Lucky Man
Thomas Maurstad
Thomas Maurstad
"Self-Portrait" Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., watercolor, charcoal, and graphite on paper, 20 1/4 × 15 3/8 in., ca. 1941
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Robert Fairchild was a signaturist, a term he coined after dismissing his agent’s suggestion, signature stylist. Either way, his brand message was this: Robert Fairchild created signatures. He performed this service for anyone with both the desire to have a bespoke signature and the means to pay the immoderate sum he charged. Robert had yet to encounter a potential client for whom the first feature wasn’t a direct consequence of the second, as all of them were successful players in the celebrity industry.
A lot of them were recent and on the rise, making the jump from internet sensation to multimedia star. A few were established, mid-career celebs seeking an upgrade. Then there were the book-tour-bound authors who came to him like corporations about to go public and in desperate need of a bankable logo. He had worked with a few politicians and a couple of pro athletes, but they were the exceptions. His core customers were freshly fused and varyingly amalgamated compounds of rich and famous. Robert had a name for them that reflected their signifying attributes; he called them “savages.” Not to their faces, of course. Not to anyone, in fact, save his agent, Gillian -- “Gill...ee-yun, with a hard G,” was how she introduced herself.
It had been Gillian with her hard G who conceived of Robert’s improbable profession. Back then, she was yet another agent’s assistant out and about on a Friday night, working her way through a smartphone list of events and locations, on the prowl for anyone or anything that stirred her future-heat sensor. She was making a reconnaissance sweep through a group show of unknown artists at a barely-there gallery when a cluster of panels in a back corner drew her in, made her stare. Five three-by-four rectangles of gessoed linen. Was that ink or acrylic? A closer look confirmed it was ink. Two were black, two were blue-black, one had some crimson bleeding through. The figures on each panel were sharp, slashing, calligraphic. She was still staring when she sensed a presence and turned her head to find a man standing just behind her left shoulder. He smiled. She nodded at the wall.
“Yours?” Gillian asked.
He nodded but said nothing.
“They look like tattoos by Picasso.”
She really liked them. She and he talked. She really liked him, and he her. She gave him her card; he invited her to his studio in Inglewood, a one-room concrete box he had also lived in since moving from Dallas. A few days later, there she was at his door. In an uncharacteristic flourish of counter-frugality optimism, he had gone to the corner mercado the morning after their meeting, so he was able to play the well-provisioned host and offer her a cup of Costa Rican coffee, a bottle of Jamaican beer, or a glass of sparkling mineral water. Two snaps of a church key later, they were clinking their squat, brown bottles together in a toast to new friends and she commenced her survey of his cluttered but clean space. She was immediately drawn to a stack of sketches. Some were sharp scrawls -- jagged, severe, chopped. Some were soft-edged swirls -- swooped, sculpted, blobby. Some were simple and spare; some crazed and elaborate. They were all beautiful. They looked like signatures, she decided, written using letters she couldn’t quite identify, in a language she’d never seen. But each of them provoked a vivid image of the “person” who had “signed” them.
She looked at them as he stood next to her, watching her look at them. She was still looking at the last of the cache when she quietly said, “They’re like portraits.”
He had quickly looked down while stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep himself from hugging her.
“They are portraits.”
That had been the beginning and things took off with a whoosh from there, faster even than Gillian had predicted, in the way that always and only happens when someone comes up with an idea so ripe and ready, it bursts open like a thought everyone had already been thinking without realizing it.
“Think about it,” Gillian had said a few nights after that first studio visit, while they waited for the bottle of rosé she ordered. Robert scanned the room -- he wasn’t looking for famous faces, but he saw one and then another -- soaking in the decadent pleasures of sitting in the sort of buzzy upscale restaurant he hadn’t been able to afford since moving to Los Angeles. Gillian continued the wind-up to her pitch.
“No one writes with pen and paper anymore. In school, they barely even teach ’penmanship’ (she somehow pronounced the word so that it became a homonym with ‘buggy whip’). For most people, it’s just another thing, like trigonometry, you’re never going to use in the real world. The signature is a leftover relic from another age. The only time anybody ever signs their name anymore is on a little screen, using a piece of plastic shaped like a pen.”
Gillian paused as the waiter returned and presented a bottle for her approval, which she gave with a quick flick of her hand while never looking away from Robert.
“Here’s the funny thing. As the signature is vanishing from everyday life, its celebrity counterpart, the autograph, is on fire in the marketplace.”
Robert must have smirked at this pronouncement because Gillian nodded, let out a derisive snort, and grabbed her wine glass for a gulp.
“I know -- ridiculous. But I’m telling you, autographs are big business. More and more of our clients are being ‘asked’ (she leaned in conspiratorially as she uttered the word to emphasize its irony) to attend events that are just endless signing sessions. And wherever they go, there are as many autograph collectors now as paparazzi. And that’s because autographs are a booming commodity in the celebrity-souvenir market.
Gillian paused to lock eyes with Robert, raising her eyebrows as she opened her palms to the ceiling.
“It’s like... having a, you know, really beautiful, refined signature is one of those things now, like perfect teeth, perfect skin, hair, body, clothes, all of it, that elevates someone, marks them as that much more special, rare, important.
Robert turned his nose to the heavens as he exclaimed with a hissing burst of breath.
“A star.”
Another fuck-me snort, another gulp of wine.
“Exactly. That’s the point. A unique, stylish, you know, ‘cool’ autograph is the new must-have celebrity accessory. And this is all happening at a time when nobody under the age of my grandmother knows how to sign their name in a way that doesn’t look like the signature of a five-year-old.
Gillian performed another conspiratorial lean as she lowered her voice to a dramatic murmur.
“You would be shocked how many” -- her scan quickly helicoptered the room -- “major players sign their names like chimps.”
Robert refilled their glasses as she presented her vision for his future: He would become a signature stylist to the stars. She assured him that just among her agency’s stable of clients, he would be certain to have enough work to keep him busy for the next two years during which time, not incidentally, he would make, based on his career thus far, at least two lifetimes-worth of income. And once established -- Gillian had already blocked out a preliminary line-up of projects to maximize the contagion effect of his work -- she assured him that his phone, and by his phone she meant her phone, wouldn’t stop ringing. She raised her glass to punctuate her spiel and offered a powerfully persuasive two-syllable summation.
“Ka-ching.”
This was Gillian’s sales pitch, which was true. There was also the unspoken reason behind it, which was the truth. The return to autographs wasn’t a fluke; it was a deliberate scheme, part of Hollywood’s anti-selfie campaign, with Gillian’s agency leading the charge. Selfies were a disruption of the natural order, representing a democratizing loss of control, an inversion of power between celebrities and civilians. Selfies in their spontaneous intimacy -- the sweaty embrace, the beery breath, the arm-in-arm/cheek-to-cheekness of it all -- transformed the civilian interloper into photographer/director/co-star/distributor while the set-upon celebrity was demoted to mere stage prop. Like a flash flood, the proliferation of “celfies” as the primary interaction between celebrities and fans seemed to happen overnight, carving a new, unstable and unwelcome ravine through the landscape. The initial response from the various industry players had been to go along, to present an accommodating front to the evolving technology of adulation. But accommodation had devolved into unworkable appeasement, as civilians became more emboldened, celebrities more resentful, and the money guard more fretful over the corrosive (and potentially profits-impinging) effects of an ever-expanding and unregulated reservoir of digital images. Autographs had been settled on as bulwark, deflection and consolation, providing a ‘no’ wrapped in a ‘yes.’
Robert hadn’t known any of this then and if Gillian had explained it to him, he wouldn’t have cared. All he knew was that he was tired of being a starving artist and here was someone smart and connected praising his talent and offering an opportunity. He briefly considered going over the reasons why it wasn’t the prospect of making a ka-ching’s worth of money that made Gillian’s offer so appealing, but he just as quickly scotched the impulse. It was the money, and so what if it was? He’d suffered in spartan obscurity long enough; he had earned an upgrade. He gave his assent with a smile and a nod; they marked the launch of their new venture with a toast, followed by several more.
Gillian had assumed some sort of penmanship tutor would be a necessary component of the signature stylist experience, a chef to execute the nutritionist’s dietary scheme, but Robert brushed aside that notion. For workshopping purposes, Gillian played the role of The Client and Robert wasted no time as he introduced himself, asked a few chitchat questions, and explained that for their work together to succeed she would need to be as relaxed and open as possible. He offered some green tea, they sat in facing folding chairs, and he began -- gently, calmly, but earnestly -- to ask questions about her career, her childhood, her hopes, her regrets. It was a surreal experience, floating somewhere between therapy session and job interview.
They had agreed to use Gillian’s name (Gillian Lawson) for this test run, in part because Robert loved the capital ‘G’ and held the series of letters ‘i-l-l-i’ to be one of the most beautiful sequences in calligraphy, but also because ever since he had watched her sign her name at the restaurant that first night, he teased her mercilessly about her remedial scrawl.
“Look at it,” he had said in mock horror after snatching up the credit-card receipt to hold it under his nose as Gillian lunged in vain to stop him. “What a colossal misfire. Such an abdication of self, this generic spritz of dashes and dots. Why don’t you just get “I give up” tattooed on your forehead?”
The instant she saw “her” new signature, she knew she had been right about him. It was sleek, sculpted, sophisticated. It began with his beloved capital ‘G’ -- he had used an uppercase print rendition of the letter rather than going cursive. It looked like a cartoon sketch of a human ear; the word “cute” popped into Gillian’s as if someone had just whispered it. The rest of her first name seemed to be skipping into that ear like a string of musical notes. The capital L that started Lawson likewise forsook the loopiness of its cursive form. This signature wasn’t at all swirly or decorous. It was straightforward. It looked smart, in two shades of the adjective, and as Gillian smiled to herself at that thought, she realized this was, in fact, her signature. Robert had created a portrait of her.
