THE EXISTENTIAL CAFE

Lee Lady

The Cafe of Lost Souls, open all night, is down at the end of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The ancient faded signs on the walls and the ripped vinyl in the booths suggest that even in peak daylight hours, there is little comfort or cheer to be found inside. At night, a cold bluish light casts irregular shadows on the scarred Formica table tops and gives one the feeling of having wandered into a dismal limbo.

The waitress is sitting at one of the tables near the cash register, her head propped on one arm, eyes focused on something that only she can see. One can see that ten years ago she would have had the kind of baby face that can get a woman almost anything she wants from men. But now the face is puffy and shows the meanness of a woman who life has cheated over and over again.

In the middle of the cafe, a man and woman are staring past each other across a table. The half-finished plates of food in front of them have been cold for a long time. One senses that some time in the past, perhaps as recently as an hour or so ago, there was a connection between these two. Now, each seems disconnected not only from the other, but from the rest of the world as well.

Somebody put an incredible amount of money in the juke box a long time ago, and it's still playing Billie Holiday records. It must be about four o'clock in the morning --- that time of night when life is on stand-by and doesn't move, doesn't think, doesn't see, but only endures.

Each new brushstroke on the canvas was requiring enormous effort. Spider's arms felt as if she were trying to move them through some heavy liquid.

Finally she stepped away from the easel and sank down into a chair on the opposite side of her tiny studio. Through an open window, she looked out into the nighttime city. It was half past midnight, but it felt much later. The picture had to be done by tomorrow morning.

Her body was dead weight in the chair. Just breathing seemed to take almost all her strength. This sort of exhaustion was something she had felt only a few times before after painting -- times when she had created something really important. Tonight she had taken something out of the deepest part of her soul and transferred it directly onto canvas.

She had been there. She had been in that cafe. Sitting with slack jaw and glazed eyes on a wobbly wooden chair at a cracked Formica table, doing her best to suffer through one more hour, one more day, one more lifetime.

Just what the world needs: another homage to Edward Hopper.

For a moment, an impulse rose within her to slash up the painting without even looking at it. Before anyone else could see it. But she would not do that.

For almost a year, ever since graduating from college, she had found excuses not to go in her studio. She came home from her job at a travel agency and told herself that she was too tired to paint, that she couldn't find the right mental state.

Then unexpectedly she had been offered the chance to have her work be part of a show in a downtown gallery. For three months she was possessed with a demonic energy. Tomorrow she'd deliver four new paintings, along with the only six presentable paintings left over from her student days.

Of course an alternative would always be to find a good stretch of downtown sidewalk to sit on, lean the paintings up against an office building, and try to hawk them to passers-by.

``Flop sweat,'' she said out loud -- a term her actress friend Eileen often used.

It was a minor league gallery in a minor league town and within a few weeks it would be just one more show for her resume, no more of a big deal than the student shows she'd been in. But right now, she was all nerves.

Suddenly she felt an irresistible energy within her, an urgency to add to the picture. She stood up and rushed back to the easel, picked up her brush and palette. She moved the brush without thinking. She saw a line in front of her, and she painted that line. She saw a color, a shape, and painted that color and that shape. She didn't even know for sure whether she was creating or destroying.

Finally she stopped, stepped back and fumbled to put the palette back on the little painter's table beside it, knocking several tubes of paint off onto the floor in the process. She stood there for a while with arms hanging at her sides and eyes tightly closed, drawing deep labored breaths, as if she'd just run a long race. She was afraid to look at what she'd done to at the painting. She thought that she might have defaced it with erratic smears of paint.

When she finally did look, though, she saw that there was nothing wrong with the craftsmanship of what she'd just done in her manic state. It was a little less controlled than her usual work, yes, but the artistry was there.

What was disturbing was the subject matter. In one of the booths at the edge of the painting, there was now a pair of lovers in a grotesque clench. Something about them -- the skin, the muscles -- had a vaguely reptilian look. And when you looked closely, you couldn't be sure whether their mouths were on each other's flesh in intensely lustful kisses, or whether they were actually in the process of devouring each other. Little spots of red on their skins might have been blood.

One of the corners of the cafe was now in very dark shadow, unlike the cold blue light that permeated the rest of the painting. At first, it just seemed that this corner was a shadowy fuzz, but a closer look revealed a standing couple who might have come out of a noire film from the Thirties. The man had wildly disarranged hair and was wearing a white shirt with the collar unbuttoned and an impetuously loosened tie. The woman was wearing a glamorous blue velvet evening gown. At first it seemed that these were also in a passionate embrace. But a closer look showed that there was unmistakably a nylon stocking around the woman's neck, and that the man was strangling her.

Spider looked at her painting in shock. She groped with one hand for the little table beside her, then moved away when it began to totter. She felt faint. She sank down to the floor and started sobbing uncontrollably.

It was late when she woke up the next morning. It was Sunday, and her clock showed her that in less than an hour her friend Eileen would be there to help take the paintings to the gallery.

