The Performance

Content warning: PTSD, fire

People assumed Willa Whitt strapped the smoke detector to her leather chest harness for art’s sake. And she didn’t correct them, so they went on softened to the woman cradling the device like a beloved child. After all, Whitt was a professional dedicated to her craft, handpicked by San Francisco’s best art school to teach New Genres. Of course she’d tend to her medium’s basic needs: taking it out in the hall when it fussed, shielding its sensor through cigarette smoke, imploring it in soothing tones to behave, wiping food dribbles off its face.

But as the years rolled on, Whitt sensed the school’s attention on her, sensed that they expected more from her performance. What would they think if they saw her now, diving into a convenience store to hide from a plume of smoke rising across the Bay? She made for the home supply section, where they sold detectors. At least the smoke wasn’t black—the color of devoured buildings. The thought cost her. The pressure in her mind shot her consciousness over the Bay into the center of hell. And she was left shadowing her body to the cashier, then down the hills, through the campus courtyard, and into the tiled bathroom.

Brown was a safe thought. Moist soil, wet beavers, slimy sea lions, dusty snakes, speckled eggs, sparrows, moths, bears, scat, mice, potatoes. She applied a smile that claimed the person beneath it didn’t notice the smoke gradually thickening the air. And she still wore it when she entered the mailroom and heard painting Professors Randelle and Therman talking about the annual garden gathering.

Randelle said, “The kids picked the theme ’70s fashion, if you’ll believe it.”

Therman dipped his chin. “Flare pants are back.”

Whitt’s cheek muscles jittered, and her tongue bobbed in her throat. “But the smoke.”

Therman said, “Oh, they’ll have those fires out soon.”

“Besides,” Randelle said, “the school really wants those new pictures for the website.”

Whitt reapplied her smile with slimy poster glue and offered to bring fruit snacks. Her colleagues raised their brows. Perhaps they figured she had something in store for the event, but Whitt had no plans beyond buying snacks and making an appearance.

No one knew that Whitt’s apartment held fifteen more detectors or that her nose was an attention-seeking liar. She allowed no one to see beyond her chest, to dip into her soul and see how she’d swapped shapeless cardigans and bulky overalls for thin cotton blouses and dresses that better complied with being cinched beneath the black leather straps. They didn’t need to know they could trace everything back to a scorched field and her oil-soaked rag.

No. Willa Whitt was safe. As long as everyone heeded the alarms, they’d be fine. But her nose was already brewing up a lie: burning candles.

“Not your best work,” Whitt said. “We don’t own candles.” She did a lap around the room anyway, letting her mobile detector scan the deepest spaces the others couldn’t reach. Obstinate silence. She unharnessed the chest piece, flopped on her bed, and breathed deeply. Her nose claimed the smell lingered. “Liar, liar.” So what her Tenderloin apartment building sported mostly dry timber? Her lookouts never slept.

Whitt’s eyes snagged on the Wemble Gallery poster above her bed. Her peroxide-blonde college friend Ashley had given her the press poster from their joint exhibition.

“See what you can do with paint?” Ashley had said. “It’s motivating, right?”

“Not really,” Whitt told her ceiling.

The morning of the garden gathering dawned apocalyptic orange. Dry grass smoke leaned against Whitt’s apartment window as if trying to intimidate the detectors standing guard inside. Surely students would see this sky and stay home; they wouldn’t need the last two snack boxes. She’d call in sick. Therman and Randelle could keep their mouths shut when admin came snapping photos. Unless the photographer sensed an unbalanced snack table on his own.

Whitt dressed in a rush, buttoning her long wool skirt crooked before sweeping on some bold eyeliner that looked more ’60s than ’70s. She trotted downstairs, kissed her detector, and waded into the smoke.

Dull ash sailed through the air. So far, so good. Her plan was going to work. Her detector would remain calm. She made it six steps up the hill. Eight. Then, peeling cries. “Fire! Fire!…Fire! Fire!”

“Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay, honey.” She was running, trailing a wake of stirred smoke. The alarm screeched on, drilling into her ears, driving her legs forward. Concrete. Her feet trampled concrete. Not grass. The noise pierced her brain, clutched her stomach. Whitt tripped and scraped her palms on the gritty ground. Surely her ears absorbed all the pain and no one else heard anything.

Then, like it wasn’t her body, Willa Whitt watched herself claw the device off her harness and smash it on the ground. Again, again, until the worst of the sounds stopped. Smoke mushed against her face like a blanket. Echoes still bounced around her mind, leaving it raw and throbbing. The broken detector lay on gray-black asphalt. What was she doing in the road? Her head pounded too hard to care about the drivers honking at her.

When Whitt clambered into the student bathroom a half-hour later, she leaned on the sink and fingered the battery out of the splintered plastic. She kissed each broken piece before tucking them in the recycling bin. And with shaky hands, she cracked open the new detector’s packaging and attached it to her harness. Despite its mocking red battery pull-tab, the pristine device promised to help her face the day.