Gillian hadn’t known what to expect when Robert switched gears and put a pen in her hand, set a blank pad before her, and began his tutorial. Flashbacks of a third-grade teacher looming over Gillian’s desk while growling “no, no, no, bring your loops up and over” smeared into her dad flinching in the passenger seat while mashing his foot on a phantom brake pedal and screeching orders as she clenched the steering wheel and strained not to cry. She had been dreading this part. But if Robert noticed (he did), he didn’t let on as he crooned his instructions.
“Don’t think of it as writing. Think of it as drawing. Forget the letters. Just see them as shapes. Focus on the shapes. Let’s break it down, one shape at a time. Once you’re comfortable with one, try the next. After that, we’ll work on connecting them. It’s easy, you’ll see.”
She had started with stiff, jerky motions, clutching the pen in a skeleton claw, scratching out marks that in no way resembled Robert’s smooth flowing lines. After a few more spasmodic squiggles, her “signature” looked like the peaks and plunges of a polygraph exam she was failing, miserably. Robert, standing just behind her, watching, emitted a single, soft cluck of his tongue as he rubbed her shoulder with one hand and pried the pen from her clutch with the other.
“Relax. Let’s start over. Take the pen and hold it like it’s a living thing. A living thing you’re trying not to choke the living shit out of” (he gently patted her shoulder as a tactile laugh track). “Now we’re just going to make shapes, whatever you want, circles, loops, waves, lines, whatever. And as you do, I want you to move the pen across the paper lightly. Soft and smooth. Steady. How do you touch a lover when you’re trying to arouse her? That’s what I want you to do. Tease the paper, awaken its desire for your sweet ink.”
In her head, Gillian wanted to laugh and unleash the dogs of snark, but before she had the chance, she saw her hand jetting across the white paper, up and down and over and around, a fluid contrail of black streaming from the pen; even more, she felt it, a liquid slipperiness, like the final swells of surf lapping at the sand.
“There you go, that’s better. Feel the flow, stay with it.”
Then and there, Gillian let go and gave herself over to his croon and her flow, and somewhere between the two, any shapes segued into his shapes, into her shapes, and then this shape was connecting with that shape and the next and the next. Two into three unnoticed hours later, she brought up her hand with a triumphant swoosh from what had become a field of evermore graceful signatures -- “her” signature now fully her signature. She turned her head to gaze over her shoulder at Robert and share an expression of jubilant disbelief, but he wasn’t there. In that same moment, she heard a pop coming from behind her other shoulder and turned that way to see Robert holding a bottle and two glasses.
This had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship; moreover, an exceedingly profitable one. Now, with the five-year anniversary of that beginning just around the corner, Gillian was an agent in full with an enviable roster of clients and plans to open her own boutique agency. And Robert was the Signaturist to the stars, living in a concrete-and-glass parallelogram cantilevered on a hill above Sunset Boulevard, purchased in a sweetheart deal from one of Gillian’s other clients, a celebrity chef moving to Las Vegas, the new center of his dining-theme-park empire.
Robert was on the cusp of ascending to the next ring of success: the roll-out of his book, Make Your Mark: Sign Like a Star. No longer an anonymous cog in the Celebrity Machine, he was out and had been ever since one of his clients, his first A-lister, a grand doyenne with a bandolier of statuettes, had broken protocol and sung his praises during a run of interviews and appearances. She loved her new signature, of course, but even more the process of discovering it, “the journey” by which the two of them had “blazed a trail through the wilderness of my soul.” It had been “the most intense act of self-discovery” she had ever experienced, “not just as an actor, but as a human being.” Robert’s response had been a wisecrack delivered in his best Bogart -- “the glitzier the dame, the gaudier the patter.” In contrast, Gillian’s response had been full-on panic. At first. But as the subsequent boil of media queries, peer congratulations and, most persuasively, new-client requests quickly confirmed, this was a coup not a disaster, and her bushwhacked horror shifted seamlessly into poised elation. Robert completed their role reversal by feeling a prickly ambivalence that sharpened into something darker and more distressed when an exultant Gillian rushed over with the good news that the bad news was, in fact, great news. He had surprised himself when, instinctively, he chose not to share his reaction with her.
He still hadn’t. Robert shuffled out onto his patio, into the late-morning light, plopped himself in one of the low-slung deck chairs, and raised the tumbler of Tabasco-spritzed tomato juice to his forehead. After pausing to extend a pinkie and press his sunglasses higher up on his nose, he dragged the glass across his brow, hoping its slick chill would dampen the headache roaring behind his eyes. He stared at the infinity pool, letting his gaze go soft as he tried to remember the last time he had dipped so much as a toe in it. He didn’t try too hard, and with only blanks-pocked success -- sometime soon after moving in, another lost night.
He drained his glass as he inventoried his upcoming schedule: He left for New York a week from tomorrow for a blitzkrieg of television appearances, interviews and photo shoots, beginning with a sweet-spot appearance on the Today show and ending with a photo/interview session for a People Online feature, pitched to Gillian as “The Phantom Behind the Pen.” Gillian was negotiating terms for a series of instructional videos, then there was the book tour schedule to finalize; she was already fielding early prods from the publisher about a follow-up, maybe a memoir; and most immediately, there was his initial meeting with a new “mystery” client, which would be in -- he closed his eyes and let his head fall back as he drew in a deep breath -- about an hour. Fuck. Everything was great, so why was he awash in dread? He was on top of the world, so why did he feel crushed by it? He looked again at his azure pool, admired the clean, precise lines of his landscape, scanned the downhill vista of west Hollywood and chuckled over his great good fortune: He was tucked-in and fancy-free. He was the luckiest man alive. So why did he feel cursed?
Five years – a long time, the blink of an eye. What had he told himself, and Gillian, when they started all this?
“I’ll do it. But only for a couple of years, just long enough to save up some money. Then I’m going to move back to the middle of nowhere Texas, maybe Marfa, or Alpine. Make my life as small as I can. Get up every day and work. My work. Have the same day every day, over and over again, until... for as long as I can.”
The look on Gillian’s face -- she hadn’t laughed outright, but only by the merest technicality. It never occurred to her to mask her scornful amusement at his dipshit pronouncement. She just shook her head.
Two years came and went, of course. Then three, four, and now it was about to be five. Robert looked down at his fingers curled around the tumbler as he silently ticked off this countdown, and as he did he had the sudden, odd sensation of sitting outside himself as words flitted through his head like graffiti viewed through a train window: ‘I’m making my life big as I can.’ And then he was back within himself, still staring down at the hand holding the empty glass. He had not only broken his solemn pledge, he was devotedly, industriously enacting its opposite. Why? He got up and shuffled back into the house as a way of making it easier to pretend not to notice that he didn’t answer.
Khaki canvas shoes, ecru cotton pants, unpleated and rolled up just above his ankles, a white singlet under a white Oxford shirt, untucked, sleeves rolled up just past his elbows -- Robert thought of this outfit as his uniform and wore it for every first meeting with a new client. He glanced at his phone and saw he still had about 20 minutes, if this appointment was on time, which was, in his experience, unlikely, so he stepped into his studio and over to his drawing table. He stared down at the six sketches covering its surface, each a blue-black ink figure on a large sheet of drawing paper, arranged in two rows of three like giant mahjong tiles. They were new; he had only started working on them last week, the first new work he had produced in... a while.
His eyes scanned slowly from one to the next, from left to right, first the top three, then the bottom. They were studies, notes to himself about an image-idea that wouldn’t leave him alone until he got it out. He gathered up five of them as he continued to stare at the remaining sketch, which was the first one he’d drawn. These others, he now saw clearly, were ever-paler iterations of the image-idea he’d been trying capture; they moved farther away not closer. He dropped them on the floor beneath the table as he continued studying the remaining figure. He liked it, and he hardly ever liked anything he did. Not so much it, exactly, as the excitement looking at it stirred in him, the wheels set spinning, the possibilities beckoning just beyond, if only he would follow. He picked up the drawing, held it in both hands, stretched out his arms as if trying to bring some fine print into focus. He rotated the sheet, clockwise, from horizontal to vertical, vertical to horizontal, so that his drawing performed an intermittent cartwheel. Another swell of excitement pumped through his chest. He could feel the ideas, like train cars, lining up and clicking together, ready to be pulled out into the light.
Robert remembered this feeling in the same instant he realized how long it had been since he’d felt it. Chasing after this feeling was how he had ended up in a dingy studio in Inglewood, fifteen hundred miles closer to the world he’d moved from Texas to inhabit and still a million miles away. The waves of long-gone excitement surged and crashed against the sheer face of his newborn dread. He wanted to close the studio door, shut himself in and everything else out, chase after this image-idea until he caught it, lashed it down, made it his. But, he reminded himself, he couldn’t. Not right now. Later. Right now, he had to get ready, do all the things, the work, that had brought him to this well-appointed point.
“Living the life I’ve always wanted to live.”
He didn’t say it out loud, just in his head, as a playful tease, but instead the phrase jolted him like a tattoo he didn’t remember getting, and now Robert flashed on the film clip to a news story he’d seen yesterday:
A luxury apartment complex teetering atop an eroding cliff, somewhere up the coast. El Nino-charged waves pulverized the cliff’s base as, again and again, huge scabs of earth sloughed off the side and crashed into the relentless surf. The cliff’s edge was creeping closer and closer to the idyllic and doomed apartment building. It was just a matter of time.
