CONTROLLED ACCIDENT
Gray Kane
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Gray Kane
Discover other titles by Gray Kane
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
When Mateo and Sylvia reached her mother’s house, Mrs. Lambert didn’t say hello. She listed instructions: Her bedroom was locked and off-limits. Her ceramics studio was off-limits. The food and stove were off-limits. Her list droned on. She stared more at his green Mohawk than into his eyes, which Mateo realized would make his following her that much easier.
Ignoring her words, he tried to memorize her features. He prepared to pick her out of a crowd. Mrs. Lambert had dyed blonde hair like Sylvia’s. White eyeliner, pink eyelashes, pink fingernails with white tips. She wore pink designer sweats over her dainty figure. White tennis shoes with pink laces canvassed her tiny feet. Her purse matched her shoes and the tips of her fingernails, whitened teeth, eyeliner, and to a certain extent, even her hair.
She moved with intention. No hesitation. No double-checking to see if she had forgotten anything. No wasted movements at all. If her words were not a little more careless than her outfit and movements, Mateo would have doubted she was human.
Sylvia’s brother was far more careless. As he followed his mother, his bed hair caught up with the rest of his head only when he stopped. Then it flew forward like a passenger in a car accident. He wore a wrinkled white Polo tucked into wrinkled kakis. Like his mother, Louis had on white tennis shoes. But dirt caked them. His mother periodically monitored whether his shoes tracked dirt into the white wool carpet.
They did.
Mateo decided he liked the kid.
Louis carried a weather-worn book. Mateo asked him what the book was, but the kid ignored him. Mateo respected that. Rebellion was important. It indicated the kind of independent thought that breeds creativity. He hoped to remember that when he was a dad.
After Mrs. Lambert and Sylvia pulled out of the driveway in the Lexus, Mateo stopped Louis from going back inside. “We’re taking a little trip.” He squinted from the sun.
“Mom said we’re to stay here.”
Mateo opened the door to his Volkswagen and grabbed a white dress shirt. “I’m in charge.”
“No, you’re not. You were given instructions.”
“Nobody can tell others what to do. They can only offer suggestions.” Mateo’s fingers combed through his Mohawk until it moved more like Louis’s. He liked assuming the role of a cool parent.
“Then you can’t make me go with you. You can only suggest that I go.”
Mateo didn’t expect that answer. But he respected its assertiveness. He decided to take a different approach. “We’re going to spy on them. It’ll be fun.” He changed shirts, tucked the dress shirt into his jeans, and pulled the folded Miami Dolphins cap from his back pocket.
“You’re going to get us into trouble.”
Mateo stuffed his Mohawk into the hat. “I respect dissent. I really do. But you’re dissenting with the wrong person.”
“Dissent?”
“You’re choosing to follow the wrong—. No. Listen. My words aren’t orders. They’re your way out of orders. Did you know you’re going to be an uncle?” Mateo held the passenger door open for him and pointed at its torn fabric seat.
“I know you knocked up my sister.”
Mateo laughed. “Yeah, well, that means you have to start thinking for yourself so you can be a real uncle to my son.”
“What? What makes you think it’s going to be a boy?”
“I’ve got a feeling.” Mateo reached up to touch his Mohawk, but it was tucked into his cap. He put his hands in his pockets. “Whatever. We’re going to be brothers. We’re supposed to be equals, but if you stay here in this house, you’re not in control of yourself. Your mother is in control of you even when she’s gone.” Mateo reached up for his hair again but stopped himself. “And you’re throwing off my mojo.”
“Somebody has to.”
“Fine. Whatever. Be a baby. Stay in this crib. Nobody is going to wait over you while you cry from neglect. I hate to break it to you, kid, but you’ve been abandoned. Whatever you’re looking for isn’t here. You’ll find it only in that car through that windshield. That’s the future.”
In the Volkswagen, Mateo honked his horn at the kids playing in the street.
“Stop it.” Louis’s eyes fluttered back and forth between his book and what was going on outside the car. “Be patient. You don’t have to catch up with their car. You know where they’re going.”
