Outside the Box

Ed flicks the tip of his middle finger against the rim of Diana's clear plastic cup and watches as concentric circles of white wine ripple across its surface. Along with a few other uncomfortable-looking people, he's positioned himself at the far corner of the gallery. One of the few relatively empty spaces left as the opening reception crowd gathers, filling the converted loft with air kisses, hairspray and expensive cologne.

A man hovers on his right. The same man who's been hovering since Diana went to the ladies room. He's fit but slender, compared to the solid wall of Ed, and all in black from his dyed hair to his pointed shoes.

Ed checks his watch. She's been gone five minutes already.

"There's nothing like the energy of a new show." The man's vaguely European accent is faded, but still gives his English a hint of a sneer. "Don't you think?"

Ed pulls at the collar of his white dress shirt, still creased from the package. "Yeah. I'm tingling all over."

"He's like Rothko, except even more whimsical."

"Rothko," Ed says. "Isn't he that new place-kicker for the 49ers?"

The man's eyes light up, and he smiles, showing tiny pointed incisors. "You're hysterical." He gives Ed's forearm a squeeze, and lets his hand and gaze linger, seeming to like the results of the hours Ed spends in the gym.

Ed backs off, the wine sloshing in Diana's cup. "Look...I don't go that way."

The incisors disappear. "My mistake," he sighs, lifting his hands. "But after a certain age, you can hardly blame a gentleman for wishful thinking."

"Wish this, buddy," Ed says. "I'm going to go find my fiancée. That's fiancée with two e's. A girl. Get it?"
Just then Diana floats into the room, a sort of ethereal marionette suspended from the sleek blonde knot atop her head. Two men turn to appreciate her dancer's grace and the view as the slit of her black dress opens and shuts, opens and shuts, flashing long, lean thigh.

Ed snaps to Diana's side and hands over the wine like it's a dead rat. Then says out the side of his mouth, "How long did doctor-what's-his-name say we had to stay here?"

She pouts prettily. A fresh application of lipstick-red to match her nails-glints under futuristic track lighting. "Don't you remember? Dr. Silverman said-" Her gaze fixes in mid-space with concentration. "'One can handle pretty much anything for only an hour, for a greater gain.'"

Ed looks at his watch. They'd arrived at the gallery exactly eleven minutes earlier. "Kee-rist."

"Really, Ed." She straightens the left side of his collar, patting him into acceptable condition. "For the money we're paying, don't you think we should at least try taking his advice?"

Ed huffs out a breath. "You mean for the money your mother is paying."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Nothing. Whatever. Let's go look at art."

He shadows her as she drifts from painting to painting. There are blue boxes on yellow backgrounds. Yellow boxes on blue backgrounds. White boxes on white backgrounds. Then she pauses in front of a pedestal. Atop the pedestal is an object that appears to be a cardboard box.

"Three dimensions." Ed grins. "At least that's different."

"Hmm." Diana taps an index finger against her cheek. The nail glistens.

Ed scratches the back of his neck-a field of red bumps from where he'd shaved too hastily. "So what's it supposed to be, anyway?"

"You're missing the point. It's not supposed to be anything. At least that's what my modern art professor said. It's supposed to be whatever you see in it."

Ed mugs a studious face, complete with stroking an imaginary beard. "I see...a box!" His shoulders sag. "We've seen seventeen boxes. At least this is the only one so far that looks like an actual goddamned box."

Diana frowns. "Well, perhaps the show is a bit repetitive, but I think the artist is trying to exaggerate the metaphor to show a deeper meaning."
"
Yeah, there's a deeper meaning. He needs more art lessons. Because obviously he's never gotten past right angles." Ed again looks at his watch. "If we leave now, we can still make it home in time for the second half."

She nails him with an icy glare. "Can't you at least try to participate in this? Dr. Silverman said that taking time to explore each other's interests would be a good exercise in building mutual respect."

He examines a price tag on the side of the pedestal. "Christ. I respect the balls of anyone who'd ask that kind of money for a box."

Diana stabs a fist into a silky black hip. "You're not even trying!"

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Ed thrusts out both palms in a gesture of supplication. "But I don't get it! I don't get any of this stuff! You think football is a testosterone festival for mouth-breathing knuckle draggers, and I think modern art is a load of pretentious crap. Can't we just leave it there and get on with our lives?"

"But Dr. Silverman said-"

"Dr. Silverman said! Dr. Silverman said!" he mocks in falsetto. "You know, the guy isn't God. He's just some shrink who couldn't get enough business." He shakes his head. "Boy, he saw you coming. Pre-marriage counseling. My parents never had pre-marriage counseling, and they've been together over twenty-five years."

Diana's mouth tightens. Her upper chest rises and falls huffily. "Your father's having an affair with his secretary and your mother is addicted to the Home Shopping Channel!"

He shrugs. "At least they're still together."

"But they're miserable! Is that what you want for us? Is that how you picture our lives?"

He smiles crookedly. "Well, as long as you didn't spend too much..."

The look she gives him could melt paint off the exposed brick walls.