There was a knock at the door, five sharp raps in an unmistakable, dash/dot-dot/dash/dash syncopation. Robert mumbled a curse, laid the drawing down and hurried out, leaving the studio door open. Another round of the five-rap knock resounded as he stepped up to the entrance. He paused, grimaced, exhaled, shimmied his shoulders, and opened the door. Robert was confronted by a young man, slightly shorter than Robert’s 5’10” -- tall by celebrity standards. He had a mop of hair so precisely haphazard, it appeared designed by Frank Gehry, while the depth and variety of its shades made each strand seem individually tinted. He wore an oversized, black, blank basketball jersey, all the better to show off the sleeve-and-a-half’s worth of tattoos covering his arms. He didn’t look at Robert, but rather past him, which saved Robert the bother of masking the repugnance that flared in his eyes in that instant of recognition. He pasted a welcoming smile over a stifled groan and reached up to give the opened door two quick, sharp knocks -- the rhythmic punchline to his visitor’s set-up.
If the young man appreciated or even recognized Robert’s response to his call, his distracted airs offered no sign. He continued to stand mute, looking past Robert. Robert let out a slight, dry chuckle and tried again, knock-knock, while softly chanting “two... bits.”
Now the young man did look at him, then leaned in as he did this exaggerated bug-eyed sneer thing with his peach-fuzz face.
“What? What’s that? Two bits? Two bits of what?”
Then he laughed at his own joke as he swiped the back of one hand across his nostrils. Robert experienced a nano-coma, not moving, not thinking, and then was snapped back to consciousness by the image of throttling Gillian when next he saw her. He reapplied the smile to his face as he tried again.
“I was just finishing your knock. You know, the old routine,” muttering in a little sing-song improv, “shave-and-a-hair-cut/two-bits.”
The dead stare from his visitor caused Robert to instantly regret his performance. The young man passed a hand through that wondrous hair and let out a laughless chuckle while slowly looking Robert up and down before he resumed looking past him as he started talking past him, too.
“That’s the beat of my new single. Just dropped last week. Blowing up. It’s everywhere. That’s probably where you heard it. It’s so everywhere, you probably didn’t even know you knew it.”
To prove his point, he reached up again and repeated his five-rap knock, this time adding an adenoidal croon -- “Bay Bee don’t cool down.” Robert experienced another nano-coma of blank-faced stupefaction, which the illustrated cherub interpreted as awe-struck gratitude. As a reward, he generously dropped the cherry on top of his impromptu gift, adding a concluding knock-knock as he grunted, “Heat up.” Then he broke into the half-cocked grin that had conquered an international army of tweens.
“Yeah, you recognize it now. I told you. ‘Heat Up.’ That’s my beat. It’s number one. Everywhere.” He flared his fingers in a simulation of bombs bursting in air.
Robert managed to regain his game-face grin and nodded.
“Yes, well, anyway, I’m Robert Fairchild and you are, of course, Tristan Shane.” Robert turned himself sideways in the doorway and swept a hand back into the house. “Come in. Welcome.”
Instead, Tristan Shane turned his back to Robert and made a flat-palmed pressing motion to a gleaming SUV purring by the curb. Now that he saw it, Robert couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed this disco-ball tank the moment he opened door; if a dirigible had been tethered to his mail box, it wouldn’t have appeared any more conspicuous. The pearlescent platinum beast hunkered on hula-hoop wheels of black metal honeycomb, which complemented the massive windows’ impenetrable tint. Robert felt more than heard the dampened thuds of whatever music was blasting within. The man-child 180’d to once again face Robert without bothering to look at him.
“My boys. My manager said you work one-on-one, so they’re just gonna wait out here. S’cool.”
And with that, he slid past Robert and zipped into the house. He stopped in the middle of the floor, a low-slung sitting arrangement to his left, the work station of a table and two facing chairs to his immediate right, with the dining area and open kitchen beyond. Hands on his hips, he swept his gaze around as Robert shut the door and followed him in. He started to offer Tristan something to drink, but didn’t get the words out in time.
“Nice spread. Who’d’ya use?”
Robert offered the name of a top-tier designer (another of Gillian’s clients) and was about to tell his go-to anecdote about how this designer had won him over when, as he was describing the styles of furniture he admired, she had interrupted him to say, “don’t tell me what you want your house to look like, tell me how you want it to feel.” But, again, Tristan Shane cut in.
“Yeah, sure. I worked with her for a minute.”
He gave the interior another scan, and added another back-of-the-hand nostrils swipe.
“She couldn’t get my thing, what I was going for.”
While trying to form the most neutral response he could muster, Robert watched as Tristan Shane began to wander, briefly pausing before the large abstract painting that had been a gift from a South Korea-born artist that Robert met soon after moving into his Inglewood studio -- his first L.A. friend! She had since caught fire and recently been included in the “New Not New School” exhibit at LACMA. He really had meant to attend the opening-night festivities, and to offer her his warmest congratulations. But he didn’t, and he still hadn’t.
His free-range guest drifted over to the built-in shelves to run his fingers across the spines of artist monograms and first editions. He then picked up and peered through a mottled brass, 19th-Century kaleidoscope, set it down rather too heavily and not at all where it had been, poked at the cluster of vintage casino dice, leaned in to leer at a couple of surrealist photos, straightened, spun around, spied the display of ornately enameled antique pens and made a beeline. Robert cut him off at the ottoman with three quick sidesteps.
“What do you say we sit down and get to work? I know your time is limited.”
Another laughless snicker; another bug-eyed sneer.
“S’cool. I don’t feel like sitting. Anyways, I’m not here to...” He lost interest in this sentence before completing it and instead wanly waved a hand. “My manager said you wanted to meet me, so here I am. Now, you just do what you do and we’ll be all good.”
Tristan Shane dipped a shoulder as he prepared to step past Robert, but Robert moved with him to continue obstructing his path and, as he did, realized he had brought up a hand with the reflexive intent to place his palm against the young man’s chest -- at best an impolitic gesture, with the potential to be much worse. He tried to salvage the moment by clumsily redirecting the offending hand into an over-the-shoulder, prithee-come-follow gesture, but abandoned this folly and let his hand, his gaze, and his voice drop as he tried once more.
“It’s not that I wanted to meet you. I mean, it’s not just that. I need to get a sense of... you. Who you are, who you want to be, so I can come up with a signature that captures that... you, and reflects it back to the world.”
Then came the look, the expression on Tristan Shane’s still baby-soft face. It wasn’t, as it had been until now, a shifting portrait of annoyance, dismissal, and boredom. Now, it was just one sentiment, simple and absolute. Pity. And then came the punk-shit pop boy’s first (and only) genuine guffaw, which added another yet more terrible dimension to the look. Amused pity.
The boy-king shook his head as he concluded his chuckle and flipped one of his hands at Robert as if waving off a waiter.
“Nah, nah, fuck all that. All you need to know is...” He paused a beat measured by a breath. “Cool, strong, sexy.”
He recited these words at a remedial pace, as if repeating the alphabet to a slow learner.
“That’s it. All you need.” More finger fireworks.
“That’s not how it works. That’s not how I work.”
Were Robert’s eyes closed as he said this? He couldn’t be sure because, while speaking, he was fixed on the inward image of himself braced against a fire door, straining to keep it shut as his anger raged on the other side, desperate to burst through and set the room ablaze. He succeeded insofar as his voice stayed calm, even conversational, but the effort required had caused his head to droop, and when he brought his gaze back up, Robert discovered that his guest was no longer in front of him. He wheeled around and, sure enough, Tristan Shane had just pulled up in front of the white porcelain platter on which the antique pens were displayed. The boy-king’s eager fingers twitched in anticipation of handling the cool, lacquered weight of presumably each and every one.
“Stop! Don’t touch those!”
Nothing calm or conversational about that. He tried to gulp back his frenzy. Now it was his turn to serve up a laughless chuckle.
“Sorry.” Another swallow to unclench his jaw muscles. “I just don’t like anyone...” His voice fell as he concluded... “touching my stuff.”
Tristan Shane, back still to Robert, delivered a one-eyed glare from his half-turned head as he raised his hands as if responding to an arresting officer’s command. He held himself in that pose for what felt to Robert like an endless, awful moment during which Robert remained mute as he ran through opposing scenarios: one in which he wheedled his unwilling client into some kind of workable compliance, and one in which he charged over, grabbed Mr. CoolStrongSexy by the scruff of the neck and bounced him out the door. Robert knew which he should choose, but lingered on immediate gratification over future reward. “Good right now would feel so good right now.” He silently, slowly stretched the phrase across his tongue, squeezing each word like fingers running down a strand of prayer beads. Tristan Shane dropped his hands, issued a loud snort, rolled his eyes, brought his flared fingers back up and slackened his mouth in a garish mask of mock remorse.
“Chill.”
Another backhanded swipe of his nose. Another mirthless leer. He turned to step away from the display, but as he did he raised a hand, extended its index finger and, as if operating a construction crane, slowly swung his inked forearm over the porcelain platter and lowered his hand until his fingertip made contact with one of the pens. He tap-tap-tapped it a few times, withdrew the offending finger, spun around, stared at Robert for a fixed instant, and then shrugged his boyish shoulders.
“Oops.”
