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- Calley is on my street again, watching. She's leaning against a red Renault, arms folded; sunglasses high on her nose; white scarf wrapped like a khaffiya, covering her hair. The one o'clock sun burns through gray dirty haze. When she looks up at my window, rays shoot off her black metallic lenses. I turn away from the window and pick up the Pentax that's sitting on the floor. The zoom's attached, ready for her; I kneel down and start shooting. She's been stalking me all month; I've already shot six rolls of her looking up, waiting. The photos are in my darkroom, stuffed inside a pile of manila envelopes, evidence in case I go to the police. Two months ago, after I saw the photo ripped in half and knew everything about her and Avery, she
started calling me, taunting me about the two of them, hanging up before I could fight her with words. I remember her voice as I look down at her: Don't forget what you told me, Eve. We know everything you did. We both know you're full of death.
- It always happens when I see her like this: the flush of rage, the tingling in my fingers, the dry lonely fear in my throat. I won't be free until tonight, when I know she'll be indoors and I can go uptown in the dark. I can't leave; I can hide in my own place, but I can't get away from her. Every week I find something she left: a pair of lapis earrings, an old pink toe shoe, a slip of paper with my name written over and over: Eve Farrell Eve Farrell Eve Farrell. The signature is a strained imitation, not quite mine. In the foyer is the photo she took of me on Mission Street, jumping of the steps of St. Rose of Lima. Avery has never seen it, but it doesn't matter. The photo that matters is the one he ripped, the one she took in my apartment the day after we went to St. Rose. I think of his bedroom, large and cool, the dark oak floor that looked black before dawn. I can't see him there without Calley, her legs over his shoulders, the two of them moving together in some warm invisible sea. The rage comes back again, orange and blind. It slips into my throat and makes me choke on raw air. It's hard to think about food; I'll forget to eat dinner if I don't set the alarm on my watch. I take the photo off the wall and carry it to the window. Calley, I whisper. You took Avery away. You gave him the photo and you showed him my blood. The Renault's still there. Calley's gone. Below me, along the street, are rows of brownstone steps, wrought iron fences and gates, cars parked so tight that their bumpers seem to touch. The sidewalk is full of Saturday women: two of them side by side, pushing strollers; two others with black backpacks and turquoise mohawks; a young girl walking three yellow labs. Somewhere up the street is a chorus of
Sometimes she said she'd left it twenty years ago; other times she said she should have been a nun. I see her in her claustrophobic flat on East Third Street, a bare November tree outside her window, the air full of diesel and dead mildewed leaves. We'd been out shopping, walking around; outside Urban Outfitters a man in a turban had stopped us and smiled. "Sisters," he nodded. “You are sisters, yes?” She brought us both tea, sat down on her futon. Her cheeks were still red as she leafed through her copy of my book, glancing at a Chelsea transvestite bloodied in a rape attempt, an eight-legged calf near Chernobyl, a Saudi thief with a bloody stump for a hand. She said she hated my vision but it connected her to something we all had to face. She said my photos kept her up at night, staring out at the street, thinking about damage and pain and how everyone on earth was so terribly alone. I sat on her floor that day and studied her eyes as she told me all this. They were the same brown as mine; in just the right light they were flecked with russet and gold. I looked down at myself, at all the black I was wearing: leggings, hi-top sneakers, silk tunic that I'd cinched with a thick leather belt. I'd made it my color when I was fourteen. I heard girls whispering through all the years of school hallways, Confirmation classes, summer camps, college dorms: Eve always keeps to herself. Weird little Eve. When I looked up at Calley, I saw my first friend. I told her about the artist-in-residence position I'd taken at Berkeley, how I'd be leaving late in January and staying in California until early spring. I did not tell her that Avery didn't want me to go. “Calley,” I said. “You must be cramped half to death in this place. Why don't you stay in my apartment? When I come back, I'll be getting married. If you like it, I'll rent it to you.” I remember the way she looked at me: the narrowed eyes, the sad confused frown. “Don't worry,” I added. “You'll have plenty of room to dance.”
