A Faraway Place

Julie watched the numbers tick up on the elevator display panel. Her boyfriend was talking but she was somewhere else. She was counting how many seconds there were between floors. Just under three.

A hand waved in front of her face and Ethan leaned into view.

“Are you listening?”

She frowned. “Don’t do that. It’s rude.”

“So is not listening to your partner. I was trying to tell you about some good news at work.”

“You got a small raise. I know.”

Another floor.

“That was yesterday. Tim told me today I’m actually getting a title promotion too.”

“Congrats babe.”

Seventh floor. Five to go.

“You don’t seem excited about it.”

Her eyes flicked back to him. “I’m not your emotional validation vending machine, Ethan.”

A frown. “You could pretend to care though. I make an effort when you’re talking about subjects I’m not particularly excited about.”

“Or maybe you could just try saying more interesting things.”

Ding.

The elevator opened. A few seconds later, they came to a door with the numbers 1219 plastered above it. Ethan knocked politely.

Kim, the leasing agent, welcomed them inside. She was a pleasant enough woman with an energetic personality to match the warm smile. Julie wasn’t a fan.

She ran them through the place. The decor was Scandinavian with gray walls and steel lamps hanging from a high ceiling. Most of the space was split between a living area with a faux oak floor and a small kitchen sectioned off by classic black and white tile.

“We have this spacious area for some furniture and a television, as well as a sliding window with a small patio in case you want to get a taste of fresh air.”

“What a view! Look at this, Julie.”

Julie thought about the glare of the afternoon sun striking the television screen. She looked down at the “patio” and saw a small landing that could barely fit a porch chair. “Looks nice,” she answered.

Kim took them past the kitchen, down the hall – if you could call it that. The corridor was maybe eight feet, with two doors. One led into a small carpeted room, the other to a tiny bathroom.

It was all so very boring.

“We love it,” Ethan said. “And just to check, the rate….”

“Rent is just over two thousand a month. And the first month is free, like we discussed.”

Ethan smiled at Julie like a puppy dog seeking attention. “Hell of a deal for LA.” He asked Kim for a day to think it over. They left and saw a couple of other places: a two bedroom for 4k in Marina Del Rey, a one bedroom for 3 and a half downtown.

“All these gray walls everywhere,” she groused as they sat on their bed at the Marriott, chewing lukewarm slices of pepperoni and cheese. “Even this hotel room has more personality.”

“We can decorate, give it our own vibe. That’s part of the fun of apartments; it’s practice for when we get a house.”

She scoffed. “A house.”

He shrugged. “We’ll both be pulling six figures. We can save up for a few years and then move somewhere else like Oregon or Wyoming.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, putting down her pizza, appetite lost.

“I feel good about that one-bedroom over in Culver City,” he said.

“It’s so small,” she complained.

“I know but if we move anywhere bigger, you can kiss disposable income goodbye — much less savings. We wouldn’t be able to build a future.”

Maybe I don’t want to build anything, she thought. But she knew deep down he was right. The apartment was a good deal. Neither of them had had much money until recently – when they both landed decent jobs – and she felt the burning in her pocket that had engulfed her parents’ lives. She thought briefly about her mother, still a bank manager at 63, probably watching as her coworkers blissfully retired one by one, knowing that the only long rest she’d get would be beneath a slab of stone with her name on it.

“There has to be a catch though,” she said. “Somebody must have died there or something.”

He flopped another slice on his plate. “That complex is filled with seniors. They’re probably just trying to lure younger people in with a good deal.”

“So we’re going to be living in a retirement community?”

“The quiet will probably help you paint. Besides, we’ll only be there a year and then we’ll upgrade to something better.”

Julie hated that he talked about the apartment like it was a done deal, like nothing she could say could change where they would be calling home next – mostly because it was true.

Two weeks later they rented a small U-Haul and drove in from Benson, Arizona. His peppy energy proved to be infectious for once as they took turns driving, counting cacti, and playing the hits from their teenage years.

They set up shop in the living room, putting their desks next to one another. His with his tower PC that functioned as a work and gaming computer; her with a Cintiq and Macbook. He pushed the couch to the middle of the room, a little too close to the aging flatscreen than was good for their eyes, but what could be done?