He walked back over, stood in front of Robert, and struck a pose -- one thumb slung in a hip pocket as his other hand raked through that godstruck hair so that it fell in a flaxen tumble just so across his peerless brow. He emitted a breathy titter. It trailed into a shy-sly grin as he dropped his head and then turned his abruptly angelic face up to gaze, searchingly, at Robert who stood statue-still as he marveled at this silky, practiced performance. Tristan Shane clapped his hands together to mark the end of the scene, and spoke.
“That’s it, that’s all. I’m not some safe you need to crack. There’s no secret stash. My manager was supposed to have explained all this to...” he drifted off, uncertain of how to conclude “...whoever.” He brushed his hands together and then away from each other as a punctuating gesture.
He resumed his wanderings while Robert, with a small, sagging sigh, adopted the vigor and command of a scarecrow. Surrender. A sure end. All at once, the cresting wave of Robert’s anger didn’t just break and recede; it vanished like a heat mirage, leaving him weightless, a ghost in his own house. Without realizing it, Robert started murmuring a line from a long-ago song: “I get the feeling that I don’t belong here.” Suddenly, everything about this situation seemed silly and pointless, a feeling that instantly threatened to swamp everything in Robert’s life and surge into a thunderhead of self-loathing. But just then, in an act of charity as unwitting as it was uncharacteristic, Tristan Shane created a diversion to deliver Robert Fairchild from himself: he accepted an open door’s invitation and sashayed into Robert’s studio. With an involuntary yelp, Robert charged after him.
He entered just in time to witness his worst-case scenario play out, in real time, beyond his reach. Tristan Shane stood over the drawing table, holding Robert’s first and best new sketch in almost the same way Robert had -- arms outstretched, turning it this way and that, pulling it in, pushing it out. If he knew Robert was watching, he didn’t show it. Robert reeled in a wordless whiteout swirl, his heart beating in his ears. He took what he endeavored to make a restorative breath and then cleared his throat to announce his presence. Tristan Shane spun around and favored Robert with his first genuine smile.
“This is it,” the boy-king yipped as he held the sketch out for Robert to see. “This is perfect.”
Tristan Shane’s expression -- crinkled eyes, expectant grin, affirming nod – made clear he was already basking in the grateful, relieved burbles Robert was now to commence heaping upon him. But this isn’t what happened. Robert was too busy speaking to follow Tristan Shane’s unspoken prompt, and what Robert unleashed was neither gratitude nor relief.
“What!? No! Stop! That’s not... That’s not for you! Put that down!” As he said this, Robert raised his fist and shook it at Tristan Shane who responded by once more glaring at him. Robert looked up at his fist and holstered it in a hip pocket as he forced himself to pause. And breathe.
“Please put that down. That work, this room, are private. That isn’t... for you. That’s not...” He brought out his now limp hand and flopped it back and forth between the two of them. “...part of this. I’ll create a perfect signature for you. I promise. You’ll love it.”
Robert had turned sideways and was now gesturing with his arms like a traffic cop, directing Tristan Shane to move along, out of the room. But instead, his superstar client just stood there. The glare continued. His face clouded over, the brightness in his eyes darkened, and his head initiated a new series of nods, sharper and not at all affirming. Up came a silencing hand as he continued to clutch the drawing with the other.
“The fuck is your problem? I’m telling you. This is it.” Now he was pointing at the sketch. “What did I say? Cool, strong, sexy.” Now he was holding the sketch with both hands again as he gazed at it. “Just make my signature look like this, like it’s made out of barbed wire veins and arteries and shit. This looks alive, like it’s got a pulse. It’s sexy, it’s scary, it’s... what I want.” He trailed off as he stared at Robert’s drawing. The affirming nods returned. Now he did put the paper down on the table, still nodding at it. “Yeah. This is it. This is my sign.” He snaked a thumb and forefinger into his back pocket and fished out his cell phone. A few rapid taps on its screen as he held it over the drawing. He was done before Robert registered what was happening: he was taking pictures of the drawing. Phone tucked back in his pocket, he walked over and clapped Robert on the back of a shoulder.
“Cool. Get on it. I want to bust this out at the Brit Awards next month.”
And then the boy-king was on the move again, zipping back out into the main room and the devil only knew where next. Robert stood in a fuse-blown stupor. What had just happened? He looked through the doorway and into the vacant space beyond. He thought for a moment of chasing after Tristan Shane to -- but here the impulse went blurry and instead he turned around and stepped over to look down at his drawing, the drawing that just a little while ago had thrilled him. To hold it and lose himself in replaying its consummation, this shape into that shape, slowly slowly slowly, then a rush of strokes and slashes – that feeling, so right, so rare.
And now -- nothing. No. Worse than nothing.
Robert stared down at this drawing stripped bare. Seeing it snatched up and ravished by that snot-nosed, greasy-fingered brat. Taking pictures of it. Claiming it as his. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t. It…
And just like that, Robert felt everything inside him turn cold and hard. He hated the drawing now, and the way looking at it made him feel. It wasn’t his drawing anymore. And if it wasn’t his, then -- a lurid smile stretched across Robert’s face as he finished his thought. He reached down to take up the drawing, crumple it into a tight little ball, or rip it into tiny pieces, or set it aflame and watch it curl into ash. Or -- and here he added a chuckle to his smile -- all three. But before he could start, he felt his phone buzz in his back pocket. He grimaced and pulled it out to see who was calling and whether he would answer. “Gillian” appeared on the screen. He groaned and clicked her call away. Now he did scramble after his free-range interloper.
He was out on the patio, standing at the edge of the pool, looking down on Sunset. Striding double-time, Robert raced out, only to pull up just short of Tristan Shane. He stood precisely behind his new client, noting how the pop boy’s slight silhouette was eclipsed entirely by his man-in-full frame, an observation that prompted Robert’s first and only unforced smile. And as that smile lingered, Robert spun into his escape:
The sunlight glittered on the water. A honeyed breeze wafted down from the hilltop. The muffled drone of downhill traffic was the only sound as Robert picked up the matte-glazed decorative urn, heavy but not too, and with both hands raised it high, stepped forward, and brought it down onto that famous, fabulous hair. He heard the crash; he felt the crunch. Robert was left holding two large pieces of the vessel while a shower of fragments rained down on the stone deck. Tristan Shane, meanwhile, pitched forward and crumpled into the pool, face down, motionless, a liquid cloud of crimson billowing slowly from his head. As Robert stared down, it reminded him of a teabag steeping in a steaming cup. He nodded at the sodden teen idol whose feet had now sunk so that his toes grazed the bottom of the pool, as if he were striking another pose. “You’re right, Tristan. A cup of tea really would hit the spot.” Now it was Robert’s turn to laugh at his own joke. As an in memoriam gesture, he swiped the back of a hand across his nostrils.
Robert blinked as he imagined trying to inventory all those ceramic shards scattered everywhere. Then there was the blood in the pool, not to mention the body, the surrounding hills with all those houses, all those eyes. And what about the designer hovercraft docked out front, full of “my boys”? Robert sighed and let go his reverie, watched it float up and away like a child’s lost balloon, and then stepped beside his guest. He took a beat to swallow back his exasperation before speaking, and thus found himself once more being spoken past.
“I can see my billboard from here. Lucky you. My house is so high up, all I see is haze. I’m thinking about getting a place on the ocean but, you know, the fuck do I care? I’m hardly ever here. There. Wherever.”
“Yes. Lucky me.”
Robert turned back toward the house, hoping to lead his new client by example.
“I know your time is limited.”
He took a few trial steps before turning to see if he was being followed. He wasn’t.
“Tristan?”
A last, lingering look at his billboard and Tristan Shane spun on a heel and motored past Robert, back into the house. Robert watched him disappear. His impulse was to follow, but he didn’t. Why was that, he wondered? But then he heard the front door’s distant slam. Now his impulse was to race in, make sure his home-invader was truly gone and that his door was securely locked. But once more he didn’t. Robert Fairchild simply stood and stared, first down at his feet and then back at his house and then down at his feet again. He felt his phone buzz again. He didn’t look; he knew who it was.
He tapped his acceptance while bringing the phone up to his ear.
“Hello Gillian.”
“I was calling to see if there were any survivors.”
“Har har. And fuck you, by the way. That really was some sort of hate crime you engineered, sending Prince Charming over here without a word of warning.”
“I knew if I told you, you’d never let it happen. It was for your own good.”
“God protect me from those trying to help me.”
“You know I’m right. In fact, I’m a genius. I just got off the phone with his manager. He’s over-the-moon excited about the signature you’re designing. This is huge. This guy represents so many.... This is huge. We are celebrating tonight!”
Gillian went on like that for a bit longer and Robert didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t jump in with any objections. He even nodded his head as if in agreement, but he wasn’t really listening. Her eager words were just a pitter-patter of sounds streaming by. She would be there soon. He was to get ready. She was taking him some place special. It was a surprise. She was very happy and excited. He should be, too.
There was a click and she was gone. Robert remained in his spot, alone, beside the pool, under a darkening sky. He needed to shower and get dressed, but he had a little time. He turned his gaze up to see if he could see any stars yet, through the haze. He tried to decide when he had decided, and decided that he didn’t know. No. Scratch that. That it didn’t matter. He slowly brought his gaze down and settled on Tristan Shane’s billboard and tried with all his might to feel lucky.
A lot of them were recent and on the rise, making the jump from internet sensation to multimedia star. A few were established, mid-career celebs seeking an upgrade. Then there were the book-tour-bound authors who came to him like corporations about to go public and in desperate need of a bankable logo. He had worked with a few politicians and a couple of pro athletes, but they were the exceptions. His core customers were freshly fused and varyingly amalgamated compounds of rich and famous. Robert had a name for them that reflected their signifying attributes; he called them “savages.” Not to their faces, of course. Not to anyone, in fact, save his agent, Gillian -- “Gill...ee-yun, with a hard G,” was how she introduced herself.