- Yes, it was Avery she wanted; I’m sure of this now. Sometimes when I talked about him, her mouth tightened up and she couldn't seem to look me in the eye. She said she couldn't understand why an independent woman like me would want to get married at all. Once she asked me if I really wanted a man who'd been divorced. I remember laughing, telling her to go find her crucifix and put it back around her neck. Didn't she know, I asked her, that Avery was the only man I'd ever met who wasn't afraid of me? Didn't she know I needed a man who saved lives? She leaned against my refrigerator and folded her arms. "You need a man you can have all to yourself." She shrugged. “Both his children are grown. I'm sure you'll be very happy.” Before she met me, she studied my life; she invented herself for me to get to him. She'd found the interview in Downtown Trends, the one where I defended “Sensations,” where I said I'd left the Church over half a lifetime ago. She'd read the profile in Life, the one with the title that made us both laugh. Eve Farrell: Dark Vision from a Pretty Face. Slim and petite, with large brown eyes and thick chestnut hair that falls well below her shoulders, Eve Farrell hardly seems a woman on the verge of forty. We laughed at the frothy text; at the photo of me in black leather jeans, leafing through student portfolios at NYU. She never mentioned the photo at the end, the one of Avery sitting in the leather chair in his study, holding me on his lap. My left arm is thrown over his shoulder; my right hand tickles his blond graying beard. “Eve lightens up,” the caption says, “with her fiancé, Avery Field, who heads the Emergency Room Medicine unit at Bellevue Hospital.” I sat there with him after the photographer left, watching the sun set over the Hudson. He kissed my throat as the walls turned pink. Yes, she wanted him; I should have seen this. The night I met her, she gave herself away. It was late September, nine months ago; a small show of mine opened in the gallery on Spring Street where she worked. I remember the celery silk shell she wore, her flowered pastel skirt; I
matter; all of us were already dead. I watched as she pulled the pins out of her hair, fluffed it with her fingers, let it fall down her back like mine. “Oh,” I heard her murmur. “What a beautiful man.”
- Sunset: I can't see it from my windows. My building isn't high enough; I'm too far east. At dusk I look at the gray-violet haze and know that Calley won't be back today. Avery will be home by now; she'll want to be with him. I've eaten a slice of melon, toast; I've had plenty of water and a small cup of tea. I can go out soon, after the dark sets in. When I come back, I'll try to sleep. I have thought sometimes of calling Avery at Bellevue, telling him to keep her away from me or I'll go to the police. But I never do; I know it won't work. He'll want to know if what Calley told him was true. I'll hear his voice and feel him in the room with me. When I think of the photo I found, ripped in half like that, desire will grow out of my rage and my fear and turn me into someone I am not. Sometimes at dawn, when I wake up wanting him and the hatred sits like magpies on my chest, I think about killing Calley, about stopping all this. She comes into perfect focus, a photo in my next big exhibit: the Guggenheim, maybe, or the Whitney. The photos will all be in color; they'll surprise the world. I know, more or less, what the Times will say: Already renowned for her black and white photographs of the violent and the grotesque, Eve Farrell establishes her place as an artist of marked versatility in a new series of disturbing color shots. The most striking of these, “broken triangle / manhattan, 2001,” has as its central element a brutal, mesmerizing red.... Yes, Calley, sometimes at dawn I see your death. I'll kill you before the end of the month; the evening light is so soft in June. On the street people thought you were my sister but they never knew how much you could bleed. It won't matter if you die from a gun or a knife; either way, there'll be plenty of red. It will stream out of
your nostrils, your mouth, the dark yawning hole in your throat. I'll go to Avery's; I'll find you dancing alone. I'll chase you into that square cream-walled room that I was painting black when I found the photo and knew the truth about you. That's where I'll do it. When the whites of your eyes are darker than your face I'll drag you into the middle of the room and arrange you in a white straight-backed chair. Yes, Calley, this is the way to shoot you: fast film; slow shutter speed; the f-stop set at two; the lens a red filter, smeared with your hot lying blood.
