6
WYATT
I’ve spent the majority of my career practicing calculated invisibility.
Fortunately for me, photography isn’t one of those fields where you need much of a public social presence to succeed. When news outlets want to talk about my work, they use a reproduction of one of my artistic photos, not a picture of my face.
But taking the Parker job means interacting with people in an actual flesh-and-blood space—something that seemed a lot easier until I actually had to do it.
“This is obligatory?” I ask Ava Zhu for the third time, standing in the doorway to her office while she packs up her bag at the end of the second day of classes.
“Oh yes,” she says. “It’s supposed to give the students an opportunity to mingle and get to know all the professors in the program. And each other.”
“Surely the students want to see less of us, not more.”
“Count yourself lucky there aren’t icebreakers. Last year Scott made us all go around in a circle and tell the story behind our favorite scar.”
Ava smiles at me as she squeezes past, out into the hall. And I stand there, awkwardly watching her lock up, imagining all the disgusted ways she’d look at me if I told her the main reason I’m not looking forward to tonight.
It feels like the kind of coincidence that shouldn’t happen in real life. New York is huge. That’s one thing I like about this city: the anonymity. I’ve lived here long enough to have plenty of stories about missed connections, people I ran into one time on the subway or at the grocery store and never saw again. I have neighbors in my building who I’ve only met one time in six years. A part of me thinks I should deconstruct my office and search for hidden cameras, because surely this is some kind of joke.
It’s not, though, and I know it’s not. I just have that kind of luck.
I wonder if I brought it on myself. I mean, I gave Ely my number for a reason. I wanted her to call me. I didn’t want it to be only one night—I had all these secret hopes for a second date, a proper one this time, in a sit-down restaurant with zero glitter or glow sticks. I do like dancing in a club like Revel from time to time. But I’m not really in the habit of having one-night stands either, so maybe the universe thought it was trying to make things easy on me. Well. Thanks for the effort, universe, but I was good on the relationships front.
Now I’m not the cool, mysterious, hot guy from the queer club. I’m the creepy perv professor sleeping with his students.
“You’ll be fine, Wyatt,” Ava says as we start off down the hall toward the elevators. “Promise. The students’ bark is worse than their bite. And you already know the rest of us.”
Which is true—thanks to Ava herself. Ava was one of my first art friends when I moved to New York. She introduced me to everyone at Parker, which is how I got nepotismed into this position in the first place. I’ll have plenty of people to hide behind.
The welcome banquet is held in one of the larger galleries on the ground floor. They call it a banquet even though the only food options are catered sandwiches and a few hors d’oeuvre trays of sad-looking stuffed mushroom bites. As soon as we arrive, I scan the room, looking for Ely—I can’t help myself—but she’s absent. I can’t decide if I have mental fingers crossed that she stays that way or if I’m secretly hoping she does show up, if only so I can see her again.
No, definitely the first one. I’m a responsible, ethical human.
“How were the first two days, Wyatt?” asks Carmen Moreno, one of the Parker old guard; she’s been faculty here since the program was founded. “Still in one piece?”
“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” I say. “The students took pity on me.”
“It gets easier,” Carmen says, and gives me a sympathetic pat on the arm. “First week is always a little awkward. Especially when you’re young. I remember being your age—so worried the students wouldn’t take me seriously.”
I’m not sure precisely how old she thinks I am, but I decide to take it as flattery. After thirty you’re supposed to start worrying about fine lines and gray hairs, right? Then again, I found my first gray at eighteen.
But if she’s trying to imply that I should be concerned about my ability to assert authority over the students…well, I’ve already failed on that front pretty miserably. Cue the world’s most pitiful cheer.
“We should mingle,” Ava says, her gaze scanning the slowly swelling crowd of students. Most of them are bunched up in the corner by the refreshments table, like a herd of deer wary of encroaching predators. “I don’t want Scott accusing us of cliquishness again.”
I try to shoot Ava my best Et tu, Brute? look, but she is—possibly very intentionally—not looking at me.
And that’s how I find myself clutching a tepid lemon water and a little cup of cheese cubes, cornered by Elisheva Cohen.
“Good day so far?” she says while I’m still struggling to figure out how a normal person is supposed to interact with other human beings, specifically ones they’ve never seen naked.
