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My night with the rapper fucked me twice, give or take if you’re counting.

***

“I know you,” he smirked at me, holding champagne in one hand, his cummerbund pressed against by his other. He was also staring up at the available portrait, an image of a face seemingly photographed, but when you looked closer, approaching the canvas, it became something else entirely. Nothing but a mosaic of colorful swirls and squares, textured tiles transforming the image.

It was just us huddled closely near the artwork, everyone else fading in our rear, taking in the Rothko or the Hirst, the first graders’ expensively framed abstracts, or the open bar.

The little placard read Chuck Close. Some insane suggested bidding price. Demarcations between head and background cease to be clearly defined, so that the overall character of the painting asserts itself.

Is he impressed the artist painted this after becoming a quadriplegic? Someone always lays it on thick like that at these benefits and balls, thinking it’ll drive the bidding up. Chuck did something astonishing, just like you can with your wallet this evening - doesn’t that feel incredible!?

Then again, I’ve read a little about his background too; maybe that morsel didn’t impress him the same way it might the rest of this crowd.

I stop reading and turn towards this other artist in my presence, taking in his hands, his feet in shiny shoes. Standing so close. Half the balding men here probably rented their tuxedos, now too rotund for the sets they purchased in their early forties. Back when they were first making it in D.C., when they could finally afford their first wives’ house- and face- remodeling hobbies, when they had club memberships they used for the gym facilities, not just for golf. Now they came to these galas and bought this art the makers had wanted to remain in museums for the public, but pivoted to private collectors under the guise of good causes nobody could argue with postmortem; when values skyrocketed and promises plummeted. So these aging elites ate the steak and drank the scotch and disregarded artists’ wishes and doctors’ suggestions.

But next to me, this man was nothing like that. For one, he’s a truth-teller, which cannot be said about the rest of us. I know his lyrics have taken a truculent tone towards my boss - that is, all of our boss - but he still gets invited to these functions, to save the children and to build the schools and so on. A bona fide philanthropist. Heard he promptly pays the organization hosting, unlike some of the others who screen these charities’ calls about an outstanding payment. Another affront to all these short little American men: his integrity. Outsmarting and outdressing and outbidding and outbeingagoodChristianing them all.

Plus, he smells really damn good.

***

That night, my husband was in Turkey for diplomatic relations. That’s code for participating in a promising new trial to stave off prostate cancer, the hunter that was coming for him and his crotch – all of these crotches – any day now. And while he was at it, a subtle hair transplant to complement the new teeth. A real two-fer for a senior in crisis management, his trip.

Bless his heart.

Sans my direction, my team had run the optics in their own focus group. Since the tabloids started seeking me out beyond our designated Press Room, there had been… unwanted attention.

“If we roll out his refreshed look before some of your public appearances for the upcoming campaign, we can push for our wholesome messaging with a more… unified image.”

Unified. Euphemism for aesthetically bridging the gap between us; he wouldn't look like he could be my father if he had luscious locks, if his polos were tailored just so. Dating your dad’s bald friend is weird. Marrying a thick-haired one though? Now that’s wholesome family fun.

Nowadays, a powerful man could lie about his health, his weight, his height. But being plain old? We were still workshopping this.

***

This rapper though, he was a beautiful specimen. He likely had a fashion house make that tux custom for his Adonis body, probably has a dozen more to boot. His hair, beneath the dimmed art lighting, almost looked like its own mosaical patterns akin to the painting before us.

“We know you too,” I said, using my half-empty flute to gesture to the whole room behind us. Suddenly looking away from him and Chuck, I realized if I let my eyes adjust, I could make out mosaics of Prilosec and Imodium, of crisp scars along hairlines and cloudy cataracts I hadn’t noticed before.

I stared back up at him. Incredibly close, and yet his little squares were indecipherable to me; his was the only face still in focus, actually human.

How could I find the sweet spot where he altered? Unable to tell what terms he was on tonight with all of us — besides philanthropic — I decided to tip my glass up towards him, offering a cheers. “To the ch—”

He stopped me. Only shook his head, took one step back, and poured a little champagne on the floor in between us, halting my gesture by splattering both our overpriced shoes, his flatter and now wetter than mine. Could nearly see my reflections in there, dotted in sparkling bubbles.

“Nah I won’t cheers you, Kate, I hate what you do.” Unflinching, I looked back at his puzzling face, kept trying to stargaze through it. Blame it on Chuck, but I was transfixed. Waiting for some imaginary lines to connect the dots for me, willing constellations to form behind his eyes. They widened slightly.

“I mean I’ll fuck you, if you’re still the good time girl I bet you were. Before your daddy sold you to all these assholes you lie your pretty little face off for. But I won’t ever cheers you.”

He goes to turn away, but when he detects something in my face — I’m still trying to make him out, all his loops and swirls and circles and ovals, my own pupils surely dilating — he snickers at me, slyly. “I see you Kate. Find me after then.”