Her memory of the end of last night was hazy. For a while, she lay on her futon bed in the living room staring at the ceiling, and wondered whether she might just have dreamed putting the macabre figures into her painting. Or worse, last night might have been like one of those moments when one is drunk and thinks one is extremely profound, only to discover the next morning that one had been babbling incoherently.

But when she finally went into her studio and looked apprehensively at the painting, she saw that it was certainly not drunken babble. If anything, it was much more subtle than her memory from the night before. She took the picture down and leaned it against a wall, so that she could sit on the floor and stare at it for a while.

At first glance, she could see, the impression was just of haunting loneliness, much more bleak than anything by Edward Hopper. Only after a little while would one notice the nightmarish embracing couple in the booth and then the noirish murder taking place in the shadows.

The intense emotion she had felt the night before wasn't there for her any longer, but there was definitely something very disturbing about the painting, something very different from anything she'd ever done or had imagined she might do. The picture tried to suck the viewer into its world.

Now she started noting little details that needed changing or fixing. She put the canvas back on the easel, got out her brushes and tubes of paint.

She was still at work when she heard the knock on her door a while later.

Spider stared back, somewhat dazed. He looks like he's making up his mind whether to rape me or turn and run in the other direction.

``This is Bradley,'' Eileen said. ``He's offered his van to take your paintings to the gallery.''

``Yeah, I see. Sure.'' These two people standing outside her door were a riddle which her mind didn't seem to know how to deal with. Finally she said, ``I guess you'd better come in then.''

They all stood for a moment awkwardly in the narrow hallway until Spider realized that they were waiting for her to tell them what to do. She knew that she didn't want the overgrown boy scout in her studio, so she put her hands on their shoulders and all but pushed them into the living room, which was also where the futon she slept on was.

``Excuse me, I just have something that will take me a few minutes to finish up.'' She went back into the studio.

When she finished the work she'd been doing on the painting and cleaned her brushes, she found Eileen sprawled in the beanbag chair in the living room, and the pink jogger perched on the edge of the low futon bed. At least he'd pulled up the blanket and wasn't sitting directly on the sheets.

``Could you please not sit on my fucking bed,'' Spider said. ``I just met you a few minutes ago. We're not ready to be quite that intimate.'' She moved a pile of books off a metal chair onto the floor, remembering as she bent over that she wasn't wearing panties underneath the T-shirt. Good thing it was long and she'd chosen the right direction to bend in.

``Look, on second thought, could you two just go hang out in the kitchen for about fifteen minutes so I can take a shower and put some clothes on?''

She cleared dirty cups and dishes off the kitchen table for them. She realized that she ought to get them some magazines or a book or something, so they wouldn't have to sit there staring at the grimy kitchen. Then, on second thought, she brought the painting from last night and leaned it against the refrigerator. ``Please don't touch this. Some of the paint is still very wet.'' That should keep them from getting bored.

Then it occurred to her to add, ``Sorry I said `fuck' to you a minute ago. This is kind of a rough morning for me.''

When she saw her face in the bathroom mirror, she realized why Bradley-with-a-van had decided against raping her on the doorstep. There wasn't time to wash her hair, either. Well, she'd just pin it up. Typical of Eileen to have showed up with a boy friend. They didn't need his van: they could have managed fine with their two cars.

Returning to Bradley and Eileen after getting dressed, she said, ``Too bad I didn't think to make a large marble sculpture or something, so we could really take advantage of having a van.''

Bradley nodded toward the painting of the cafe. ``This is very interesting.''

Spider said, ``Thank you,'' without going so far as to smile. ``I'm glad that at least I'm not boring.''

Eileen gave her a look of amusement. ``I take it you just woke up,'' she said. ``How much are you going to ask for this one?''

It was something she hadn't thought about yet. ``It was after two this morning when I finished painting it. We all like to spend our nights in different ways.''

``I'm sorry if I sounded condescending,'' Bradley said. ``Eileen and I have been fascinated, looking at all the different themes you've put together here. It's quite existentialist. I do know a little about art.''

Right, she though. Existentialist is what people say instead of ``interesting'' to show they have a large vocabulary. She picked up the painting and took a step toward the doorway, but Eileen was standing in it, preventing her from passing. ``Bradley's the business manager for an advertising agency.''

``I see.''

``They've just finished a big campaign for Mattie Crowfoot.''

``Who or what is Mattie Crowfoot?''

``Sexy lingerie, for Heaven's sake,'' Eileen said. ``Spider, don't you ever pay any attention to what's happening in the world around you?''

``We're not Victoria's Secret,'' Bradley said, ``but we're going to run in national publications. Playboy and Penthouse this spring. Not to mention all the women's magazines, of course. Elle, Mirabella, you name it.''

``Not the Ladies Home Journal,'' Eileen said.

``No, not the Ladies' Home Journal. We're stressing an Unbearable Lightness of Being look. Mattie's looking for women who are young and hip and have a sense of humor about their sexuality.''

``Ah, no wonder I don't know about her,'' Spider said. But I'd know enough not to base an advertising campaign on a film that's ten years old.