She looked around as they finished unpacking the few boxes they brought. “No room for my easel,” she said sadly.

“You can always set up in the bedroom.”

“And drip on the carpet?”

“I mean, you’ve got your tablet, right?” Ethan said.

She frowned. He didn’t get it. The tablet was for the job and doodles. Her easel was for when the work mattered, when she needed to feel the warmth of her fingers connecting with the cool stickiness of oil paint.

“I’ll find somewhere,” she said doubtfully.

The first week went well enough. They connected utilities and set up autopay for everything. Both of them did video calls from their desks, one of them going to stand out on the “patio” when meetings conflicted.

In the rare hours Julie wasn’t in meetings, she burned daylight drawing concepts for logos and web layouts. The work was dull, but she was good enough that the agency had scooped her up full-time when a senior designer left. She was particularly skilled when it came to creating and executing website blueprints.

Ethan sat hunched at his desk, typing on a loud mechanical keyboard, his deep voice booming on work calls. Julie did not know or care if Ethan was any good at his job. He was able to pay his half of rent, and in the end, perhaps that was all that mattered.

By Friday, the pair had fallen back into the familiar groove they had established in their old apartment – working next to one another and yet somehow a sea apart. Julie liked it that way.

Saturday morning was when the strangeness began, with the corner. She had noticed when leaving the bathroom. She stared at the right corner at the back of the hallway; it had sunk somehow, retracted several inches into the wall.

She called for Ethan. He came out of the bedroom, long legs sticking out of his red Fruit of the Looms like telephone poles. “Another spider?” he asked sleepily.

She pointed. “That corner looks weird.”

He peered down at the corner, poked it with his toe. He shrugged. “Some shoddy construction.”

“It wasn’t like that when we moved in.”

He shot her a familiar expression she loathed.

“Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know for a fact the corner wasn’t like that when we moved in.”

He scratched his chin. “Baby, what do you want me to do about it?”

Suddenly she realized she did not, in fact, have an answer to his question. She hadn’t gotten that far.

“Should I call maintenance?”

“Forget it,” she said.

“I’ll do what you want. Just tell me –”

“I said forget it.”

The weeks went on. Video calls, Adobe Illustrator, and Sketch devoured Monday through Friday. The only free time Julie had was split between being annoyed by Ethan’s habit of littering both their desks with protein bar crumbs and the depression of being unable to find a place to set up and paint on her easel. And then one day, Julie woke up and stepped into the hallway to find it had grown by several feet. Not only that but there was a whole new door right next to the bathroom.

“Ethan!” she screamed.

He ran into the hallway, a panicked look in his eyes that only grew wilder. She heard him exhale deeply. “What the ever-living hell? This isn’t a dream right?”

She pinched his arm hard.

“Ow!”

“Guess not.” Shifting her attention away from him, she stepped over to the new door and turned the knob.

“What are you doing!?” he hissed.

She answered by opening the door. Within, there was an empty room that looked roughly the same size as their bedroom; the only difference was the floor was wood instead of carpeted.

“Whoa,” she said.

Ethan peered inside. “Well, that’s novel.”

“I want it,” Julie found herself saying.

“Pardon?”

“This is going to be my studio.”

“I’m sorry. A room just spawned in our apartment and your immediate reaction is that you want to set up shop?”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“It could shift back while you’re in here and crush you or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

His face flushed. “There wasn’t a room here yesterday. Now there is one. I’m being perfectly rational.”

She turned to him and stood on her tiptoes so she was just an inch away from that flushed face of his. “This is going to be my office,” she whispered with a hint of malice. “If you try to stop me, we’re going to have a real goddamn problem.”

He stepped back. “Jesus, you don’t have to talk to me like that. There’s no need for that."

But there was. Julie could see now, yes, could see just how much Ethan controlled. How they always did what he wanted. Ethan wanted burgers for dinner but Julie was feeling Thai? Too bad Julie. Ethan continued to leave trash on her desk despite her constantly asking him to stop. Too bad Julie. Well, no more of that. This room was hers.

“We should at least talk to the leasing office.”

“Why? Tell them so they can charge us another 300 dollars a month? Make us move out just as we get settled in here?”