"All right. I'll try. Wouldn't want to disappoint Dr. Silverman." They drift in front of another canvas. It's two boxes going down a waterfall. "OK, Miss Smartypants. What do you think this is supposed to be?"

The red fingernail taps anew. "Well, obviously it's another portrayal of the box metaphor, the box as a symbol for all of us, that we're confined by our gender stereotypes and societal expectations, and the waterfall magnifies the helplessness, kind of a man against nature paradigm."

Ed blinks at it, then at Diana, then back. "Para-what?"

"Paradigm."

He blinks some more. "Oh yeah? Well, what's it mean when the ref goes like this?" He circles his forearms around each other.

"False start. Five yard penalty."

His eyebrows shoot up. "How the hell do you know that?"

"I bought a book. I'm studying in advance of watching a game with you next weekend. See, I'm trying to take this exercise seriously. Unlike some people, whose only approach to something they don't understand is to make fun of it."

"I make fun of it because it's freakin' ridiculous. Four hundred dollars for a cardboard box? I can go to the nearest liquor store and get as many as I want for free."

"You're still missing the point, Ed."

"No, I'm not. All right, maybe I didn't go to some fancy-ass liberal arts college, like you, but I do know that art's supposed to look like something. A landscape, a person, I get it. This, I don't get. It makes me feel stupid. I could feel stupid at home, you know. I could have a couple beers, wear comfortable clothes and watch football instead of being hit on by Count Dracula and looking at a bunch of overpriced crap that I don't understand."

Diana's lower lip begins to tremble. "You don't want to understand! You don't want to even try! You don't care if we wind up like our parents! Drifting apart because they've stopped making the effort!" Her eyes fill with tears. "Over half of all marriages end in divorce, and I just wanted...just wanted...to improve our odds..."

He gestures uselessly in front of him, as if he could stop her from crying. It doesn't work. "Ah, shit. Diana, I didn't mean-I'll try. See, I'll try. I promise."

She shoves her now empty glass of wine at him so she can rustle through her purse for a tissue. "You've been saying that since we got here but you keep making me feel like some kind of snob because my parents were able to send me to a good school and because I'm interested in something other than football. If you really loved me, you'd try harder to at least take a token interest in things that are important to me."

Ed lets out his breath. "I didn't mean...Christ. Look." He sets the empty glass on a passing caterer's tray and pulls out his wallet. "Look, I'll buy you something. Anything you like in here."

Tears blink to a stop. "You'd...buy something?"

"Anything you want."

"And I can put it up in the new house?"

He forces a smile. "Right in middle of the living room."

A somber expression settles into her face. She points to the cardboard box. "I want that."

He winces. "You want that? You're...sure? You wouldn't...maybe like one of the paintings instead? Paintings are good. We're going to have all those blank walls to fill. You like the blue box on the yellow? The yellow box on the blue?"

"I want the box that looks like a box. You just said that art is supposed to look like something."

"But-"

Diana raises a hand toward the man with the dyed black hair, standing about ten feet away, performing wishful thinking on someone else's muscles. "Excuse me, sir? You're the owner?"

"Aw, crap. I'm going to the men's room."

Diana grabs Ed's arm, preventing his escape. The man drifts over, smiling expectantly. "Yes, hello, I'm Karl." He briefly takes Diana's hand by the fingers, like she's royalty. At first she blushes, fighting a flutter of a be-charmed smile, then recovers into a graceful dip and a barely perceptible, expressionless nod, as if accustomed to such treatment from birth.

"We're interested in making a purchase," Diana says.

"Oh, how marvelous!" He beams at the two of them, but mostly at Ed. "Would you like to meet the artist?"

"Could we?" Diana pulls Ed closer. "My fiancé especially wants to share his impressions of the show."

Ed's eyes widen.

"Well." Karl bares his pointed teeth. "I'm sure his life will not be complete until he hears every single one."

Karl hides all but a corner of a smirk as he turns and crooks two fingers at a tall, balding man in the center of a gaggle of more people dressed in black holding more plastic cups of white wine. "Helmut? Helmut?"

"Shit," Ed says under his breath. "Why the hell did you-"

Karl returns, clinging to Helmut's elbow.

"So you are understanding the symbolism?" Helmut has an even thicker vaguely European accent, which sounds so much like a sneer that in several countries, it could be considered an invitation to a punch in the nose.

Ed's eyebrows push together. Diana stands silent, her mouth turned up in amusement, apparently refusing to bail him out. He rubs the back of his neck, which only makes the skin angrier. "Well, yeah, uh, I kind of...it's the boxes. It's like...yeah, like we're all trapped."

"Yes! Exactly!" Helmut smiles and crosses his arms over his chest. "Please, go on."

A bead of sweat rolls down Ed's back and soaks through his shirt. "And it's about sex roles. And nature. Like the one with the two boxes and the waterfall."

"See, Karl?" Helmut touches the gallery owner's shoulder. "This is the reason why I show. If even one person understands...tell me," he says to Ed. "The waterfall, that one was your favorite? I think I saw you for a very long time looking at it."