“Oh, you know,” I say, which doesn’t quite live up to the eloquent vision of myself I had in my head.
But Ely doesn’t seem to mind. She has a plate of those stuffed mushrooms and keeps fiddling with them—she’s as nervous as I am. Only where I choose avoidance, she’s clearly decided overt confrontation is the best solution.
“Hope you’ve been settling in okay,” I say, attempting an olive branch. Normally I can’t stand small talk, but right now I’m incredibly grateful for whoever invented meaningless, space-filling platitudes. “Getting along with your roommates, and so on.”
“Oh yeah. They’re great. If they’re hiding dead bodies anywhere in the apartment, I haven’t found them yet.”
“I’m sure there are still plenty of nooks and crannies you haven’t investigated.”
“Surely the smell would give it away,” she says, and the corner of her mouth quirks up. She’s wearing red lipstick. The contrast of that shade and her near-black hair with the creamy white dress she’s wearing makes her look like a figure in a painting. Not that I’m supposed to be paying attention to students’ lipstick choices.
“A dedicated serial killer would find a way to disguise the stench. Maybe some discreet potpourri.”
She makes a face. “Oh god. That reminds me of the time my roommate in LA adopted this tiny little kitten. Then she kept going on, quote, mission trips and leaving the cat with me. That thing puked in my room and I didn’t find the source for like two weeks. I just kept spraying apple cinnamon Febreze and hoping for the best. Trust me, the only thing worse than the smell of rotting biomatter is that plus synthetic fragrance.”
“Dead bodies might be an improvement, then.”
The comment earns me an arched brow and another one of those crooked smiles. God, those smiles are gonna be what gets me. The first time she looked at me like that, at Revel, it sent a jolt of adrenaline rocketing through my gut, and not much has changed on that front. Ely Cohen still has an impressive talent for turning my veins electric.
I need to get out of here. But of course Ely won’t let it be that easy.
“You know, it’s kind of weird seeing you in this environment,” she says. “You’re wearing actual clothes, for one.”
My face goes bright red. I can feel it, blood flaring hot beneath my skin. “That does go with the professional territory.” Be professional, be professional, be professional.
“Don’t get me wrong. The clothes look great on you.”
I feel like she’s pushing me, trying to press every button she can reach just to see what happens. It’s the kind of thing I should be immune to, as a thirtysomething grown-up. But being around her clearly turns me into a flushing teenager. It’s my first crush all over again, the shiver that uncurls down my spine when she lifts her drink to cheers me. The way I keep looking at her lips, lacquered in burgundy lipstick, and wishing she would leave bloody trails of that lipstick down my throat, my chest.
When I do manage to drag my attention away from her mouth, I discover that she’s every bit as distracted as I am. Her gaze has caught on something lower down—my chest, maybe, or my hips. I’m abruptly hyperaware of the fact that this girl—woman—has seen every part of me. She doesn’t need to imagine what’s under my clothes, because she knows.
She glances up again and I barely, barely, manage to look over toward the refreshments table before she realizes I’ve been staring.
If I harbored any hopes that Ely might change the subject…well, she doesn’t. “The whole outfit is very redneck chic. The flannel is a nice touch.”
“Flannel is cozy.”
“Wyatt, it’s almost June.”
I roll my eyes as dramatically as possible. “You Northerners have no sense of weather. It’s May and it’s seventy degrees out; I’ll wear flannel if I want to.”
She looks me up and down once more. Am I imagining the way her gaze lingers on my thighs? Stop it, Wyatt. Stop it. Either way, she’s smirking by the time she looks at my face again.
“I’d like to see you in a suit, even so,” she says. “Maybe next time they make us come to these. Or better yet, do the whole professor thing—elbow patches and a worn gray sweater.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to role-play right now?”
Aaaand now I’m just leaning into the whole thing because I can’t shut my mouth to save my life. The question earns me a grin, Ely sticking her tongue out at me like a five-year-old. “So what if I am? What are you gonna do, Wyatt—give me an F?”
“Oh, I’d figure something out.”
Which, of course, is just amping up the flirtatiousness. I need to take this down several notches if I don’t want to ruin my reputation by dragging Ely off into a janitor’s closet somewhere.