``Your imagination is just the sort of thing ad agencies are looking for,'' Eileen said. ``Someone who can find the unexpected twist in an ordinary situation. Bradley's agency is looking for art people right now.''

``Yes, you have a great imagination,'' Bradley said. ``You need that for advertising, but you also need to learn to discipline it. Commercial art is a different ball game.''

Spider just looked at the two of them. ``Is it okay if we take my canvases out to your van now?'' Before leaving the kitchen, she stopped in the doorway for a moment and said, ``And to answer your question: no, my paintings aren't all like this one. And I think maybe the price I put on it should be one soul. That's traditionally what the devil asks, isn't it?''

The gallery where Spider's pictures were to be shown was on the fringes of downtown, on a little street that was really more of an alley. There was one fairly large room, complete with a counter selling espresso and pastries, and a slightly smaller room off to one side, which also had a small couch, an armchair, and a coffee table.

At the moment, the walls of this side room were hung with photographs of Mexico. In the larger room there were some vaguely Matisse-like figure drawings. Several stacks of pictures had been leaned against one wall.

The owner of the gallery was a rather muscular woman in her forties with an oblong face and very yellow hair cut extremely short. Her name was Cassandra. This morning, she was wearing a black and white striped polo shirt and black jeans. She seemed quite taken aback by the paintings that Spider and her friends brought in.

``My goodness, some of these are quite, um, striking. They're very different from what I'd been expecting.''

``I told you that the slides I gave you all represented old work. I've been working on some new things.''

``Yes, of course. This is a very new direction for you. They're wonderful, certainly. Just lean them along the wall here so I can have a good look.''

Spider stood by the painting she'd finished last night. ``That's the one I was telling you about, the one I was so anxious to finish. I was up most of last night working on it.''

``Hm... Remarkable. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would have sold instantly. Since then, tastes have changed, of course. But these are all very good work. I can certainly use a number of them. I'll just have to think about how to fit them in with the rest of the show.'' ``You said that you wanted ten,'' Spider said. ``That's what I brought.''

Cassandra shrugged. ``Oh, well, I'm sure I must have said around ten. Nothing is ever definite until the show is finally put together.'' She moved to the pictures that had been stacked against the wall when Spider and Eileen had arrived. ``Let me show you some of the other pieces that will be in the show. These water colors are extremely nice. And these charming landscapes are done by a woman who spends every summer touring the countryside in France.''

``Lucky for her. You should tell her to book her next trip through the agency I work at. I can get her a discount. These are all very decorative.''

A look of anger crossed Cassandra's face for a moment, then she put on a determined smile and said, ``Oh, but they sell. Of course they're not intense, like your work. But one can't live at that level of intensity all the time. Sometimes one wants a Beethoven symphony or Moussorgski, but sometimes it's nice to just have some Boccherini playing in the background, or one of Chopin's little waltzes.''

``So how many of my paintings are you going to be able to take?''

``I told you, I can't say for sure.'' She took some time to carefully examine Spider's cavases, one by one. ``I'm sure I'll be able to take at least six.''

``Six?'' Spider was dismayed. ``That means you're not taking any of the recent ones.''

``You have to trust my judgement on this, Spider. You're the one who knows the process of creation, and I'm the expert on the public taste. We both want the same thing -- for you to be a successful artist. If I only take six, it doesn't have to mean they all have to be older ones.''

Shit! Spider looked at her canvases, then at Bradley. She'd really like to load everything back up in his van and take it home, but she had to try to deal with this sensibly.

Cassandra gave her a big smile. She was obviously a woman who thought that a smile could fix anything. ``Spider, I like your things. It's just going to be a matter of finding a way of putting everything together without these little waltzes here, which are also quite lovely and do help me pay my rent, being overpowered by your great crashing chords.''

Bradley said, ``Just getting any work shown at all shown right now is a big positive step for you. If the ones you care the most about don't get shown now, they'll get their chance in some later show. All of your work is good.''

Spider looked at Bradley in outrage. Jesus, the guy wouldn't even be here except for the fact that he had a van. He was just a deliveryman, that's all.

Then she turned back to Cassandra. She had to make her understand. ``Look, this newest one -- the cafe -- is very important to me. It's got to be in the show.'' She stared Cassandra in the eye, trying to make her understand.

Maybe it would help if you got down on your knees and kissed her feet.

Finally she said, ``That's non-negotiable.''

``Oh, Spider, if you'd just try running a gallery for a few years you'd learn that everything is negotiable. I do agree, though, that this painting is amazing. Very surrealist. Or, hm..., existentialist. Somehow that's the word that comes to mind.''

``Just what I thought,'' Bradley said. ``A quintessentially existentialist vision.''

Spider looked at him in exasperation. Why the hell did everyone think they needed to explain her own painting to her? ``I could paint in Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir standing at the jukebox feeding quarters in,'' she said caustically.

``Oh, Spider.'' Cassandra waved her hand dismissively. ``Words are only labels. It's a very intense painting, we all realize that.''

``I don't do Chopin waltzes,'' Spider said sullenly.

``No indeed, you certainly don't.''

