“It’s a more abstract piece,” says Doc Holliday. He’s turned to one of the other beard-wearers that Bronca hasn’t bothered to name yet. That one trots out into the corridor. Bronca registered the plastic-tarp-covered piece when they came in, but forgot it during the assault on her senses afterward. The new piece is big, maybe ten feet on a side, and canvas to judge by how light it seems as they carry it in. The nameless one starts peeling tape off the plastic tarp. Holliday moves between this unpeeling operation and Bronca—Bronca assumes so she won’t be spoiled by glimpses of whatever is beneath the tarp, rather than the full effect at once. Real artists don’t do this. Only bullshit artists are this fucking dramatic. He’s also super earnest. “I just want your opinion on it, please. I’ve gotten some good feedback from a gallery in Manhattan.”
Yijing stirs. She’s got a fixed look of disgust on her face, and for once Bronca loves that prissy way she pushes her chin forward. “Which gallery?”
The guy mentions one that Bronca’s actually heard of. Bronca meets Yijing’s eyes to see if Yijing’s impressed enough by the name. Yijing purses her lips. “I see,” she says, but Bronca suspects Yijing will soon call the dealer who owns that gallery to find out what the hell is wrong with them.
Strawberry Manbun looks a query at Doc Holliday, and together they move to position the piece against one of the open display walls. In a moment, they’re ready. “I call this one Dangerous Mental Machines,” Doc says, and then they pull down the loosened tarp.
It’s definitely not like the others, Bronca sees instantly. Those were caricatures of art—the kind of thing that people who hate fine art think constitutes the bleeding edge of the field. This is the real deal. In fact, as the colors resolve into intricate patterns-within-patterns, she begins to realize just how much skill must have been involved in making it. There is technique here. A lot of Neo-Expressionism, but some of the grace of graffiti. Everybody wants to channel Basquiat, but most people can’t control it. Basquiat couldn’t control it. Whoever made this, though—because Bronca knows full well Doc and Fifteen didn’t—can.
But.
It’s a street scene, or the suggestion of one. A dozen-odd figures wend, disproportionately, into the distance, along a busy road. Something about the density of the shops, and their clutter of signs, feels familiar. Chinatown. It’s a night scene, and a rainy one; there’s a sheen of colors like wet road pavement. The figures are barely more than ink-swirls, faceless and indistinct, but… Bronca frowns. There’s something about them. They are dirty, these figures—clad in drab non-fashion, with sleeves rolled up to show blackened hands and shoes smeared with grime and aprons stained with blood and less identifiable bodily fluids. They loom, these dirty creatures, for whom the word people is a laughable misnomer. And as a haze in the air suggests the smell of wet garbage tangled with evening mist, Bronca can almost hear their chatter…
(It has grown dim and quiet in the gallery room. Strawberry Manbun stands at the edge of her vision as if spotlighted, smiling at her, watching her face greedily. No one else moves.)
But the chatter is not like what she’s actually heard, walking through Chinatown. Real street chatter, there, is just talk—a preconcert warm-up cacophony of tonal languages, English, and a smattering of European from the tourists, interspersed with the laughter of children and the shouts of angry drivers. What Bronca hears, here in front of the painting, is something higher pitched. A gabble.
(It’s late afternoon. What she’s hearing isn’t what she should be hearing. The wheezy old HVAC should be rattling faintly as it strains against the summer heat. The Center faces a major thoroughfare, but where are the traffic sounds from outside? She should hear the buzz of a straight-line saw, now and again, as the woodshop turns out requests for Center artists. It’s just never this quiet in the Bronx Art Center, not at this time of day. Bronca frowns… before the painting draws her back from this distraction.)
A gibber. The faces loom, seeming to shift as Bronca takes in the painting.
(Oh, wait. There’s something. She can hear)
A chitter. Like the screechy, chitinous bree of an insect, broken up with distance and movement.
(Veneza’s voice: “Old B. Yo, Old B. Buh-rr-o-nnn-ca.” Bronca hates it when Veneza says her name like that, making a syllable of every phoneme. It makes her worry that she’s having a stroke, which is why Veneza does it.)
Now a new sound. Something heavy and wet slapping the polished concrete of the Center’s floor behind her. It makes her think of a docking line being pulled up onto a pier. She can even smell seawater faintly. She doesn’t wonder why someone has unrolled a wet rope in the room, however, because the faces in the painting suddenly seem to loom closer, painted-wet and expressionless. They’re what’s chittering. Jittering.
The faces turn to follow her.
The faces turn and loom and they are all around her—
A hand grabs Bronca’s shoulder and yanks her backward sharply.
There is a moment in which the universe pauses, stretching just a little. Bronca hovers, caught in the pliability of the moment for a long, pent breath—and then reality snaps back into place.
She blinks. Veneza stands beside her, frowning in concern. Her hand is still on Bronca’s arm; she’s the one who pulled Bronca back. The painting stands before them, just paint on a surface. Bronca has the sudden feeling that it never changed. The room around her, on the other hand…
Because Bronca is meant to be the guide, she understands precisely what has happened—although it’s a complicated thing to try to think through, and she’s glad she probably won’t have to actually explain it to anyone. There’s a lot to consider: particle-wave theory, meson decay processes, the ethics of quantum colonialism, and more. But when one really gets down to brass tacks, what’s happened here is an attack. An attack that came dangerously close to not just killing her, but destroying her. And New York with it.
“Old B?” That’s Veneza’s charming nickname for her, which has caught on among the younger artists who use the Center. Veneza, whose middle name is Brigida, is Young B. “Feeling okay? You spaced. And…” She stops in midsentence, mouth still open for the next word despite her hesitation, and then she finally pushes on and says what she was going to say. “I don’t know. Shit got weird for a second.”
Understatement of the spacetime continuum. “I’m good.” She pats Veneza’s hand to reassure her, then turns to face Strawberry Manbun and his cronies. Manbun isn’t smiling anymore, and Doc Holliday is frowning outright.
“Cover up that shit,” Bronca snaps at them. “Took me a minute, but I get it now. ‘Dangerous mental machines,’ hah.” She looks around and sees confusion on Jess’s and Veneza’s faces. Yijing, though. Yijing might be an ass, but she at least shares Bronca’s love of expensive liberal arts university education. She’s glaring at Doc Holliday, furious anew. So Bronca continues, “Yeah. That was H. P. Lovecraft’s fun little label for folks in Chinatown—sorry, ‘Asiatic filth.’ He was willing to concede that they might be as intelligent as white people because they knew how to make a buck. But he didn’t think they had souls.”