- Saturday night: I'm out, free, wearing a veil on my head and a black rayon dress without sleeves. I walk down to West Third, over to Washington Square Park. The rastas are still hanging around the entrance, playing chess with flashlights and checking out the street. I head north to Fourteenth. It's lit up, shimmering, the air full of falafel, fast food grease, diesel, cheap musk. I push my way through crowds and noise. People hustle, jostle each other, gawk at cheap toys that play scratchy tunes. Somewhere east of Union Square, a man rushes out of a tavern door and stops in front of me. Underneath us, subway wheels clatter and screech; the ground seems to shake. He comes just about up to my shoulders; his head is too big for his body. Before I can move away from him, he reaches up and touches my veil with both hands. I gasp, jump back. My knees feel weak but I don't stop walking. I keep heading north: up Third to Eighteenth Street, up Lexington to Twenty Third. The streets get cleaner. Up Madison to East Thirty Fourth, up Fifth past the electronics boutiques, Lord and Taylor's, the Library lions, and on. I head where I always head, where Calley's stalking has sent me. When I see the St. Patrick's spire I pull the scarf tighter and slow myself down. If I could walk through the door, go inside, I could light a candle and finish something. But the visits are always the same: I sit on the bottom step, rest my head on my knees, swallow over and over. Taxis whiz by, heading
told me to pray. Pray for the people here, Eve. If we don't look out for them, who will? I did not pray, but I know I used my left hand to make the sign of the cross. I know all this, and I know the car family. Once, around Christmas, I pointed them out as she and I drove by. She looked at me hard. “They never come to the kitchen,” she snapped. “Some people can't help themselves.” I don't think they hated me. When the early thaws came I started walking from St. Rose down to Ed Farrell Trucking so my father could drive me home. I walked past warehouses, boarded-up taverns, junkyards full of tires and rust. They lived in a car in an empty lot, an old Ford with no rear tires. There was a husband, a wife, three children who all looked younger than five. I used to stand across the street, watching. There was a circle of barrels around their car; flames shot out of them, even in daylight. They ate from tin cans and fed scraps to a stray brown dog. On cold days I'd see it in the back seat lying across the children's laps, panting. The husband had a beard down to his belly; the wife had a tattoo on her cheek. The children's noses and mouths were always smeared with something like mud, but it was their eyes I kept staring at. They were empty: no color, all the light gone. In March, the day before my first confession, the fog was the worst in years. That night I stood in my backyard, hugging myself, whispering bless me Father for I have sinned. Each time I said it I kept swallowing; I couldn't think of one sin that had anything to do with me. The next day I put on a white dress that I wouldn't change out of, not even when my mother shook my arm. This is not your First Communion any more, Eve. This is serious business. By next week you'll be a soldier of Christ. I sneaked my camera inside my coat. I knew I had time to take pictures; my mother had to drop me off early because she had a board meeting at the Y. She saw me walk into St. Rose; she was gone before I walked out. I ran down the cracked sidewalk, around all the potholes in the street, toward the flames blazing above the mud and the snow.
When I got near the junkyard I saw the dog lying on the pavement, blood pooling around its head, its tail thumping a useless beat against the asphalt, the wife standing over it screaming, pointing at air. The children huddled on the curb; the husband was nowhere around. I pulled my camera out when she fell on her knees and cried. I moved closer and stepped in something wet. She kept screaming who are you goddamn you leave us alone but the shutter was clicking and I couldn't stop. I shot the mother; I shot the dog. I shot the children over and over. They didn't move, didn't look away. Their faces looked the same as they always did, the eyes empty and dead. I don't know how I got back to St. Rose, if I walked or ran, but when I got into the confessional I couldn't speak. I remember the dust, the dim light, Father Dolan's wheezing. There was blood on my sock and my shoe. The only words I could think of kept getting stuck in my throat. Bless me father for I have stolen their souls. I reached into my pocket and covered my camera with my palm. Finally I stood up. I remember speaking before I ran out. Father, don't bless me for there's too much death in the world.