It had been Gillian with her hard G who conceived of Robert’s improbable profession. Back then, she was yet another agent’s assistant out and about on a Friday night, working her way through a smartphone list of events and locations, on the prowl for anyone or anything that stirred her future-heat sensor. She was making a reconnaissance sweep through a group show of unknown artists at a barely-there gallery when a cluster of panels in a back corner drew her in, made her stare. Five three-by-four rectangles of gessoed linen. Was that ink or acrylic? A closer look confirmed it was ink. Two were black, two were blue-black, one had some crimson bleeding through. The figures on each panel were sharp, slashing, calligraphic. She was still staring when she sensed a presence and turned her head to find a man standing just behind her left shoulder. He smiled. She nodded at the wall.
“Yours?” Gillian asked.
He nodded but said nothing.
“They look like tattoos by Picasso.”
She really liked them. She and he talked. She really liked him, and he her. She gave him her card; he invited her to his studio in Inglewood, a one-room concrete box he had also lived in since moving from Dallas. A few days later, there she was at his door. In an uncharacteristic flourish of counter-frugality optimism, he had gone to the corner mercado the morning after their meeting, so he was able to play the well-provisioned host and offer her a cup of Costa Rican coffee, a bottle of Jamaican beer, or a glass of sparkling mineral water. Two snaps of a church key later, they were clinking their squat, brown bottles together in a toast to new friends and she commenced her survey of his cluttered but clean space. She was immediately drawn to a stack of sketches. Some were sharp scrawls -- jagged, severe, chopped. Some were soft-edged swirls -- swooped, sculpted, blobby. Some were simple and spare; some crazed and elaborate. They were all beautiful. They looked like signatures, she decided, written using letters she couldn’t quite identify, in a language she’d never seen. But each of them provoked a vivid image of the “person” who had “signed” them.
She looked at them as he stood next to her, watching her look at them. She was still looking at the last of the cache when she quietly said, “They’re like portraits.”
He had quickly looked down while stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep himself from hugging her.
“They are portraits.”
That had been the beginning and things took off with a whoosh from there, faster even than Gillian had predicted, in the way that always and only happens when someone comes up with an idea so ripe and ready, it bursts open like a thought everyone had already been thinking without realizing it.
“Think about it,” Gillian had said a few nights after that first studio visit, while they waited for the bottle of rosé she ordered. Robert scanned the room -- he wasn’t looking for famous faces, but he saw one and then another -- soaking in the decadent pleasures of sitting in the sort of buzzy upscale restaurant he hadn’t been able to afford since moving to Los Angeles. Gillian continued the wind-up to her pitch.
“No one writes with pen and paper anymore. In school, they barely even teach ’penmanship’ (she somehow pronounced the word so that it became a homonym with ‘buggy whip’). For most people, it’s just another thing, like trigonometry, you’re never going to use in the real world. The signature is a leftover relic from another age. The only time anybody ever signs their name anymore is on a little screen, using a piece of plastic shaped like a pen.”
Gillian paused as the waiter returned and presented a bottle for her approval, which she gave with a quick flick of her hand while never looking away from Robert.
“Here’s the funny thing. As the signature is vanishing from everyday life, its celebrity counterpart, the autograph, is on fire in the marketplace.”
Robert must have smirked at this pronouncement because Gillian nodded, let out a derisive snort, and grabbed her wine glass for a gulp.
“I know -- ridiculous. But I’m telling you, autographs are big business. More and more of our clients are being ‘asked’ (she leaned in conspiratorially as she uttered the word to emphasize its irony) to attend events that are just endless signing sessions. And wherever they go, there are as many autograph collectors now as paparazzi. And that’s because autographs are a booming commodity in the celebrity-souvenir market.
Gillian paused to lock eyes with Robert, raising her eyebrows as she opened her palms to the ceiling.
“It’s like... having a, you know, really beautiful, refined signature is one of those things now, like perfect teeth, perfect skin, hair, body, clothes, all of it, that elevates someone, marks them as that much more special, rare, important.
Robert turned his nose to the heavens as he exclaimed with a hissing burst of breath.
“A star.”
Another fuck-me snort, another gulp of wine.
“Exactly. That’s the point. A unique, stylish, you know, ‘cool’ autograph is the new must-have celebrity accessory. And this is all happening at a time when nobody under the age of my grandmother knows how to sign their name in a way that doesn’t look like the signature of a five-year-old.
Gillian performed another conspiratorial lean as she lowered her voice to a dramatic murmur.
“You would be shocked how many” -- her scan quickly helicoptered the room -- “major players sign their names like chimps.”
Robert refilled their glasses as she presented her vision for his future: He would become a signature stylist to the stars. She assured him that just among her agency’s stable of clients, he would be certain to have enough work to keep him busy for the next two years during which time, not incidentally, he would make, based on his career thus far, at least two lifetimes-worth of income. And once established -- Gillian had already blocked out a preliminary line-up of projects to maximize the contagion effect of his work -- she assured him that his phone, and by his phone she meant her phone, wouldn’t stop ringing. She raised her glass to punctuate her spiel and offered a powerfully persuasive two-syllable summation.
“Ka-ching.”
This was Gillian’s sales pitch, which was true. There was also the unspoken reason behind it, which was the truth. The return to autographs wasn’t a fluke; it was a deliberate scheme, part of Hollywood’s anti-selfie campaign, with Gillian’s agency leading the charge. Selfies were a disruption of the natural order, representing a democratizing loss of control, an inversion of power between celebrities and civilians. Selfies in their spontaneous intimacy -- the sweaty embrace, the beery breath, the arm-in-arm/cheek-to-cheekness of it all -- transformed the civilian interloper into photographer/director/co-star/distributor while the set-upon celebrity was demoted to mere stage prop. Like a flash flood, the proliferation of “celfies” as the primary interaction between celebrities and fans seemed to happen overnight, carving a new, unstable and unwelcome ravine through the landscape. The initial response from the various industry players had been to go along, to present an accommodating front to the evolving technology of adulation. But accommodation had devolved into unworkable appeasement, as civilians became more emboldened, celebrities more resentful, and the money guard more fretful over the corrosive (and potentially profits-impinging) effects of an ever-expanding and unregulated reservoir of digital images. Autographs had been settled on as bulwark, deflection and consolation, providing a ‘no’ wrapped in a ‘yes.’
Robert hadn’t known any of this then and if Gillian had explained it to him, he wouldn’t have cared. All he knew was that he was tired of being a starving artist and here was someone smart and connected praising his talent and offering an opportunity. He briefly considered going over the reasons why it wasn’t the prospect of making a ka-ching’s worth of money that made Gillian’s offer so appealing, but he just as quickly scotched the impulse. It was the money, and so what if it was? He’d suffered in spartan obscurity long enough; he had earned an upgrade. He gave his assent with a smile and a nod; they marked the launch of their new venture with a toast, followed by several more.
Gillian had assumed some sort of penmanship tutor would be a necessary component of the signature stylist experience, a chef to execute the nutritionist’s dietary scheme, but Robert brushed aside that notion. For workshopping purposes, Gillian played the role of The Client and Robert wasted no time as he introduced himself, asked a few chitchat questions, and explained that for their work together to succeed she would need to be as relaxed and open as possible. He offered some green tea, they sat in facing folding chairs, and he began -- gently, calmly, but earnestly -- to ask questions about her career, her childhood, her hopes, her regrets. It was a surreal experience, floating somewhere between therapy session and job interview.
They had agreed to use Gillian’s name (Gillian Lawson) for this test run, in part because Robert loved the capital ‘G’ and held the series of letters ‘i-l-l-i’ to be one of the most beautiful sequences in calligraphy, but also because ever since he had watched her sign her name at the restaurant that first night, he teased her mercilessly about her remedial scrawl.
“Look at it,” he had said in mock horror after snatching up the credit-card receipt to hold it under his nose as Gillian lunged in vain to stop him. “What a colossal misfire. Such an abdication of self, this generic spritz of dashes and dots. Why don’t you just get “I give up” tattooed on your forehead?”
The instant she saw “her” new signature, she knew she had been right about him. It was sleek, sculpted, sophisticated. It began with his beloved capital ‘G’ -- he had used an uppercase print rendition of the letter rather than going cursive. It looked like a cartoon sketch of a human ear; the word “cute” popped into Gillian’s as if someone had just whispered it. The rest of her first name seemed to be skipping into that ear like a string of musical notes. The capital L that started Lawson likewise forsook the loopiness of its cursive form. This signature wasn’t at all swirly or decorous. It was straightforward. It looked smart, in two shades of the adjective, and as Gillian smiled to herself at that thought, she realized this was, in fact, her signature. Robert had created a portrait of her.
Gillian hadn’t known what to expect when Robert switched gears and put a pen in her hand, set a blank pad before her, and began his tutorial. Flashbacks of a third-grade teacher looming over Gillian’s desk while growling “no, no, no, bring your loops up and over” smeared into her dad flinching in the passenger seat while mashing his foot on a phantom brake pedal and screeching orders as she clenched the steering wheel and strained not to cry. She had been dreading this part. But if Robert noticed (he did), he didn’t let on as he crooned his instructions.
“Don’t think of it as writing. Think of it as drawing. Forget the letters. Just see them as shapes. Focus on the shapes. Let’s break it down, one shape at a time. Once you’re comfortable with one, try the next. After that, we’ll work on connecting them. It’s easy, you’ll see.”
