Snubbed Wife

GHOSTS IN GREENPOINT

They had been speeding on the taxi across the Williamsburg Bridge, with their minds all over the place. Below, the East River was muddy, tinted the color of tarnished spoons, and the skyline of Manhattan dwindled in the rearview mirror, like a glittering lie in front of some finally awakened disbeliever. Victoria kept her hood up and tucked her chin, but inside, her pulse was on parade.

It had been four years since Victoria was last in the Greenpoint studio. After the first bust of an IPO for Julian, they had moved on to a penthouse with north-facing glass and climate-controlled art storage. She had crated forty-two canvases and told herself it was just temporary—just until the new stretchers arrived, just until the private wing was painted. There they lay, still crated in climate-controlled limbo, unpainted, unloved.

The cab dropped her on West Street, the wind siphoning off the river when she paid cash—Ingrid's daily allowance stuffed into an envelope like a schoolgirl's lunch money, rebellious girl. She watched the taxi's taillights fold into the opposite direction.

That warehouse was quite imposing: six stories of red brick crowned with graffiti. A ghost sign read POLSKA IMPORTY, even if no imports had been phasing through since the '90s. She located the keypad; her fingers were stiff with the cold, and she punched in 1-9-8-9—her birth year, the code she and her old roommate Mara had chosen for lack of imagination because both could never envision not remembering their twenty-first birthday. The lock buzzed. She pushed in.

The hallway smelled the same: turpentine, dust, and ghosts of Mara's clove cigarettes. Fluorescents flickered half-heartedly. She climbed up the freight stairs, her steps echoing like slow heartbeats. By the time she reached the third floor, her thighs—now acquainted with Pilates reformers—were pleasantly burning. She realized she was not winded. Somewhere between posture drills and salmon lunches, her lungs had expanded.

Fourth floor, loft 4B. The steel door was padlocked. She stared at it, overcome with memories: Friday nights painting until dawn, stereo blasting Nina Simone, takeout stacked like Jenga containers. They had painted each other's backs with cheap acrylics when they ran out of canvas. They had sworn they'd never trade art for approval.

She plunged her hand into her coat pocket for her phone, scrolling to Mara's other contact—which was still there under the name Partner-in-Canvas-Crime. Her thumb hesitated. She couldn't bear anything so cavalier as Hey, I'm outside, can you buzz me in? Not just yet.

Instead, she removed a bobby pin from her hair—Luca's immaculate chignon had relaxed into something messier and more workable—and picked up the lock unerringly, the same way she'd used to at RISD when she lost her keys after studio parties. She clicked it: thirty seconds later, and with a click, it opened. She smiled—the first illegal deed she'd done in years.

The loft looked like a museum of time. North-facing windows smeared milky light onto drop cloths crusted with paint the color of old bruises. Her easel occupied center stage, with a half-finished canvas still clamped on it: a 2013 portrait of Julian, shirt-sleeved rolled up, eyes alight with hunger, and mouth lulled—back in the days when hunger meant ambition rather than consumption. She had given up on it, him with the curve of his smile being altered faster than her brush could have ever caught it.

She walked up to the painting. Dust dimmed the surface, while a spider had spun a kind of galaxy in the left upper corner. She touched the cheek she had once mixed from titanium white and a whisper of vermillion. The paint felt sticky; it was the oils that never dried without sunlight. Her fingerprint remained, a pale smear like a little moon.

"You used to love that moon-faced boy," she murmured. "Before he started eclipsing you."

Thirty unfinished canvases leaned against the brick wall. She pulled the shroud off one: a self-portrait, naked from collarbone up, hair wild, eyes ringed with insomnia. Painted the week Julian signed his first term-sheet, when he started attending a 3 a.m. call and calling it hustle. Brushwork was frantic, nearly violent. She remembered crying on the palette, saltwater diluting ultramarine.

It felt very vaguely at first, almost as if one were hearing a fight between neighbors far away behind thick walls, but still within one's home. Catherine's ice baths had become diamonds in the sky: still one in pain, but no longer fitting like a second skin.

Buzzing from her phone--Julian:

Where are you? I brought dinner--Nobu. Getting cold.

She stared at the text: part of her longed to turn and hurriedly return to play the role of the sorry wife. Instead she typed,

Stay warm. Eat without me.

She cut off the phone before courage could backspace again.

She moved through her loft touching each relic: a coffee can full of crusted brushes, the thrift-store kimono she wore as a smock, a mason jar of dried eucalyptus smelling faintly of rain. Atop the work table was a spiral notebook--her idea journal of the past. She opened one random page:

How about painting galaxies on the ceilings of corporate boardrooms so liars can find out how small they really are?

Tears welled up suddenly, bright. That girl had been naïve, sure, but also electric. She closed the journal, shoving it into her tote. Borrowing courage from her past seemed far more honest than inventing it.

A sound: footsteps in the corridor. She froze. The door creaked open and Mara was there in paint-splattered overalls. Strands of gray flecked through her otherwise black curls. She stared, wide-eyed, in disbelief.

A cold, holy s**t, Mara whispered. The lock did look jimmied, but honestly thought I was being robbed.

