The Children(92)

“Like in Camelot?”

“I know the concept.” Her name was Guinevere, for god’s sake. “What you’re saying is, no one’s in charge.”

“I’m saying we’re all in charge.”

So this was how it was going since Ennis fired Candy. “That’s so cool,” she said disingenuously. “Is there a most in charge person who can help me find Ennis?”

The boy tipped his head, shaking his broccoli flop out of his eyes to see her. “Your voice, like, is really familiar. And your face.”

Then it clicked. The rollie he’d moved to the corner of his mouth fell to the ground. “Oh, shit! Guinevere Sharpe!” His eyes rode the length of her. Was he—yes, he was snapping photos, phone tipped up and thumb tapping without a glance at the screen. “Did you know I was deadass in love with you when I was ten?”

“I didn’t. Thank you.”

A few of the other child laborers had trickled out and were watching them. The boy stepped forward a little to corral her away. She was his niche celebrity.

“I can’t believe it’s you. What was it like, growing up at the Farmhouse? What was she like?”

Guin grimaced, some ancient protective impulse making her say, “You don’t talk to Ennis about that stuff, do you?”

“It’s my second day here. To be honest I haven’t met him. I would ask him, though. I mean, the show’s about her, right?” He licked his lips. “Hey, what did you mean in that video? What’s gonna happen at the show?”

“Wasn’t me,” she said shortly. “Deepfake.”

“Really? It seemed pretty—”

“Do you think something’s going to happen?” She nodded at the open doors. “How much of it have you gotten to see?”

“Yeah, no, none of it.” His tone was chiding. “Nobody goes on the upper floors, not until the opening.”

“How are you supposed to build it if you can’t go in it?”

Dude looked at her like she was the obtuse one. “That’s all done. The whole show is done. It’s opening tomorrow, right? We’re doing work on the ground floor, where the reception’s gonna be. I’m not . . .” He looked around, dropped his voice. “I’m not, like, a trained art handler. Or a carpenter. I’m not union or anything, I just heard they needed bodies. And I want to be a part of this. So do you think there’ll ever be a final Ninth City book?”

“I was up there a few days ago. It was untouched.”

“That . . . can’t be right.” He looked toward the upper floors. “How many days ago?”

Guin didn’t answer. A young woman in black denim walked past them, her mullet the blue white of a Boca Raton granny’s. She rose on tiptoes to stuff a dirty tarp into a construction dumpster and looked very good doing it. But Guin couldn’t really see those slender tattooed arms lifting more than a couple of two-by-fours.

She looked again at the young man in front of her. His ironic 1970s stepdad shirt, his selvedge denim. Then she stepped back, over the sidewalk, into the empty street. Taking in a ground floor bustling with untrained hands. And the construction vehicles. Who among these kids could operate them?

Guin felt a wrench in her gut and a doubling in her sight.

They were props. The vehicles, the dumpsters, the bricks wedged against open doors. All of it props, and these busy, pretty people were actors. Even if they didn’t know it, they were part of the show. The illusion of construction: that was Mother’s opening act.

Because the work Ennis created was impossible. Not in the riddling, seductive way of impressive endeavor, but in truth. Plainly stated, his installations were not possible. The revelation clicked into place with the rightness of prefab: human hands could not make what Ennis devised.

Had she always known this? No. She’d suspected, though. For six years at least, since the rainy West Coast evening when she visited Film Still.





Interstitial




Film Still (2019)

Ennis Sharpe (1991–)

The Panoramic, Seattle, WA





A film archivist attending the Portland Book Festival found Guin after a page-to-screen panel. She squeezed her arm and said, “I’m so excited for your brother’s new show. I’m literally hopping on a plane next week to see it.”

Guin smiled, nodded, and at the first opportunity fled to a quiet corner with her phone.

The new exhibit was called Film Still. It was Ennis’s first foray into installation art. A composite re-creation of a golden-age movie palace, built inside a former auto showroom in a run-down quarter of Seattle.

The hype around it extended beyond the cloistered art world. After the word-of-mouth virality of his early shows, the name Ennis Sharpe had begun to shed its first associations. He was more than the son of a great woman. He was, maybe, on the verge of becoming something great himself.

Crouched by the women’s room of the Portland Art Museum, Guin paid out the nose for a flight into Sea-Tac. Two days later she was dropping her suitcase in an overpriced hotel room and walking out into the mizzling dusk.

She was unprepared for Seattle. No umbrella, no hood. By the time she got to where she was going, rain had soaked through her jacket. She squinted at her phone—a block to go—turned a corner, and stopped.