Constituent, I did.

Gave up trying to demystify optical illusions, gave in to allowing myself to feel. All my little squares had been dulled and blurred in recent times, I wanted to come into magnified, sharp focus, even if it didn’t make sense, if on paper it was my undoing.

One kaleidoscopic night.

The original spin.

So that was the first time. In a literal sense.

***

I bet you think the second time he fucked me was when he wrote some song about me afterwards, right? Got me cancelled or fired as a result?

Close.

But no.

The second time was when the pregnancy test confirmed what we’d done.

***

At first look, it’s only urine, and some specially treated antibodies; hCG appearing on its face like a blue line.

Simple as that.

But when you hold it up to your eye, it’s actually a whole black hole in there. Swallowing lives and degrees and bodies and fun cars and vacations and identities and happy hours. A metaphorical phenomenon, devouring literally everything it touches, masquerading as a pee stick.

Having been with my husband for so long, I mistook myself for the lifeless void. I forgot about my body, this vantage point.

Come even closer, and another paradigm doesn’t merely shift inside the plastic window. It explodes, like a supernova.

***

This can’t happen.

So. I had some serious shit to take care of. Or to spin. Or both.

Now, normally I could spin anything with my eyes closed. But the irony was, these days I couldn’t take care of it without a favor from my boss. The man who had paid off all of his concubines, and probably had taken care of it dozens of times — certainly more than most — but won on a pro-life platform.

Like I said, fucked.

Pardon my language. I meant “alleged” concubines.

***

My team was patronizing me, trying to weave my marriage into an image it clearly wasn’t, to spin my life. Everyone kept putting things past me. Despite my age, appearance, and connections, I'd proven myself capable. Cunning, even. Not just the face and voice of the optics operations, but the goddamn brains. If I do say so.

No matter what any of the others did in our party, I was the one who controlled the entire narrative.

Esposito’s connections to the cartels? A racist conspiracy.

Durden’s slur caught on camera? AI deepfake.

My poolside vacation paparazzi shots being overtly sexualized? Proof who the real perverts and sexists are; never printing those pics of my male counterparts.

Honestly, it’s too easy; just bust out the ol’ I am rubber and you are glue trick. That way, they never stick.

Unless, that is, something does.

***

What my team didn’t grasp was my reason for becoming a third wife, for inheriting college-aged stepchildren. It was my loophole: zero expectations of motherhood. Never wanted that. Sure as hell don’t now.

Even if I did, I couldn’t have this one. Should I become inescapably, publicly pregnant I would morph from the spokeswoman to the poster-(mother-with-)child for the cause. Demoted from a player to a pawn piece.

Still. Anyone can spin opinions.

But then there are facts, some more pliable than others. Everyone knows the truths — sorry “alleged” truths — about my boss. Those facts people don’t care about; buying the stories I spin offers them peace of mind.

Nobody would buy a story wherein we welcome this child into our (soon-to-be so!) wholesome, sweater-caped crew. This is one exhibit where you needn’t strain or approach closely to distinguish that the little tiles betray the bigger picture.

Hard fact: that’s clearly not my husband’s child.

My belly deflated from pushing out another's baby, they’d all chant Checkmate! having finally caught us — caught me — in our own glue. My hands covered in the gunk of a story I can’t sell anyone.

So. I have to make it go away before it grows; something too unyielding to twist; too dark to hide with a brush stroke.

I won’t let this happen.

***

And how to do so, now that we’ve shut it all down?

I can’t go north or south. I won’t go east, to seemingly see my husband and his dotted scalp in his final rounds of the trial. So good at letting nurses take his vitals and telling invested doctors how he feels. He must love it there, remembering the hands-on nurturing that eventually strangled him in his first marriages. But I don’t want that either. No passport stamps. No witnesses.

I need solitude.

It’s karma, surely. For my involvement in making my very predicament infinitely more challenging than it already is for all the others.

Mine is not the mess of a few drops drizzled out of a flute. This is a whole bottle of champagne thrust down violently, burst on the floor and splattered on the walls; shattered glass scattered and effervescence flattening out, dying.

You made this happen.

***

When we’re in our conference room dissecting the latest videos of our boss (throwing a golf club at his caddy after being caught cheating at a tournament), I start to feel my stomach turn. Excellent.

Frustrated and feeling the bile rise, I leave in the middle of our session (bounces right off of us, sticks to them how?), telling my team I need to make a call, will get some air.

I take myself and my phone out.

I won’t call in a favor from above. Not yet.

I haven’t googled any desperate measures either, refusing to type my problems out. I won’t leave a trail. No breadcrumbs like in his lyrics for Come Close.

Now every woman’s a ghost to me, reminds me of my sister. R.I.P.