``Nobody's asking you to,'' Eileen said.

Cassandra put a hand on Spider's arm. ``You're a very intense person, Spider. You know, if you don't mind my saying so, you could have a real charisma about you, if only you would take a little care with the way you present yourself to the world. You have a very interesting face, but that great mass of hair is the wrong setting for it. I always get the feeling that there are forces inside you that you are afraid to let loose on the world. But in your painting, yes, all those forces come out and threaten to devour us.''

As soon as they were outside the gallery, Spider started swearing. ``Fuck, fuck, fuck! Excuse my language. That goddamn dyke is the sort of person that makes artists turn to prostitution. I could see the minute she looked at my new painting that she was going to renege on our deal.''

Then she turned to Bradley. ``And you. Who asked your opinion? I don't go to your office and try and tell you how to sell pantyhose, do I? The one really good painting I've ever done, and nobody wants it.''

``It's a good painting,'' Eileen said. ``We all see that.''

``A good painting? Is that all you see? You'd give me an A for it maybe?''

``Yes,'' Eileen said. ``It's a damned good painting. Is there anything wrong with my saying that? It's very imaginative and very skillfully done. What do you want me to say? Art is not my field, I can't talk about it from an expert point of view.''

``Fine.'' Spider made a gesture of surrender. ``As long as you don't call it existential. Even in my art classes, nobody would have let me get away with a lame word like that.''

``Okay. I'll cross it out of my vocabulary. But I have to tell you, you're being extremely uncivilized this morning.''

``Okay, fine. I'll walk home, you don't need my company. Since we're being so candid, though, I just want to register my opinion that advertising is nothing but a socially accepted form of graffiti. When you're a kid, you have to paint your stuff on buildings when nobody's looking. If you're a big corporation, you pay for the space, and that supposedly makes it okay. But either way, people have to look at it.''

Bradley didn't argue this, but said, ``You can't walk home from here. Your apartment is all the way on the other side of town.''

Spider started walking. ``Thanks for letting us use your van. You've been very helpful.''

Bradley started moving toward his van with Eileen, then turned back toward Spider a moment to say, ``Advertising is the predominant art form in our culture, whether you like it or not.''

``Whatever you say. Good luck selling lingerie.''

After being extremely depressed for a few days, Spider had started thinking that maybe it was for the best that her picture would not be displayed in a hack gallery amidst conventional little water colors and landscapes of the French countryside. What had happened might even be a message from Fate telling her that for the time being, the cafe painting was something that should be kept private.

Then she was notified by Cassandra that this painting, as well as two of her other new ones, would be hung after all. Altogether, eight of Spider's ten pictures would be in the show.

Now, with two days remaining before the opening, she was in the grip of a number of conflicting emotions. She kept screwing up orders at the travel agency, and at home she found it difficult even to concentrate on a simple television program.

The night before the opening, she went to a bar she had occasionally hung out at when she was a student, thinking she might just sit and get quietly drunk. But there was a large group inside celebrating a birthday or some success, and she didn't want to get mixed up in that, especially since she saw three art students she knew among the crowd, and she didn't want to undergo the obligatory exchange of banalities.

Getting drunk wasn't really what she wanted. It would take the edge off her unease in a way that would trivialize it. She'd never been very big on drinking in any case. So she just started walking through the nighttime streets.

Since graduating from college, she had almost forgotten what it was like to be walking down the street and suddenly really see a piece of art right in front of her and know that if she were lucky, she might one day be able to put that vision on canvas.

In the past few days, though, since she had finished that last painting, she was seeing again.

Walking through the nighttime city now, she saw art in everything she looked at. There were hundreds of pictures here waiting to be painted. This was the art to be found in the ordinary world. This was there to be seen by anyone who took the trouble to look.

But at her very best moments, she could see more than this. She could see ultra-reality -- the reality underneath normal reality. She realized now that that was what, in her mania, she'd put into the painting of the cafe.

The ultra-reality was all around her now, she knew. She was aware of it with a sense beyond the usual five.

Tonight, trying to heighten her awareness of the unseen forces around her, she had almost stopped seeing the actual streets she was walking through. Now, with a start, she realized that she was in a seedy part of the city walking past strip clubs and adult book stores. At that moment, a man approached her, looking for something -- sex, money, she didn't know.

She fixed him with a piercing stare and felt an enormous power within herself. I can see a reality that you don't even know exists.

The drunk turned and walked off in another direction.

Jesus, she thought, that was really stupid! It may not work so well a second time. She looked nervously around her and started trembling a little.

A short while later she managed to catch a bus.

Riding through the dark streets, she looked at the other late night passengers, really seeing each one of them. She thought again about the power she had concentrated into her gaze in order to scare off the drunk on the streets back there. She thought, ``I am the Angel of Death. Who touches me does so at their peril.'' For a while, she was almost able to make herself believe that she could take the life of any of the other passengers simply by touching them.

But then she got tired of that notion.

Not the Angel of Death, but the Angel of Art. Approach me at your peril, for I may turn you into art.

She started to giggle.