- Avery does not know any of this; it's not what one tells a man who saves lives. Calley knows all of it. One day last December, when the sun set before five and I felt heavy and full, she made strong espresso and I couldn't stop talking. I told her about my life in Alexandria. I told her how I left the confessional and ran out of the church for the last time; how I jumped off the top step, sprained my ankle, how my camera didn't get hurt. When I talked to her, I kept looking down in my lap. I did not notice that she had started parting her hair on the left, that she was styling it like mine. I told her how my mother wouldn't talk to me all that spring and sent me to camp for the summer. Calley breathed very deeply and said there was something I had to finish. “Eve, you've got to leave that church without hurting yourself. I'll drive you up there so
telling myself I did not swallow poison, telling myself I am alive. Calley leaned forward, touched my hair. She nodded slowly, as if she understood this all very well. Later, in some blurred dream, she came back. She stood near my bed like some music box ballerina, legs crossed at the knees, arms above her head in a pale flowing arc. The robe fell open as she twirled around on her toes. I think she was wearing my panties. I think she had a pair on.
- Sunday, eight o'clock: I'm out on my morning run when it happens. There's no traffic on West Street, but the gutter is lined with junk: crack vials, used condoms, a dead waterlogged rat, broken bottles of two-dollar wine. Several drunks dot the sidewalk, sleeping off Saturday night. I don't hear the car come up behind me until it passes on my right. I hear the tinny Sentra engine; I see the lilac paint. It swerves around a pothole, jounces up the middle of the street. She's been waiting for me somewhere; she's followed me here. A block ahead, she slows down, turns around. I know what will happen. She'll gun the motor, accelerate too fast. The hood will break me, toss me toward the sky. Avery, I whisper. I'm sorry. I'm going to die here on West Street. I jump onto the sidewalk, trip on jagged concrete; something sharp burns into my elbow and thigh. Then I'm up again, running: I jump against a chain link fence and hold on. I'll die on West Street and no one will know for days. The drunks and the crackheads will leave my body alone; they'll think I'm one of them. She slows down, looks at me hard. I see her face: black sunglasses, hair pulled back in a ponytail or a bun, mouth open as if she's surprised. Her car heads north; she doesn't turn around. There's rust in my throat; I can't stop panting. As I jump down from the fence I realize there are two dogs inside the yard, chained to a concrete block. Each is a Rottweiler, black and tan. I don't know how long they've been barking, growling like this. Their front teeth are long as fangs. As I limp up the street, one of the drunks waves his
arm. It doesn't take me long to get home. In the bathroom I check myself for bruises. Nothing: they're never visible immediately. The scrapes on my elbow and thigh keep oozing, even after I wash them twice. It was stupid of me to run there. I told her the time of day I went out; I told her every one of my routes. She used to say that I ran too much, that running would make me too thin. She asked me once what Avery thought, if he worried about me in the traffic, in all those city streets. Maybe tomorrow she'll find me again. Maybe tomorrow she'll get up her nerve, run me over, pick up some foccaccia at Zabar's on her way back uptown. The room is cluttered with towels, mats, window plants, brushes, toilet cleaners, perfume vials, bottles of shampoo, liquid soap. It's always felt too crowded; today it feels too big. I don't know how much longer I can stay here. Maybe I'll move outside the city, go somewhere Calley's never been. I take off my clothes, wrap myself in a thick pink towel as the bath water runs. When I turn the cold water on in the sink I see the Opium bottle on the shelf underneath the mirror. I thought it was gone; I thought I'd thrown it away. Dizziness hits me; I stretch out on the floor and rest my feet on the rim of the tub. Maybe tomorrow she'll eat foccaccia, or Key Lime tarts, or salmon pate; she'll lick her fingers while an ambulance carries me off. Maybe it will rush me to Bellevue and Avery will carry me through the hall. I'll whisper to him, clutch his hand. Calley. Calley did this. When he's examining me, I'll ask him about her photo: why he kept her, why he cut me out. His stethoscope will be cold; he'll palpate my stomach with both hands. It doesn't matter if you live or die , he'll tell me. You've been dead your whole life. I sit on the bath mat shivering, pressing a cold washcloth against my cuts. I won't keep doing this. I won't let her trap me in this self-pity, this dizzy dirty sweat. I have to call him, tell him about this morning. Right now there's nothing left in me: no hate, no desire, no fear. Nothing matters; I'll answer all
