There’s no music tonight. No noise at all that we aren’t making: Vic’s shallow breaths and my steady ones, our footsteps on the stairs. Vic wiping her sweaty hands on that poor satin dress.
“Okay.” We’re here. I open the door to the second floor. No Lilia. The floor seems to welcome my feet. Vic stays next to me down the hall to the studio. Lilia has either been there to greet me, or has left the door cracked, up to this point. But with a closed door, should I knock?
“Does someone live here?” Vic asks.
“It’s Lilia’s studio,” I tell her.
Vic laughs—sort of a cascading, nervous giggle that falls to the floor. The floor which, by the way, is perfectly still.
“You’re working with her?” Vic whispers. “I can’t believe it. I hope she’s not here.”
“She says you’re supposed to be invited before you can come in.” It’s silent up and down the hallway. It’s how Vic would expect an abandoned building to look. “But, I mean, we’re already here.”
I tap on the door. Nothing. I try the doorknob, and the door swings open to reveal a dark house. Studio, whatever. To avoid scaring Vic off right away, I’m not going to bother turning on the lights, because the ceiling sculpture isn’t the most welcoming introduction to this place.
She follows me down the hall, and I flick on the overhead light in my room. It’s a single bulb in a plain round fixture, but it has served me well so far. It’s better than painting under the bright fluorescent lights of Mrs. Pagonis’s classroom.
Vic stumbles into the room. “Whoa! This is it?”
“This is it. The two red walls, and the picture over there,” I say.
She gives herself a walking tour of the room, running her hand along the red walls and coming to a stop in front of the formerly secret painting. Abuela stares down Victoria, and both of them look perfectly serene about this arrangement.
Thanks to the presence of Victoria, I forget about the possibility of highly localized earthquakes. I flop onto the floor and hold my hands there. Not a single vibration. Would I suffer through another instance of the Estate shaking if it meant I get to see what Vic thinks of my work here? I think I would. And I think I might risk another if she were to say that she liked it.
“Wow!” Vic sits on the floor, too. She almost slides one shoe off, but seems to rethink this and keeps it on. She stares hard at the walls, her eyes scanning from one field of red to another, her gaze hanging in the corner, like she’s waiting to see something burst forth from the place where the walls meet. And then she returns to studying the Abuela portrait. “It’s amazing, dearie. Like, when I look at it, I feel like I’ve met her. And you said you couldn’t do faces.”
“Thanks.” A nice acknowledgment from Victoria is not a thing that shakes the floors. Noted. Very much noted. “The red walls were the first thing I did. The Abuela portrait is something else entirely. But everything about painting this room has felt right, so I’m going to finish the red walls to see what happens next.”
“Well, okay.” Vic looks as overwhelmed as I have ever seen her.
I kick off my shoes, so she doesn’t feel like she needs to wear hers. “What do you feel like doing?”
“Are you tired?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Then I’m going to tell you to finish your red walls already! I want to see what the end result of all this is.”
There’s still no sign of Lilia or a shaky floor as I go into the kitchen cabinets where she keeps all the paint and other supplies. I poke my head out the door, expecting to hear music or the strains of a party, but the hallway is silent. I wonder what would have happened if I’d brought Angela tonight, and if she’ll ever get to see this place again. I kind of want to show her how inspired a person can become here, but it’s possible that she doesn’t need it. After all, the piano and Lilia came straight to her. I’m the one who has to go sneaking out of windows and dashing across the city in the middle of the night to do my work.
But that’s okay. Because despite all the trouble, the rewards are pretty great. The red walls. The free drinks. And tonight, there’s Victoria.
Back in my studio, she is sprawled out on the floor, so welcomingly out of place, like when your math teacher drops the name of one of your favorite bands in class. She is staring out the window; the view from here is nice because at night it is always the same. It is the dark rooms across the way, and it is the sky, and the gulf. You don’t have to worry that you’re missing anything, that something has changed without you noticing.
I start painting the third wall red, announcing myself with a wide slash of paint across the center of the wall, and then moving outward to the corners, becoming more strained and careful as I go along. Victoria doesn’t interrupt—her view shifts from the window to me, but she doesn’t say a word.
A sound from outside. No, from above.
The music. It’s back.
“You hear that?” I put down my roller and brush.
Vic nods. Her eyes ask me to tell her something, anything about what’s going on.
“They have parties upstairs. It’s kind of a practice space for musicians.”
Last night, with Angela, the music was chaotic, focused on the level of noise it made and seemingly nothing else. Tonight, it is quieter, and more settled into itself. It bounces along, assured, like Vic when she dances. Like me with the red paint. I sit on the floor (a few feet from her—now that we’re not in an enclosed hallway, I can’t figure out what is the best way to be with her). I stare at the wall across from me, the first one I painted. I stare at it long enough that it starts to have texture and movement. Almost. Maybe. And it is calling out for something more from me.
“Be back in a minute,” I say to Vic, who is still taking in the music.
I grab more paint from the kitchen. Tubes of blue and black and dark green. Thinner brushes. A palette and some rags and a cup of water. I wish Mrs. Pagonis and Gretchen and Rider could see me now.
Or maybe not. Because this is my place.
In the room, I start with a black outline, keep my hand steady, decide on form and orientation and size and such. I shape a head and a back and arms and legs. I begin brushing in fur in strange shades of blue and green, because there have been enough paintings of brown and gray lemurs already, I’m pretty sure. They look just like the lemurs in the head-picture that I didn’t even know I had—so much like them that I expect one of them to pick up a paintbrush himself and start drawing his own dishwasher.
“What is that?” Vic asks.
“Something inspired by Angela.”
“Hmm. It’s pretty cool.” She has come up behind me and is looking over my shoulder, watching me craft the lemur’s fur. Thick and thin strokes of blue and green, each made with a strategic flick of the wrist. It’s sort of like when I would start off any picture I drew as a kid with a thick brown line for the ground, and then meander a zigzag of green grass across it. Actually, it is only a little like that, because my fingers are getting cold and shaky, and my knees are prickling, and I’m not sure how many times Victoria has heard me swallow hard.