He didn’t have a counter to that. Ethan left it alone – clearly perturbed – but her mind was made up.

She went to Home Depot and bought drop cloth to cover the floor, then she moved her easel and Grumbacher paints and brushes in there. As soon as work was over, she would spend a few hours painting in the studio at night.

Julie painted all kinds of things. Portraits from reference photos – self and otherwise. Abstract smatterings of color that were structured yet somehow still ambiguous. And of course, landscapes. Julie adored landscapes. Whether it was a thriving metropolis peeping beneath a blue skyline or the rolling hills of New Zealand, a country she had yet to visit but saw so often in her dreams that she knew its curves and contours intimately.

The weeks continued to go by, each day Julie counting down the hours until she could break free of the 9-to-5 monotony and take up her brush. Sometimes she stayed up as late as midnight painting. Canvases collected at the back of the room. Within two weeks, she had seven new paintings. She was working at a speed she hadn’t experienced since she was an enthusiastic freshman at Northern Arizona. The difference was the work she was producing was actually pretty swell, even by her own stringent standards.

Initially she attributed this efficiency to having a space to herself for the first time since graduating college. And yet, there was something else too. A sensation. Sometimes she’d look around her studio and, if she closed her eyes and listened, she could hear something. A murmur of sorts. A pleasant whisper in her ear, like a mother humming their child to sleep.

The cautious choir in Julie’s brain that wailed whenever she noticed a man walking behind her too closely, or tempted her to take a shortcut through an alley, was suddenly silent. There was no danger here. The apartment liked her. It wanted her to feel joy.

Unlike Ethan, who only wanted himself to be happy even if it came at the cost of Julie’s contentment. “Hey,” he’d tell her, poking his head into her studio uninvited. “It’s been a few days since we’ve spent some time together…”

Red hot anger flashed across her mind and the murmurs shifted into a hiss. At first, she told him no. Would tell him no repeatedly. And yet, as the days went by, guilt crept in. Didn’t Ethan deserve better? Wasn’t she being unfair to him? He was a person with thoughts and feelings, not a burden.

Soon her thoughts distracted her from painting and she’d put the brush down. They’d watch episodes of Only Murders in the Building or go out for dinner and a movie or, if she was somewhat tipsy, even be intimate. She didn’t mind. It could be nice sometimes.

And yet.

The studio was always calling to her, to the need in her blood to create. She answered rapturously. The murmurs grew louder. Now when she closed her eyes there was no longer darkness, but she could see things: different worlds, planes of existence that defied words. Assortments and orders of color she’d never considered; prismatic structures shaped like ribbons and, yes, even people. Silhouettes from afar. They hummed to her, and she kept on painting.

The number of completed canvases grew, each of them filled with alluring vistas that disturbed as much as they astounded. For the first time in her life, she felt the burning desire to share her craft with the world.

She reached out to an old professor from college and asked for his help in setting up a meeting with a gallery. “I have some friends down at The Grendel,” he told her on the phone. “They’ll take a meeting as a courtesy call for me, but if you’re not showing up with something outstanding, they’ll never let you book another one.”

A week later, she loaded the five paintings she felt were the most true, the ones that clung most tightly to the honesty of her mind’s eye, and drove them across town.

She knew she should be terrified. The Grendel had the reputation for being one of the most uptight galleries in the country. Who the hell was she, this rookie showing up demanding to play in the major leagues? And yet, there was no fear. The murmurs had already thrown the dice for her and now all she had to do was cash her chips.

The two old men in the office met her with a mixture of amusement and hostility. They clearly regarded her as a waste of their time. And then she took the tarps off her canvases and allowed herself to feel a sliver of smug vindication when their mouths dropped open.

The gallery bought one for nearly five figures and said they’d be honored to show the other four and only charge fifteen percent commission. She waited until she was three streets away before allowing herself the treat of a fist pump accompanied by a primal scream of joy.

YES, she screamed with the window rolled down, at a light on 6th. YESSSS, she shouted at the US Bank Tower, its small head scraping the bottom of the skyline.

Ethan was just as enthusiastic when she broke the news to him. He even did a little dance.

“That’s like five months of rent.”

