strawberry fields forever [for Max]
The apartment's walls are no thicker than Jude's head; he can still hear the television and the shaggart that carted it in, the two things most deserving of his girlfriend's attention and least deserving of his own.
You'd think a girl with Lucy's conviction could understand the difference between not caring and caring too much, but he's not the brains of the operation, clearly. He's all heart and stubbornness, willfully ignorant and throwing stones from his glass studio. May as well be glass, as he sucks fire into a roach and holds sullen to the smoke, stares sullen at the wall and can see perfectly the way they must be standing, side by side at the table with that news-man-drone filling the whole apartment, like the buzz of a beehive. She'll go all soft thinking of Max, he's sure, though it only inspires a touch of guilt at leaving, and he'll put an arm about her shoulders and tell her all the promises of a revolution.
He can't look anymore, and putting it aside's as easy as turning around, exhaling it in a dance of piquant smoke. The walls can't block the newscaster's voice, but the room starts to make its own sounds--noisy red strawberries sitting wet in a harsh metal colander; static white canvases on the walls and floor. He stubs the joint out for later and runs his fingers over the fruit, letting himself be drawn in, distracted by their texture, little hairs and seeds that get lost in the overall shape, that you don't notice until you've put the thing in your mouth and they're scraping your tongue.
Max would know what to say to her, he thinks; the television edges back in, and he's the one going soft with nobody's arm 'round his shoulder. He can feel her standing outside the door, but the moment makes him hard again, determined in his odd way, to do nothing. Let her do it, let her find the words. He'll be right here tacking strawberries to a canvas, and if they can't simply disagree, he doesn't want to know, finally slipping into the high and staring along the neat rows of dripping fruit. Easier to close his eyes and go with it, dip into bowls of fruit and cans of paint that start to feel the same, toward the end, one hand throwing berries at the wall and the other lashing out with a brush, red and black in loud bursts to drive all other noise away, a splash of green to even it all out. He isn't breathing hard, but feels like he ought to be, too excited to keep his high and hot under the collar, more upset than he'd like to be. It isn't until he pauses to roll a cigarette that he really sees what he's been working on, amid all the painted footprints and crushed fruit: a great, bloody strawberry, splatters from its form like a warning, that its luscious form is never smooth.
He's still staring at it when the apartment's too-thin walls become even thinner, angry red and black fading, white brick and canvas gone transparent, but it's not New York on the other side. His first thought, when the heat and light strike a balance with the fever under his skin, is that he's sticky. His hands, his feet, the parts of his hair where splattered paint caught it, where he dragged the fruit-juice on his fingers through it in frustration. His skin feels banded and tight where the acrylics dried.
It's not a terribly rational worry: he knows how it got there. He just isn't sure how much dope you have to smoke or how focused you have to be before you don't notice that the room you were just in disappeared and left you on a beach with a colander full of strawberries and a fucking easel. His second and third thoughts make a good deal more sense, where am I and what happened, shifting his paint-wet toes uncomfortably in the hot sand and looking around. Ocean to his front, jungle to his back, and he wonders if he's somehow gone completely out of his head and fallen into that goddamn television set, past the grainy reception into the reality he doesn't want to face.
A bit of pot doesn't do that to a person, though, and he somehow doubts going crazy would bring his paints and cigarette along for the ride, spitting it out onto the giant ashtray of a beach and staring at the brush he's clutching tight as a rope tossed from the lip of a great, dark hole. It isn't until he's gone through questions rational and otherwise, explanations each more impossible than the last, that he wonders with a stomach-flipping mix of fear and guilt, where's Lucy?
You'd think a girl with Lucy's conviction could understand the difference between not caring and caring too much, but he's not the brains of the operation, clearly. He's all heart and stubbornness, willfully ignorant and throwing stones from his glass studio. May as well be glass, as he sucks fire into a roach and holds sullen to the smoke, stares sullen at the wall and can see perfectly the way they must be standing, side by side at the table with that news-man-drone filling the whole apartment, like the buzz of a beehive. She'll go all soft thinking of Max, he's sure, though it only inspires a touch of guilt at leaving, and he'll put an arm about her shoulders and tell her all the promises of a revolution.
He can't look anymore, and putting it aside's as easy as turning around, exhaling it in a dance of piquant smoke. The walls can't block the newscaster's voice, but the room starts to make its own sounds--noisy red strawberries sitting wet in a harsh metal colander; static white canvases on the walls and floor. He stubs the joint out for later and runs his fingers over the fruit, letting himself be drawn in, distracted by their texture, little hairs and seeds that get lost in the overall shape, that you don't notice until you've put the thing in your mouth and they're scraping your tongue.
Max would know what to say to her, he thinks; the television edges back in, and he's the one going soft with nobody's arm 'round his shoulder. He can feel her standing outside the door, but the moment makes him hard again, determined in his odd way, to do nothing. Let her do it, let her find the words. He'll be right here tacking strawberries to a canvas, and if they can't simply disagree, he doesn't want to know, finally slipping into the high and staring along the neat rows of dripping fruit. Easier to close his eyes and go with it, dip into bowls of fruit and cans of paint that start to feel the same, toward the end, one hand throwing berries at the wall and the other lashing out with a brush, red and black in loud bursts to drive all other noise away, a splash of green to even it all out. He isn't breathing hard, but feels like he ought to be, too excited to keep his high and hot under the collar, more upset than he'd like to be. It isn't until he pauses to roll a cigarette that he really sees what he's been working on, amid all the painted footprints and crushed fruit: a great, bloody strawberry, splatters from its form like a warning, that its luscious form is never smooth.
He's still staring at it when the apartment's too-thin walls become even thinner, angry red and black fading, white brick and canvas gone transparent, but it's not New York on the other side. His first thought, when the heat and light strike a balance with the fever under his skin, is that he's sticky. His hands, his feet, the parts of his hair where splattered paint caught it, where he dragged the fruit-juice on his fingers through it in frustration. His skin feels banded and tight where the acrylics dried.
It's not a terribly rational worry: he knows how it got there. He just isn't sure how much dope you have to smoke or how focused you have to be before you don't notice that the room you were just in disappeared and left you on a beach with a colander full of strawberries and a fucking easel. His second and third thoughts make a good deal more sense, where am I and what happened, shifting his paint-wet toes uncomfortably in the hot sand and looking around. Ocean to his front, jungle to his back, and he wonders if he's somehow gone completely out of his head and fallen into that goddamn television set, past the grainy reception into the reality he doesn't want to face.
A bit of pot doesn't do that to a person, though, and he somehow doubts going crazy would bring his paints and cigarette along for the ride, spitting it out onto the giant ashtray of a beach and staring at the brush he's clutching tight as a rope tossed from the lip of a great, dark hole. It isn't until he's gone through questions rational and otherwise, explanations each more impossible than the last, that he wonders with a stomach-flipping mix of fear and guilt, where's Lucy?