As a way of thumbing her nose at people like Bradley and Cassandra, Spider had decided to title her recent painting The Existential Cafe. Along with her seven others, it was in the gallery's side room, apart from the main part of the show. When one walked from the main room, with its delicate watercolors and lush landscapes, into this room of rather stark, even disturbing pictures, the effect was dramatic.

The mostly middle-aged, well dressed crowd at the opening congregated in the main room, drinking wine and assiduously conversing while paying scant attention to the art on the walls. The painter of the French landscapes, a large woman with exuberant gestures and a brash voice who obviously paid a lot of money for her clothes, was a main center of attention. The way her round-faced husband beamed at everyone around him made it clear that for him, having a wife who exhibited landscapes in galleries was one more token of success, right up there with his country house and Mercedes.

The watercolorist, on the other hand, was a short gray-haired man with charmingly formal manners. He was the sort of grandfatherly person you'd feel comfortable entrusting your money to at the bank.

Spider's few friends from art school who showed up stood out conspicuously since they were mostly wearing the same scruffy clothes they would have worn for a show at the campus gallery. They didn't stay long.

Jeans and a denim jacket had been Spider's own first choice for attire, but she had been persuaded to wear high heels and a very short black skirt with a frilly white blouse almost like a halter, leaving her shoulders and back bare. Eileen and Cassandra told her that she looked very elegant, but in the mirror she thought she looked like a clumsy bony woman making a fool of herself by trying to be sexy.

To Spider's annoyance, Eileen had brought Bradley along to the opening. Now, standing in the side room with Spider's paintings, he disconcerted her by saying, ``Did you notice that Gladys Cohn was here? I'm sure you must know her.''

``I took Art History from her, if that counts. I doubt that she remembers me.'' Professor Cohn was a force to be reckoned with in the local art world, since in addition to her position at the University, she also wrote the art column for the Sunday paper.

``She's very impressed by your paintings,'' Bradley said. ``I'll go bring her over.''

He walked off into the crowd and Spider looked at Eileen in astonishment. ``How does he know Gladys Cohn?''

Eileen made a gesture of mock reprimand and said, ``Spider, you can have an extremely snobbish attitude sometimes. Do you realize that? Why shouldn't Bradley know Gladys Cohn? I think they're actually very old friends.''

Professor Cohn did not, it turned out, remember Spider from Art History. Good thing too! She had barely managed to scrape through with a B.

``I'm sure you never showed any work like this when you were a student, though,'' the critic said. ``I would certainly have remembered that.''

Cassandra, who was dogging Cohn's footsteps, was clearly beside herself with the possibility that her gallery might get mentioned in the Sunday art column. ``Aren't these amazing? When I invited Spider to be part of this show, I didn't even know she was doing this sort of thing. These are the kind of quality works I'm always on the look-out for.''

The critic's look made it clear that dealing with people like Cassandra was a familiar task for her. Turning to Spider, she said, ``Like everyone else, I keep coming to back this painting that Bradley told me about: the Existential Cafe.''

Spider immediately wished that she could find a black marker and cross out that stupid title. With an attempt at bravado, she repeated what was becoming her standing joke. ``I forgot to paint in Sartre and de Beauvoir.''

Cassandra took the critic's hand insistently by the wrist. ``As soon as I saw that painting, I knew that I had to make it the high point of the show.''

Gladys Cohn continued addressing Spider. ``The cafe does certainly convey the terrifying anxiety of being confronted with one's own existence,'' she said, ``and the awareness of how insignificant that existence is in comparison to the vastness of the universe. And then in the dark corners, one sees the Id escaping from the Unconscious and raging out of control.''

Spider had no idea whether this made any sense or not, but she thought that maybe Cohn understood some of the emotion she'd poured into the painting. ``It actually scared me when I saw what I'd painted,'' she said. ``I cried for quite a while after I finished it.''

``Of course.'' The critic moved a hand along Spider's forearm in a brief caress. ``The artist sometimes reaches so deeply inside herself that she finds things she's not really ready to confront. You've done some very promising work here. Keep working and one day we may be hearing quite a bit about you. Why don't we all have dinner together after the show, when it will be easier to talk?'' She gave Spider a large smile and walked back towards the main part of the show.

Spider stared at the retreating critic's back, which Cassandra was hard behind. She wondered why she felt confused about what had just happened.

Eileen took Spider's face in her hands and looked her firmly in the eye. ``Spider! This is great! It sounds like she'll write something good about you.''

``This show is a lot smaller than the things she usually reviews,'' Spider said, freeing herself from Eileen's grasp. ``But maybe I'll get a footnote in her column.''

``She's asked you to dinner. That obviously means she takes you fairly seriously.''

Bradley nodded enthusiastically. ``She's helped a lot of young artists get started,'' he said. ``I think you two will really really get on well together.''

``I'm not sure it was even a good idea to show my things now,'' Spider said. ``I've only done four paintings that are at all worthwhile. The rest are just ordinary student work. I'm still trying to find myself. This is just a minor show.'' She looked slowly around at her paintings, then back toward the watercolors and landscapes in the main part of the gallery. ``I think maybe I've been taking it too seriously.''

