I Knew You'd Be Lovely by Alethea Black

initiate
himself
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    But he needed a plan. A plan was paramount. He pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to think. The driver of a red Taurus threw an empty Pepsi bottle out the window, and it nicked his elbow. Felix didn’t care. The world, like a bride, was finally unveiling its hidden mysteries to him. He had a friend who was opening a bar and had asked him to look over the paperwork. PerhapsFelix could go in on it with him, be his partner, make it a place like Bandera. Or maybe he could start a restaurant that also had a cabaret in the back, for musicians and actors, even magicians.
    He was smiling and his heart was beating fast. It was possible he’d found the perfect solution. When he got home, he would open up and tell Janet everything. She might not like his idea at first, but she would come around—she always did. He would kiss her on the lips while she was still asleep, then he would turn on the bedside lamp and explain to her that change was possible. Change, life, all of it. The dream of his youth was not entirely dead. There was a flicker of something true that burned within him still. It was a relief to realize such a thing. No, it was victory. It was the thing itself.
    Someone yelled something and waved his arm out the window. Felix ignored it. A feeling he recognized from childhood had crept into his chest and was radiating out his skin. He felt free for the first time in decades; it was as if the air he’d been inhaling up till now had all been made of counterfeit oxygen. Tomorrow morning he would quit his job, then he would call his mother and ask her to look for that picture of him in the peach tuxedo. Life could still be an adventure. It wasn’t too late. Cars whizzed past him, but he didn’t even notice them anymore. His eyes were fixed on the moon, full and low and lovely, like a beacon. Like a rolling ball of white light in the sky.
    It all happened so quickly it was hard to feel anything except surprise. He got home and closed the door quietly; he didn’t want to disturb Janet. He stepped inside, feeling stealth and tiny, like an ant that had just completeda long journey. But as soon as he crossed the threshold, there she was, standing in the foyer, her eyes glossy with a happiness he’d never seen in them before. As if she’d been waiting for him. As if his adventure were just about to start.

THE LAZIEST FORM OF REVELATION

    I’m wearing only my underpants and sitting in a window seat with my back to the Hasidic grocery across the street. It’s one in the afternoon, and Misha is painting me. The embroidered cushion on which my backside rests was initially a comfort, but over the course of the past four hours, with the help of the midday sun, it has begun to feel like a very subtle instrument of torture. Inexplicably, it is itching me in a way I feel in my gut. There are those who spend their lives consciously or unconsciously courting such discomforts; I am not one of them. Something about Misha’s style makes him try to capture as much as possible of the final painting in the initial sitting, so I’m essentially on a twelve-hour fourth-date semi-naked marathon. At first I thought this arrangement might be enlightening, if not downright conducive to epiphanies—the endurance, the inner quiet, the lack of food. But thus far, the experience is more sweaty than transcendent.
    â€œWhat are you working on?” I ask. Misha is silent, but I can see the color on the tip of his brush. “Are you doing my hair? My mane?”
    â€œIt’s a complicated red,” he says half-distractedly, like a combination painter-oenophile.
    â€œThank you,” I say. Misha says nothing. “I get it from my grandmother.”
    He shifts his weight to his other foot. “Is it the reason for your name?”
    â€œGod, no. I was bald when I was born. That’s just an unfortunate coincidence.” I then proceed to tell him the story of my