She emerged to clear, orange light shining on the street. Had she imagined the smoke? No, students took turns mouthing, “The wind shifted.” So Whitt walked down to the garden that kept the campus from skidding into the Bay. A dozen students and their gaudy blankets already dappled the patchy grass. Some sipped tea and chattered with friends like they’d just claimed an area at a sleepover. The garden soon hummed with life, and the snack table stood ravaged in the building’s shade. See? Good thing she came. 

A junior had wrestled an easel down here and set up her painting supplies. But most sat, poking their phones and drawing in notebooks. No one noticed the smoke nuzzling Whitt’s neck and slowing her movements. And only Whitt saw the flames forking across the grass. She lunged to stop them with her numb body.

Within minutes—before the crowd finished applauding and Whitt was done running home—the video of New Genres Artist Willa Whitt beating down invisible flames had spread across the web.

Later that day, another email requesting an interview regarding Whitt’s “successful garden performance” buzzed her awake. Then came Wemble Gallery’s offer to host a reception for her and display one of her paintings. The formal tone seemed to erase the months Ashley and Whitt had spent nights slouched over dirty diner tables planning shows.

Whitt pulled the covers over her head and mentally drafted a mass no thank you statement. But then her fingers closed around a forgotten fruit snack that had burst and oozed syrup on the bed, and she realized the only way forward: Yes.

The smoke would disperse by then. She’d have time to prepare her answers, practice her smiles. And wasn’t she always urging students to push their comfort zones? She’d been too soft on her business side. In fact, tucked away in her apartment, far from the terror, she couldn’t imagine fearing anything beyond sleeping on these opportunities. She caught up with her sticky fingers after they’d written several lines of gracious text, accepting every request.

***

Business mode guided Whitt through the next few days. It told her to dig the canvases out from under the bed, how to dress for the interviews. She had to watch the broadcasts later to find out how it told her to respond to the questions:

“What are you hoping to say with this work?”

“Is it true you never take it off? All in the name of art. Doesn’t that get uncomfortable?” 

“Now, what was going through your mind?”

“We’re headed into summer, high fire danger throughout the West. Are you worried?”

 “Are you working on anything else? We found your old artist statements. You were a landscape painter, no?” 

Business mode even woke her early and marched her to Wemble’s waterfront gallery. Whitt hovered in the old warehouse doorway with a painting of burgundy hills. She wasn’t there to acknowledge the familiar entryway, the smell of bleached printer paper—so she didn’t. She did, however, feel the lipsticked receptionist staring at the smoke detector. The brunette lifted her eyes and said, “Willa! Let me show you what wall we’re thinking.” It was a fine wall, white and smooth. The woman whisked the painting away and came back with her aura askew. “I’ll handle everything on this end. Your university people are making my job easier.” She had Whitt sign something, then said, “Okay, we’re all set. Come by next week?” But as Whitt leaned into the cold, wet air, the woman scampered after her. “Wait, Willa! You wanna grab lunch?” 

Whitt slammed into the edges of herself, and business mode slipped from her sweaty hands. It was Ashley. College friend Ashley, with dark hair. They bought sandwiches and sat on the wet stones along the Bay. Whitt communed with the gray water and the damp air that claimed nothing could burn on its watch. Worried she’d been quiet too long, Whitt said, “How’ve you been?”

Ashley scraped teeth furrows into her lipstick. “The gallery’s been busy.”

“How are you?” It’d been so long. Did she even deserve to know? She hoped her sincerity shimmered through her words. Her eyes. Hell, her skin.

Ashley slid her gaze over the water. “Got married post-grad. Marcus Levings.” She took a big bite of her sandwich, and her tone was indecipherable as she said, “It’s shit. He says he fell in love with a painter, not an event coordinator.” Ashley coughed a laugh, sending a half-chewed chunk of bread into the Bay. “He’s not wrong.” 

Her vulnerability tugged the hairball clogging Whitt’s mind. “What do you need?” 

“A napkin.” Ashley grabbed Whitt’s hand, their skin meeting like moist tracing paper. “I need to paint,” Ashley said. “It’s torture touching it every day through white gloves.” 

“I’ll clean the brushes at school,” Whitt said.

Ashley smiled like she used to, her lips barely reaching for cheek. “Look at you—Professor! With your fancy device here.”

“You dropped me.”

Ashley flinched like a giant raindrop doinked her nose. Then, as if she’d left the explanation on the sanding belt all these years, Ashley said, “Wemble Gallery feels the art you’re making isn’t salable compared to the pieces for which we offered you representation. Seeing as we don’t want to stand in the way of your creative choices...” The exact words from the email.

Whitt wanted to explain the detectors now, but she couldn’t make her mouth work. Thinking maybe its touch kept her quiet, she unfastened her harness and put it in her bag. She looped the bag around her leg and lay back. If only she felt this safe in her timber box apartment. Whitt imagined her friend coming over and seeing all the detectors. Ashley would release one jagged laugh, and Whitt would feel compelled to lie. Fine. No guests. At some point, Whitt sat up and realized she was alone with the Bay. She scrambled into her harness. How had their conversation ended? It couldn’t have been too bad because Ashley sent a Snapchat of a thumbnail sketch that night. A portrait. She overlaid text: “something I’ve been thinking about for years.” Then she sent her address.

