The Gorillaz play in the background, through the speakers the-last-one bought me for Labor Day. I am reminded of her because like the multi-member virtual band, I am inclined to think outside of myself, sometimes.

The conversation about the speakers was as erratic as the occasion for gift giving, though, she obviously knew I was unhappy.
        
'I can't take these.'
        
She forced the glossy white plastic choked box into my embrace the way one hands over a newborn to a paternity denying father.
        
'I want you to have them,' she said.
        
'I think it's best we don't see each other anymore.' I told her anyway.
        
She died on a cruise ship about two months later. A rare allergy to Catfish. She had cashed in all her savings to sail around the world, find herself, forget me. When we were together, I used to cook meals for us. Somehow, I never served her catfish, even though, whenever I visited my family by myself, all of us ate catfish all the time. Where's the message from the universe in that?
        
The music drowns out suddenly; ringing fills the room like a sermon. The vibrating phone nudges against the bonsai plant on the edge of the kitchen counter, next to Portia's medicine. I still haven't figured out how to set the Bluetooth to automatically disconnect when the phone rings.
        
'Hello?'
        
'OK'
        
I have stopped being surprised / amused / annoyed / morose ( a month for each reaction give or take ) over Portia's use of 'OK' in any context. I pretend she doesn't say it … isn't. How did someone with such a literary name come to have such a limited vocabulary? English is a second language to me and 'OK' was the first thing I picked up back in Japan, so she really needs to upgrade her terminology.
        
'Are you done?' She goes on. 'My interview ended early so I'm on my way back already.'
        
I'm cooking an exotic meal for us--Indian food--to celebrate the success of her interview. The fact that it ended earlier doesn't invoke optimism.
        
'How did it go?' I ask, genuinely concerned. If she gets the job, she can get her own place.
        
'I can't hear you, OK … I'm in the tunnel.'
        
She's spent money on a taxi. Didn't take the subway. Maybe it did go well.
        
'Should I… .' The line disconnects.
        
I don't call back. I know she'll be home in 20 minutes. If I ask her to pick up green chilis from the ethnic grocery store two blocks away, I'll have to wait to add them in to the marinade before I can put it all in the blender. Dinner will be late. Everything will end late.
        
She arrives just when my Tikka Masala is ready. We eat.
        
I've turned down her offer to help with the dishes so often now that she doesn't offer anymore. I really don't mind the actual work. What frustrates me is that she still doesn't realize that she does a terrible job of cleaning up.
        
I grew up in a small home with many people in a suburb of Tokyo. One learns to be clean like out of everything else; necessity. My brother and sister, parents, grandmother, each one a vividly different personality. Yet, we all kept clean and tidy, both out of courtesy and selfishness. Miracles are not always out-worldly, they're domesticated too.
        
After doing the dishes, I carefully water the Bonsai plant, like every night. Portia gifted it to me last Christmas before I left to visit my family in Tokyo. I obviously couldn't carry it with me, left it behind, and returned two weeks later to find it rotting on the counter. ( At the time, Portia didn't have the keys to my apartment, but she slept in late and left after I left for the airport and didn't turn off the heat ).
        
I replaced the plant without letting her know; it was the first time in my life I developed a dual feeling; hate toward a person and love for a plant simultaneously. Not outright repulsion and endearment per se, but rather, the idea of these two emotions, unable to exist singularly as if they were a marriage. The more I grew to care for the plant, the more I started detesting Portia. It was unnerving, exhilarating.
        
She never noticed the plant had been replaced; not even when she had to replace it yet again. More on that later.
        
Dessert in hand, we cuddle on the tan faux suede couch, pairs of weekend-eyes gazing into the piercing sun of Lawrence of Arabia on TV. I pick what we watch on Friday night. It's important. She needs to see such things. Everyone does. Not just for the artistry, which is of course profound, but for what it expresses about belonging; Peter O'Toole's character leads a crusade, motivated by conflict of the self rather than pre assigned genetic you-look-like-me loyalty. One doesn't equate military men with artists, but in my opinion, Lawrence is the ultimate artist; he goes beyond the staples of art's modus operandi I.e. perspective, to actually striving for the change he sees, wishes to see. Being a film, there is of course, the question of authenticity, but even parents lie to their children for their own good now and then.
        
The film ended on a realistically pessimistic note, which helped supplant its Oscar tally. Creators worldwide were rewarded, with inspiration. Which is inspiring in itself. The problem occurs, when the creators start thinking they've won. Regimes, Businesses, Foundations learn to be creative too if they are to thwart it. Planting a mole in the form of a work, a person, or thing of significance in the artist's life is the reverse-reverse psychological way of ensuring advantage. Why outright kill the artists and invite overt rebellious pushback, when you can suck the creativity out of them without suspicion, like some horrible disease tearing the insides without anyone noticing until it's too late. Think James Bond with paintbrushes and M dropping hints with names of Dead Sculptors. Artists are terrorist cogs to Capitalism, Communism and anything else that can be manufactured assembly line.
        
