Alice by E.A Colquitt
On the day I’m strong enough to collect my own mail, the postcard twirls out of the pile onto the table. It meets the glass top with a clang that says, Look at me! I’m inlaid with gold!
I shake my head. Wendi. It has to be; you only get the best from her.
I go over. If the postcard arrived this morning, she’s been back for two weeks. And yeah, I’ve barely knocked before she opens her door.
‘Darling! How are you?’ Mwah, mwah. ‘Why don’t you come in?’
Ever obedient, I trot through the doorway, eager to see the fruits of Wendi’s latest affair. She’s wearing a new dress; from the shine, it looks like silk. Maybe she’s gone back to clothes? After all, she still works for that fashion magazine.
I’m about to ask when she steers me to the couch, which has turned blue and moved into the corner. ‘How are you?’ she repeats.
‘Good,’ I reply. ‘Great, actually: I got the all-clear.’
‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ she says. ‘I’m so happy for you.’
‘They said I can go back to my third-graders in the fall. Part-time, of course.’
‘How lovely.’ She gets up and brings over a drink tray. Normally, it’s coffee, but, ‘I didn’t know if you were allowed, so I bought juice instead.’
‘Thanks. Juice is fine. So,’ I say, as she sits down again, ‘how was England?’
‘Oh, you know. Cold.’ She leans forward. ‘Uncle introduced me to my new obsession.’
Wendi’s tastes are charming, and capricious as Toad. When we first met, it was clothes. After that came foreign languages, then coding, judo, brutalist architecture.
Today, it’s conceptual art. The apartment is lined with it, apparently. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, launching into the full story, ‘he just bought me a piece and now I can’t get enough of it.’
I listen politely, sipping at my glass. Wendi’s uncle is her only living relative, as far as I know; she only ever gives me snippets about her family. They’re rich – no doubt about that – but she’s told me different things about where the fortune came from. A Wall Street business talent in the last century, an aristocratic inheritance the century before that... maybe it’s both. I don’t actually know.
Anyway, this uncle showers her with presents whenever she visits home. ‘I even made my own,’ she says. ‘I left most of it over there as a gift. The fruits of his generosity.’ Her eyes have a mischievous spark. ‘But I did bring back some smaller pieces...’
By the time Wendi has told me everything, I’m aching with tiredness again, too much to go home. She insists I take a nap on her couch.
‘Could you put the radio on?’ I ask, stretching out.
She does so – ‘Anything, darling, anything you need,’ – and flutters off for a blanket. I probably won’t need it. There was always a radio playing someplace in the hospital. Now, it’s the only thing that really gets me asleep.
The news is on. Something about a museum theft in London, from an artist I’ve never heard of. ‘…piece, entitled “Freedom!”, is part of a new series depicting feminist issues through the medium of fruit. The theft is believed to be the work of the so-called “Pan Gang”, a criminal organization named for their ability to open previously-inaccessible upper-story windows.’
Yeah... I can feel myself going already. So the radio’s working fine, but the couch is less comfortable than the old one, more… lumpy. I snort, joking to myself that the news is all Wendi; sure, she’s hidden the art inside the upholstery.
I turn over, onto my side. On the wall opposite is a new frame: a gleeful banana, captured in the middle of tossing its skin to the winds. Two black strips censor the piece in places where bananas don’t even have genitals.
It’s the last goddamn thing I see before I fall asleep.
Written by E.A Colquitt
E.A Colquitt is based in the north of England. Currently working on her first novel, she is a graduate of Lancaster University and her favourite thing is being happy.
You can check out her blog HERE.