But, over the summer months, the calls overflow to the town hall. The house is a travesty, disgusting to look at. It is bringing property values down. One passerby telephones in a panic, thinking the creatures are real. The house was already bad enough, some snap, but this is a middle finger to the rest of the town. There need to be regulations to suppress people like the Gregorys who believe the world is theirs to deface.
Finally, in November, Martin reads in the Old Cranbury Gazette about the lawsuit against his patrons. The art installation is incorrigibly offensive to the residents of the town. A black-and-white photograph of the house accompanies the front-page article. Martin sees his own name captioned beneath the image, and his breath catches for a moment. In the fuzzy photograph, of substandard resolution, the piece does look horrific, like the scene of a crime.
All publicity is good publicity, he reminds himself. Lying alone in bed, habitually on the right-hand side, he allows his mind to drift through the possibilities. The art media will surely catch wind of the controversy, and there might be a write-up in one of the monthly publications. The longer the Gregorys resist, the better for his own career. Perhaps other suburban iconoclasts will contact him about commissions. He feels a sweet shudder at the thought, despite the heavy awareness of the empty space at his left.
Later that week, Bill Gregory comes to the door. He shakes Martin’s hand firmly, gives a brief, beleaguered smile, and announces that they are going to take the piece down. The battle is grueling already, and it has only begun. The situation is emotionally depleting for his wife, in particular, who has not taken well to being the town pariah.
They will cover the cost of de-installation, Bill says as he rises from the couch. And Martin, of course, will keep his commission payment. As Bill speaks, Martin sits quietly and watches his neighbor’s gesturing hands, the gold wedding band making designs in the air. He watches the knob in Bill’s throat move up and down the pink column of his neck. When Bill shakes his hand, Martin receives the grip impassively. As Bill leaves, the storm door lets in a crisp breeze before closing with a flatulent sigh.
The next week, a truck comes to Martin’s house. A man rings his doorbell and asks where they can put the crates. There is no room in the studio—the garage—he tells them. He signs a paper and closes the door. He watches through the window as the men unload wooden crates onto the driveway. Then the truck pulls away.
Martin steps outside, and the autumn sun hits him flat in the face. He walks, partly blinded, toward the maze of crates on the pavement, each sealed tight. Fingering the perimeter of one lid, he feels the divots where each screw is firmly countersunk. There are at least twenty screws in this one lid. He sits down on the box. The sunlight crowns his head, indiscriminately loving. The fiery trees flap their excitable hands.
He thinks of the little pond behind the house, icy in winter, covered with algae in summer. He remembers chasing frogs with the kids, capturing dragonflies. Just now, the water would be clean and cold beneath a scrim of vibrant leaves. He entertains a vision: a pond bejeweled by insects. Floating grasshoppers and bees, the water shuddering alive. The foam would keep them afloat, and he would go in after them, sink down among them. He would drop through them with his iron weight, completing the piece and bestowing its meaning.
Martin sits for another moment, then uses both hands to push himself up. He leans down to the crate he’d been sitting on and tries to lift it, but the strain on his back is too much and he lets it drop back to the ground. Straightening, he surveys the jumble of boxes—too many to count, identical, equally impossible. He squints into the sun. A car approaches, loud and filled with children. A boy sees him with his boxes and waves. He waves back instinctively. The car rumbles out of earshot, and the small sounds of birds return.
VISA
THEY MEET in the parking lot. She supposes that this is one of the more dampening aspects of suburban dating, this kind of public, day-lit rendezvous. They shake hands on the strip mall sidewalk like business associates. He is tall—taller than she remembers—with a pronounced jaw that hinges on the brink of ugliness. For a moment, she is thrown. In the blush-toned glow of O’Reilly’s Pub, postmidnight, his profile had reminded her of a Roman statue. It is possible that she had even said this. Now, studying the flat-sloped nose and deep, suggestive cleft at the top lip, she understands that this is the kind of face that defies easy categorization. The kind of face that does not reveal itself at once, but alters with the faintest breeze of feeling.
In the Japanese restaurant they are enveloped by cool, regulated air, the sounds of synthesizers and burbling water. As they settle at their table, Camille watches his hands. Smooth and slender with neat oval-shaped nails, the type of quasi-feminine, erotic hands she notices on men from time to time. She meets his eyes—granite gray, dominating—and her initial distaste is interrupted by a slight shudder. All at once, the patchwork of his face seems to harmonize and become familiar, inevitable.