She smiles up at me as she holds one sculpture together while I tack it to the ceiling. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Why do you have a different last name from your sister?”
“We’re half-sisters,” she says. “My dad left my mom when she had me. They were teenagers and never married. Then, my mom married someone else and had Riley and Pete.”
I’d figured it was something like that. “Relatable,” I say. “My mom and dad never married either. But instead, my mom disappeared. My dad never did settle down. I grew up in a house with a series of girlfriends coming and going.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, handing me a nail.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead with my upper arm. “The worst part was being encouraged to call them all ‘Mommy,’ until I wised up in about fourth grade and put a stop to it.”
“Oh, god,” she breathes, looking horrified.
“I’m over it.”
“Our parents really did a number on us, didn’t they? Almost makes a person decide to stay single forever,” she says.
Our eyes meet, and I notice how I feel when she’s looking straight at me. Something feels homey and familiar when she maintains eye contact, and I want to latch onto that. “That’s exactly right. I don’t think I have the DNA to make a relationship last forever.” Though if she keeps those eyes on me, I could probably figure it out.
“Me either,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t date. It’s just that I’m unmatchable. I make matches on all the dating apps, but I fuck it up almost immediately. I just don’t know how to relate to men. I ask for a coffee date, and half of them say that a coffee date is a cop-out. So I suggest going out to dinner, and they spend the entire night talking about themselves. I’ve taken it as a sign to just focus on myself and not worry if something long-term never happens. It’s possible to be happy and single.”
I can cope with blisters. I can also cope with hard work as long as I can listen to Ari talk. Literally, about anything.
A different kind of person would cut and run the moment they realized they were in for an all-nighter. For me, this is turning into a pretty good night.
When we come down the scaffold for the last time, it’s after midnight, and I’m tired as fuck.
Ari still looks like she’s running on a motor.
“This is going to look so good,” she says. She rises up on the balls of her feet in front of me, almost like a woman who wants to be kissed. I almost lose myself for a moment before I catch on. Of course she doesn’t want to be kissed. She’s simply perpetual sunshine and can never stop bouncing.
Me, I’m ready for a beer. Or seven.
“Let’s see how this looks,” she says.
Confused, I stand there staring at the ceiling, and I still don’t quite get what it’s supposed to look like.
“Uh…looks good,” I say, not wanting to hurt her feelings because I cannot make heads or tails of what we’ve actually done here tonight.
Ari laughs. “No, silly. We have to turn off the lights!” I’m still confused as she runs to the wall and switches off the big overhead lights, plunging the gym into darkness.
“Foster, could you go hit the switch by the outlets on your side?”
I realize that I’m standing right by the bank of electrical outlets, where the light strings are plugged in.
When I step on the cord switch, the room is softly illuminated from above by a thousand tiny white lights.
Finally, I see what we’ve done.
From this vantage point, the effect is, well, magical. It’s a starry night sky blurred by misty clouds, with soaring, feathered birds, and cherubs aiming their pointy arrows at unsuspecting mortals below.
Listen, I’m not a guy who throws the word “magical” around to describe anything. Stars are balls of gas. Clouds kindly keep the sun out of my eyeballs, but they also bring rain, and rain puts a literal damper on a business like mine, which exists to outfit tourists for skiing and backwoods adventures. Birds are loud, and they shit everywhere, and yet every person in this town is obsessed with them.
But this thing that Ari has designed and created, and that I have somehow been a small part of piecing together, is pure ethereal magic and romance and wonder and whimsy.
My eyes, my body, and my brain do not understand how I helped with this. I am stunned. Art does not, in general, touch me. But this. The way the light hits the paper sculptures, and the way those things move as they hang in the air, all make sense.
“Well, what do you think?”
