James laughs and takes the egg roll anyway.
Nelle sniffs one of the takeout containers. “Huh. What exactly isinCharlie’s Kickin’ Chicken?”
“This is the studio.” Jessie jiggles her key in the metal door and kicks it twice with her boot before it gives. Flakes of rust fall onto the threshold of the moonlit loft.
Nelle needs a moment to compose herself after she steps inside. The farthest wall is all floor-to-ceiling windows exposed to the East River and the glittering Manhattan skyline. Another wall of windows faces south, so light can spill in during the day. The walls and floor arecovered in scattered artwork: watercolors, pottery, acrylics, sculptures made out of cans and baby doll heads and light bulbs, pencils, charcoal, paper, glue. The expressions of many artists all mixed together.
“This is my latest piece.” Jessie bounces over to a surrealist painting of a blue woman with an ass the size of a glacier and a head the size of a grape. “It’s a self-portrait.”
Nelle spots a stack of blank canvases, and her throat closes up. She is back in her bedroom in Lincoln, choking on the thick dust accumulated on her easel, her canvases, her favorite brushes. Crying to the fireplace while her best painting blackens and curls.
“You good?” Jessie asks.
“Yeah, sorry.” Nelle blinks back her tears. “It’s been a while since I painted.”
Jessie chews her lip. “Wait here.” She disappears into an adjoining room.
Nelle watches the street below. A cat bounds down the sidewalk, claws stretching toward a fluttering pigeon. Jessie returns a minute later with a cup of steaming coffee and flips a switch by the door. Twelve hanging lights, all hand blown and shaped like fishbowls, flicker on.
Nelle accepts the coffee, hints of cinnamon and vanilla pooling on her tongue. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Jessie leans against the wall. She is a beautiful woman, Nelle realizes. Her blue eyeliner and sparkling eyeshadow are creatively applied, her hair short and lightly curled, her face heart shaped. She gestures, her fingernails individually painted with different flowers, and says, “This is your spot, whenever you’re ready. I’ll be here all night.”
Nelle stands in front of an easel. With shaky hands, she picks a square canvas off the stack. The material is familiar, rough, terrifyingly empty. Her heart pounds as the white square seems to grow, a monster intent on swallowing her whole—
“Want to hear a story?” Jessie asks, her strawberry earrings glinting.
Nelle tears away from the canvas, grateful for the distraction. “Please.”
“Follow me.” Jessie disappears through a curtain of tinkling multicolored beads.
Please work.Nelle sends up a prayer to whatever magic controls her life. She is already stretching the boundaries of what she can do by leaving the apartment without James. The first time she went to the café by herself, she nearly burst into tears while ordering a latte. Still, her ink has limits, and James only wrote for her to go to Jessie’sstudio. Nelle has no idea if her body will allow her to cross into the room where Jessie disappeared to. She might freeze on this side of it, and how would she explain that?
Sorry, Jessie, but I actually have a phobia of beads. Can you tell your story in here, far away from those little bastards?
Her heart pounding, Nelle sucks in her breath and plunges into the beads. Strands of rainbow orbs cling to her as she passes through, and she sags in relief.
Paint-splattered furniture seems to be the theme in the room she steps into. Three strangers sprawl across the couch, two playing a video game on a flat-screen TV, the other thumbing through an oversize magazine. Their hair is dyed various shades—pale blond, rose red, black—and when Nelle enters, they all stare at her.
“Want a turn?” The redhead holds up a game controller.
“I’m good, thanks,” Nelle says.
Jessie presses a button on a single-serve coffee machine, and it starts to hum. She leans on a colorful island, reclaimed wood muralized by myriad hands. Nelle spots a painted mermaid with seaweed hair and small breasts. Beside the couch, a lamp sculpted into a black cat. Across the hardwood floor stretches a warm, polychromatic rug that appears handmade in the best way. Uniformity has no place here.
“I came out when I was sixteen,” Jessie says. The coffee machine beeps, and she spins around to retrieve her cup. “Leaving out all the gory details, my parents were not proud. They forced me to withdraw from my art classes, and after that, I kind of withdrew from life. Got depressed. James was there for me, even as a little kid, but I couldn’t talk to him about wanting to die when he was eleven. I stopped painting. Is that about where you’re at?”
“It’s about where I was. Before I met James.”
Jessie blows softly into her coffee cup. “He’s helped you then?”
“We’ve helped each other,” Nelle says.
Jessie smiles, her upper lip lingering above the rim of her mug. “Before senior year of high school, I knew I wanted to study art in the city. I got a part-time job, did what I could to have the best grades possible, and saved up for therapy. Then I got medicated, andthenI decided to start painting again. It was frustrating at first, but after a few weeks of relearning the basics, I was all in. Sometimes painting was even more therapeutic than talking to a professional. I didn’t have to try, it all came spilling out.”
“And here you are,” Nelle says. “You did it.”
“I did.” Jessie looks at the little kitchen, the other artists on the couch, the adjacent room. “The first painting I finished when I got back to it was my submission for art school.”
