Cheshire Smile

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

Flip a coin.

No, really. Go fish around in the drawer where you stash your loose change. Find a coin. Take it out. Throw it in the air.

It’s going to come up heads or tails. One or the other. It’s inevitable. You can’t stop it.

But for that moment, for that instant when the coin’s in the air, flipping and spinning in flagrant disregard for gravity, it could go either way.

For that moment, anything is possible.

We hardly ever notice, but life’s full of little moments like that.

It was a party. A gala, really. The kind of thing where important people in gowns and tuxedoes stand around drinking important drinks and having important conversations that nobody can quite remember.

Paul didn’t even know what he was doing there. Well, he knew. Shary’s invitation said “plus one,” and he was her plus one. Just a seat-filler, just somebody to stand next to her so she didn’t look like she was there by herself when the pictures made their way into the paper the next morning. She’d made that clear when she asked him to escort her. “Would you escort me?” she’d said, just like that. Christ, all the mid-Atlantic girls talked like that. All round vowels and family money. Her parents’ house probably had a veranda, for God’s sake.

But she’d asked him, and he’d said yes. Back when he still thought he had a chance.

That ended about thirty seconds later in the phone call, when she gave him the address. Oh, she’d been polite about it. I won’t be home, we’re going straight from work, they hired cars for us. But the message was clear. He was just meeting her there, standing at the curb like an idiot in rented pants. Meeting her there, standing next to her like a prop, then at best getting a kiss on the cheek before hailing a cab to take him back to the unfashionable suburbs across the river.

Ten seconds after meeting her there, before they’d even made their way into the damn building, he knew the kiss on the cheek had just been an adolescent fantasy.

But he was there, and he’d paid for the tuxedo rental, and what the hell, the drinks were free.

Halfway through his second cocktail, he saw her. Hair like a bonfire, and a grey gown that covered her like a brush stroke. And this smile. This smile that made the lights go dim.

Somewhere, miles away, a coin goes up in the air. And no one can predict how it will come down.

“You like Rothko?” she asked, and before he even turned around, he knew it was her.

“I like the tension,” he enunciated carefully. His lips felt numb, and it wasn’t the booze. “You know your art,” he said.

She pointed, and that smile was back. “I read the sign,” she said. Untitled [Blue, Green, and Brown], 1952. A tiny label there on the wall next to the canvas. Courtesy of Mrs. Paul Mellon.

“You mean you cheated,” Paul said, turning back from the label to that smile that could illuminate worlds.

“Whatever it takes to get what I want,” she said.

There was nothing overt about it. She didn’t step into him. She didn’t even bat her eyelashes or cock an eyebrow. She just spoke without thinking. He could tell by the pale flush in her cheeks after she realized what she’d said.

But she didn’t back away, either.

The coin spins in tight circles.

“I don’t think we met before,” she said. She stuck out her hand, all business. “I’m Kate.”

“Paul,” he said. Okay, if this was how she wanted it, he could be businesslike too.

She nodded at him, just a microscopic dip of her chin. “You’re with Sharon, right?”

“I think so,” he said, glancing involuntarily over his shoulder.

She smiled again. “‘Plus one,’ right?”

“Right,” he said, and he was smiling back.

“You must be bored out of your mind,” she said. He suddenly noticed that when she closed her mouth, her bottom lip stuck out just a fraction of an inch. He found himself intensely preoccupied with that fraction of an inch.

“I was,” he said, because it was the truth.

The coin approaches the top of its arc and begins to slow.

Tracking down her number wasn’t hard. He knew her name. He knew where she worked. Paul was a strictly working-class guy, in the city but not of it. But he knew people. And the people he knew knew people.

And then he had her number.

And for a moment, just an instant of time, the coin floats weightless.

Before it begins to fall.

She didn’t ask how he got her number. Paul took this to mean that she wasn’t unhappy that he had it. Then she came right out and told him she was glad he called, and he knew she meant it.

He had his pretense all planned out. He’d had it planned out for days. Gallery opening, arts district, nothing fancy. Jeans and Chardonnay. He had to go, didn’t have a choice. It was his friend’s opening. Always so dull, he said, trying to put an edge of worldly weariness into his voice to cover up his nervousness.

“You want me to be your plus one?” she asked. He could hear her smiling on the other end of the phone.

“You’d be doing me a favor, really,” he said. “Besides,” he began.

“Yes,” she said skeptically.

“You know, since you apparently don’t know anything about art, I thought maybe you’d like to learn a thing or two.”

He had his eyes squeezed shut tight when he said it. He knew he was taking a chance. God, his heart was pounding.

Then she laughed, and he knew he was in.

“Oh, that’s it,” she said. “The gauntlet’s been thrown down.”

“So you’ll go?” he said, his blood roaring in his ears.

“Absolutely,” she said through that perfect, audible smile.

“Pick you up at eight?”

“No way,” she laughed. “Give me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

And he did. And she did.