When they reached South Beach, Mateo found the Lexus double-parked on Jefferson Avenue by Lincoln Road. Sylvia sat alone in the car. Mateo parked the Volkswagen a few cars down from her. He turned to Louis. “I’m leaving the keys in the car so you can putz around with, I don’t know, the radio. See your sister over there? I’ll let her know you’re here, so you’ll have that supervision you’ve been craving.” Mateo winked. Louis ignored him. He continued reading. Mateo shook his head. He started to reach for his Mohawk, but it was tucked into his cap. “Whatever.” Mateo left Louis in the car.
The humidity quickly pasted his forehead and cheeks. He knocked on Sylvia’s window. Startled, she looked up. Sylvia smiled and rolled down the window.
“Your highly social brother is in our car over there. Where’s your mother?”
“I can’t believe you got him to come along. She’s being really secretive. All I know is she’s meeting someone at the Van Dyke Café. Apparently she brought me just so she wouldn’t have to pay for parking.” Sylvia laughed.
“I’ll probably have to get out of here in a hurry. I’ll see you at the house.” Mateo kissed her pale forehead. She smiled.
He walked over to Van Dyke’s and sat under the red awning next to the English phone booth. He saw Mrs. Lambert seated alone two tables away. Mateo ordered an orange mojito and wiped the sweat from his face with a paper napkin.
A leathery man in a white cotton suit greeted her. "Mrs. Lambert. Little Lizzie. You came!"
"You know me, Jack. I'm an artist. I can't trust psychologists. I trust other artists." She stood and pulled down her sweatshirt over her exposed waistline.
"How you holding up?"
"I'm not firing whole vases anymore. I'm firing shards.” She forced a smile, but her eyes creased more than her mouth. “Emotionally, I can't put it all together. In my eyes, it's broken before it's even whole." She shrugged her shoulders.
"Go with it. Let the art lead you."
"I knew you'd understand." Mrs. Lambert kissed his pocked cheek.
They both sat.
Jack leaned forward. "Now what are we going to do about your son?"
"He's a mess without his father.” She looked away. (Mateo lowered his head.) “All he does is read his father's novels. If I tell him to play outside, he just hides in the bushes."
"Hides in the bushes?"
"He pulls the vines off the ground and climbs under them.”
Mateo turned his head and stared at the vines growing up the building behind him.
“He takes one of his father's books and a flashlight. He's obsessing. Louis is taking everything in and letting nothing out. He's got no outlet."
Jack nodded. "Tell him to go outside, goes outside. Nothing more obedient than an object, Lizzie. Said he's reading his father's novels?" He put a finger on his chin.
"Yeah."
"An object pushed from one place to another.” Jack looked away, but his finger remained where it was, hovering in the air. “Wants to be passive. A kid's misunderstanding of what a father wants of him.” He looked around them. “In his mind, his father's lecturing to him through the novels." His eyes caught Mateo’s and then looked away. Jack appeared to notice his own hand. He quickly lowered it.
Mrs. Lambert put her hand on Jack's wrist. "I knew you were the right person to come to. Can you help him?"
Jack pulled his arm away. "Kind of the reverse of what I do." He tugged at his cotton sleeve and stared off into nowhere. "You want to de-objectify your son."
Mrs. Lambert touched Jack's face. "Are you saying you won't help me?"
"Didn't say that. But the opposite of what I do.” He sighed. “The art acts.” He retrieved a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the sweat from his neck. “Audience becomes the object." Jack grabbed the bottle of red wine from the table and poured it into the two glasses. "Needs a larger narrative than accustomed to doing." He gave one to Mrs. Lambert. "Think of characters in a novel. Objects that come to life. A story gives the character an objective. Makes the core of what he is—an object—now external to him. Something he can no longer be. Something he has to have. Go get.” Jack looked at his wine, but appeared not to notice it. “That's what we want to do with your son."
Mrs. Lambert sipped from her wine glass, nodded, shook her head. "I don't understand. How do we do that?"
"How do we make your son a character in a story?” He stared into her eyes, ignoring everything but her eyes. “We talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Don't let him be it: the prodigal son, a disobedient one, whatever. Can't be it. Has to pursue and get it back.” Jack leaned forward. “Need the whole Performance Troop for this, Lizzie. Take him out of school. Got to be his only influence. Boy can't even watch T.V."
"We don't have a T.V., anyway. My husband and I didn't believe in it. God rest his soul."
"I’ve got to move in with him. You've got to move out."
Mrs. Lambert raised an overly plucked eyebrow.
