything else. But I have never walked into an artist party.
I don’t even know what it smells like here. Not smoke, not paint, not food. Maybe just like people.
A few steps forward. There’s a group of three women talking. They look at me—they are older, like in that big swath of time between Tall Jon’s age and Abuela’s age. Like when you’re supposed to be doing things and making things.
“Do you know what band this is?” I say. “They’re really good.”
They all look like they’re trying to signal one or the other to speak to me. “Are you Lilia’s new friend?” the tallest one asks.
“I guess so.” Maybe I look nervous. I uncross my arms, let them hang by my sides. It’s easier to do parties when you have a Tall Jon–donated cigarette in one hand. “My name’s Mercedes.”
“We’re glad you could come up tonight,” another one says. She is strikingly pretty, a mix of colors: brown eyes, medium-tone skin, a striped scarf in her dyed red hair. “This isn’t a band, not in the usual sense of the word. They’re here most nights, though, just experimenting with different songs and sounds. You might hear some of them again, one day.” She winks at the other ladies.
“Cool. Thanks.” I move farther into the crowd. People say hello and excuse me and sometimes nothing. But I am supposed to be here, I’m pretty sure. They haven’t turned me away. And—yes—there’s Lilia, heading toward me down the hall, and people step aside to make sure that she, now wearing a floaty light green dress and sandals, can get by.
Her eyes lock on me. “Did you finish your painting?”
“Yes,” I say, “with the wall I came to finish. I mean, I didn’t originally plan on coming back tonight. I know I didn’t tell you that earlier. I really needed to stay home with my sister. But I just couldn’t stay away. I just had to—”