Eileen looked at her with exasperation. ``Spider, you're good. Why isn't that enough for you? This is a big success. Have dinner with her. Please don't pull a typical Spider screw-up this time after all the effort Bradley went to.''

Spider looked at her in shock. ``The effort Bradley went to? What are you talking about?'' Turning to Bradley, she asked, ``Did you somehow engineer all this?''

``I didn't engineer anything. I just happened to mention to Gladys that you were a young artist who'd painted some things I thought might interest her.''

``You just happened to mention. Jesus Christ!'' How dare this idiot rob her of the credit for her own success? ``Who the fuck invited you to constantly mix yourself up in my life anyway?''

Bradley was taken aback. ``I thought your work deserved to be seen. She likes it Spider. She's not the sort of woman who would say that just because I'm her friend and you're my friend. Which, in any event, is obviously not the case.''

``And what about Cassandra?''

``I have no influence with her. She made her own decision about what pictures she wanted in the show. Knowing that Gladys was interested in seeing your work might have swayed her a little.''

``Might have swayed her a little! You've been quite the busy little wheeler-dealer, haven't you?''

``You're being very unfair,'' Eileen said, putting an hand on Spider's shoulder. ``Why can't you ever let people help you?''

``Just leave me alone.'' She stalked away.

The trouble was, though, that Eileen was right. And Bradley was right too, goddamn his philistine soul to hell! Gladys Cohn couldn't have been attracted to this jerkwater gallery by Spider's paintings without Bradley's intervention, because she hadn't even known Spider. She couldn't have known about her work, in any case, because until a few weeks ago the important paintings hadn't even been done.

But if Bradley was going to do all this behind the scenes manipulation, he could at least have warned her. She would never have given her painting that stupid title if she'd known the city's art critic was going to be here. That title was definitely something she could blame Bradley for. He was the one who started all this ``existentialist'' bullshit!

Hell, she had to stop making such a big deal over what the painting was called. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by it. Several people even congratulated her on her title.

I should have called it ``The Jean-Paul Sartre Memorial Cafe and Billiards Parlor'' and painted in a pool table.

The important thing was that Professor Cohn liked the paintings and could help her. She should definitely go to dinner with her, even if she had to put up with Bradley as part of the bargain.

She wandered around the gallery, letting herself be complimented by her friends and by a number of strangers as well, but always moving away again to be alone. It was fine that everybody liked her paintings, but it was getting to be a burden graciously smiling so much, being praised by people who didn't have any real understanding of the art.

All this praise would be a bit more credible if there were just three or four people in all this crowd who would say, ``I think your stuff is really repulsive.''

She remembered lying on the floor and sobbing the night she'd finished painting the cafe. When she went back now and tried to look at it objectively, she could see that it was certainly well done, with a certain stylish flair, but she couldn't be sure that it was anything more than that.

A handsome young guy with a gold medallion hanging over the open neck of his black silk shirt stood beside her. ``It sure is spooky, isn't it?'' he said, putting a hand on her bare shoulder. ``It's called The Essential Cafe. Don't you think it's like something out of one of Stephen King's books? It makes me think of that hotel in The Shining. I wonder if the artist had something like that in mind when he painted it. But I think it would be better if the whole painting were darker, like it is in those corners. What do you think?''

``It's hard for me to look at it objectively,'' Spider said, removing the hand from her shoulder. ``I'm the one who painted it.'' She gave the would be sex god a scathing look and walked back to the main room, where she noticed Gladys Cohn and the loud-voiced landscape painter having a animated discussion.

At the refreshment table, Spider allowed the gray-haired watercolorist to gallantly pour her a glass of white wine.

``Everyone is talking about your paintings,'' he said. ``They've created quite a stir. I'm afraid, though, that it's all a bit over my head.''

Spider smiled at him. ``I don't understand half the things people say about art myself. A lot of the time, I don't think the people who talk so much about it know what it all means either. But I guess that, all in all, I prefer the Stephen King school of criticism to Sigmund Freud.''

``Ah, I see,'' he said, obviously embarrassed that he had no idea what she was talking about. He probably doesn't even know who Stephen King is.

Why couldn't she stop feeling that the show was a failure?

She found a place against the wall where she could stand alone and watch the crowd like a naturalist studying a group of animals in the wild.

All these people, she thought, are just automata. You poke them in the right place and they come out with whatever response is designed into them. Some have been programmed for Freud, some for Stephen King, some for, ``Oh these are marvelous, Spider, you're really talented!''

They're not even very well programmed. Look at the way they move -- totally predictable. A bright high school kid with a home computer could have done better.

After a while, she started slipping back into the same state as the night before, although not as intensely. The colors in the room were becoming more vivid than they had been earlier. But more than this, she was starting to be vaguely aware of the forces running between the people in the room. She let her mind drift, dismissing all her conscious thoughts, letting herself quietly focus on whatever images her mind was giving her, waiting to see if the lines of force would become visible.