Whole world sinking, no paddle to Roe a boat; that’s our democracy.

We can’t swim, we can’t breathe, we can’t float in the tsunami’s tide,

Lost another unborn? We lost our soulmates to the storm. No one survived.

His sister. Maybe one of his tattoos that never came into focus? I miss the first chorus, distractedly reflecting on all the secret messages inked on his skin, but soon feel the frisson. Lyrics about me.

But her? Curves the only thing in focus in a sea full of squares,

Pixelate a woman’s worth, Louvre wanna frame her up in theirs.

Pants on fire when she moves, they say she’s just a talking head,

But she play every game with a razor, except when she lie... in my bed.

That’s why only I can call her my Mona – can’t you hear, can’t you see?

When she’s quiet it’s a riot, cause we all know this ain't worth the salary.

Mirror talk now — real talk now:

What do you see? Is it them, is it you? Is it me?

Stay forever trapped like that, in my haunted collectors' gallery.

It’s too close, too spot on. His words could have me spinning in all the wrong ways: snagged in his hook, hanged up by his dangling loop.

I hate spot on.

I listen once, then never again.

***

But if it does happen to him – condoms breaking, accidents occurring, little miracles surviving – he must know how to take care of it, to chivalrously help the other women. I won’t reach out though. I’d rather die than give him the satisfaction: admitting I had any role in denying my own access.

Conversely, I imagine the stinging death I’d feel if asked for comment about the song – about me – and he vehemently denied it, bouncing my tactics back against me. “She wishes I wrote a song about her. They’re so vain."

***

A friend once admitted to feeling disappointed after an emergency pregnancy test turned out negative, her life not destroyed.

“Even if it makes no sense, I never want to fail something,” she lamented over a sunset bottle of wine, celebrating the close call. Psychotic, I thought then.

I understand that nuance better now. Privately, I want to feel the bottle break, to cut myself in the kaleidoscope, rather than wallow in anguish after him publicly turning me down.

***

I have to be more careful, especially than the ones who get caught. Some cheating, stupid husbands asking their computers questions about life insurance policies and how to dispose of bodies.

Instead, I type “Chuck Close Washington DC” and walk through the Mall towards the results.

Who purchased the portrait from the gala? I don’t actually want to learn. It’s probably still in some nailed-up crate. Waiting for a husband to move funds around to finish paying for it. Or maybe it’s destined for an eternity in the lightless storage unit of an investor who has no need for art. Only for saving the children, ostensibly.

Along the humid walk, a few people snap permissionless photos, apparently recognizing me. It happens more since the paparazzi found a market in my personal movements, particularly in warm weather. One overweight couple with hot dog breath asks to take a picture, says their sons back home love me. I manage a pose and smile, but only nod farewell so puke doesn't fly out all over their t-shirts and sunburns.

God bless America.

Once inside my air-conditioned destination, I realize I’ve never come here in the middle of the day. Not when it’s open to the public like this. I don't ask anyone for help, so it takes me some time before I find it.

Patron, I did.

Deja vu: big picture, tiny details. Again, me standing before this blown-up face, my feet aching in heels. Today it’s pangs of nausea I feel, it’s my own sweat wetting my feet, turning my bra itchy. My breasts feel heavier and sore, as they’ve persistently been for the past several days, verifying my problem with a leadened intensity.

Everything a reminder. Chuck too.

Same face, different portrait.

First, I read the details provided in print besides the work. I gravitate towards the sensational, lingering on his accident, no different than all the couples I mocked for exactly this weeks ago.

One consequence of the Event was that a set of restrictions was imposed on him by dramatic circumstances. He has been able to work with that set of restrictions just as he previously worked within the self-imposed ones.

Pointillism personified.

Then, I catch myself. Inches away from galaxies swooshed on Chuck's chin, I’m standing exactly how he’d been standing that night. With my hand pressed on my abdomen. As the background and foreground blended and blurred, I didn’t realize what I’d been doing. Noticing my hand’s placement, I immediately recoil from the canvas and from my body as if bitten. A sudden overreaction, borderline heaving venom and vomit all over the masterpiece.

***

With Chuck’s peers witnessing my process, I saunter past other exhibits, letting my mind bounce ideas around inside its rubber walls, loosening tiles within me. After I’m done — for now — I brace for my departure, for facing the heat and tourists outside again. Walking out the museum doors into the sticky daylight, my hands smelling of sanitizer freshly dispensed, I hum.

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently through the crowd.

Fix all the messes, smile, step, repeat in tight dresses,

Even if you want to burst and scream aloud…

I will turn this without anyone, besides the dead artists, ever knowing the truth.

This never happened.

Spin it.

Unless, that is, someone knows where to really look.

In my portrait, if you lean close enough, you’ll see his seed painted inside, the littlest big bang. So tiny, but so obvious. Right on the nose.