She had started with stiff, jerky motions, clutching the pen in a skeleton claw, scratching out marks that in no way resembled Robert’s smooth flowing lines. After a few more spasmodic squiggles, her “signature” looked like the peaks and plunges of a polygraph exam she was failing, miserably. Robert, standing just behind her, watching, emitted a single, soft cluck of his tongue as he rubbed her shoulder with one hand and pried the pen from her clutch with the other.
“Relax. Let’s start over. Take the pen and hold it like it’s a living thing. A living thing you’re trying not to choke the living shit out of” (he gently patted her shoulder as a tactile laugh track). “Now we’re just going to make shapes, whatever you want, circles, loops, waves, lines, whatever. And as you do, I want you to move the pen across the paper lightly. Soft and smooth. Steady. How do you touch a lover when you’re trying to arouse her? That’s what I want you to do. Tease the paper, awaken its desire for your sweet ink.”
In her head, Gillian wanted to laugh and unleash the dogs of snark, but before she had the chance, she saw her hand jetting across the white paper, up and down and over and around, a fluid contrail of black streaming from the pen; even more, she felt it, a liquid slipperiness, like the final swells of surf lapping at the sand.
“There you go, that’s better. Feel the flow, stay with it.”
Then and there, Gillian let go and gave herself over to his croon and her flow, and somewhere between the two, any shapes segued into his shapes, into her shapes, and then this shape was connecting with that shape and the next and the next. Two into three unnoticed hours later, she brought up her hand with a triumphant swoosh from what had become a field of evermore graceful signatures -- “her” signature now fully her signature. She turned her head to gaze over her shoulder at Robert and share an expression of jubilant disbelief, but he wasn’t there. In that same moment, she heard a pop coming from behind her other shoulder and turned that way to see Robert holding a bottle and two glasses.
This had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship; moreover, an exceedingly profitable one. Now, with the five-year anniversary of that beginning just around the corner, Gillian was an agent in full with an enviable roster of clients and plans to open her own boutique agency. And Robert was the Signaturist to the stars, living in a concrete-and-glass parallelogram cantilevered on a hill above Sunset Boulevard, purchased in a sweetheart deal from one of Gillian’s other clients, a celebrity chef moving to Las Vegas, the new center of his dining-theme-park empire.
Robert was on the cusp of ascending to the next ring of success: the roll-out of his book, Make Your Mark: Sign Like a Star. No longer an anonymous cog in the Celebrity Machine, he was out and had been ever since one of his clients, his first A-lister, a grand doyenne with a bandolier of statuettes, had broken protocol and sung his praises during a run of interviews and appearances. She loved her new signature, of course, but even more the process of discovering it, “the journey” by which the two of them had “blazed a trail through the wilderness of my soul.” It had been “the most intense act of self-discovery” she had ever experienced, “not just as an actor, but as a human being.” Robert’s response had been a wisecrack delivered in his best Bogart -- “the glitzier the dame, the gaudier the patter.” In contrast, Gillian’s response had been full-on panic. At first. But as the subsequent boil of media queries, peer congratulations and, most persuasively, new-client requests quickly confirmed, this was a coup not a disaster, and her bushwhacked horror shifted seamlessly into poised elation. Robert completed their role reversal by feeling a prickly ambivalence that sharpened into something darker and more distressed when an exultant Gillian rushed over with the good news that the bad news was, in fact, great news. He had surprised himself when, instinctively, he chose not to share his reaction with her.
He still hadn’t. Robert shuffled out onto his patio, into the late-morning light, plopped himself in one of the low-slung deck chairs, and raised the tumbler of Tabasco-spritzed tomato juice to his forehead. After pausing to extend a pinkie and press his sunglasses higher up on his nose, he dragged the glass across his brow, hoping its slick chill would dampen the headache roaring behind his eyes. He stared at the infinity pool, letting his gaze go soft as he tried to remember the last time he had dipped so much as a toe in it. He didn’t try too hard, and with only blanks-pocked success -- sometime soon after moving in, another lost night.
He drained his glass as he inventoried his upcoming schedule: He left for New York a week from tomorrow for a blitzkrieg of television appearances, interviews and photo shoots, beginning with a sweet-spot appearance on the Today show and ending with a photo/interview session for a People Online feature, pitched to Gillian as “The Phantom Behind the Pen.” Gillian was negotiating terms for a series of instructional videos, then there was the book tour schedule to finalize; she was already fielding early prods from the publisher about a follow-up, maybe a memoir; and most immediately, there was his initial meeting with a new “mystery” client, which would be in -- he closed his eyes and let his head fall back as he drew in a deep breath -- about an hour. Fuck. Everything was great, so why was he awash in dread? He was on top of the world, so why did he feel crushed by it? He looked again at his azure pool, admired the clean, precise lines of his landscape, scanned the downhill vista of west Hollywood and chuckled over his great good fortune: He was tucked-in and fancy-free. He was the luckiest man alive. So why did he feel cursed?
Five years – a long time, the blink of an eye. What had he told himself, and Gillian, when they started all this?
“I’ll do it. But only for a couple of years, just long enough to save up some money. Then I’m going to move back to the middle of nowhere Texas, maybe Marfa, or Alpine. Make my life as small as I can. Get up every day and work. My work. Have the same day every day, over and over again, until... for as long as I can.”
The look on Gillian’s face -- she hadn’t laughed outright, but only by the merest technicality. It never occurred to her to mask her scornful amusement at his dipshit pronouncement. She just shook her head.
Two years came and went, of course. Then three, four, and now it was about to be five. Robert looked down at his fingers curled around the tumbler as he silently ticked off this countdown, and as he did he had the sudden, odd sensation of sitting outside himself as words flitted through his head like graffiti viewed through a train window: ‘I’m making my life big as I can.’ And then he was back within himself, still staring down at the hand holding the empty glass. He had not only broken his solemn pledge, he was devotedly, industriously enacting its opposite. Why? He got up and shuffled back into the house as a way of making it easier to pretend not to notice that he didn’t answer.
Khaki canvas shoes, ecru cotton pants, unpleated and rolled up just above his ankles, a white singlet under a white Oxford shirt, untucked, sleeves rolled up just past his elbows -- Robert thought of this outfit as his uniform and wore it for every first meeting with a new client. He glanced at his phone and saw he still had about 20 minutes, if this appointment was on time, which was, in his experience, unlikely, so he stepped into his studio and over to his drawing table. He stared down at the six sketches covering its surface, each a blue-black ink figure on a large sheet of drawing paper, arranged in two rows of three like giant mahjong tiles. They were new; he had only started working on them last week, the first new work he had produced in... a while.
His eyes scanned slowly from one to the next, from left to right, first the top three, then the bottom. They were studies, notes to himself about an image-idea that wouldn’t leave him alone until he got it out. He gathered up five of them as he continued to stare at the remaining sketch, which was the first one he’d drawn. These others, he now saw clearly, were ever-paler iterations of the image-idea he’d been trying capture; they moved farther away not closer. He dropped them on the floor beneath the table as he continued studying the remaining figure. He liked it, and he hardly ever liked anything he did. Not so much it, exactly, as the excitement looking at it stirred in him, the wheels set spinning, the possibilities beckoning just beyond, if only he would follow. He picked up the drawing, held it in both hands, stretched out his arms as if trying to bring some fine print into focus. He rotated the sheet, clockwise, from horizontal to vertical, vertical to horizontal, so that his drawing performed an intermittent cartwheel. Another swell of excitement pumped through his chest. He could feel the ideas, like train cars, lining up and clicking together, ready to be pulled out into the light.
Robert remembered this feeling in the same instant he realized how long it had been since he’d felt it. Chasing after this feeling was how he had ended up in a dingy studio in Inglewood, fifteen hundred miles closer to the world he’d moved from Texas to inhabit and still a million miles away. The waves of long-gone excitement surged and crashed against the sheer face of his newborn dread. He wanted to close the studio door, shut himself in and everything else out, chase after this image-idea until he caught it, lashed it down, made it his. But, he reminded himself, he couldn’t. Not right now. Later. Right now, he had to get ready, do all the things, the work, that had brought him to this well-appointed point.
“Living the life I’ve always wanted to live.”
He didn’t say it out loud, just in his head, as a playful tease, but instead the phrase jolted him like a tattoo he didn’t remember getting, and now Robert flashed on the film clip to a news story he’d seen yesterday:
A luxury apartment complex teetering atop an eroding cliff, somewhere up the coast. El Nino-charged waves pulverized the cliff’s base as, again and again, huge scabs of earth sloughed off the side and crashed into the relentless surf. The cliff’s edge was creeping closer and closer to the idyllic and doomed apartment building. It was just a matter of time.
There was a knock at the door, five sharp raps in an unmistakable, dash/dot-dot/dash/dash syncopation. Robert mumbled a curse, laid the drawing down and hurried out, leaving the studio door open. Another round of the five-rap knock resounded as he stepped up to the entrance. He paused, grimaced, exhaled, shimmied his shoulders, and opened the door. Robert was confronted by a young man, slightly shorter than Robert’s 5’10” -- tall by celebrity standards. He had a mop of hair so precisely haphazard, it appeared designed by Frank Gehry, while the depth and variety of its shades made each strand seem individually tinted. He wore an oversized, black, blank basketball jersey, all the better to show off the sleeve-and-a-half’s worth of tattoos covering his arms. He didn’t look at Robert, but rather past him, which saved Robert the bother of masking the repugnance that flared in his eyes in that instant of recognition. He pasted a welcoming smile over a stifled groan and reached up to give the opened door two quick, sharp knocks -- the rhythmic punchline to his visitor’s set-up.