“Yeah, it is,” she said, still feeling elated. “And the others are on display, so we might see more,” she told him.

“This calls for some wine.” He went around to the kitchen and pulled down two glasses and a bottle from the cabinet above the oven.

“This is great,” he said, working the bottle. “Maybe we’ll be able to get out of here sooner than expected. Move into a bigger place.”

The cork popped, taking Julie’s joy with it.

“But this place is bigger now,” she said.

He brought her a glass, poured. “Well yeah,” he replied. “But we can afford normal bigger now – not spooky, cursed bigger.”

“I like this place,” she said. Her hand was trembling now.

Ethan could see the red waves in her glass. “We can do better,” he answered, his voice firm. He took a drink. “Come on. Let’s not ruin the mood.”

“Why do you always try to take things from me?” she demanded.

He put his glass down on the counter. “No one’s trying to take anything from you. I’m trying to celebrate with you.”

“No, you’ve made it about what you want, like always. This isn’t your moment, Ethan.”

“I didn’t –”

Too late. Her wine glass flew into the wall, shattering.

“Holy shit,” he yelled, but she was already down the hall, marching into her studio and locking it behind her. Every breath was fire.

He was at the door. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m staying here,” she said.

“This apartment is literally haunted, Julie.”

“I like it here. This studio is mine.”

“To hell with this,” he shouted.

“Eat shit, Ethan!” she yelled back.

The door reverberated with the force from his fist. The murmurs in her mind turned to screams.

A moment passed. Then Ethan spoke, calmly. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper. I didn’t mean that.” She hated how he stopped himself from being lost in anger with her. That he’d always pull back from the edge of oblivion and act like he should be congratulated for doing so, that he was better than her because he could swallow his feelings instead of embracing them.

“Go away, Ethan,” she said. “Just go.”

“This place is doing things to you.”

“Don’t call me crazy.”

“It is making you crazy. And I won’t stick around for it.”

“Then go.”

“I know you don’t mean that.”

They both stood inside the silence, separated by the door, for a time. When he spoke again, his voice was shaking.

“I’ll give you two months and then I’m going. I love you very much and I’m very real. I’m more real than anything you could paint would ever be. I’ll be there when you’re sick and I’ll be there to hold you up on bad days and I’ll be there to tell you the truth when you need to hear it. I love you, Julie.”

“Stop saying that,” she said.

He said it again. It made her so sick and sad and sad and sick. “I’m going. I’ll sleep on the couch if you want the bed.”

She listened as the sound of his footsteps trailed away.

The next morning, the apartment had shifted once more. The hallway was much longer and the kitchen and living area had swapped places. There was also now a smoke alarm in the coat closet for some reason.

She went to him while he was working the French press. “I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“It’s fine,” he answered, breaking away from her grasp.

She made another bid. “I was thinking we could go get lunch later or something.”

“Your coffee is on your desk,” he answered. “I’d prefer if we didn’t actually talk that much until you make up your mind about what I said last night.”

“Don’t be like that.”

He poured his coffee in a thermos and grabbed his wallet and keys. “I mean it,” he told her. “If you’ve already decided that this,” he said, pointing down the hall at her studio, “is who you want to be…I don’t want any part of it.”

“I am who I am,” she answered, her fingernails digging into her arms.

“That’s the sad thing: you don’t have to be. You could be so many things that would make you happier than whatever is in that room.”

“As long as those things are with you. On your terms,” she said. The heat was in her chest again.

He put his hand up. “You’re not hearing me, and I don’t think you want to. I’m going to go in and work from the office for the next few weeks. It’ll be good just to have time to ourselves.”

“Okay then,” she told him. After he left, she went over to her desk and drank some of the coffee, noting with resentment it tasted quite good.

As the days passed, the apartment continued to shift and grow. The hallway became longer, the distance between Julie’s studio and the bedroom increasing. One day, she checked her email to find that all the artwork she had given the gallery had been purchased and that she’d receive a check with a frankly ludicrous amount written across it in the mail by Friday.

Julie promptly sent in a polite but firm two-week notice to her supervisor and once that period was done, she gleefully retreated to her studio and painted from morning to late at night. She even took to sleeping in the studio. A month passed, with she and Ethan barely saying a word to one another. For a while this kind of freedom brought her joy and relief in strong, alternating waves, and yet thoughts crept into her head like gnats on flesh while she painted.