"Yeah, uh, but my fiancée wants that one over there."

Helmut casts his gaze in the direction of Ed's nod. "Blue on Yellow?"

"No. Uh, the box."

"The box."

"Yeah."

"But that isn't being part of the collection." He turns a dark glare on Karl and says something rapid and harsh in a vaguely European language.

Karl reddens, bowing his head, working his fingers together. "My deepest apologies. I wasn't aware. I'll take it in the back right now."

"No," Ed says. "The woman I love wants art, and I'm going to buy it for her."

"But you don't understand-" Karl says.

"The hell I don't. It's an exaggeration of the metaphor. It's..." Ed squints at the box, tilting his head. "Symbolic. Yeah. It's...kind of like everything in your life, it all comes down to boxes. You're in the womb, it's sort of like a box, they give you a name, and it boxes you in, and you're a guy and you have to act a certain way and there's another box, and all the way through. Hell, they even take you away in a box. Don't tell me I don't understand."

Diana smiles at Ed adoringly.

Karl blinks. "Well, Helmut. Sounds like we're just going to have to part with this one."

"But I cannot! In good faith, I cannot! It is only-"

"He is very modest about his work," Karl tells the young couple, then pulls at Helmut's arm. "Pardon us one moment."

The two men move aside.

"Was that too much?" Ed says to Diana.

She slips her hand into his and looks like she might start crying again.

He cranes his neck to try to see them. Helmut is snickering. When he catches Ed watching, he turns away. "I hope they aren't going to jack up the price." Diana's hand loosens. "Not that price is an issue if it's something that will make you happy."

Helmut has been reabsorbed into his black-clad hive of sycophants, but Karl returns, alone. "Well, it seems that this is your lucky night," he says. "It has taken some convincing, but the artist has agreed to sell. Will you be taking the objet with you or would you like it shipped to your home?"

"Think they'll ship it in a box?" Ed leans over to whisper to Diana. Her mouth quivers like she's trying not to smile.

"We'll take it with us," Diana says. "And thank you."

"No, no. Thank you, and your fiancé for his exquisite taste. I will go prepare it for you. Please enjoy the rest of the show. And if you would like to get off your feet, there's a terrace overlooking a lovely courtyard. You would like a glass of champagne? Rumaki? A bit of caviar, perhaps? Yes, I will arrange this now."

Ed watches him slither away.

He turns to Diana. "You want to get some air?"

--------------------

Ed eyes the shining beads of caviar with suspicion. "Next week you're watching all four quarters. And the pregame."

Diana sips her champagne, then smiles. "Anything you want."

"Then how about we forget Dr. Silverman and just take this on faith?"

She says nothing for a long time. A car alarm pierces the silence, then stops. The echo of it rings through the courtyard.

"I don't know what a paradigm is, Diana."

"It's when-"

"No. I mean, I'm not that kind of guy. Dr. Silverman and every stupid exercise in his playbook isn't going to make me that kind of guy."

She says nothing for an even longer time. "I don't want that kind of guy. I want you. I fell in love with you."

He smiles. "Yeah?"

She nods. Watches as she traces a finger around the rim of her glass. "Maybe you'd rather have some woman who likes football."

He laughs. "Hell, no. You're already smarter than me. Leave me something I know that you don't!"

Diana drops her head against his shoulder. A crackle of forced laughter rises up from the hum inside. "I love what you said about the sculpture. About being boxed in? The symbolism? Did you really mean that?"

He thinks. "Well...yeah. I guess I did. Huh. Guess I know more about art than I thought."

"Look," Diana says. "I know I kind of manipulated you into buying it...really, you don't have to do it just to prove something to me."

"No," Ed sighs. "I want you to have it. Besides, the idea's starting to grow on me. Owning a piece of art. I keep thinking of all these things having to do with boxes. I guess that's what art's supposed to do. Give you something to think about."

Someone behind them clears his throat. A young man in catering whites is standing in the doorway. "Sir, your objet is ready. Shall I call a taxi?"

"Nah," Ed says. "We'll go get the car."

--------------------

As Ed and Diana leave the gallery, Karl spies the young man in the white uniform. He ushers him into a quiet corner and presses a crisp bill into his palm.

The boy's eyes widen. He slides his gaze from his palm, to Karl, and back again.

"You are having a problem?" Karl says.

"You promised ten percent."

"Ungrateful brat. You are lucky I didn't tell your supervisor to fire you on the spot. It is most unprofessional to leave such a mess behind during my opening reception."

"And it would be most unprofessional for you if I told him that the objet he just purchased was what the Brie was delivered in."

Karl considers this. "Fifteen percent."

The boy smiles.

-------------

Diana turns toward the back seat for another look. "Maybe we should put it in the den. In that little alcove. And we could maybe install track lighting. What do you think?"

"Whatever you want." Ed pulls away from the curb. He smiles. "You know, I'm starting to like the idea. Of owning art. Makes me feel, I don't know, smarter or something."

"Something." Diana wrinkles her nose.

"You don't like it." Ed says.

"No. I like it. It's just...Ed, do you smell cheese?"