Contour Rivals

A rotted apple core. Plumed, suspended in a spherical container of formalin. Around it, arched pipes, grizzled steel, and an assortment of other metal subjects. Below and before it all, a solitary card was perched.

Arrhythmia of the Artillery

Reinhold Ksieski, 1998

An apple a day. Pera uncapped her camera’s lens, and captured the work. Apple of my eye, she teased, tossing around a few more possible captions.

“Are you a fan of Reinhold Ksieski’s?”

Pera turned to see a smaller boy, around her age, wearing a billowing olive-green skirt over jeans, a white t-shirt and hoop earrings.

“Oh, I was just coming back around to get this one because some people were in the shot earlier.”

“Have you seen his giant origami house?”

Pera shook her head. The boy charged ahead.

“My mom took me to see its opening in Bolivia. Have you seen Reinhold’s Xerox of a Xerox statue in the Olympia Mall?”

Pera shook her head again as the boy retrieved a vintage camera from his backpack.

“Why did you bring that DSLR?” the boy pointedly asked. “There’s thousands of photos online of this piece already.”

“Well, it's- this is for my personal blog,” Pera shakily answered.

“Personal blog? If you don’t mind my asking, who’s your readership?”

Pera frowned.

“Well...it’s just me right now,” she mumbled.

“There’s a quote that reminds me of you. I forget it exactly, but it goes something like, ‘it’s a disservice to revel in the works of a stranger so casually.’”

Pera stared at the boy, decidedly disinterested in continuing to speak with this stranger. Time to go.

“You don’t know very much about Reinhold’s personal life, do you?” she heard the boy call out to her. “He hates his work being captured in photos.”

Pera’s silver locks bounced against her face as she turned a heel on the linoleum.

“Why'd you bring your camera then?”

“This isn't my camera. This is Reinhold’s camera he used in high school, actually. I’m just borrowing it. I’m his son."

A small hand reached out for a shake, upward facing and slightly cupped as if expecting a communion wafer.

"Remy Ksieski.”

Pera took the hand of the boy, and dipped it in the air.

“Pera.”

“So, Pe-ra,” Remy said, pausing between the syllables as if worried he’d mispronounce the sounds. “You aren’t a fan of Reinhold’s. Who is an artist you hold in high regard?”

Pera thought back to her art classes, trying to remember the names of artists associated with the lessons.

“Escher is pretty cool.”

Remy closed his eyes and nodded knowingly. “Escher. What a morbid consideration. Yes, some of his illusions are a fun glance, but I find his monochromic presentation so gaudy. Anyone else?”

Pera suddenly took up her camera and snapped a photo of the boy.

“Myself. I like myself.”

Remy stood in shock for a moment, before putting Ksieski’s camera back into his backpack.

“Delete that.”

Pera shook her head.

“No.”

“You’re a stranger, you’ve no right to take my photo like that, unwarranted.”

Pera shrugged. “You’re a stranger, too. I was just minding my business and taking pictures until you showed up.”

“‘A stranger?’ I’m the son of Reinhold Ksieski. That wasn’t right of you to take that photo, Pera. You’ve been warned.”

“I’m deleting it. Don’t you worry.”

Pera held her camera up and snapped the flash once again.

“Oops.”

Remy went red as a radish root. Pera laughed and angled the camera again, causing the boy to retreat to the center of the room. Remy burrowed his head into his shoulders and clumped up behind one of the glass centerpiece sculptures.

Pera turned around, satisfied with her victory. She headed for the exit of the gallery.

“I don’t want those photos on the internet. Or on your blog or whatever.”

Pera turned, looking back at the glass mold and blurry figure behind it.

“Grow up. Everyone’s online now.”

“I’m not some wild animal in a zoo. I don’t like what you did, Pera.”

“Well, I don’t like that you came in here and were so judgy. I told you I didn’t know your dad and was just minding my own business and you still-”

Pera saw Remy’s face lift at the mention of his father before shaking his head.

“Like, all I did was take a picture,” she continued. “Kids at my school take dumb pictures of each other all the time.”

Pera started for the exit once more, then heard a strange sob.

“But I’ll delete these,” she proffered.

Remy sat, still behind the piece, not saying anything.

“I’m deleting them,” she repeated from across the room. Pera pulled up her camera’s screen and thumbed the trash bin icon on both photos.