“I thought this would be art,” she whispered, leaning in close and covering her mouth with her glass of cheap white wine. “You promised me art.”

“This is art,” he said, leading her through the serpentine but mostly empty gallery. “Photography is an art.”

“But how am I supposed to learn anything from this?”

“You’ll pick it up by osmosis,” he said.

“Ooh, college boy,” she said. “Knows his big words.”

“I read it in a book somewhere,” he said, faintly blushing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You’re too pretty to read.”

Paul was still trying to figure out how to respond to that when he heard his name. He turned to see Michelle moving toward him like a five-foot freight train. It happened fast. There was a hug; he felt her nose press into his collarbone. Pleasantries were exchanged, compliments offered and politely declined, then offered again and accepted. Paul felt ridiculously out of place.

“So who’s the latest conquest, Paulie?” Michelle demanded with a playful chuck to his chin.

“I’m Kate,” she said. “But you don’t have to talk to me. I’m just his plus one.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Paul said. He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “She doesn’t think photography is art.”

“Oh honey,” Michelle exclaimed, throwing her arms around Kate. “We’re going to get along just fine. Has His Highness shown you around yet? Probably not, I’m sure he’s been too busy trying to look down your top. Which is so cute, by the way. Come on,” she said, leading Kate off in a randomly selected direction. “I’ll give you the tour.”

As she was being pulled away, Kate threw Paul a glance over her shoulder that made him feel ten feet tall.

Michelle was just as much a cyclone as ever, spinning Kate around the gallery at the speed of sound and talking the whole way, somehow managing to interrupt herself several times in the course of a single seemingly endless sentence.

Paul watched the whole thing from across the gallery. Or at least that’s what he intended to do. In the end, he was just watching her smile as it floated and weaved through the room like a beacon calling to him.

After way, way too long, the debris settled and she was standing next to him again.

“Another five minutes and I was going to come rescue you,” he said, signaling to a bored-looking waiter with a tray of wine glasses.

“She’s fun,” Kate said, slightly out of breath. “I don’t know where she gets her energy.”

“A thousand-dollar-a-day coke habit and the ground-up souls of starving artists,” Paul said, handing her a glass.

“Speaking of which,” she said before taking a sip of wine. There was a twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, God, she didn’t,” Paul said.

“She did,” Kate said, the twinkle becoming a gleam.

“She lies,” Paul said.

“I’m sure she does,” Kate said, “but not this time.”

Paul pinched the bridge of his nose.

“She said she’s offered to show your work a hundred times,” Kate said, the gleam becoming a glint. “A hundred times. That’s what she said.”

“I told you she lies.”

“Exaggerates, maybe. But that’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is you didn’t tell me you’re an artist.”

“I’m not an artist,” Paul said, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. “I paint a little.”

“You’re an artist,” Kate said, taking a half step toward him, the glint becoming a glow.

“An artist … I don’t know. Arts, or whatever. I work at a bank.”

“An artist does whatever his heart tells him to do.”

“Then I’m definitely not an artist.”

Another half step.

“You’re not doing what your heart tells you to do?”

Their faces were three inches apart. He could smell her.

“Not right now,” he said.

The glow became a blaze, and it scorched him.

After ten thousand years, she leaned back on her heels, opening the air between them. “I,” she said, “am going to finish my wine.” She took a tiny sip. “While you go hail us a cab.”

Still reeling in the moment, Paul was halfway out the door before he realized that she’d said “us.”

“I don’t care,” she was saying. Paul was getting used to it. She’d said little else during the whole cab ride.

“Look,” Paul said for the twelfth time as they reached the landing. “You don’t understand. They’re not for anybody else. They’re … they’re personal.”

“I don’t care,” was all Kate said.

“I don’t show them to anyone.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m not going to let you see them,” he said, but he kept climbing the stairs.

She caught the sleeve of his sweater, pulled him around. Two inches apart now, tops. Her eyes had candles glowing in them.

“I don’t care,” she whispered.

And then she kissed him. Softly, tentatively. Betraying the urgent look in her eyes. For a moment he let her, then his hands were on her hips and he was kissing her back.

The light from the streetlamp poured through the window cold and blue, cutting across their bodies as they lay under the sheets. Her face was in shadow tucked under his chin, and they spoke in whispers that seemed very loud.

“I bet you keep them in the closet,” she said to his neck.

She ran her hand over his chest, felt the tightness in his shoulder. He felt her smile. “You do,” she breathed. “My lie detector tells me you do.”

“Okay, yes,” Paul exhaled. “Yes, they’re in the closet, stashed away like so much porn.”

“Maybe that’s why you don’t show anyone,” she said. “Maybe they’re all dirty, all twisting bodies and sweaty skin.”

“They’re not,” Paul said, dropping his chin to kiss her, “but you’re giving me ideas.”

In a flash she was gone, exploding out of his bed like she’d been wired to a spring. In midair, she slipped a finger under the seam of her panties to rearrange them, just as she passed through the beam of blue lamp-light. The moment was frozen in Paul’s mind like a flash bulb had gone off.

