LITTLE SPARKS
By
Fractures puncture the immaculately curated world of a picture-perfect couple.
It started with a first edition of Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray, of course.
“Babe, how could you spend $2,000 on an old smelly book,” you scoffed, as we walked back to our two-bedroom Chelsea apartment from Bauman Rare Books.
I didn’t say anything, but I clutched the paper bag that contained the most valuable item I’ve ever owned, closer to my chest. After a few minutes, I released my grip a little, worried if my body heat might disintegrate the fragile pages that had passed through many hands from the time it was printed in 1891 to now, in 2022, in my tight grip. A slight tingle of electricity went through me as I imagined Oscar Wilde himself, holding a quill maybe, inscribing this copy to a Frenchman he had befriended in Paris.
My macabre teenage imagination had been wildly enticed by the tale of a beautiful man who, given the gift of immortality, descended into the depths of depravity. Ever since, I’d been drawn to people behaving badly. I briefly wondered if I could ever take that leap.
As we walked up the three flights of stairs to our apartment in silence, I watched you take angry steps ahead of me, trying to outpace me in this heated race to our front door. Your mousy brown hair that you spent hundreds of dollars each month to have cut and styled by a men’s salon touted in Monocle, looked dull in the afternoon grey light streaming through the high windows in the stairwell.
Your fit was, of course, on point. Pangaia matching sweat suit in the neutral shade ‘Stone,’ paired with vintage Air Force 1s that you had spent a stupidly large sum of money on from a sneakerhead, and yet I had said nothing.
Because we met one night, drank too many margaritas and had sex, now here we are. Two strangers, coexisting in a space we’ve spent months designing and decorating to feel like “us.”
And boy, did you have ideas of what “us” would look like. Your mood boards delegated “us” to a muted palette of neutral shades accented with artisanal pops of sage green (“babe, it has proven calming effects,” you said as you picked out the exact shade, the sales girl nodding in enthusiastic approval), and moody marine blue (“babe, it has to be a stormy teal, not navy,” you insisted). We spent weeks scouring flea markets and galleries to find art that reflects “us.” Curved black lines forming abstract sensual shapes in balsam frames. My book collection had to be pared down (“babe, we can’t live in an apartment made of books, silly,” you interjected patronizingly as I tried to protest to keep my undergraduate copy of Midnight’s Children. “It just doesn’t go with the color mood,” you said, shaking your head), and now our custom-made beige-hued bookshelves housed vases, sculptures and pricey ephemera sourced from high-end designer stores, all resting on coffee table books of great artists of the past.
I wondered how Gustav Klimt might feel being the pedestal for a $2,000 earthen vase, Moon Jar 26, by Jane D’Haene. Perhaps he’d just have been honored to have a presence on such a high-end bookshelf. “Look at this exquisite curation,” he might have said.
On paper, we were *that* couple. The graphic designer and the writer; the extrovert and the introvert; the all-American boy and the ambiguously exotic girl; the loudly critical and the quietly dangerous.
Within three months of dating, we started a social media account to document how cute and aspirational we were, you leading the artistic vision as I was directed to be dainty and effortless. My preppy wardrobe started to transform with pieces from Jil Sander, The Row, Toteme and Dior. “You should look like the Parisian girls,” you advised, as you supervised my hair appointment, telling the stylist to let my dark natural roots graduate into the honey blonde that I usually opted for. I didn’t complain. Maybe looking French would make me more alluring than just my boring ethnic features?
Growing up shy, isolated and insecure about my looks (“ewww, your skin is the same shade of poo,” Gemma Montgomery-Hayworth had declared loudly in fourth grade, while waving her pristinely white arms around doing movements she had just learned in ballet), I enjoyed a life where I could retreat behind my written words. Meeting you was unexpected. After so many years of burying myself away, you wanted to display me loudly and proudly. It was exciting and enamoring as I breathlessly allowed you to take me and remake me in your vision, cohabiting in the middle of a floating island.
“Oh my god, you have to hear about how Maya spent $2,000 on a dusty old book from Baumans,” you raucously boomed one night over dinner with our friends. It was yet another highly curated event, from the guest-list (fellow literary and design duos) and the menu (customized seven courses by the soon-to-be head chef at a new Manhattan hotspot) to the lighting (warm, low glow at no more than 100 lumens) — even our outfits were coordinated to match with a pop of cerulean blue (“next year’s Pantone color of the year, but of course it’ll be over by then,” you explained as you handpicked the exact shade from the rack at Off-White).