I swallow as I stare at him. He's smiling; his eyes seem warm. Can you smell me , I want to ask him. Can you smell her on me? I lead him into the living room and let him sit down with me. I should tell him quickly, get it out. Calley's started following me in her car. You'd better get her to leave me alone. I pick at the bandage on my elbow, but I can't feel the same fear I felt on the street. I've got a plan , she said that Sunday morning, holding the Fuji, setting up the self- timer as she told us both to strip. I remember hugging myself, feeling tired and crampy and wet, my teeth chattering as the images came up: my mother turning away from me, shutting the door to her room; the clinic nurse who told me I'd bleed; a dead dog on the St. Rose altar, its paws tied with a silk umbilicus; the cross behind the altar flashing brass and gold in the light. Calley laughed when I sneezed, when I wiped my nose with my hand. She said I was right; the Church spat on women and she was crazy to think she could ever have been a nun. She said come on Eve take your clothes off and we'll spit right back and when I felt the blood trickle down my thigh I stood very still and let my robe fall to my feet. And then we danced nude; holding hands, arching our backs as the flash went off. I see our photograph on Avery's floor, hidden under newspapers I picked up to lay under a bucket of paint. I see Calley: graceful, slender like me, part of her right hand missing because it's holding my left hand but Avery's cut the picture in half. My face gets hot as I remember the two of us watching each other, Calley's hand reaching, the words I spoke that didn't quite come from me. Yes Let's be Teresa of Avila. Let's be all those dark women out there. Let's be Mary Magdalene herself. As the flash shot us both, Calley's voice was calm. And let's be Eve , she added. Let's both be Eve. Later she said she'd never had the film developed; she told me she felt too embarrassed, too ashamed. Now Avery is rubbing my leg, pity or need in his eyes, saying something about a huge mistake, what an idiot he was, how nothing is the way it seems. I'm feeling something like desire but I'm sure Calley
gave him the photo and pointed out the blood on my leg. I want to say don't touch me but desire and hate are building up and spilling out of everything I see and the Opium's like steam between my breasts. I see him making love to her picture, cradling it all night long in his hard naked lap. He kisses me, pulls me down. He whispers Eve, if we could just go back and realize and I run my finger over his beardless face as I feel the rug under my back. I want to say I know what you smell and I know I'm not her but the only time we ever made love on the floor was in his co-op, the day I started painting the walls of the old nanny's room that was just the right size for my darkroom. When one of them was black and still wet he held me above him on the floor and he told me afterward that he'd wait there for me, sleep in that room until I came back the next day. Now I feel his weight against me; every move I make gets me closer to it. I know you slept in the room I was painting and held her picture all night. The stained glass wind chimes flick shards of light onto the ceiling. And you left it for me to find because you were too much of a coward to admit you were fucking her. I move my hands down his back, onto his hips. I want to say don't you touch me Don't you dare pretend I'm her but I see him with Calley, his hips moving above her; when I kiss his face I see him with scissors, a chainsaw, a crucifix with an stainless steel point, ripping us in half, taking a hammer or a match to the half that is me. Light is dancing