When at last she did see, she was caught by surprise. Although the forces in the room were mostly in a constantly state of shifting flux, as she had expected, one place in the gallery was an island of stability. And that was the spot just in front of her cafe painting -- exactly where she would have looked for the greatest turbulence.

Someone was standing there. A man she hadn't noticed before. The forces didn't touch him and ricochet off him the way they did with everyone else in the gallery.

For some reason, the stable energy field centered around this man reminded her of her fantasy of the Angel of Death the night before. She didn't think that the person she was looking at was Death, but he might be some other powerful and primal element, and that scared her a little. And yet she knew that this entity was one she was intended to communicate with.

Up till now, she had always had absolute trust in her visions of ultra-reality, but she had never put one to the test by acting on it. She found idea of approaching this person very intimidating. She had the feeling that she might be breaking some fundamental psychic taboo by trying to mix the two different realities this way.

By the time she started walking towards him, she had completely come out of her meditative state and was extremely nervous. She saw that he was a fairly ordinary looking man. Stocky, probably around forty years old. Wearing a rather drab gray-green shirt, slightly rumpled slacks. A square face, with square rimless glasses.

He gave her a slow, careful look of friendly puzzlement. She realized that he was leaving it to her to speak first. She wanted to say something clever, but what she came out with was, ``I painted this.'' Then, already feeling stupid, she made things worse by adding, ``Would you like to buy it?''

``The card says that it's not for sale.''

``That's true. I don't want to sell it right now.''

He looked at her with even more puzzlement than before.

``Excuse me. I seem to be making a complete fool of myself.'' She turned to walk away, but to her surprise, he grabbed her by the arm, gripping it very hard.

``You're hurting me.''

``I'll stop if you promise not to run away,'' he said, immediately releasing the arm.

Suddenly she was hyper-alert. They stood there looking at each other, very aware of the red mark on her arm where his hand had gripped it and which still smarted. She realized that he was not going to say anything about it unless she did.

He had hurt her and she had accepted that. That fact scared her.

``I don't know what's going on,'' she said, ``but apparently I am intended to know you.''

``If so,'' he said, ``I'm certainly pleased. My name is Harvey King. I write the drama reviews and movie reviews, among other things, for the Journal-Mirror. We could have dinner together.''

Jesus, he's just a guy on the make. Fast worker, too!

Her mind groped for a conventional response. ``It would be an honor.'' Why not, after all? Dinner with the local drama critic, it shouldn't be boring. ``My friend Eileen is an actress. I could convince you to give her good reviews, next time she manages to get a part.''

``I'll do what I can, as long as it doesn't seriously jeopardize my integrity. What kind of food do you like?''

For some reason, this question brought her back to reality and reminded her that, all other considerations aside, she wasn't free for the evening. ``Actually, I'm afraid that I already have another commitment. I'm having dinner with Gladys Cohn.''

``Ah.'' Something in King's face changed. She felt that he was appraising her more critically. ``That could be very important for you. Are you one of her proteges? Or are you hoping to become one?''

Spider felt that something was being said that she didn't understand. ``I just met her today. Except for taking her Art History course two years ago, but she she didn't even remember me from that.''

King nodded and asked carefully, ``What does she think about your painting?''

``She said that it was good. I can't remember, exactly, but she seemed to think that `existentialist' was a good word for it, and she talked about the demons of the Unconscious raging out of control or something.'' Spider tried to remember Professor Cohn's words more carefully, but the result was that she suddenly realized how ludicrous Cohn's comments had been. ``Pure critic-babble, actually.'' She giggled. ``Probably something like the Id and the Superego duelling on a field of existential angst. The sort of thing I'd never have tried to get away with in a term paper.''

King's original friendliness returned. ``I wondered why you'd given such an impressive painting such a cliched title. But now I can understand that you were using it as bait for the Gladys Cohns of the world. Just don't laugh at the wrong moment during dinner tonight. She wouldn't appreciate that.''

``Actually, the title was just a bad joke. What did you mean when you asked if I were one of her proteges? I guess you must know her pretty well, both working at the newspaper.''

King shrugged. ``She's not really on the Journal-Mirror staff, she just turns in her column once a week. She could be very helpful to you if she chose. She can open doors, and not just here in town, although certainly her influence on the national level is much more limited.''

``I don't much like the term protege.''

``Words are just labels.''

This polite conversation was not what Spider had been hoping for when the lines of force had led her to approach Harvey King. The only thing that made her think that her vision of the forces had not been a total delusion was the memory of the way he had gripped her arm.

She had to find a way to get below the surface.

``So what do you think of my little cafe?'' This was the crucial question, and despite her attempt to be very casual in asking it, her voice broke slightly.

He seemed to give it careful thought before replying. ``Despite being a professional critic, I don't work with the same kind of vocabulary as Gladys Cohn. I don't know quite how I'd describe the effect it has on me. I was standing here, just letting myself get absorbed into it.'' He looked off to the side and seemed to choose his words carefully. ``I guess I'd say it's almost like a doorway into another reality. Or what it shows, really, is a moment when the other reality and the ordinary reality -- which may not really be so ordinary as we think, when one really looks at it -- a moment when these two realities start to interpermeate each other.'' Then he looked back at Spider, slightly embarrassed, and laughed. ``I guess maybe I'd better stick to drama reviews.''