If the young man appreciated or even recognized Robert’s response to his call, his distracted airs offered no sign. He continued to stand mute, looking past Robert. Robert let out a slight, dry chuckle and tried again, knock-knock, while softly chanting “two... bits.”
Now the young man did look at him, then leaned in as he did this exaggerated bug-eyed sneer thing with his peach-fuzz face.
“What? What’s that? Two bits? Two bits of what?”
Then he laughed at his own joke as he swiped the back of one hand across his nostrils. Robert experienced a nano-coma, not moving, not thinking, and then was snapped back to consciousness by the image of throttling Gillian when next he saw her. He reapplied the smile to his face as he tried again.
“I was just finishing your knock. You know, the old routine,” muttering in a little sing-song improv, “shave-and-a-hair-cut/two-bits.”
The dead stare from his visitor caused Robert to instantly regret his performance. The young man passed a hand through that wondrous hair and let out a laughless chuckle while slowly looking Robert up and down before he resumed looking past him as he started talking past him, too.
“That’s the beat of my new single. Just dropped last week. Blowing up. It’s everywhere. That’s probably where you heard it. It’s so everywhere, you probably didn’t even know you knew it.”
To prove his point, he reached up again and repeated his five-rap knock, this time adding an adenoidal croon -- “Bay Bee don’t cool down.” Robert experienced another nano-coma of blank-faced stupefaction, which the illustrated cherub interpreted as awe-struck gratitude. As a reward, he generously dropped the cherry on top of his impromptu gift, adding a concluding knock-knock as he grunted, “Heat up.” Then he broke into the half-cocked grin that had conquered an international army of tweens.
“Yeah, you recognize it now. I told you. ‘Heat Up.’ That’s my beat. It’s number one. Everywhere.” He flared his fingers in a simulation of bombs bursting in air.
Robert managed to regain his game-face grin and nodded.
“Yes, well, anyway, I’m Robert Fairchild and you are, of course, Tristan Shane.” Robert turned himself sideways in the doorway and swept a hand back into the house. “Come in. Welcome.”
Instead, Tristan Shane turned his back to Robert and made a flat-palmed pressing motion to a gleaming SUV purring by the curb. Now that he saw it, Robert couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed this disco-ball tank the moment he opened door; if a dirigible had been tethered to his mail box, it wouldn’t have appeared any more conspicuous. The pearlescent platinum beast hunkered on hula-hoop wheels of black metal honeycomb, which complemented the massive windows’ impenetrable tint. Robert felt more than heard the dampened thuds of whatever music was blasting within. The man-child 180’d to once again face Robert without bothering to look at him.
“My boys. My manager said you work one-on-one, so they’re just gonna wait out here. S’cool.”
And with that, he slid past Robert and zipped into the house. He stopped in the middle of the floor, a low-slung sitting arrangement to his left, the work station of a table and two facing chairs to his immediate right, with the dining area and open kitchen beyond. Hands on his hips, he swept his gaze around as Robert shut the door and followed him in. He started to offer Tristan something to drink, but didn’t get the words out in time.
“Nice spread. Who’d’ya use?”
Robert offered the name of a top-tier designer (another of Gillian’s clients) and was about to tell his go-to anecdote about how this designer had won him over when, as he was describing the styles of furniture he admired, she had interrupted him to say, “don’t tell me what you want your house to look like, tell me how you want it to feel.” But, again, Tristan Shane cut in.
“Yeah, sure. I worked with her for a minute.”
He gave the interior another scan, and added another back-of-the-hand nostrils swipe.
“She couldn’t get my thing, what I was going for.”
While trying to form the most neutral response he could muster, Robert watched as Tristan Shane began to wander, briefly pausing before the large abstract painting that had been a gift from a South Korea-born artist that Robert met soon after moving into his Inglewood studio -- his first L.A. friend! She had since caught fire and recently been included in the “New Not New School” exhibit at LACMA. He really had meant to attend the opening-night festivities, and to offer her his warmest congratulations. But he didn’t, and he still hadn’t.
His free-range guest drifted over to the built-in shelves to run his fingers across the spines of artist monograms and first editions. He then picked up and peered through a mottled brass, 19th-Century kaleidoscope, set it down rather too heavily and not at all where it had been, poked at the cluster of vintage casino dice, leaned in to leer at a couple of surrealist photos, straightened, spun around, spied the display of ornately enameled antique pens and made a beeline. Robert cut him off at the ottoman with three quick sidesteps.
“What do you say we sit down and get to work? I know your time is limited.”
Another laughless snicker; another bug-eyed sneer.
“S’cool. I don’t feel like sitting. Anyways, I’m not here to...” He lost interest in this sentence before completing it and instead wanly waved a hand. “My manager said you wanted to meet me, so here I am. Now, you just do what you do and we’ll be all good.”
Tristan Shane dipped a shoulder as he prepared to step past Robert, but Robert moved with him to continue obstructing his path and, as he did, realized he had brought up a hand with the reflexive intent to place his palm against the young man’s chest -- at best an impolitic gesture, with the potential to be much worse. He tried to salvage the moment by clumsily redirecting the offending hand into an over-the-shoulder, prithee-come-follow gesture, but abandoned this folly and let his hand, his gaze, and his voice drop as he tried once more.
“It’s not that I wanted to meet you. I mean, it’s not just that. I need to get a sense of... you. Who you are, who you want to be, so I can come up with a signature that captures that... you, and reflects it back to the world.”
Then came the look, the expression on Tristan Shane’s still baby-soft face. It wasn’t, as it had been until now, a shifting portrait of annoyance, dismissal, and boredom. Now, it was just one sentiment, simple and absolute. Pity. And then came the punk-shit pop boy’s first (and only) genuine guffaw, which added another yet more terrible dimension to the look. Amused pity.
The boy-king shook his head as he concluded his chuckle and flipped one of his hands at Robert as if waving off a waiter.
“Nah, nah, fuck all that. All you need to know is...” He paused a beat measured by a breath. “Cool, strong, sexy.”
He recited these words at a remedial pace, as if repeating the alphabet to a slow learner.
“That’s it. All you need.” More finger fireworks.
“That’s not how it works. That’s not how I work.”
Were Robert’s eyes closed as he said this? He couldn’t be sure because, while speaking, he was fixed on the inward image of himself braced against a fire door, straining to keep it shut as his anger raged on the other side, desperate to burst through and set the room ablaze. He succeeded insofar as his voice stayed calm, even conversational, but the effort required had caused his head to droop, and when he brought his gaze back up, Robert discovered that his guest was no longer in front of him. He wheeled around and, sure enough, Tristan Shane had just pulled up in front of the white porcelain platter on which the antique pens were displayed. The boy-king’s eager fingers twitched in anticipation of handling the cool, lacquered weight of presumably each and every one.
“Stop! Don’t touch those!”
Nothing calm or conversational about that. He tried to gulp back his frenzy. Now it was his turn to serve up a laughless chuckle.
“Sorry.” Another swallow to unclench his jaw muscles. “I just don’t like anyone...” His voice fell as he concluded... “touching my stuff.”
Tristan Shane, back still to Robert, delivered a one-eyed glare from his half-turned head as he raised his hands as if responding to an arresting officer’s command. He held himself in that pose for what felt to Robert like an endless, awful moment during which Robert remained mute as he ran through opposing scenarios: one in which he wheedled his unwilling client into some kind of workable compliance, and one in which he charged over, grabbed Mr. CoolStrongSexy by the scruff of the neck and bounced him out the door. Robert knew which he should choose, but lingered on immediate gratification over future reward. “Good right now would feel so good right now.” He silently, slowly stretched the phrase across his tongue, squeezing each word like fingers running down a strand of prayer beads. Tristan Shane dropped his hands, issued a loud snort, rolled his eyes, brought his flared fingers back up and slackened his mouth in a garish mask of mock remorse.
“Chill.”
Another backhanded swipe of his nose. Another mirthless leer. He turned to step away from the display, but as he did he raised a hand, extended its index finger and, as if operating a construction crane, slowly swung his inked forearm over the porcelain platter and lowered his hand until his fingertip made contact with one of the pens. He tap-tap-tapped it a few times, withdrew the offending finger, spun around, stared at Robert for a fixed instant, and then shrugged his boyish shoulders.
“Oops.”
He walked back over, stood in front of Robert, and struck a pose -- one thumb slung in a hip pocket as his other hand raked through that godstruck hair so that it fell in a flaxen tumble just so across his peerless brow. He emitted a breathy titter. It trailed into a shy-sly grin as he dropped his head and then turned his abruptly angelic face up to gaze, searchingly, at Robert who stood statue-still as he marveled at this silky, practiced performance. Tristan Shane clapped his hands together to mark the end of the scene, and spoke.
“That’s it, that’s all. I’m not some safe you need to crack. There’s no secret stash. My manager was supposed to have explained all this to...” he drifted off, uncertain of how to conclude “...whoever.” He brushed his hands together and then away from each other as a punctuating gesture.
He resumed his wanderings while Robert, with a small, sagging sigh, adopted the vigor and command of a scarecrow. Surrender. A sure end. All at once, the cresting wave of Robert’s anger didn’t just break and recede; it vanished like a heat mirage, leaving him weightless, a ghost in his own house. Without realizing it, Robert started murmuring a line from a long-ago song: “I get the feeling that I don’t belong here.” Suddenly, everything about this situation seemed silly and pointless, a feeling that instantly threatened to swamp everything in Robert’s life and surge into a thunderhead of self-loathing. But just then, in an act of charity as unwitting as it was uncharacteristic, Tristan Shane created a diversion to deliver Robert Fairchild from himself: he accepted an open door’s invitation and sashayed into Robert’s studio. With an involuntary yelp, Robert charged after him.