on the ceiling and his beard is gone and my Pentax is still on the floor. When I shut my eyes I see her car coming at me but I know I can't tell him because he'll say it's my fault; he'll say I run after death. He had that beard forever, long before Calley came into our lives, and I know now what I'll do with his body, his face. I whisper let me get my camera you're such a beautiful man and the rest happens quickly. The Pentax is waiting for Calley; it has plenty of film. I kiss him over and over as I take off his clothes, then I check the light meter and start shooting. He says Eve there are things you should know about Calley. Eve, we have to talk. I
she floats down to the floor. She kneels, picks up one after the other. Do something , I think. So we can end this. Avery's eyes, open and wild, stare up at both of us. Very slowly, she stands up. When she murmurs I guess he couldn't stay away from you I tell her how smooth his face looks. “I've never seen him without his beard,” I tell her. “Not till today.” She shakes her head. Do something. “Well,” she says finally, “he's free. He can do what he wants.” Her mouth is tight, the way it always was when we talked about him. I cross my arms, lean back against the door. “Maybe he can,” I begin, “but you can’t. You can't taunt me on the phone. You can't hang around my building any more.” My voice is hoarse. “And if you ever try stalking me in your car again, I go right to the police.” “No,” she whimpers. “You don't understand. It wasn't like that.” I swallow, tell myself I'm not afraid. She's trembling now; she looks frail suddenly, too thin. “I was trying.... I wanted to warn you. About that neighborhood. You just.. you shouldn't run there, Eve. It's not safe. Awful things could happen to you.” “Right,” I tell her. “And that's just what you want.” “No,” she pleads. “Never. I saw your eyes this morning. You looked so helpless. And small. I felt so bad. I... Oh, God, I don't know. I don't know anything.” She starts crying; I've never seen her cry. You bitch. “You must know one thing,” I say. “You've ruined a huge part of my life. You fixed things so I ended up alone.” She sniffles, wipes at her eyes. “You,” she murmurs. “What do you know about being alone?” When she speaks again, her words tumble over each other, as if they're trying very hard to run away. “It wasn't what you think. All those times I was outside your building? I knew you were up there taking pictures of me. I could see your lens in the window. I knew I was scaring
you. But I never would've hurt you, ever. There were things I needed to tell you. I needed to talk.” “About what? How you told Avery about my abortions?” “No!” she is shouting now. “I hated what you did. But that was between us, Eve. I kept it.” “You said on the phone I was full of death. You said you both knew.” “ We knew. You and me.” She's lying; I know it. But when I saw him today there was none of it in his eyes. “I guess you wanted to talk about snatching Avery then. About how easy it was to replace me.” She shrugs, sighs. “Men are weak. You know how I dance. I've learned how to move just right. I can do things to a man.” Yes, I know how she dances. She used to show me poses: arabesques, pas de deux, grands plies. You have a dancer's body, Eve. Try this. Once she held me, helped me stretch, pressed her palm into my thigh. Look, she said, we have the same long legs. When I remember her hand like that I see her with Avery again, the two of them in his study. “That photo.” I look her in the eye. “The one you took in my apartment. You tricked me into posing nude with you.” I see the two of them naked in his leather chair, Calley's feet pressed into the small of his back. With both hands she holds the photo like an offering, laughs as he rips it with his teeth. “You took it for him. So he could compare us.” My voice breaks. “So he could desire you. And choose you over me.” We stand there staring. Beyond the wall, the elevator creaks. I hear pipes hissing, horns outside. “No,” Calley says finally. “I took it for myself.” My knees ache, as if I've been running too long. “Eve,” she says, “come see something.” She turns and waves her hand. I take a step, stop. If I get too close she could turn and grab me. Slowly I follow her down Avery's hall, past his kitchen, his study, the bedroom that used to be ours, into the room he gave
