Free How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad Page B

“collective.” Sunera gasps, phone branching from her ear.
    The Ex spent our twelve years working as a bike courier in the day, painting in the living room at night. The galleries were indifferent, the government grant agencies puzzled by his proposals. “I’m interested in painting beautiful things,” I read over his shoulder before he slammed a forearm down over the papers.
    “Add this clause: ‘ … about my experiences being molested,’ ” I suggested. “Trust me. That’s where the money is.”
    He frowned.
    The Ex was a terrible player. At parties, he stood frozen in front of anyone who mattered, his eyes unfocused. He was a limp handshake of a man in public.
    But this new woman, this
woman he left me for
(what picture emerges? Loofahed elbows, multilingual, a saluting ass), got him out there, I hear. I hear, and I pretend to be deaf, putting my blankest face forward. I hear that she is very well connected in the arts scene, especially for a lawyer. They spent last summer in Europe at her parents’ “London flat” (the cruel casualness of cocktail conversation) with hot young British artists: the guy who puts sharks in tanks; the woman who sculpts the negative space inside bathtubs. And the Ex emerged from August with a group London show on his CV, enough to get him some press Here because it was a small success There. She must have media coached him too, because lately he’s been in the alternative weeklies and
The Other Daily
mouthing a new kind of futurism, a way of “talking back to the technology that talks for us,” phrases made bearable because he’s boyband cute in his woolly sweaters.
    And every time I see him at a bar, or a party, or come across his new middling fame, I go over all of this again: how he got so far away. I can remember the events but not the feelings. Cool, indifferent documentation; an autopsyreport. Sunera’s silver cigarette case of pink and blue pills, not evened out, but dulled.
    Theo McArdle, back in the day, wore second-hand striped pants like a court jester and dyed his hair a different primary colour every few months. I took to black then and fourteen years later I am still wearing black and listening to some boy-friendly Stan Getz with my legs tucked under my butt just so, accessorized by a glass of red wine and a cigarette, generally radiating a beautiful-woman-lounging vibe.
    I’ve arranged myself so that when Theo McArdle comes up the snowy walk and peers in the sliver of window I’ve framed perfectly with the slightly open curtains, he’ll catch his breath at the sight of this staggering creature, this jazz-appreciator, this feline catch.
    But Theo McArdle is a little late and
Entertainment Tonight
is on and I really need to catch up on the news for a second – work related – just for an update on the Tom-Nicole thing, so I have to disturb the tableau and I’m slithering low down (in case McArdle should peak in, I want to be out of his line of vision) with my wine spilling just a little and I’m rubbing that into the hardwood where the Ex’s rug used to be and I can’t really hear the TV over the Stan Getz so I’m propping up on my elbows and putting my ear close to the speaker and that way I can hear some beauty tips delivered by that girl from the sitcom (the one with the roommate who’s gay but she loves him and isn’t it hilarious how her entire life isdevoted to this farce of a relationship and week after week we tune in as he brings home some hunky boy from the gym or buys a ticket for one to Fire Island and she’s all devastated and the laugh track gets louder and louder and louder) – so I’m like this, belly down, wine spilling, when I feel a light tap on my shoulder.
    Theo McArdle has decided to walk in. He made his way to the porch, opened the door, and strode right into my living room, where his first sight of the evening is not me, gently cast in the glow of the non-working fireplace, but rather me on my belly, a pin-sized noggin