Did he miss her? Was he seeing someone? Why wouldn’t he just say something? She was sidelined by these thoughts more and more. Less paintings got finished and when they did, they lacked the truth and glory of her previous accomplishments. She was ashamed and weak.

One night, she finally burst into loud sobs. There came a knock at the door.

“Julie?”

She wiped away her tears but did not open the door. “Yeah?”

“I was passing by. I just wanted to check on you, I guess,” Ethan said.

“I’m good,” she said.

“Do you want to go grab some dinner or something? Just talk about things? It’s been a while.”

She stood there in silence. A part of her body was screaming like it desperately needed water, shrieking yes, go to him go tell him you’re sorry go you need him.

She looked over her shoulder at the canvas.

“I should stay here,” she answered at last, knowing he had been brave to be the first one to say something and that she had thrown it in his face. She was so so sorry. She couldn’t go but she could still be sorry. That was not a weakness.

“Okay,” he said. Not angry. Not sad. Just distant. “Night, Julie.”

She waited until she couldn’t hear his footsteps and knew he was way down the hallway that had grown so long these past few weeks. She then said “I love you” to no one. Torrents of tears rushed down her cheeks, and the snot came out of her nose and somehow her mouth too was like a flood of mud. She’d thought she’d bleed her whole body of moisture. She’d thought maybe she could do it now, that she’d cry out all the hate and the pride and stubbornness. That maybe she could be what the world wanted her to be and that, yes, it would be okay. She would be like everyone else, but she would be happier and not alone and that would be nice and–

This is not the truth.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood. The murmurs were no longer murmurs. The walls were speaking to her.

This room is your world entire. What you were meant for. Everything else is a distraction.

She nodded.

He will take you away.

Another nod.

You make us look so beautiful, little prophet.

A shift in the room temperature. She had never felt more calm in her life. The tears left her.

We can make him go.

“Go?” she said.

You need only give us the word.

She was quiet for a time. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Who can say? Perhaps the walls had stopped time just for her or, more accurately, had made her see time was a prison men and women created for themselves. What felt like eons went by.

“Will he suffer?”

No.

“Can you make him happy?”

He will only know happiness.

She considered their reassurances. At long last, she uttered two words. And then she stood and approached the canvas and got back to work.

She could smell the sweat stink rising from her armpits but even this did not stop her painting for three days straight. On the fourth day and at the precipice of exhaustion, Julie finally went out of the studio to relieve herself and replenish her strength with food. She turned. She could no longer see where the hallway ended. There were more rooms on both sides than she could count.

She looked in the other direction. Her room was now somehow the one closest to the kitchen and living room. She used the restroom and when she stepped out, something called to her.

“Julie?” The voice was faint but familiar.

“Ethan?”

“I’m lost. Julie, please.” His voice was receding now.

“Where are you?”

“Julie,” Ethan cried one last time, and then his voice was gone, carried away like a child in the tide.

She stood for a few moments, looking down the endless hall. For a spell, she could hear things in the distance, like the squeak of door hinges and the turning of gears. And then everything was quiet again.

Julie turned and went into the kitchen and made coffee like he had taught her. Freshly ground beans. Four minutes in the French press. She poured the dark nectar into her mug and tasted it. Not as good as his but she could get it there eventually. Maybe.

She returned to her studio and painted. Over the next few days, she took breaks only when necessary. To eat. To shit. To shower. To get the mail with the money in it. To pay rent. To email the gallery to tell them more paintings would be coming soon, yes, more than they could ever imagine. To call someone to take Ethan’s things away.

Her life soon completed its transformation into an unwavering commitment to her calling. She was more than an artist. She was a priestess in her temple.

One fine Saturday morning, Julie paused to look at the latest painting, nearly finished.

Another landscape. This one showed a naked man sitting on a stone platform hovering in a void somewhere, his back to the viewer, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of infinity. He stared out at what appeared to be a blazing sun embedded in a deep purple sky. She could not see his face but she imagined – or perhaps hoped – that this man in his faraway place was smiling.

The moment passed. She went back to work.