“I began to think that maybe he was trying to sell me drugs. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, and that was pretty much the truth, since I didn’t know what a cynosure was, for one thing, ‘but you can buy me a drink if you want.’
“He did, and when I had my drink in my hand, he clinked glasses with me and said, ‘Ariane, I want to make you a work of art.’
“ ‘What’s the matter with me now?’ I asked.
“He gave me an appraising look and said, ‘Nothing that I can see.’
“ ‘Are you a painter?’ I asked.
“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not a painter, and I don’t want to paint your portrait. That’s not what I want you for.’
“Now I was sure I knew what he was after. ‘Well, you have a different way of putting it,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you that.’
“He held his hands up. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘We’re getting off on the wrong foot here. Let me explain.’
“ ‘Shoot,’ I said, just the way my father would have.
“ ‘I’ve found a little house—’
“ ‘Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘I hardly know you.’ I glanced into the mirror behind the bar. I knew all the guys were listening to Greg and me, and I wanted to see them smile at this little joke of mine.
“ ‘I want you to come and live in the house,’ said Greg.
“ ‘Brother!’ I said. I was playing to the crowd.
“ ‘Alone.’
“ ‘Alone?’
“ ‘Yes, alone. Your every need will be taken care of. You’ll be able to do just about anything you want. Your life will be much richer than it is now. You will be highly regarded. And you will be enclosed and safe.’
“That business about enclosed and safe really got me. It sounded like what I was looking for—without realizing it. It’s funny—I think I had two conflicting desires. One was to get out of my parents’ house and be on my own, and the other was to be enclosed and safe. Greg couldn’t have known it, but he was offering me exactly what I wanted.
“ ‘There has to be some catch to this,’ I said. I was already hoping there wasn’t, even though I knew there had to be.
“ ‘Well, in a way there is,’ he said.
“ ‘Yeah? What is it?’
“ ‘The catch is this,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be on display.’
“ ‘On display?’ I asked.
“ ‘On view, available for viewing.’
“ ‘What do you mean, available for viewing?’
“ ‘You’re going to have an audience.’
“I thought he was kidding. I told him so. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ I said.
“ ‘Come and see,’ he said. He put his glass on the bar and he held his arm out, bent at the elbow, for me to take. I shrugged, so that he—and the rest of the guys at the bar, who were taking this whole thing in—would know that I was just going along with the gag. And with everybody watching us go we walked out the door.
“I got into this wreck of a truck he drove and let him take me down to the docks, where he took me into a warehouse—this warehouse—and showed me that he wasn’t kidding.
“In here, he had built something like a house—more like a stage set for a house, really. Not as comfortable as what you see now. There was a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Outside the ‘house,’ where the outside walls of the kitchen, living room, and bedroom would have been, he had set up rows of theater seats so that an audience could watch me.
“I walked around the rooms. I imagined myself living there. I looked out at the seats, and I imagined people watching me live there. It made me feel a little creepy, but it gave me a nice tingle, too. It made me feel important. It even made me stand up straight, the way my mother was always telling me to.
“As I walked around, I knew he was watching me to see what I was thinking, and it gave me a taste of what it might be like to be on display, as he had said.
“ ‘Listen,’ he said, because I seemed to be having a hard time making up my mind. ‘I’ll make you a promise. Go along with me, go along with the gag, and I’ll make it worth your while. I promise you—well, I promise you this: it will at least be interesting, more interesting than most of the things you might have done instead.’
“I liked that promise right away. I liked the way he didn’t promise too much, just that it would be interesting. I took another look around. We were going to have to make some improvements. The place was awfully bare looking, and the furniture was shabby, but it wasn’t really any worse than home, and I’d have the place to myself. Living there wouldn’t be what you could call the ideal situation, not what I would have chosen for myself, all things being equal, but it was a way to get out on my own, and it was something to do, and I was flattered that he’d picked me, so I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ ”
[to be continued]
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