Free Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner Page B

onlookers caught their breath. By this time he had formed a habit of patting her on the head when she did something that pleased him, as if she were a loyal pooch, no longer stroking her mouse-brown fur, her leathered wingtips, no longer content to stay in their cave. He was spending more and more time with a woman who kept a steppe wolf in her laundry room. The wolf mistress, she realized, even then, was the kind of woman she could never be.
    I can grant you any wish you want , he told her that night she burnt her fingertips. Did he actually say this or only imply it? Had she invoked him, her demon, like Theophilus or Faustus, or even poor Robert Johnson down at the crossroad? She had been content living blind, eating fermenting plums, breathing deep, the world just brief flickering shadows on the moist walls of a cave when he lit his bong. What was left that she could wish for?
    To be an artist or to be a muse—that was what tore her in two. The spell she was under led her to believe being his muse would be the more fulfilling of the two. And they lived happily ever after. Or so it would seem, for a time.
    So you see, thwarted artists can be anywhere, Shayana. There is artistry to Georgia’s rages, to my husband’s carefully cultivated philistinism, even to your straining T-shirts with their incoherent stage heroes and faux satanic symbols. There is an artistry to how my dentist scales my bicuspids (yes, he does his own scaling). And when he talks to me, sticking to strictly technical terms as he cups my collapsing jaw in his smooth nitrile-glove-cloaked hand, I can almost hear colours again. (I think he could help you with your overbite, I really do. I am willing to do this, to share . You only have to say the word.) My umbral masterpiece hangs above the bidet, to my husband’s discomfort, a reminder of how much has been lost and how much has been gained, and of the almost incalculable distance between the two things.
    Just let me ask you this, Shayana. Can we honestly say any of us really have our feet firmly on the ground?
    Sincerely,
    Anne (Georgia’s mother)

INVESTMENT RESULTS MAY VARY
    Dan and Patricia O’Donnell are always searching for the best of everything. Here they are now. Patricia—her long, dark hair tied back in an impossibly sleek braid, hair pulled so tight her eyebrows look as if they’re about to boomerang around the room—partially reclines on what appears to be a chaise longue. Dan leans against an old-fashioned radiator by an open window, one loafer-clad foot crossed in front of the other, looking like one of those guys in high school Nina always wanted to hump on the leg like a crazed standard poodle. You know, dry-humping away, knees locked, eyes bulging, just to get that self-satisfied smirk off his face. Dan and Patricia’s teeth are preternaturally white, boraxed incisors gleaming. Their ceiling soars above them at least sixteen feet. A crudely painted saddle—a swollen lily, Georgia O’Keeffe–inspired, over the seat—vies for wall space with pressed-tin skeletons dangling on wires. The single orchid in an intentionally crooked rakuvase on the edge of a spotless glass table screams wabi-sabi pretensions with twice-weekly maid service.
    And the light. The light in the room is fantastic. Vermeer, all business, hands on his hips, directing the sun. Of course, there’s the berber rug. Not a Paul-Bowles-got-wasted-on-this-rug berber, but creamy, white wool, Yaletown berber.
    Nina, sitting cross-legged on her basement suite’s futon couch, fennel tea cooling beside her on the upturned milk crate draped with a beach towel, really does want to hate them. She has already started that ascent to the dizzying heights a decent bout of righteous anger can transport her to—that place where the air thins, the blood grows hypoxic, and you can muse on your own demise in an oddly detached manner— but the fine print gets in the way.