Wow! Now that I know you’ve been to ITALY and won an AWARD, yes, I would love to go out with you!
Here’s something about me. Something real.
I have a brother. His name is Simon. We aren’t close but we used to be. When we were growing up, I followed him everywhere.
Then puberty got in the way. I got chubby, awkward. Simon went to high school. Suddenly he was embarrassed to be seen with me. He put a Do Not Disturb sign on his door.
But I took care of it, Jake. That’s important to know about me. I take care of things.
The only time I was guaranteed to see Simon was when he walked me home from school. A girl had been abducted that year from one town over, so my parents insisted. Every day, he came over from the high school and waited for me outside the junior high. 3:15 on the dot.
One day after school let out, I hid in the school bathroom, crouching on the back of a toilet until everyone was gone. 3:45, 4. I thought about that abducted girl. Her face had been shown so many times on the news it felt almost like I had known her. I pictured her in the gully where she had been found two weeks after going missing. Wet leaves spidering over her face. Her limbs rigid and smooth as starched silk.
No one remembered her name. We only remembered her as a warning. A worst thing.
I climbed down off the toilet and put on my parka. I walked home slowly. Waiting for the right moment. Three blocks from our house, a car came up behind me. Engine buzzing over the hill. A red Chevy, dented bumper but sparkling paint. When it got close to me, too close to swerve, I stepped in front of it.
I knew I wouldn’t die. The speed limit on that street was low, and I had waited for the right car. I just wanted to get a little hurt. Enough so my parents would blame Simon.
I said he hadn’t been there waiting for me, so I decided to walk home myself. Of course my parents believed me. Why would I lie? I had a concussion and a leg fracture. No one would do that to themselves on purpose.
He was grounded for two months. And the only person in our house for him to hang out with was me.
So that’s who I am.
You still want to take me out?
M
Miranda Planchart
Mailbox 19
More than ever.
Some friends are hosting an installation in a warehouse Saturday night. Come with me, let me introduce you around. If you don’t have fun, you can throw me in front of a car afterward.
J
Jake Brand
Mailbox 4
October 4 1980
Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.
OK for Saturday.
Meet you in the lobby at 9.
Check before you cross the street.
Just in case.
M
SERIES 1, Correspondence
BOX 1, Personal correspondence
FOLDER: Toby-Jarrett, Lynn (incl. 12 photocopies of letters from MB, from LTJ private collection)
* * *
December 21 1980
Lynn,
SO glad one of the Mikes is gone and you finally have another woman at the station. Can you have menstruating contests as retaliation against the remaining assholes? I can always send you my fake blood recommendations. (Turns out the best one is a do-it-yourself. Strawberry Jell-O + Hershey’s syrup + powdered sugar … It has the right look, a little plasticky.)
Two important men in my life now:
1) An art dealer, Hal Eggers. He works at a good gallery and he’s putting a couple of my prints in his next show. Depending on the reception maybe he’d take more for the gallery, or even represent me exclusively. It would be a big break. Not to jinx it.
2) This guy Jake Brand. What a name, right? I wish my last name were something powerful like that. BRAND. Planchart sounds like a kind of wart remover. Anyway, Jake Brand and I are sleeping together. He’s a painter. I know, I’m breaking the Richard Rule. But he understands me in this insane way. He’s a magnet and I’m a steel filing. He just draws me in close.
In other words, it’s been a good year. Sometimes as I’m walking around at night, an immense NOW fills up my chest so full I think I might die of knowing. I look up at the skyscrapers with their lit-up squares of people still working, and down at the candy wrappers spangling the gutters, and around at the people, all the people, and I want to take them all