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“Rent out a studio with a couple of friends. Buy an intaglio press—that’s what I used to create the prints. Make art. Sell it.”
“Are you going to quit your day job?”
“Eventually, if I can make enough money. Most people who get an MFA want to teach, or at least they want to make a steady living while they pursue their art. Some start applying for grants and support themselves that way, but you need to be a real go-getter to do that. I’m lucky because I work in the sewer.”
Now there’s eight words I never thought I’d hear, I told myself.
Benny nudged me along to another exhibit. This one featured two identical steel tracks that were twisted into an upward spiral not unlike a staircase. The steps consisted of thirty six-by-four-inch silk prints hung from the tracks by thread, starting with an image of a small child at the top and an old man at the bottom. In between there was a variety of images, some violent, some benign, some familiar, and some incomprehensible to me. The card on the wall read STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, B. ROSAS.
“I have a question,” I told Benny.
“What?”
“Shouldn’t the child be at the bottom and the adult at the top?”
“The stairway to heaven doesn’t go up,” Benny said. “It goes down. As a baby, as a child, we are as close to heaven as we’re likely to get. We slide away because of the choices we make during our lives.”
“That’s a cynical attitude.”
“The images—Catholicism and religion run through the piece because that’s a part of how I was raised. But mostly the images are about me and how things were passed down to me—values, ideas, possessions like my grandmother’s brooch—and how all that influenced my life.”
Based on the images, I decided Benny must have had an interesting thirty-five years. I was about to ask her about them when her hand tightened on my arm.
“Oops,” she said.
“What is it?”
“My boyfriend.”
A man, I placed him at midthirties, was waving as he plowed through the crowd. I assumed he was waving at Benny, but he was looking at me when he reached us. From his expression, he wasn’t thrilled to see me. Benny maneuvered so that she was standing between us.
“Benita,” he said.
She placed a hand solidly against his chest, stopping him. “Lorenzo,” she said.
“Benita,” he repeated. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
“No.” Benita added a head shake to her words. “No, not now. We can talk some other time.”
“Please.”
Lorenzo reached out his hand, but I intercepted it before it could fall on Benny’s arm.
He looked at me with surprise that turned quickly to anger.
“I was speaking to Benita, not you,” he said.
“Like the lady said, some other time.” I told him. At the same instant my inner voice asked, When did you become Daniel the architect?
From the expression on his face, I was convinced that Lorenzo was preparing to attack me. I took a step backward. His hands came up. I put myself into a balanced fighting stance. Lorenzo could see Benny standing next to me, though, and she must have passed a message because the fight quickly went out of him. He lowered his hands.
“Good-bye, Lorenzo,” Benny said.
She tugged at my elbow, and I followed her through the crowd and out the door.
We stepped out of the Regis Center into suffocating heat—I was beginning to think that was the only kind there was—and began walking along the cobblestones of Twenty-first Avenue south toward Riverside. That was another thing. When did the University of Minnesota start paving its streets with cobblestones? It was something to think about the next time the regents pled poverty before the Minnesota state legislature, which only happens every two years.
I removed my sports jacket and carried it by the collar in my left hand. Benny walked with her hands behind her back and her head down.
I spoke first. “Back inside, with Lorenzo . . .”
“I’m sorry about that,” Benita said.
“I noticed you called him your boyfriend. Not ex-boyfriend.”
“He loves me,” she said.
“You are lovable,” I told her, trying to keep it light. “But that’s not what I’m asking.”
“I’ve known him for so long. We . . . He . . . Us . . .” She couldn’t get the words out.
Behind us, footsteps echoed on the cobblestones.
“Benita.” Lorenzo was shouting. “Benita, Benita.”
I turned toward him, positioning myself between him and Benny.
He came at us in a hurry.
Benita called his name.
“Benita, please,” he said.
“Whoa, pal,” I said. I let my jacket fall to the ground.
“Leave us alone,” Lorenzo shouted.
I didn’t move.