from the beginning of  Blue, a novel by Charles Keatts |  purchase Blue directly from the publisher
copyright  2000

one

various thought processes a,b,c, robert etc.

 

As I walked down to the station I thought that maybe I liked her. There was something about her that seemed to click with me, there seemed to be some kind of connection with us, although I didn't know what it was. It was like "Hey Jude..."

 

Laura had enjoyed her night with the jazz teacher. When she was having coffee with him that morning, sitting there in the station cafe as if they were a couple, she could see why girls liked him. He didn't treat her like a one-nighter, he was good-looking, but not too much, not intimidating, you could get inside him. He was not a real professor. One of her friend's a guy who loved jazz and played alto sax, said he had read Robert's reviews in the Post and that he was really cool. She had a couple other guys she had been interested in, slept with a few times, but she could see spending some time with Robert. She had two fears: his masculinity and her drinking. If the affair continued, it excited her. The whole episode with his wife had been terrifying. Making love with her in the apartment had been so erotic. Laura imagined her watching them, envious of her young, firm body, blonde (fake) hair, dark pubes and thin legs, wrapped around her husband. Envious of Robert's attraction, his desire, which led him to take this risk. His lack of control around her. So far, she reminded herself... so far. He seemed more in control now, now that he had fucked her. Men could be so relaxed so soon after, but a few days, weeks later, they started calling, the obsession began... the cycle began again. And she had control. Her insecurities, which he saw, were hidden by her sense of control at these times...
dissonance, resonance, legs spread wide... sensual wet smells... a sense of control... energy firing along neural pathways, proteins, various chemicals, amino acids, saying "fuck me" into the night, lonely guitar, the unnameable, washing machine, daydream nation, blue, red, black orpheus, orestes, electra, wlwh, sister ray, still, decades, joy division, new order...

 

She wanted to understand life. This was an opportunity, to experience something new. As much as possible. She saw each moment as a container of mystery, one she was determined to pierce into, to see inside of. When she was in high school she had an abortion after 2 months of pregnancy. She never wanted children, much, then or now. Robert did not want children, he said several times. Cool, yes, she thought. She always pushed away these types of feelings, controlling all of that, everything. Jen had called her a control-freak. Well, fuck her then, she thought. She was drinking her cappuccino and trying not to look at Robert, his tan arms, thin from cycling, his long rides outside the city.

 

When she asked him why about children he got irritated and waved his fingers, just dismissed it, like a fly. Then there was a painting, a Rothko, in the National Gallery, that he wanted to look at, talk about. He talked constantly, all over the place, she followed it fairly well, she was fucking smart, and said so in her journals, to her mostly male drinking companions. And don't you fucking forget it, she would say. They'd usually order a shot at that point. All these malnourished, depressed boys. Robert was a nice change.

 

She was satisfied with his finger-waving.

 

Robert's wife Jane had an MFA in painting from Yale, but quickly decided, a year after graduating, to become a conceptual/performance artist. She made these types of decisions and never questioned them later. She always had this narrow certainty, even when contradicting herself. Her marriage to Robert was the same type of decision.

 

Even when exhausted, she would continue to do things that satisfied her, that gave her pleasure. She was a workaholic, the worst kind, the artist. The night she came back from a New York series early, with Laura, Robert's new student/disciple, she could have noticed things, if she had been looking for them. Expensive, tacky perfume, meant to be attractive. The haughty way Laura conducted herself, daring her to accuse her of something, of impure motives. But what young woman had pure motives around an older teacher? Jane had had those thoughts. Jane was not concerned with hypotheses. She was interested in facts, what she could manipulate, what was real. She would have said, if pressed that what could she do anyway? Robert can fuck who he pleases, she would say, although secretly she would feel less of a woman, for a moment, a dark figure, along, standing naked in the hallway, holding a towel, waiting for Robert to finish the job, ready to clean him off. Then go in and do her thing with the girl, her second choice. But she would have snapped back into being is doing mode, identified herself with her work again. So she sat in her workroom, studying videos of her own gorgeous body, moving, drifting through space, before various images, while Robert humped Laura down the hallway. She tuned everything out, the Gabriel-like music in both rooms, any possible sounds. He did not exist for her in those moments. Only she existed.

 

Robert had woken from dreams of Caligula, torture, a black oily sea, brains. The President and Senators, their daughter and wives and sons milling about. It was not emotional or fearful dream, just strange, incomprehensible, like many of his dreams. After breakfast with Laura, she had snuck out in the middle of the night, somehow, past his wife, that was an actual nightmare, but he could not help himself, fuck, he just lost it, all control, around young women, every now and then. And it was stupid, too, really, with a wife so attractive. But she was 32. Different. Too much going on. He liked the shallow streams, at times. The not-there of undergrads, the not-knowing of not-there. Cruel thoughts, he noticed, at times, but fucking true.

 

She was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. Overdosed, not sure why yet, lots of issues there, depression, sexual abuse, the usual. But a great artist, a great person, funny, dashing, stylish. A fucking shame. Absolutely.