"Boy lost his father, Lizzie. Can't get his father back. You're gone. He can get you back.” He leaned back in his chair. “Right now, you're the parent; your son's the object of affection. If we send you away, you become the object.” Jack sat up straight. “Oooh. And I'll play the role of the domineering father. I’ll deny his access to you." He stroked his chin. "This is going to be fun."
"Oh, Jack. Are you really willing to do this for me?"
"Do my part for free. But the Performance Troop won't. And you need them." He closed his eyes, sighed. "Hate to break it to you, but that'll cost you." He peered at her. "Unless of course you let us document this in some way." Jack held her hand. "Audio. Visual. Security footage. Because you're commissioning the biggest art project we've had, Lizzie. Beats the hell out of manipulating rollerbladers outside our studio window."
"Good. Because I can't afford to both live on the road and pay you guys. I really am going to have to hit the art-fair circuit, too, sell as much as I can. It's been so hard without him. Not just financially. The emotional makes the financial so much worse. I had to buy a new bed."
"I know. I know."
"Couldn't bear to sleep in our bed alone." She looked away.
"I know."
"Thank you so much, Jack. I really appreciate this." Mrs. Lambert stood and pulled down her sweatshirt over her waistline.
"Not rushing out on me right now, are you, Lizzie?"
She looked around.
Mateo tilted the bill of his cap to cover his face.
Mrs. Lambert sighed. "My daughter is double-parked in the car. And we have to get back to Louis."
"Isn't your boy thirteen? He's fine alone."
"Louis? Yeah. He's growing up. I could've left him alone, but Sylvia has her good-for-nothing boyfriend babysitting him."
Mateo chugged his mojito. He pulled his sweaty shirt from his back and shook it dry.
"Why?" The leathery man stood.
"Because that jerk needs parenting experience. You know that sonofabitch knocked her up? Louis wouldn't do anything stupid.” She looked Jack in the eyes. “I'm not so sure about Sylvia's boyfriend."
"Well, we'll straighten out your son first." Jack winked.
Mrs. Lambert raised an overly plucked eyebrow and leaned towards him. "I like the way you think." She kissed his pocked cheek.
Mateo tossed money on the table and rushed back to the Volkswagen. Louis ignored him. He continued reading. Mateo stared at him, sighed, and shook his head.
On the ride back to West Ft. Lauderdale, they said nothing. Mateo thought about Mrs. Lambert’s conversation. He didn’t understand it, not really. But he wondered what it must be like for this kid to grow up under such manipulation. No wonder the boy was so passive-aggressive. It was the only version of aggressive he knew how to be.
At the house, Mateo took off the hat, changed back into his sleeveless T-shirt, retrieved hair gel from the glove compartment, and grabbed a football from the backseat of the Volkswagen. He didn’t let the boy go inside. He forced him into the backyard.
Louis sat under a ficus tree.
“We need to get in the sun, Louis. The mosquitoes.”
Louis never raised his eyes from his book. “Let me read.”
A mosquito landed on the inside of Mateo’s elbow. He watched it poke into his flesh and feed from the artery. “Watch this.” Mateo made a fist. A rush of blood pumped into it.
The mosquito exploded.
“You’re the one who needs a babysitter,” Louis said.
Mateo retreated from the tree’s shade to escape the mosquitoes. He gelled his hair, but without a comb and a mirror, the attempt was useless. He was a sweaty mess. A film of dried sweat quickly pasted his veiny arms, tanned face, both sunburned sides of his floppy green Mohawk. Wishing he had brought a sketchbook, Mateo squinted at the football in his hands. “It’s not healthy for a boy your age to choose reading over playing catch.” He thought of Professor Esterfop combing the sweat through his thinning hair. The professor had said once to the class, “An artist never goes anywhere without a sketchbook. Because he never knows when people are going to ignore him.” Mateo looked at the reading boy and nodded.
“It’s definitely healthy.” Louis never lifted his head from the book in his hands. “You mean it’s not normal, and, and even that’s not true. You’re just not used to seeing us reading kids. Because we’re not the kids you have to honk your horn at. We're not the ones you have to move out of the street when you drive that crappy car.” Louis’s eyes stayed focused on his book. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not normal, and just because you do see it doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Try taking a look in the mirror. That’s something you see all the time. Doesn’t mean what you see there is either normal or healthy.”
“He never knows.” Before his students, Professor Esterfop pushed his yellowing shirttails into his brown slacks. “When he’s abandoned.”