Victoria's heart lurched in her chest. "Hey stranger."

"Mara's expression flickered through shock, eagerness, and finally something a tad more guarded. 'Hey ghost.'

A moment of staring between them and then movement. At first the hug was tentative, and only then it became ferocious-it could realign ribs. There was turps and cardamom in Mara's scent-the ache of it nearly buckled Victoria's knees.

Mara pulled back, searched Victoria's face. "You look... different. Good different. Like someone who finally started saying no.''

Victoria laughed shakily. "I'm working on it."

Mara glanced around the loft and then back. "Julian doesn't know you're here." Not a question.

"Nobody does."

"Good." With that, Mara stepped inside, closing the door. "I was going to burn that portrait of him for warmth."

Victia smiled, but guilt nipped. "I'm sorry I disappeared. I got... swallowed."

Mara waved it off. "Swallowed is survivable. Digested is not. You are here, so you are still chewable." She gestured to the easel. "Want to finish it? We could give him devil horns, a tail, tiny--"

Victoria said softly, "No," to her. "I want to paint something else."

Mara lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah? What?"

Victia looked at blank canvases stacked like unopened letters. "Myself. Only bigger. And on fire. In a good way."

Mara's grin slowly spread wickedly. "Let´s stretch a monster. Six feet at least."

The two of them moved together again, as before, old choreography returning. Mara wrestled stretcher bars from the rack; Victoria hunted for house-painting brushes she 'd once purchased at Home Depot, scandalized at how cheap they were. They spoke little, the silence fluent in shared history.

This canvas took shape in an hour--72 inches tall and 48 wide. Victoria squeezed pure paint from a reclaimed cafeteria tray: cadmium orange, quinacridone magenta, interference gold that shifted from bronze to lime under shifting light.

She began with a body. It was abstract-torso-all-curve-and-velocity. Then a corona of negative space where shame had once perched. It was slashing vermillion as if freshly bloodied for six inches, then overlayed in gold until it turned to sunrise.

Mara was watching, arms crossed, staring eyes glistening. "That ain't paint. That's an exorcism."

Victia continued at it; the sweat beaded on her despite the unheated loft. Every time her shoulders began to scream, all the way until the room grew dark and the lights streamed outside competing in such riotous kaleidoscope.

At last she stepped back. The canvas pulsed raw, imperfect, alive. This was not pretty; it was declaration.

Mara handed her a cloth. "Sign it before you chickened out."

Victia raised a charcoal stick, hesitated, and then wrote in the lower right corner: tall, unapologetic:

PHENOMENAL, 2025

Mara raised her brow. "No last name?"

"Not yet."

They dragged the painting to the middle of the loft, propped it up in front of where Julian's image had once stood. Those two works faced each other, past and future separated by ten feet of cracked concrete.

Mara cracked two lukewarm beers from a mini-fridge that continued to hum. "To ghosts who refuse to stay buried."

Victia clinked bottles, drank. There was an undergrad rebellion allure in the beer-borrowed: cheap, hoppy, limitless.

Mara studied her. "So what's the plan then, V? You're running away or running back?"

Victia swallowed foam. "Neither. I am running through."

She told Mara everything: Ingrid, the pewter gown, the ten-million-dollar necklace, the gala, unmasking. The words came tumbling, urgent, glittering.

Mara listened without interruption, her eyes growing wider only at the part where Victoria described the six-inch heels. When she had finished, Mara whistled low.

"Girl, you're building a Trojan horse in couture."

Victia smiled thinly. "I just hope I don't burn the city down on my way out."

Mara raised her glass. "If you do, paint the flames."

They sat drinking quiet camaraderie. Outside, a siren dopplered; inside, radiators clanked like old applause, finally giving in to the dank silence.

Eventually, Victoria looked at her watch-10:42 PM. She had car-service booked at eleven. She really didn’t want to leave. Tomorrow, however, held lymphatic massage, voice drills, diamond fitting. The schedule owned her now; it was a benign dictator.

She hugged Mara tight. "I needed to remember where I sharpened my teeth."

Mara squeezed. "Remember where you learned to roar, too. And when that prick sees you on New Year's Eve, you make sure he hears it."

Victoria stepped into the corridor, then turned. "Keep the portrait. I'll barter it for something nice when I am done."

Mara grinned. "Done deal. Now go level up, Wonder Woman."

Downstairs, the wind had picked up, slicing off the river with knife-edge glee. Victoria pulled her hood tight, but inside she was furnace-hot: paint under fingernails, beer in bloodstream, sunrise on canvas.

The car-service Tesla idled at the curb. It climbed in and gave the address, and then rolled down the window just enough for winter to bite her cheeks awake.

She opened her notebook on a new page and wrote:

Day 9: Painted myself on fire and didn’t flinch.

Note to self: flames can be friendly if you’re the one holding the match.

She shut the book, tilted her head against cool glass, and practiced breathing from her diaphragm-low, steady, phenomenal.

Tomorrow will demand diamonds and discipline, but tonight she smells of turpentine, raw and defiant, and that, she decides, is the first scent of home she has worn in years.