“Okay. They’re deleted. Sorry.”

Pera exited and walked down the marbled hallway. Outside in the distance the sun was shining bright, but dark clouds had started to crowd it, darkening the building. The digital clock bled 4:42. She walked through the door.

After a few steps, she glanced back just as the one-way exit door yawned shut. The museum was closing at 5:00 and her mom would be waiting. She went around to the front where a huge vinyl banner was hung.

REINHOLD KSIESKI

CONSTRUCTING THE OBSTRUCT

03/07/10 - 04/02/10

Pera walked to the front desk.

“Hey, do you know if the Ksieski gallery will ever be back here?”

A museum staffer winced in thought.

“I don’t think so? It’s going to Brazil after this.”

“Is Reinhold Ksieski here right now?”

“He was earlier. He follows his work everywhere, he’s funny like that. Says he can’t bear to part with it.”

Pera walked up the grand steps, back up to the upstairs gallery, past the familiar objects and still life works. Over the intercom a voice announced the museum was now closing. She made her way through the entrance of the Reinhold Ksieski gallery.

“Hi,” Pera said as she glided past a hunched figure who still sat at the base of the sculpture.

“Hello. Do I know you?” its voice dryly asked.

“No, you don’t,” Pera replied as she flew around to the other side.

Remy looked up, his eyes looking red and sugary. Pera bobbed her knees as she stood in place.

“They close at 5:00,” she awkwardly stated.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And my mom’s going to pick me up soon, but I wanted to tell you. There’s a quote that reminded me of you, too. It’s from Chuck Palahniuk. It goes, ‘there’s an opposite to deja vu called jamais vu. You meet the same people and visit the same places, over and over, but remember nothing. Everybody’s a stranger.’”

Remy sat there, then placed a hand on the ledge of the sculpture’s support platform and lifted himself. Picking up his backpack, he took a tiny black notebook from it.

“My dad gave me this and said if I met someone who I liked, to give it to them.”

Pera cautiously took the book and opened it. Inside were ornate sketches and designs, pages covered overwhelmingly in ballpoint madness.

“It’s Reinhold’s old high school sketches. Every page could probably go for close to five grand each on eBay.”

Pera handed the book back to Remy.

“I don’t think I should have this.”

“Reinhold told me to give it to someone I liked. I liked meeting you.”

“Do you have a pen?”

Remy shook his head.

“Okay, well, can you remember ‘midgardvesuvian.tumblr.com’?”

Remy wiped his eyes and nodded.

“That’s my blog. I’m not on Facebook or anything, and I don’t have a phone.”

Remy held the little notepad out to Pera more forcefully.

She took it in her hands again, now more carefully, and once more flipped through it.

“But yeah, it was awesome meeting you, too,” Pera said at last, the words tasting like plastic. “Does your family live around here?”

Remy seemed ready to answer, then broke as he spotted a page Pera had flipped past.

“Oh, that sketch, that’s something Reinhold always hated. That’s because he can't build it exactly how it was drawn, how it was in his head.”

Pera studied the drawing for a second, on the cusp of repeating her question, when Remy started talking again.

“And no, I don’t live here. Reinhold has a compound in Michigan that we return to between trips. That sketch,” Remy continued, pulling a polaroid out of a pocket of his bag. “This is what those look like in person. They’re all up there.”

Pera took the photo and held it on the page beside the sketch. In it, a sprawling backyard beside a lake was littered with a series of massive attempts to build the very thing on the next page.

“Well, those look pretty close,” Pera reasoned.

“No, he calls it a junkyard. I think he’s spent more time-”

Another intercom announcement warning the day’s end broke in over Remy’s words.

“I gotta go. But thanks a lot for the book,” Pera said, picking up the pause.

Remy nodded, forging Mona Lisa’s attempt at a smile.

“Pe-ra. If you give me your address...I’ll write you letters.”

“We’re switching apartments soon, so I don’t think- I can’t give you anything now.”

“Oh, okay. Well, if it’s meant to be, you know,” Remy said, curtsying.

Pera nodded, holding the book out to Remy once more, the polaroid on top of it.

“What if you regret giving me this?”

“I won’t. What was your blog called again?”

“Midgard. Vesuvian…”

Remy repeated the name to himself a few times before clapping his small hands together.

“Okay: remembered.”