Mateo touched his Mohawk to test the strength of its gel. Infirm. He threw the football at Louis.
“That’s it.” Louis stood. “I’ve had enough.” He kicked the ball at Mateo. Louis stomped over to the creek, descended its muddy bank, hopped across its rocks, climbed the bank on the other side. He lifted the edge of the wedelia, crawled beneath its entangled weave of vines and leaves, transformed into a shape splashing barely beneath the surface of its green sea. He disappeared into the depths of where the wedelia grew the tallest. After a while, Mateo couldn’t hear where the boy went.
Shit. I lost the kid. What am I going to do now?
Mateo traced Louis's path across the creek. He lifted the carpet of wedelia and dropped to his knees. Mateo crawled beneath its vines. He discovered a shoveled trench where Louis had dug what appeared to be a fort. Tiny holes in the organic tapestry allowed Mateo to see little more than the speckled shadows of his hands. The trench deepened. So long as he slouched, he managed to walk through its trail. The path gave way to interlocking passages. “Louis, what the hell kind of hideout is this?”
Mateo turned a corner. He saw a hunched figure. “Louis?” The shape was too big to be Louis. The shadowy figure remained silent. Mateo’s heart raced. “Louis?” The shape turned slightly, shakily, as if contemplating running. “Who are you?” Mateo managed to say. They stood facing each other. Mateo noticed the figure’s hesitant stance. The figure squatted to lunge. Mateo charged. He leaped. Fists clenched. Screamed.
Mateo swung at the mirror. A large shard sliced Mateo’s arm. It slid like a swift blade to slice the side of his left sneaker.
“Son of a bitch.”
Mateo yanked the triangle of mirror from the torn canvas. He grimaced. Hot blood puddled in his shoe. “Shit.” The pressure of his step parted the split flesh. “Ow, ow, ow.”
Mateo stumbled into a cavernous room. He smacked his shin into aluminum. “Son of a bitch.” He tumbled over this folding chair to land on a small, cold, hard cylinder. It was a flashlight. Mateo managed to turn it on to see the collapsed chair and the pile of reflecting shards. He rose to rip a shard from his thigh. He grunted.
The flashlight revealed a row of unlit candles. Mateo failed to notice the small, detailed sketches of motorcycles across the dirt walls. Louis had drawn the bikes onto loose pages from one of his father’s novels. Greenish mold ate through the words.
Mateo looked at the long muddy cut stinging his right arm. “This is so wacked. What kind of kid builds a fort like this?” He hobbled around the various corners. “Louis, answer me, you little brat. I’m injured!” The soil absorbed the deeper tones from his shouts. Through the wedelia, his whiney voice echoed weakly between unseen branches.
He squeezed his floppy Mohawk.
Mateo plowed forward. The soft soil corners of the maze curled away from him. They sucked the light from his flashlight as if the batteries were dying. Mosquitoes tracked his body from above the woven vines. They entered the thin spaces between the layers of green-leafed fabric. They buzzed around his ears. He felt woozy. Sharp bites contracted his muscles into spasms. He pushed forward. He clipped another soil corner with his shoulder. The thought crossed his mind that he could die here and no one would find him. “Louis!”
“What?” a faint voice replied from somewhere in the undergrowth.
Mateo aimed the flashlight. Its light failed to reveal more than blurred shapes in the dirt walls—indentations of rough earth hacked by the shovel that dug this place. Humidity overwhelmed him. Hot breath hit his nostrils. Sweat from his upper lip drenched his mouth. Mateo’s left arm swung at the wedelia ceiling for fresh air. His hand gripped a clump of the vines. He pulled to tear them. The ceiling sagged.
“Don’t,” the voice pleaded.
Mateo tore the first layer of wedelia. More layers continued above it.
Louis’s thin body tackled Mateo. “It'll take forever for this to grow back!” The boy punched at his ears.
Mateo tried pushing him off. Nausea weakened him. Vomit welled in his throat.
“You ruin everything!”
Mateo tried to push him off but couldn’t. He jabbed the flashlight into the kid’s nose. Louis screamed. Charged. Ripped his fingernails across Mateo’s eyelid and neck. Mateo clubbed him across the cheek with the flashlight.
The boy dropped.