A surge of anger coursed through my hands unexpectedly as your words landed across the table, and I gripped the stem of the $1,000 Zalto Denk’art Bordeaux glass that you had insisted that we needed (“Babe, do you want people to think we’re poor,” you retorted when I balked at the price, knowing how many wine glasses had been obliterated in my hands).
“Apparently, it’s a first edition Dorian Gray, but there’s no way. She definitely got scammed,” you added, allowing the words to once again settle as the rest of the table laughed. You popped the cork on another $625 magnum of the 2001 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape, pouring the blood-red spicy, seductive blend liberally. “First edition Oscar Wilde for two thousand? C’est impossible!” declared Eponine Aubert du Thorens, a writer of poetry with a French accent that she insisted was from summers spent at her family’s compound in Toulouse, but who really grew up in Staten Island as Annie Wilson, which I had discovered in a New York Times profile of her that she had insisted was a “hack job.”
I laughed quietly, as our esteemed guests started pounding the table, demanding to see the item that so offended you. It was bought with my hard-earned money from the sales of the books I had spent years conjuring and tinkering with in quiet corners, and finally allowing to be released into the world. Why did this item irk you so?
Maybe it’s because this was just for me, not “us”? The faded emerald cover of the book was the “wrong tone,” you had snapped, for the shelves on which rested an oversized Jonathan Adler acrylic pill that you deemed was “kitschily on trend.” I had buried the book in a drawer in my tiny desk that was bare except for a vintage Japanese ikebana vase holding one orchid stem.
Now, I carefully extracted the book, keeping its protective cover on, and allowed it to be released to the hyenas baying for attention, each one ripping through quips they had constructed days ago in their heads for this occasion. “Oh yes, iz definitely fake, just look at zis binding, zey would have used horse glue in the 1800s,” surmised Henrik Van-Staltz, a graphic designer who had invented the Van- Staltz font that had become a staple in modern design, removing the protective cover and pulling at the binding while peering over his clear acetate glasses that he didn’t need.
“Babe, you’re such a dummy for getting scammed,” you zinged back at me without missing a beat. The book was now passing through hands, not unlike how its journey began in 1891 as an object of fascination and taboo amongst society gatherings. But now it was a mockery. I grabbed the book back from Eponine, but then you snatched it from my hands and your Bordeaux took a leap from your glass, spraying across the front cover.
I felt the breath knocked out of me as the red slash branded the most precious item I owned. My façade slipped for the first time. I glared daggers at you, to which you just shook your head and loudly tutted. And then you stared me dead in the eyes.
“Babe, you’re so ugly when you’re mad. It’s not the vibe. Stop it.”
Silence fell across the table as our esteemed guests, wine glasses in hand, turned to look at us. The “us” that we had so carefully built, curated and presented to the world. #CoupleGoals! And now a crack scored through the perfection.
The evening quickly wound down, everyone making their excuses as midnight fell across the city. Even though they tried to be polite, I heard their whispers as they pulled their shoes on while perching on the concrete $5,000 Highland bench by Ben Soleimani. “She seemed so sweet, I’d never have thought she’d have such an attitude. Over a fake Oscar Wilde as well!,” remarked Theodore Highclere-Tottingham, an Eton and Oxford graduate who had published a very popular series of generic crime books that had become a multi-billion dollar movie franchise, a profession that was initially much maligned by his aristocratic English family but they gratefully accepted the Hollywood money to repair their crumbling manor house.
Afterwards, you and I cleaned in silence, washing the custom-made earthenware pottery dinner plates and sweeping the endangered African blackwood floors that your parents had purchased for our first home (“babe, it’s an investment, it won’t rot or warp in the heat and it’s the densest wood known to man. It’s unbreakable, like us,” you said, as you watched over the laborers being paid $13.50 an hour to plant the roots to our Eden.) Partly because of my own cultural traditions, partly for hygiene and partly for the reverence of the opulent wood floors, I did insist everyone take their shoes off in our home. It was the one rule that was mine.
