her to get over it, work through it, talk it out. As if prepositions could protect her. As if others knew whatever lay beyond was better. In reality, all anyone knew was that it came next.
As Kate looked over the balcony, she suddenly saw her own body splayed out against the pavement, head wrenched to the side. Blood trickling from her nose and skull. The image was vivid and bright like an oversaturated photograph, the lines so sharp they were like a command. Jump.
She leaped back, bumping into someone. They swore. Something wet spilled across her left shoulder.
“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled, without looking at them.
She had to get out of here.
She shoved her way through the crowd to the apartment’s front door and slipped out into the musty hallway, where she punched the elevator button over and over again until its doors shuddered open.
Inside, she looked at herself in the warped metal surface of the door. Her hair had gone flat. The lipstick had faded. Lately she had begun to notice tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She used to catch sight of herself at night, traces of eyeliner, tousled blond hair, and think, Damn, yes, but now she didn’t always recognize the person in the mirror. It wasn’t age, exactly. The past year had changed her, weakened her, stretched her out.
“You just need some color,” her mother had said the week before. “A little sun.”
Kate wanted her to be right. She wanted to believe California could fix it all: tan her wan skin, shine her dull hair, and when that was done, reach down into the broken, taped-together mess inside her and repair that, too.
The elevator slipped past another floor. It wasn’t so different than jumping. Gravity was still pulling her down. Only the elevator moved steadily, sedately, the floor catching her as she fell. Catching her here, and here, and here, until at last she was at the ground floor, as low as she could go, and the doors opened, splitting her reflection in half and then taking it away.
MIRANDA
SERIES 1, Correspondence
BOX 1, Personal correspondence
FOLDER: Eggers, Hal (incl. 39 photocopies of letters from MB, from HE private collection)
* * *
December 27 1990
Dear Hal,
Thanks so much for the invitation to write a “confessional essay.” I will have to respectfully decline.
Here’s why, you fucking tool.
You want something juicy, rich, spilling, like biting into a ripe fig. But confessions aren’t sexy. Confessions are hernias. An organ pushing through an opening. Hacking up your body. Wet and bulging. Confessions should never be exposed to sun.
Of course the fans “want it.” They’re sybarites, cannibals, starving predators, they want to sink their teeth into the organ and rip it apart. They want to be in the inner circle.
But I won’t cater to them. I can’t.
I’m not a stock option.
I’m not publicly held.
My photos are already making you rich, aren’t they? So what do you care? These essays, press releases, lectures to donors, they’re just WORDS. The photos will sell themselves. The photos will say everything I want to say.
Yours truly,
your money bank,
Miranda
1/4/1991
Miranda sweetheart,
Of COURSE I don’t want you to feel that I’m USING you—I thought the confessional would be a good experience to tell your STORY!!
Also, I think you are discrediting the confessional genre. It is VERY popular. Haven’t you read Sylvia Plath? I’m not saying you have to give everything away. You can create the ILLUSION of a confession. Everything these days is about performance, think Cindy, think that adorable little gent from North Carolina that I signed last year … you’re being too LITERAL, as always!!
I did tell Romi that you would say something for the exhibit catalog. He has a VISION for your contributions that will feel very FRESH. We can stage it as an interview, WHATEVER, but we need SOMETHING. And anyway I think the “recluse” schtick is a little overplayed now. You’ve been doing it too long.
Meanwhile, I have a buyer interested in purchasing a complete set of Bottle Girls, but have no more prints of #4 available after the last one sold. We’ve only sold 7 out of a print run of 10 so I think you must have more at your place. Can you check?
Hal
January 18 1991
Hal,
I have couriered down the 3 remaining prints of BG#4. I can do another print run next month.
Let me guess what Romi wants me to write about.
Motherhood.
Marriage.
Too much fame.
Not enough fame.
My vagina. Who’s gone in it, who came out of it, whether I got that extra stitch postpartum.
Whether my