Mateo rolled over, vomited, inhaled the humidity, vomited some more. He stood. Mateo unconsciously continued breaking layers of vines over his head. He reached the cooler surface air. He gripped the undergrowth. Mateo dragged enough of the wedelia’s netting to climb.
He turned to decide what to do about Louis, but the kid was gone.
Mateo made his way back to the house. At the creek, he navigated loose rocks while listening to Louis wail at the house’s back entrance. Sylvia consoled her little brother. Louis curled into her. Her dyed-blonde hair draped over the back of the boy’s head. She raised her face. Her crying eyes squinted around her cheekbones. Before Mateo reached the other side of the creek, she screamed at Mateo. He didn’t listen to her. He only heard her. Mateo didn’t bother to make out the words.
Mateo and Sylvia didn’t talk the whole ride back to their house in the Everglades. Mateo parked under their stilt house. He followed Sylvia up their sun-worn wooden stairs. Each step parted his split flesh in its shoe. He grimaced as he tried to favor the other foot. Inside the kitchen door, Mateo held Sylvia’s shoulders, but she broke away.
“But I’m hurt.”
“Is that the type of father you’re going to be?”
“Better than the mother who’s currently raising him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He raised his arm. “Look at me. Look at my arm. I’m covered in blood. I hit that kid in self-defense. And—. And—. And in a way, your mother’s hitting him, too, and just to—. I don’t know. It’s not to keep him in his place, but that’s what she’s doing.” Mateo lowered his arm and looked away. He stared at the fading yellow light on their bay window. “He doesn’t stand a chance. What kind of kid builds a fort like that? That’s a lot of nervous energy.”
“Louis didn’t do that to your arm or foot. You did. But you took it out on him.”
“I got injured and needed air. He started swinging at me, tried to stop me from breaking vines, but I had to get away.” He stared into her eyes. “I had to get out of there, Sylvie.”
“If our child acts out, are you going to beat her, too?”
“No. I—. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I wasn’t in my right mind. I—. I was scared I couldn’t get out. I was really sick in there.” Mateo reached for his Mohawk, but it was a mess. “I know. I let everybody down.”
“Everything you say is I, I, I. Stop it. This isn’t about you. You hurt a child. This is about him.”
“Louis is in trouble.”
“He has a black eye.”
“No, I mean he’s really in trouble.” He stared at his bloody sneaker on the green carpet. “Your mom hired some guy to move in with him. She’s going to leave.” He looked up at her. “And what kind of a kid builds a fort like that? Think about who she’s raising him to be.”
“Mom travels to art fairs. And she’s always encouraged our creativity.”
“This is different.” He clasped her shoulders. Sylvia tried to break away, but he held her tight. “I love you.” She shrugged under his hands and looked away. Mateo kissed her temple. “Your mom hired this guy to manipulate him.” Sylvia looked up at him. “Your mom wants this guy to replace your dad.”
“Is that what she’s doing?” Sylvia put her hands on his chest, leaned her head against his neck. She gently pushed herself from him. “Good. Louis needs a male role model, and obviously you can’t be it. Not now.”
Mateo looked at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t get the Mohawk exactly the way he wanted it.
“Stop being so vain. You’re not even going anywhere.” She pushed her hair over her shoulder.
Mateo resigned from looking at himself in the mirror. He reached for her shoulder, but she already had walked away. He watched her bottom move freely beneath her sundress. Mateo sighed. “Let’s start over. We’re acting like our relationship is over. Aren’t you optimistic? I see our crazy family having fun together. We’re not like other people. We don’t know how to be boring. We’re like the Partridge Family, only we dress better.”
She turned and waved her arms in the air. “Who needs instruments when we can play each other?”
“You think I’m playing you?” He took two steps toward her.
“I know you’re a good man, but—.” She studied her high heels, as if making sure she could count on them if she wanted to run away. “Sometimes you see the rest of the world as being there only for your own entertainment.” She stepped quickly into the kitchen before he could grab her shoulders.
Mateo caught up with her. He looked at the dishes piled in the sink: his beer mugs, her tiny Asian plates. He stared at her, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his. He looked away.
Mateo noticed the abandoned painting on the easel in the living room. It was a portrait of her, but he hadn’t worked on it since he babysat Louis. Mateo had painted her before working on the background. Her features looked so happy, but her figure was removed from reality. Just an image on blank canvas. In a way, he thought it was finished. “I want you to be happy.”