And then she was in the closet, pushing aside his clothes and pulling out his canvases.

She gasped.

“Oh come on,” he said. “The lights are out. You can’t even see them.”

“I can see fine,” she said in a distant voice. More noises of things being moved. “God, they’re beautiful.”

“Shut up,” Paul cried out, throwing his arm over his face.

“No, seriously,” she said, and something in her voice made him look up. The light was in his eyes. All he could see of her was her smile, floating in the dark.

“They’re spectacular,” she said.

Paul swallowed on a dry throat. “Really?”

“No,” said her smile. “I’m just flattering you to get you in bed. Oh, wait!”

And then she pounced from the darkness and onto him and onto his mouth and the world disappeared in their kiss.

How long? Three days? Two?

Screw it. Paul called her the next day. The next morning, in fact, before ten.

She didn’t pick up. He got her voicemail, the recording sounding like she’d been smiling when she’d made it. “Hi, this is Kate, leave me a message!”

He snapped his phone shut. He didn’t know what he wanted to say.

She didn’t answer his call that night, either.

Or the next day, when he finally figured out what to say into her voicemail.

Or the day after that, when he tried again.

After that, he gave up.

It was three weeks later, and it was blind, stupid luck. Lunchtime. Downtown. The deli was packed. Every deli was packed. Half a million people wanted their sandwiches all at the same time.

The odds that he’d run into her were astronomical.

But of course that’s what happened.

“Hi,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

She didn’t even look embarrassed. She smiled at him. That same smile, the one he’d last seen floating in his darkened bedroom. Everything about it was the same. Everything about it was different.

“Hey, how are you?” she said, stuffing a handful of napkins into the sack with her sandwich and bottled water.

A dozen answers shot through his head. A few were flirtatious. Some, admittedly, were unfriendly. In the end, he went with, “Fine. I’m fine.”

“That’s great,” she said, and then something in her smile faltered, changed. Something invisible. “It’s good to see you,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“I called you,” he said, stepping closer to get out of the way of the surging crowd. “I called you a few times, actually.”

“I know,” she said, breaking eye contact and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I know, I’ve been so busy.”

“I’d like to see you again,” he said, and he knew this wasn’t going well at all.

Her eyes flickered, looking into his for an instant and then away. “Me too,” she said. “I’ve just got a lot going on.”

That’s when he saw it. On her finger. Her third finger, her left hand. A diamond the size of the tip of a paintbrush.

Without thinking, he reached down. Took her hand in his. Held it up, examined it like it was some anomaly, something alien, something that didn’t fit.

She didn’t say anything. He didn’t either.

And then she was gone, vanished into the crowd.

It was a year before he saw her again.

Another night in that same gallery. Another opening. Another three hours of meeting people, shaking hands and immediately forgetting both their names and their faces. Paul didn’t even know why he was there. He’d made Michelle send the invitation. The carefully worded invitation. She fought him on it, but he made her send it anyway.

He never believed she’d actually show up.

When she walked through the door, he almost didn’t recognize her. Her hair was the same. Her eyes, her face, everything about her. The same as it had been a year before. But something was different.

Paul did the only thing he could think to do. He turned around and walked the other way. Before she could look up. Before she could see him.

He made his way to the other side of the gallery, through the throng of snobby patrons of the arts who wanted to meet him, and turned back toward the door. She didn’t see him. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking out the front window. Watching her husband — it had to be her husband — argue with the cab driver over the fare. She bounced on the balls of her feet impatiently until her husband finally gave up and paid. Then he was inside, in the gallery, and she was kissing him on the cheek.

Paul knew what he had to do.

She saw him coming. She put her hand on her husband’s arm. He turned, showing rows of too many perfect teeth beneath a spray-on tan.

Quicker than he should have, Paul closed the distance between them. He was ready for this. Hell, he’d practiced this in front of the mirror. But it was happening too fast. Not like he’d imagined it. Too fast.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“It took you long enough,” Kate said.

Paul glanced around the gallery, saw his paintings hanging on the walls. They looked so different under the right lights, in front of the right backgrounds. So much bigger than the little things he’d stuck away in the back of his closet.

“I just needed the right encouragement,” Paul said, turning back to Kate, not too fast, not too fast.

His heart skipped as they looked into each others’ eyes.

Then it was over, the moment gone as quickly as it had begun. He turned slightly, stuck out his hand.

“You must be,” he began.

“My plus one,” Kate said. “The invitation said ‘plus one,’ and he’s my plus one.”

And then everything went away. The pretentious light jazz in the background, the milling of the crowd, the lights, everything. It all faded away, and there was nothing left but what Paul realized then had been missing when she walked it. There was nothing left but her smile.

The coin has to come down. Everyone knows that. But for that one instant, when it’s spinning in space, it seems like maybe, just maybe, anything is possible. Maybe heads, maybe tails, or maybe it won’t come down at all.

But then the moment’s gone.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.