I pulled on my $280 Lunya washed silk pajamas and went through my carefully regimented nighttime skin care routine, created by a facialist known for getting that Parisian smooth skin. How French women could have the best skin despite smoking and eating pastries all the time was one of the world’s greatest mysteries. The $300 serum boasted the healing powers of turmeric and ashwaganda, ingredients that were deeply rooted in my culture but were being touted as the hottest new western skincare elements. (“Babe, do you really think a facialist who Jennifer Aniston and Gwynnie Paltrow come to every month doesn’t know what she’s talking about? This isn’t the same as your hokey Indian ayurveda; it’s science, babe!” you lectured me as you supervised my facial).
I woke up at 3:46am. It was still dark outside, that sliver of the night where the noise in Manhattan had dulled down to its quietest and the city just sparkled. You were lightly snoring next to me, your arm over your eyes blocking out the world as you made your descent into your nightly odyssey.
The coolness of the African blackwood floors wicked my sweaty feet as I padded to the living room, wrapping a $310 Frette waffle robe around me as I curled up on the $11,000 Restoration Hardware sofa that you were annoyed that you had to settle for (“Babe, I wanted the Williams Sonoma $35,000 sectional,” you whined as we sat on the rich leather seats and I reminded you of our budgets. “Fine, I guess this will have to do for now, but we’ll have to upgrade as soon as we can,” you sniffled. The store clerk gave me a sympathetic look, to which I wanly smiled back). Our little Eden was nestled in a residential row and from this angle, I could see the lights of the boats on the Hudson, and the glow of Hoboken.
You had forgotten to put out the $500 Le Labo Santal candle that flickered across the room, dancing with the fragrant jasmine breeze that drifted through the window, cracked open on a notch. The first edition of Dorian Gray lay on the $7,000 Kreiss Azul coffee table, the spray of wine slashed across the cover. I picked up the book and a jolt of anger coursed through my body again. There was nothing I could do about the wine, it had sunk into the fine paper threads of the cover.
A speck had gotten onto the for-edge, and I thumbed open the page it marked with red. An illustration stared back at me. Dorian Gray, in all his beauty, clasping a knife over the head of the poor, wretched Basil.
Dorian, who had inspired Basil to create his most exquisite work of art that became locked in an attic and aged instead of its subject, almost had a sneer as he readied himself to stab the felled painter again.
As the flame of the candle flickered more violently around the room, I felt his eyes bore into me. The sneer widened and I saw the glint of the knife.
Two days later, a police officer found me stumbling around Hudson Yards in my slippers and pajamas, the waffle robe tattered, no match for New York elements.
A few hours later, with a Styrofoam cup of Nescafe instant coffee warming my hands as I sat in a dingy holding room of the 10th precinct with a two-way mirror smudged with multiple handprints, the officer informed me that our Eden had vanished into ash. The cause looked to be a candle left unattended. Did I know anything about that, he asked?
In front of me sat The Picture of Dorian Gray, stained with the 2001 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The policeman said it was the only thing I had on me, perfectly nestled into the pocket of the waffle robe. I shakily opened it, thumbing through to the page that had been marked with red. It had been ripped out messily. A quick memory flashed across my eyes as I saw myself rip out the page and hold it to the Santal flame, watching it ignite before letting it drop onto the sofa, where it quickly engulfed the $1650 Hermes Ithaque Blanket.
I examined my reflection in the two-way mirror. Gone was the curated cutesy writer doll. Dark, sunken eyes stared back, and a hint of a smile. Persephone had finally taken a bite of the underworld’s pomegranate seeds. There was no going back.
“Shame it’s damaged, that’s a first edition, it’s worth a lot,” the policeman said, eating a doughnut as he picked up the book. A crumb fell into the binding.
You had woken up just in time to throw on your Thom Browne coat and Air Force 1s, grabbing your laptop filled with your high-concept Thoughts and Ideas, and dashing out of the fire escape as flames licked the walls of our bedroom. When they asked where I was, you looked around confused, not once realizing I was long gone.
“Babe? Where are you? She was right behind me, I swear!”
***
PIYA SINHA-ROY is a writer and former journalist based in Los Angeles. Born in Sleepy Hollow and raised in the English countryside by Indian parents, she has a penchant for collecting ghost stories, hunting for mysteries, rainy day reads and researching her next ridiculous purchase.
For all inquiries, email info@hellomermade.com