Sylvia walked over to him. She touched his sleeveless arm. “I do love you. I’m just concerned that our family won’t have any other connection to my own family but me. I don’t want to live between those worlds by myself.”
Mateo caressed her hair. “Why don’t you visit your brother? With your mother gone, he needs you. And maybe that need is greater than his anger towards me. Eventually I’ll start coming along.” He kissed her temple. “I’ll rebuild those connections. From what I’ve seen, I might be exactly what your family needs.” Mateo winked. She looked away. He touched her chin and pulled her face back to him. He smiled.
Seven months later, Sylvia recounted to him the story of her brother’s death.
CHAPTER TWO
Sylvia visited her mother’s house and her brother bombarded her at the front door. “It’s brilliant! Sylvia, it’s so smart. You have no idea how intelligent this guy is. We filed a group of, of the links down, so that a disk dislodges to sever the clock’s internal organs.” He held a dismantled clock between his bony fingers. “We’ve perfected a clock that'll kill itself in exactly eight days. We’ve molded all its parts, so we can recreate it over and over. We’ve done three runs. They varied only by an hour.”
“Louis, take my suitcase. Can’t you see I’m pregnant?”
He stared at the clock in his hands. “No. Barely pregnant.”
Through the studio’s open door she saw red stains, the color soaked into the pores of the concrete floor. She wondered if there had been an accident. Sylvia looked at her little brother. Not a single red stain on his wrinkled white shirt. “Louis, what’s going on? What’s the meaning of all this?”
He raised his head from looking at the clock in his hands. His floppy hair snapped back like a broken neck. “To show that imperfection is part of the p-perfect plan.” He stuttered to get the words out. “Every clock. Every clock dies for some reason. Destruction is designed in creation—.” He looked like he was trying to remember something he’d memorized. “Either by the artist or by the forces manipulating the artist. Either way. Either way, Sylvia. Either way. Are you even listening? Either way, the tragic flaw is built in.”
Sylvia found his words weirdly pretentious but understood that Louis was approaching that age. In October, he was going to be fourteen. He was probably reciting something he had read in some dorky magazine.
Later she learned that every clock in the house was infected. Rooms and rooms of clocks, not slowly winding down, but rather violently self-destructing. She never knew which clock was next. It seemed so random. He insisted that it wasn’t. Sylvia tried only to see what time it was. A clock gutted itself in her presence.
She asked Louis to sit with her in the living room. Sylvia sat on the couch and patted the seat next to her, but Louis chose the leather recliner. They both smiled at each other.
"Not too many girls from school would want to put their arms around a clock killer." She laughed.
Louis stopped smiling. He lowered his eyes. "Mom took me out of school."
"Oh.”
“I didn’t get along well with my classmates anyway. Not that I started fights or anything. I just didn’t like it there. Mom says I don’t have to go back because, well, Jack’s a teacher.”
Sylvia watched his mood cool like a body in a hospital bed. She thought of her father passing away. Her father broke every bone in his body from a motorcycle accident. “How's that going?" she asked him. Her father had swelled into a colorful balloon. They had to let him go. The doctors said they couldn’t hold on to him forever.
"I saw a naked lady as my first tutoring lesson."
"God bless you, Louis!" Sylvia laughed, then sighed. Her eyes glossed over the family photos on the wall without noticing any of them. "What do you mean you saw a naked woman?"
"She was nice, too. Real nice. She likes to give me hugs and everything."
Sylvia stared at the dirty ashtray on the glass coffee table. "What does your tutor think he’s teaching you with this?"
“Roxana's a performance artist. She had an art exhibition where she allowed only men to go, and then, Sylvia, and then, she rolled around a canvas with her naked body, and then she sold the canvas to the highest bidding man. It's a controlled accident because she can't exactly control the paints with her body, you know, as they spread across the canvas, but it's also a controlled accident, because she can't exactly control which, are you listening, which if any of the men will pay to host her next exhibit, as it spreads across, are you even listening, as it spreads across the male population."
"That's crazy," she said without looking up.
"Yeah, and she's pretty, too."
Sylvia leaned forward and extended her hand. Louis looked at it, blinked, and then awkwardly put his hand in hers.
"How old is she?" She held her brother's bony hand. Her thumb massaged one of its veins. It twisted around the boy’s index finger.
"I don't know. In her thirties."