My breath smells of onions; hers doesn't. We ate the same food. WTH.

        
When I saw Portia for the first time, over a year ago ( a few months after the-last-one choked in her cabin without a sea view ), I was sitting on a rusted bench in the courtyard across the street, staring at the Redbud tree which was in full bloom. This is where I go when I have nowhere to go.
        
Portia was seated nearby and was wearing a bright Yellow Coat to ward off the bipolar spring wind, but the striking shade of the fabric appeared to be sending out a defiant message to the weather; summer's coming, bitch!
        
At the time, I was struggling to finish the preliminary concept for an Aids Memorial exhibit sanctioned by the local museum. The brief was to represent the victims as a single entity, vulnerable but persevering. Weeks of sketches and research had yielded expectedly mediocre results. I couldn't escape the perversion to utilize red in my intended piece, which had become synonymous both with the 80's Epidemic and the three-decade long defiance and sympathy that followed.
        
Portia, in the yellow coat, was hunched over, eating a falafel, with her eyes closed. She seemed both focused and asleep, a meditation of munching. The world could end, and she would still be gobbling the middle eastern delicacy. And then it hit me; first, Biology as a Foundation course in my freshman year, then, a sporadic image on a history channel show not too long ago.
        
I got up, and under an umbrella of branches spiked with reddish-purple flowers, walked up to her.
        
'Thank you.' I said. 'What's your name?'
        
Yeah, just like in a movie.
        
She came to the opening night of the exhibition. Stared at my installation which drew the largest crowds. A human sized piece of a water bear, or Tardigrade, the only known micro animals that are regarded for their adaptive resilience, having survived all mass extinctions on Earth. I even constructed them from non-biodegradable reclaimed plastic that was used for storing hazardous medical waste in the 1960's to further drive a point, and painted the entire surface in a bright neon yellow; a catchy coating to an otherwise underwhelming, even ugly in appearance organism, that has been around before Aids, before us, before communism, the dinosaurs and almost everything before.
        
A critic from an esteemed west coast magazine praised the piece in a review, even calling it "Warhol-esque".
        
'What do you think?' I asked Portia, trying to ascertain in her expression if she had any inkling that she was the inspiration for the piece.
        
'OK.'
        
There was a letter of complaint too, from a civil servant, who felt the installation bore an uncanny resemblance to a member of the Reagan Administration, and thus, was defaming both the person and the federal effort involved in facing the AIDS crisis. I had arrived. I was Lawrence of The Lower East Side, south of McDougal Street.
        
We are in my apartment over a year later on a Friday evening after Portia's interview, and many Fridays since I've produced anything of relevance again.
        
Initiating a break-up from my side is out of the question after what happened with the-last-one; even if my conscience is still inconsiderate, it is now also accountable.
        
I also do not possess the fine skill of making her leave me by hating me, despite my sincere efforts. A few months ago, just before heading for the airport on a short scheduled trip back to Tokyo, I'd said, 'Maybe I'll be there for the next 6 months, let's see.'
        
Even a great white shark would roll over and die with guilt upon seeing her reaction.
        
I stuck to my resolve, took the taxi. Checked in.
        
Just before boarding, I got a call from Portia's friend, Gale. 'Portia's just tried to swallow the bonsai plant whole. I'm in the ER. Come now.'
        
By the time I made it to the Hospital, Portia had been safely resuscitated.
        
Just like in a movie.
        
She didn't have insurance. I paid from the funds I'd been saving up for my next big project, the exploitation of extinct volcanoes by Tour Groups.
        
Portia got me my third bonsai, thinking it was my second; she didn't know it all, but I knew I was her all from then on.
                 
My art is in a bind because of my personal life and my personal life is in a bind because of my ( lack of ) art. Excuses work in loops.
        
She's dodged the question about the interview ever since she arrived back. I don't even care any…
        
'So, they really liked me.'
        
I drop the ice cream bowl.
        
After Portia washes off the Tutti Frutti chunks from her hair, she returns wearing my Ivy League sweatshirt; the one my mother gifted me when I got in. She died during my sophomore year.
        
'Are they going to make you an offer?' I ask.
        
'Actually, they already did.'
        
'That's great … and the pay?'
        
'More than I asked for in the application … there's even a signing bonus.'
        
Once, at the supermarket, I asked Portia to break a $100. She gave me back 6 bills of $20 from her purse, after counting them, twice. I didn't return the extra $20.
        
The job didn't involve such demands on aptitude and anyway, it wasn't her area of study.
        
'When do you start?' I ask, unable to contain my excitement.
        
'Well … there's a catch. I mean, something has to be done for them to hire me.'
        
'Do you have to go through another round of interview? Or take a test?'
        
She takes the bowl I just washed and fills it with the last scoop of the Tutti Frutti. I always eat a half spoon of ice cream before bed. It's my thing. She knows.