Ashley called Whitt adorable as she pulled her into the flat. Whitt wore her old overalls with the harness turned backward, though she hardly needed it with the building’s fancy automatic sprinklers. Their frangible bulbs gleamed like red pills. A paint-smeared drop cloth tried and failed to interrupt the flat’s breakroom feel. Big windows lined the back wall, and Whitt scanned the bedroom hall for hidden co-workers ready for team building.

“Marc’s at work,” Ashley said. “He’s in tech.” She tacked up the canvas, prepped the palate, and hesitated. “We really doing this?”

Whitt forced herself to load her filbert—blueberries, dragonflies, hyacinth macaws, ribbon eels, morning glories, clear skies—and start painting rectangular prisms that loosely resembled the cityscape out the window. A streak of orange ran through the mound of titanium white on the palette, so Whitt hugged the darker shades and wiggled her toes to confirm she hadn’t slipped away somewhere.

Then Ashley said, “Show me your nose.”

“It’s a liar.”

“Come on, I forgot what nostrils look like.”

Apparently so. The orifices on Ashley’s canvas were as proportionally twisted as Whitt’s buildings. Light air ballooned in her chest, and basic movements came easier.

Ashley laid a thick stroke around the zygomatic arch. The choice defied her typical soft-edged style. She said, “I’ve thought about you a lot.”

“We should let these dry,” Whitt said as she hurried out the door.

They didn’t speak again until the day of the reception. Wemble Gallery’s welcoming walls and low-slung windows squatted over the Bay. During high tide, the water sloshed and spanked the pier’s undercarriage. Inside the gallery, two sections of folding chairs stood in the gallery’s main partitioned space. Strangers and students arrived, trailing in the fog. Whitt’s former students grinned and fidgeted. 

“Hi, Professor,” Bea sang. “We hope you’re surprised. Don’t mind us.” And they scuttled as a crowd to her wall.

Warmth suffused Whitt’s insides. They’d come even though grades were submitted weeks ago. Her expression attracted Ashley and her husband. Marcus’ soft-featured face looked like Ashley painted him into existence. They shook hands, and as Whitt readied to say how nice it was for him to come, he blurted, “Ash tells me you’re ace.”

Whitt cranked her face into a smile. “It’s true,” she said in a way that also told him: Yes, Marcus Levings, I have no desire to bang your wife.

Marcus laughed. “What that must be like.” He cast around the group for support. None came.

“Feels normal to me,” Whitt said.

The hairs framing Ashley’s face pulsed with her strong heartbeat.

Marcus tugged Ashley’s waist against his hip. “We’d get more out of that harness, wouldn’t we Ash?”

“You assume I haven’t,” Whitt said.

Marcus squinted, trying to read Whitt’s face. “If you say so.”

Ashley’s bottom lip ticked down in apology and flicked her eyes to the front, where the garden video dominated the projector screen. Whitt’s clammy toes comforted each other inside her borrowed shoes.

The audience clapped until Whitt’s tongue lurched into motion. Her hands offered late gestures like an off-beat backup dancer. The split audience reminded her of wedding guests gathered to hear proclamations of love. The guests tossed glances between her body and detector, and the vows-of-sorts spilled from her mouth—a special few drifting over the partition walls like embers jumping fire lines. People were nodding along. She had to be doing it right. Then her tongue ran dry and lay pudgy in her head. She spurred it, and it writhed the shape for “Questions.”

A man several rows back stood. “Lovely as ever, Willa! I think we all thank you for your contribution to New Genres. But your paintings—I’ve purchased twelve and have never heard you speak with such candor about your smoke detector process.” He nodded around the room, accepting the nonexistent praise for his extensive collection.

Whitt touched the detector as if it would repeat what she’d said.

The man went on, “You said this was your last painting since your pivot to New Genres. I’ve never known you to use these color combinations or staccato strokes. Do you think you were on the cusp of a new style? You told the news last week you’re going to paint again. Is this your new style?”

She considered her old painting. The burgundy brush strokes were active like troubled water, imitating scorched hills. And her mind replayed the moment the sun caught the oil rag, the moment she realized the flames were too big to beat down and she had to run.

“Do you have more harnesses?” someone asked.

“What leather conditioner do you buy?”

“Are your old smoke detectors available for purchase?”

“When can we expect your new paintings?”

She must have answered them because a person from admin soon strode up the aisle with a white, tiered cake. Faces disappeared behind beady-eyed camera phones. Students dashed in front of him, stuffed lit sparklers into the cake, and guided him the rest of the way—the spitting wicks obscuring his sight. 

To Willa Whitt, the blurry sticks shone like wheat under a sunset. The sun flare stuttered, then mushroomed. Sharp hairspray seared her nose. Crackling filled her ears; her scalp heated. Even at the smell of tangy flesh, she didn’t move. Willa Whitt knew there was no fire clawing down her dress, knew that keening wasn’t her baby crying or her skin burning. And the orange staining her vision? Pumpkins, goldfish, marigolds, amber, chestnut horses, and California poppies. She faced the camera in the aisle and remembered to smile.