He entered just in time to witness his worst-case scenario play out, in real time, beyond his reach. Tristan Shane stood over the drawing table, holding Robert’s first and best new sketch in almost the same way Robert had -- arms outstretched, turning it this way and that, pulling it in, pushing it out. If he knew Robert was watching, he didn’t show it. Robert reeled in a wordless whiteout swirl, his heart beating in his ears. He took what he endeavored to make a restorative breath and then cleared his throat to announce his presence. Tristan Shane spun around and favored Robert with his first genuine smile.
“This is it,” the boy-king yipped as he held the sketch out for Robert to see. “This is perfect.”
Tristan Shane’s expression -- crinkled eyes, expectant grin, affirming nod – made clear he was already basking in the grateful, relieved burbles Robert was now to commence heaping upon him. But this isn’t what happened. Robert was too busy speaking to follow Tristan Shane’s unspoken prompt, and what Robert unleashed was neither gratitude nor relief.
“What!? No! Stop! That’s not... That’s not for you! Put that down!” As he said this, Robert raised his fist and shook it at Tristan Shane who responded by once more glaring at him. Robert looked up at his fist and holstered it in a hip pocket as he forced himself to pause. And breathe.
“Please put that down. That work, this room, are private. That isn’t... for you. That’s not...” He brought out his now limp hand and flopped it back and forth between the two of them. “...part of this. I’ll create a perfect signature for you. I promise. You’ll love it.”
Robert had turned sideways and was now gesturing with his arms like a traffic cop, directing Tristan Shane to move along, out of the room. But instead, his superstar client just stood there. The glare continued. His face clouded over, the brightness in his eyes darkened, and his head initiated a new series of nods, sharper and not at all affirming. Up came a silencing hand as he continued to clutch the drawing with the other.
“The fuck is your problem? I’m telling you. This is it.” Now he was pointing at the sketch. “What did I say? Cool, strong, sexy.” Now he was holding the sketch with both hands again as he gazed at it. “Just make my signature look like this, like it’s made out of barbed wire veins and arteries and shit. This looks alive, like it’s got a pulse. It’s sexy, it’s scary, it’s... what I want.” He trailed off as he stared at Robert’s drawing. The affirming nods returned. Now he did put the paper down on the table, still nodding at it. “Yeah. This is it. This is my sign.” He snaked a thumb and forefinger into his back pocket and fished out his cell phone. A few rapid taps on its screen as he held it over the drawing. He was done before Robert registered what was happening: he was taking pictures of the drawing. Phone tucked back in his pocket, he walked over and clapped Robert on the back of a shoulder.
“Cool. Get on it. I want to bust this out at the Brit Awards next month.”
And then the boy-king was on the move again, zipping back out into the main room and the devil only knew where next. Robert stood in a fuse-blown stupor. What had just happened? He looked through the doorway and into the vacant space beyond. He thought for a moment of chasing after Tristan Shane to -- but here the impulse went blurry and instead he turned around and stepped over to look down at his drawing, the drawing that just a little while ago had thrilled him. To hold it and lose himself in replaying its consummation, this shape into that shape, slowly slowly slowly, then a rush of strokes and slashes – that feeling, so right, so rare.
And now -- nothing. No. Worse than nothing.
Robert stared down at this drawing stripped bare. Seeing it snatched up and ravished by that snot-nosed, greasy-fingered brat. Taking pictures of it. Claiming it as his. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t. It…
And just like that, Robert felt everything inside him turn cold and hard. He hated the drawing now, and the way looking at it made him feel. It wasn’t his drawing anymore. And if it wasn’t his, then -- a lurid smile stretched across Robert’s face as he finished his thought. He reached down to take up the drawing, crumple it into a tight little ball, or rip it into tiny pieces, or set it aflame and watch it curl into ash. Or -- and here he added a chuckle to his smile -- all three. But before he could start, he felt his phone buzz in his back pocket. He grimaced and pulled it out to see who was calling and whether he would answer. “Gillian” appeared on the screen. He groaned and clicked her call away. Now he did scramble after his free-range interloper.
He was out on the patio, standing at the edge of the pool, looking down on Sunset. Striding double-time, Robert raced out, only to pull up just short of Tristan Shane. He stood precisely behind his new client, noting how the pop boy’s slight silhouette was eclipsed entirely by his man-in-full frame, an observation that prompted Robert’s first and only unforced smile. And as that smile lingered, Robert spun into his escape:
The sunlight glittered on the water. A honeyed breeze wafted down from the hilltop. The muffled drone of downhill traffic was the only sound as Robert picked up the matte-glazed decorative urn, heavy but not too, and with both hands raised it high, stepped forward, and brought it down onto that famous, fabulous hair. He heard the crash; he felt the crunch. Robert was left holding two large pieces of the vessel while a shower of fragments rained down on the stone deck. Tristan Shane, meanwhile, pitched forward and crumpled into the pool, face down, motionless, a liquid cloud of crimson billowing slowly from his head. As Robert stared down, it reminded him of a teabag steeping in a steaming cup. He nodded at the sodden teen idol whose feet had now sunk so that his toes grazed the bottom of the pool, as if he were striking another pose. “You’re right, Tristan. A cup of tea really would hit the spot.” Now it was Robert’s turn to laugh at his own joke. As an in memoriam gesture, he swiped the back of a hand across his nostrils.
Robert blinked as he imagined trying to inventory all those ceramic shards scattered everywhere. Then there was the blood in the pool, not to mention the body, the surrounding hills with all those houses, all those eyes. And what about the designer hovercraft docked out front, full of “my boys”? Robert sighed and let go his reverie, watched it float up and away like a child’s lost balloon, and then stepped beside his guest. He took a beat to swallow back his exasperation before speaking, and thus found himself once more being spoken past.
“I can see my billboard from here. Lucky you. My house is so high up, all I see is haze. I’m thinking about getting a place on the ocean but, you know, the fuck do I care? I’m hardly ever here. There. Wherever.”
“Yes. Lucky me.”
Robert turned back toward the house, hoping to lead his new client by example.
“I know your time is limited.”
He took a few trial steps before turning to see if he was being followed. He wasn’t.
“Tristan?”
A last, lingering look at his billboard and Tristan Shane spun on a heel and motored past Robert, back into the house. Robert watched him disappear. His impulse was to follow, but he didn’t. Why was that, he wondered? But then he heard the front door’s distant slam. Now his impulse was to race in, make sure his home-invader was truly gone and that his door was securely locked. But once more he didn’t. Robert Fairchild simply stood and stared, first down at his feet and then back at his house and then down at his feet again. He felt his phone buzz again. He didn’t look; he knew who it was.
He tapped his acceptance while bringing the phone up to his ear.
“Hello Gillian.”
“I was calling to see if there were any survivors.”
“Har har. And fuck you, by the way. That really was some sort of hate crime you engineered, sending Prince Charming over here without a word of warning.”
“I knew if I told you, you’d never let it happen. It was for your own good.”
“God protect me from those trying to help me.”
“You know I’m right. In fact, I’m a genius. I just got off the phone with his manager. He’s over-the-moon excited about the signature you’re designing. This is huge. This guy represents so many.... This is huge. We are celebrating tonight!”
Gillian went on like that for a bit longer and Robert didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t jump in with any objections. He even nodded his head as if in agreement, but he wasn’t really listening. Her eager words were just a pitter-patter of sounds streaming by. She would be there soon. He was to get ready. She was taking him some place special. It was a surprise. She was very happy and excited. He should be, too.
There was a click and she was gone. Robert remained in his spot, alone, beside the pool, under a darkening sky. He needed to shower and get dressed, but he had a little time. He turned his gaze up to see if he could see any stars yet, through the haze. He tried to decide when he had decided, and decided that he didn’t know. No. Scratch that. That it didn’t matter. He slowly brought his gaze down and settled on Tristan Shane’s billboard and tried with all his might to feel lucky.
About the Author
Thomas Maurstad was the pop culture critic of the Dallas Morning News for over 20 years. Since his release back into the wild in 2011, he is endeavoring to create ambitious, compelling fiction.
About the Work
"As eager as I am to start referring to present realities in the past tense, I won’t since, like a massive tropical depression that sits and swirls over us, refusing to budge, they are still very much in the here and now. We are living through an age of anxiety and overload, and as both an artist and a citizen, my existential challenge is to stay connected and to disconnect. When does connection become obsession? When does disconnection become denial? I want my writing to be of my time; I don’t want it to be about my time. I suspect I will be trying (and mostly failing) to strike that elusive balance long after here and now is done and gone."
Thomas Maurstad was the pop culture critic of the Dallas Morning News for over 20 years. Since his release back into the wild in 2011, he is endeavoring to create ambitious, compelling fiction.
About the Work
"As eager as I am to start referring to present realities in the past tense, I won’t since, like a massive tropical depression that sits and swirls over us, refusing to budge, they are still very much in the here and now. We are living through an age of anxiety and overload, and as both an artist and a citizen, my existential challenge is to stay connected and to disconnect. When does connection become obsession? When does disconnection become denial? I want my writing to be of my time; I don’t want it to be about my time. I suspect I will be trying (and mostly failing) to strike that elusive balance long after here and now is done and gone."