“Well.” I truly could not sound less awkward if I tried. “If you need help with bodies, you know where to find me.” What the fuck? Stop talking, Cole.
I press my lips shut to keep from making things worse and settle for a wave instead of a verbal goodbye. Verbal is not working well with my constitution at the moment.
I find Ava as quickly as I can and then stick close to her side for the rest of the welcome reception. It’s the safest place for me, because Ava is talkative, and when she’s part of a conversation, I essentially don’t have to speak at all.
■
The first thing I do when I get back to my apartment is shut myself in the shower and press my brow against the cold tile wall. I should have done something the second I found out Ely was my student. I should have alerted the administration. That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it? If I opened up the faculty handbook, it would probably say something about disclosing such things.
I could tell Ava. She was my mentor before she became my friend. I probably need some outside person to check my bullshit before this spirals out of control any further. But as much as I love Ava, she might have her hands tied by university rules. She might have to report this, and I can imagine all too well how that might go. I’m a trans guy; there’s a long tradition of assuming perversion of queer and trans people, and the last thing I need is this black mark on my record from day one. Besides, it’s not going to happen again, and Ely is no longer in my class. That means the conflict of interest is officially dealt with. Right?
I stick my head under the spray so that the water falls directly onto my face.
The problem is the power imbalance isn’t dealt with. Ely pointed that out well enough herself.
I keep managing to be an asshole despite my best attempts otherwise. I can basically hear my dad’s voice in my head, murmuring, You’ll always be a failure. It’s the same voice I heard in my head the first day of class, I realize now. He lives eternal in my brain, no matter what I do.
My career and my reputation mean everything to me.
My dad cared more about being a good marine than being a good father. Looks like I, too, am more committed to appearances than to being a good person.
I have to make this right with Ely. I’m not sure what that looks like, but I need to figure it out. Problem is, I’m second-guessing just about everything right now, up to and including my offer to help her one-on-one. Clearly I can’t restrain myself, even for the purpose of seeming professional at a goddamn school event.
This whole summer stretches out before me, long and full of minefields.
“Mraaaow.”
I twist to meet the gaze of my three-legged black cat, Haze, who has parked himself right in front of the misty shower door to stare at me. His little pink tongue flicks out to wet his nose.
“It’s past your dinnertime, isn’t it?” I ask as Haze continues to give me that reproachful look. “Sorry, buddy. I’ll be out in a second.”
It took me years to establish myself as an artist—there were lots of part-time jobs at record stores and fast-food joints while I tried to build some kind of portfolio. My first big break came when I was twenty-four and won a local competition that was judged by a big-name dealer. After that, it was another two years until I could afford my own studio apartment and years after that before I could upgrade to a one bedroom. But even the studio was a game changer. My mind feels larger without the encroaching presence of other humans in the same tiny space. With just me and Haze here, I feel as if I stretch wide, filling every corner. I could close my eyes and expand further still, into the streets and alleys, across the bridge over the river, my imagination swimming between the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
My art is better when I’m alone.
I spoon wet food into Haze’s bowl, his damp nose nudging at my hand again and again until I finally get out of the way and let him dive in. I scratch my fingers behind his ears, then leave him to it.
My apartment is small even for a one bedroom; I’ve appropriated half the living room into a mock studio. I don’t bring any of my final products back here—I do most of my work at Parker or at a local spot I rent in an artists’ workshop—but it’s great for rough drafts. I can experiment with paints and glues and textiles without worrying about damaging a final print. Right now, my desk is covered in the detritus from a project I just finished, a meditation on self-image and the masks we wear to construct the image we want other people to see. I’ve sculpted photos of real people into masks—laughing, angry, afraid, hopeful, sad. The collection has already found a temporary home at a gallery in SoHo. Sometimes I still can’t get over the fact that this is my real life—that actual people, actual buyers, are going to look at something I created and potentially be moved by it.
Art is a form of telepathy, really. You have an idea, or a feeling, and you try to get someone else—someone totally different from you, with different wants and fears and interests—to share your emotions, even if just for a moment. It doesn’t always work. But when it does, it’s the best experience in the entire world.
I clear off the old shit and settle in at my desk, now a blank expanse of oak with my pens lined up patiently along the top edge.
Back to the beginning: the worst and best part.