Spider was dumbstruck. This was certainly not just another guy on the make. ``Sometimes I can see that other reality,'' she said very quietly.

``I can see.'' He gestured toward the painting.

``I was seeing it in the gallery just now. I started seeing the lines of force between people, jagged and fluctuating like they always are, a little like those tiny lightning bolts that jump around Frankenstein's laboratory in the movies. But on one side there was a pool of calmness, something very strong and very stable, centered around you.''

``I was letting myself be absorbed in your painting,'' he said. ``Nothing else existed for me at the moment. Maybe that could be a reason that the energy in the rest of the room would by-pass me.''

That would certainly make sense, but she wondered whether he was just telling her what he thought she wanted to hear. Finally she grinned and said, ``Or it could just be that I'm subject to occasional delusions and should go find a good psychiatrist.''

``As long as you don't start getting a compulsion to cut off an ear, you're probably okay the way you are.''

Spider considered this remark seriously, despite its joking tone. She knew that in a lot of ways she was outside the boundaries of what most people would consider normal, and she was sometimes scared that there might be in fact some real insanity waiting in her future. ``I do know that the things I see come out of my own mind,'' she said. ``But I believe that they represent forces within ordinary reality that we're ordinarily not aware of. Does that make any sense to you?''

``I'll tell you the truth.'' The drama critic's face looked distant for a moment. ``I sometimes experience the same sort of things you do -- the awareness of a different reality. I'm sure I probably don't see it the same way you do, though. As to whether it represents anything real or is just a fantasy... I don't know. I've found that these perceptions are about as useful a guide in my life as anything else I've been able to find.''

Spider said, ``When I first saw the way the force lines were stabilizing near you, I thought you might be some primal energy. Last night I was having a fantasy about the Angel of Death, so I thought maybe you were some other angel.'' She realized with a start that she was telling him about a part of herself that she'd never shared with anyone else. She hoped that she wouldn't later regret this.

``In any case,'' she went on, ``I knew that it was important that I talk to you. It was meant to be. I'm too practical to really believe that you could be an angel, but I thought that you might be some key person who I would need to make a part of my life. That we were meant to be lovers or something.''

``That sounds nice.''

Spider shook her head in irritation. This was not a moment for flirtatious banter. ``You don't want me for a lover. And I don't want you for one. We both know that.''

``Yes,'' King said seriously. ``We both know that.''

``Now I realize that what I saw wasn't because of you, it was just because of what was going on between you and my painting. I was meant to connect with you, but the connection is only important for this one moment. What was intended was this conversation, which has helped me to realize something important.''

``I'm happy to have served that purpose for you.''

Spider shrugged. They were back to conventional pleasantries now. Was it a mistake to keep trying to get back to a deeper level? ``Why did you grab my arm?'' she asked. ``You hurt me, you know.''

``I'm sorry,'' King said, looking uncomfortable. ``I didn't want you to walk away from me. I don't think I've ever done something like that before. I think I may have been partly under the influence of the same forces you noticed.''

Spider brushed this aside impatiently. ``Don't use the forces as a cheap excuse.'' But then she remembered the intensity of that moment and reconsidered. ``Okay, maybe there was some powerful energy right then which we were both responding to. But don't do that again. It's not acceptable behavior.''

``I agree,'' he said.

She looked at him quietly for a few moments. Was their interaction now complete? She wished that she could find her meditative state again now so that she could see the forces between them. Finally, she asked, ``What do you think I should do?''

``About what?''

She shrugged. ``About my painting. About our conversation together. About my life. About everything.''

``Did you really paint this painting?''

``Yes!'' The question took her totally by surprise. It was like a betrayal. ``Don't you believe me?''

``Of course." He smiled. ``And as the person who painted this painting,'' he said, ``you will know what to do. You don't need advice from anyone else.''

She nodded. ``Okay.'' In fact, she didn't have the least idea, but she supposed that he was right that there was no point in asking other people.

``Or, if you want more practical advice: go have dinner with Gladys Cohn and do what you can to let more of the world see your paintings.''

``First I need to paint a few more of them.'' And suddenly she realized that she'd just answered her own question. She was filled with a sense of resolution. ``No, I'm not going to have dinner with Professor Cohn. I'm not interested in being a protege. And I'm not going to have dinner with you. Right now I need time alone.''

She moved backward a few steps so that she could take another good look at Harvey King. She wanted to really see him, just as he had really seen her when she first approached him.

Not an angel, certainly, although maybe there was a little bit of that in him. And not just a guy on the make, either, although there was definitely some of that in him. But, for the most part, simply an ordinary person. But one that had been chosen, unbeknownst to himself, to deliver a message. He hadn't been told the message, and so he hadn't been able to say it to her, but she'd got it nonetheless.

It was time to begin another painting.